Heaven Has No Favorites: A Novel by Erich Maria Remarque; Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston Read Free Book Online

to bore you.”
    “Don’t be silly. I’ve seldom had a chance for a good solid stretch of prewar boredom. A pity. Boredom’s become the rare luxury of our time. Only the Swiss can afford it, at least in Europe—not even the Swedes, ever since their currency went to pot. Shall I smuggle anything up from the village for you?”
    “No, I can’t think of anything I need. There’s going to be a party here tonight. An Italian woman is giving it, Maria Savini. Secret, of course.”
    “Are you going?”
    Hollmann shook his head. “They always throw this kind of party after somebody’s left. Meaning: died. The idea is to have a goodtime to work up fresh courage.” He yawned. “Time for the prescribed siesta. Lie flat and no talking. For me, too. See you tonight.”
    The coughing had stopped. Lillian Dunkerque lay back exhausted. She had offered her morning sacrifice; the day was paid for, and last night as well. She waited for the nurse to come for her. It was time for the weekly fluoroscopy. She knew the routine to the point of nausea; nevertheless, it made her nervous every time.
    She hated the intimacy of the X-ray room. She hated standing there naked to the waist, feeling the assistant doctor’s eyes on her. She did not mind the Dalai Lama. To him, she was a case; to the assistant, she was a woman. It did not bother her so much that she was naked; it bothered her that she was more than naked when she stepped behind the screen. Then, she was naked beneath her skin, naked to the bones and to her moving and pulsating organs. To the eyeglasses twinkling in the reddish dusk, she was more naked than she had ever seen herself, or ever could.
    For a while, she and Agnes Somerville had come to the examinations together. There she had seen Agnes Somerville converted from a beautiful young woman to a living skeleton in which lungs and stomach crouched like ghostly animals, expanding as if they were consuming her life. She had seen the skeleton moving, to the side, forward, seen how it drew breath and spoke, and she knew that she must look the same. Hence her feeling that it was more than obscenity to be looked at by the assistant doctor through the fluoroscope.
    The nurse came. “Who is ahead of me?” Lillian asked.
    “Miss Savini.”
    Lillian put on her housecoat and followed the nurse to the elevator. Through the window, she saw the gray day. “Is it cold?” she asked.
    “No. Forty degrees.”
    Spring will be here soon, she thought. The sick wind, the föhn, the wet, splashy weather, the heavy air, semi-suffocation in the mornings. Maria Savini came out of the X-ray room. She shook her black hair back. “How was it?” Lillian asked.
    “He won’t say a thing. He’s in one of his vile humors. What do you think of my new negligee?”
    “Wonderful silk!”
    “You really like it? It’s from Lizio in Florence.” Maria made a comic grimace. It looked odd, with her wasted face. “What the hell! We can’t go out in the evenings, so we concentrate on our negligees. Are you coming over tonight?”
    “I don’t know yet.”
    “Miss Dunkerque, the doctor is waiting,” the nurse admonished her from the door.
    “Come,” Maria said. “Everyone else is coming. I have new records from America. Fabulous!”
    Lillian entered the dusky room. “At last!” the Dalai Lama said. “Will you ever learn to be punctual, Miss Dunkerque?”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “All right. Temperature chart.”
    The nurse handed it to him. He studied it, and murmured with the assistant. Lillian tried to catch what he was saying. She could not. “Light out,” the Dalai Lama said at last. “Turn right, please—left—once more—”
    The phosphorescent glow of the screen glimmered on his bald head and the assistant’s glasses. Following the orders to breathe and not to breathe, Lillian felt somewhat nauseated; it was like being on the verge of fainting.
    The examination took longer than usual. “Let’s see that case history again,” the