BY ERICH MARIA REMARQUE
The unusual love story of two people with no future – her waiting for the next hemorrhage, him the next race.
5 stars out of 5 stars
Unlike the three novels by Erich Maria Remarque I recently read, this one is not about war or the aftermath of war. Rather, it is a bitter-sweet love story of the heroine (Lilian), who was dying of consumption, and the hero (Clerfayt), who was a race car driver. “We’re alike”, Lilian thought, “Both of us have no future. His reaches only to the next race, and mine to the next hemorrhage.”
In his war novels, such as in “A time to live and a time to die”, Erich tended to shock the reader with a ghastly description of the brutality of war. In the present novel, he began with an equally ghastly scene, in a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. The heroine, who wanted to pay a last visit to her dying friend, found that it was already too late - her friend had died a short time ago. Lilian ended up in the room where her friend’s coffin was stored. There followed a description of what would happen to her friend’s body during the cremation process, and the words of an attendant who told her “Not to take it so to the heart, as sooner or later we all have our turn”. Just as in his war novels, such a beginning is not for the faint hearted.
Lilian was told by her doctor (nicknamed the Dalai Lama) and the head nurse (nicknamed the Crocodile) in the sanatorium, where she had been for three years, that her disease had turned for the worse and she may not live to the end of the year. She wanted to experience life in her own way, rather than waiting to die in the sanatorium. Among the places she wanted to see and experience were Paris and Venice. She was warned by her doctor that such an action was equivalent to suicide, but she persisted. Shortly before she left, she met Clerfayt, who was visiting his friend and race car partner, Hollmann, who was also a patient in the sanatorium and was a friend of Lilian. Lilian accepted Clerfavt’s offer that they would go to Paris together in his racecar Giuseppe. Another friend of Lilian was Boris, a Russian who was treated by the doctors in the sanatorium but who lived in an apartment down in the valley. Boris had a crush on Lilian and was sad to see her leave. He was jealous of Clerfayt.
So the story went on to describe the experience of Lilian in the outside world, and how her relationship with Clerfayt developed.
There are no utterances about the brutality and senselessness of war. However, there were musings about the absurdity of the human condition through various conversations. For example, in a conversation with a poet named Gerard which Lilian met in the sidewalk coffee in Paris, they were wondering whether “we are all fallen angels condemned to a number of years of penance on earth; and we can shorten the sentence if we want to by suicide.”
In another conversation with Gerard, Lilian said: “Our trouble is that we think we have claim upon life. We have none. When we know that, a good deal of bitter honey suddenly becomes sweet.”
Lilian and Cherfayt were first in Paris. Then Clerfayt had to go to Italy for a race. He went to a training session in Rome but put Lilian in Sicily with a friend. Lilian then made a brief stop in Rome. She was supposed to return to Paris from Rome to meet up with Clerfayt. Instead, she went Venice. In Venice, while watching a show in a theatre, she had a hemorrhage attack that almost killed her.
The race in Italy was a thousand-mile race through the country. It usually takes 15 to 16 hours. It started with Brescia and ended with Brescia, a little provincial town of garages, cafes, and shops.
Lilian listened to the race on the radio. When she heard the broadcasters said that “If the leading cars keep up this pace, they’ll be back in Brescia again in a new record time.”, she had this reaction about racer-car drivers:
“From Breacia to Breacia! Was there any more vivid symbol of meaningless? Had life given them such miraculous gifts as healthy lungs and hearts, incomprehensible chemical factories like liver and kidneys, a soft white mass inside the skull which was more fantastic than all the stellar systems – had life given them all that so that they could risk it and, if they had luck, go from Brescia to Brescia? What horrible folly!”
Clerfayt had a mishap during the race, but he survived and did arrive in Brescia, finishing in sixth place. After several attempts, he finally located Lilian in Paris, and the two were together again. Clerfayt asked Lilian to marry him. While knowing that he would soon become a widower if they did marry, she eventually agreed, not wanting to upset him. She told him that they could get marry after his next race in Monte Carlo, with the plan that she would leave him for good during the time he was in Monte Carlo.
Unfortunately, Clerfayt’s luck ran out this time. A car smashed into his during the race and his chest was crushed by the steering wheel. He was dead when carried to the hospital. The hospital staff did not allow Lilian to see him.
In the train station waiting to leave for Zurich, she met Boris, who had come from the sanatorium to look for her when he heard about the death of Clerfavt. Boris boarded the train with her to Zurich. By this time, Lilian had experienced “the real world”, and wanted to go back to a sanatorium, not the former one, since she was sure that they would not take her back. Boris convinced her that they would certainly allow her to go back. This was confirmed by a telephone conversation with the Dalai Lama when they arrived in Zurich.
The story ended on a bitter-sweet note. On the road to the sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, they ran into Hollmann. The friends were glad to see one another again. Hollmann told Lilian that he was cured of his disease and his old firm had just hired him as the replacement of Clerfayt.
Six weeks after returning to the sanatorium, Lilian died, on a bright and tranquil summer day. She died quickly and alone. Boris was absent when she died. When he saw her, her face was first distorted because she had suffocated during a hemorrhage, “but a short while afterward her features smoothed and her face became more beautiful than Boris had seen it in a long time. He believed also that she had been happy, insofar as any human being can ever be called happy.”
In conclusion, a most unusual and touching story.
Link to Amazon Review: https://www.amazon.com/reviews/edit-review/edit?ie=UTF8&asin=0449912493&reviewID=R2OWUTEHHNA4VD
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