The nun’s mirth faded away. “Perhaps you think my presence on such a train incompatible with my vows of poverty?”
“I would not presume to have an opinion on that matter, Holy Mother.”
She tossed another rock with more force than was strictly necessary. “I have no shortage of opinions, on that matter or any other. Not that my opinion is of any consequence. I travel with the permission of my order, and in the company of my brother. It is all very proper, I assure you.”
The bitterness in her voice puzzled me, but it was not my place to ponder its source. “I did not mean to imply otherwise, Holy Mother. My only concern is your wellbeing, and of course you are the best judge of that. But at least let me give you these gloves.”
The nun smiled and showed me her hands. No doubt she was born of good family—any brother who could convince an abbess to give leave to one of her nuns must be a powerful and important man—but the stavrophore’s hands were as rough as any peasant’s.
“Keep the gloves for yourself,” she said kindly. “Hands are an artist’s most important tools, and I judge by your clothing that you are one of the artists responsible for the meals my brother has been enjoying so heartily.”
I pulled on the gloves and started working beside her. “And you? You do not enjoy these meals?”
“It is still the Lenten season,” she said. “I will not eat meat for another week. But the bread is very fine, the vegetables fresh, and bottles of mineral water are a luxury to which I could happily become accustomed.”
“Surely you eat more than that! What of the fish? The cheeses, the desserts?”
Humor danced in her eyes. “I see I have committed sacrilege.”
“That, I very much doubt.”
“Not by the tenets of my order, perhaps, but what is sacred to one is not sacred to all. Take my brother, for example.” She picked up two fist-sized rocks and hurled them into the gorge. “Like many men of wealth, he worships Mammon. Or would, if he had a soul to sell.”
“Forgive me, but that seems harsh.”
“Does it? I assure you, if the maharajah wished to add me to his collection and offered sufficient recompense, my brother would sell me in a heartbeat.”
Her tone was now lighter than my best soufflé, but I could not fail to notice the faint, lingering note of bitterness beneath the jest.
I looked about for something to divert the conversation and noticed a rift in the rock wall. “That looks to be the entrance to a cave, does it not?”
The nun studied the rift for a moment, her brow furrowed with concentration. “Do you hear something?”
A frisson of dread raced down my spine, and I knew sudden, fervent regret over my choice of diversion.
Everyone, I suspect, has a secret fear, something that returns again and again to haunt his dreams. For no reason that I can explain, I have always feared caves and the things that might lurk in them. Did the avalanche unseal such a cave? Could it have unleashed one of the deeply buried terrors my imagination so often conjured as we passed through this gorge? Unlikely, to be sure, but the mere possibility rooted my feet to the track.
But the nun wandered closer, her face suffused with stern purpose as she picked her way across the rubble. She stopped suddenly and folded like someone who’d taken a fist to the gut.
I thrust aside my fears and hurried to her side. As I bent to help her rise, a terrible cloud enveloped me.
You must understand that this was no natural cloud. There was nothing one could see or touch or smell—no mist or haze, no scent or sound, no color or light or darkness. There was not even a Presence, not in any sense that I would use that word, nor anything approaching any emotion I could name or understand. The closest I can come to describing what I sensed was hunger.
Nausea rolled through me, but I managed to raise the nun to her feet. We leaned on each other as we staggered away from the rift.
We got as far as the track before she fell to her knees, retching. I backed away, determined to give her some small measure of dignity and privacy while retaining what I could of my own.
At length she wiped her eyes on her sleeve and turned to me. “There was a voice. A call for help, I think. I heard it … before.”
I did not need to ask what she meant. Some moments, a very few, have the power to turn a page in a man’s life. I had not realized until now that one single moment could rip away all the preceding pages and send the shreds spinning away into a maelstrom of confusion. The terrible hunger I sensed in that cave overwhelmed all other truths. Everything that came before no longer made sense to me. I felt utterly adrift—unable to think, uncertain of what I should do.
The nun had no such doubts. She pushed herself to her feet and staggered toward me, her so-expressive eyes ablaze with fervor.
“We must help that poor soul!”
I thought I had known fear beyond bearing, but the prospect of entering that cave, confronting that Hunger, dragged me into new depths of terror.
“Madness,” I murmured.
“Sacrifice,” she said firmly. “We must emulate Our Lord in this, as in all things.”
She spun away from me and headed for the rift.
The prospect of a nun—a passenger!—putting herself at such risk shook me from my lethargy. I pushed past her, drew in a long breath of relatively wholesome air, and squeezed through the narrow rift.
To my relief, the cave appeared to be small and shallow. It would take but a few moments to explore the shadows for the source of the mysterious call. I suspected there was nothing to find. Surely the nun had only heard one of the workers. The dense fog played strange games with sound, that was all. Nothing more. Surely not.
Before I’d gone a dozen steps, my ankle turned on a loose rock and suddenly I was tumbling down a steep incline.
Several bruising moments passed as I flailed about for a hand-hold—anything to stop my fall. Branches—or tree roots, more likely—lashed at my face and I managed to grab hold of one.
For the space of several long, ragged breaths, I clung to the roots and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. To no avail—the blackness was total, with no hint of light above or below me. Not trusting the roots to hold my weight for long, I sought a foothold and found, to my great relief, an expanse of solid rock.
“Hello? Monsieur le chef?”
The nun’s voice sounded very far away. I tried to call back, but my dust-choked throat could manage no more than a croak.
“Courage, Monsieur! I will bring help.”
But she would not. She would flee this place and not return. I knew this in the marrow of my bones. And in truth, I could not blame her.
I settled down among the rocks and wrapped my arms around my body, partly for the slight comfort this offered and partly to ward off the cold. Afraid to move for fear of falling deeper still, afraid to speak for fear of what I might awaken, I sat and rocked and rocked like a child, or perhaps a madman.
Time passed. How much, I could not say, but at length my thirst overcame my fear. I forced my chilled limbs to move and crawled so very slowly through the rocks.
My seeking hand found flesh—colder than my own, and horribly sticky. I recoiled, shrieking in terror at the image flooding my mind.
Blue-gray hide, tentacles, many slack mouths ringed with curved fangs…
There was more, much more, but my mind could not absorb it. As horrific as the creature might be, I did not get the sense that it was any great size—probably not much bigger than a man. It lay still and silent, to all appearances as lifeless as the tumbled rock surrounding it.
I prodded the creature again. It did not move, but I could not be certain that it would not. If I fled, I would be easy prey in the darkness.
So reasoning, I settled down beside the thing and felt around until I found a stone shaped remarkably like a knife. Having armed myself, I found enough calm to ponder the thing.
What was it, and where had it come from? Was its origin some alien world, or a
hidden pocket of the world I thought I knew? And what of that terrible cloud of hunger that overcame the nun and me? Was this creature the source of it, or an unconsumed victim of some greater horror?
Such thoughts occupied me as hours stretched into days. I dared not leave the creature’s side, because in all this time it did not putrefy. Not in the slightest. No scent of decay rose from the carcass, if such it was. For all I knew, it only slept.
Hunger brings its own sort of madness. When I could bear it no more, I cut a bit of flesh from the creature and did what I must to survive. The revulsion I expected did not come, nor did the paroxysms of poison. Indeed, I felt much revived. Whatever the thing was, my body recognized its flesh as food.
And why should it not? Was not man master of the world, and in the end, does he not turn everything to feed himself? There is an order to life, not unlike the proper running of the train.
The train!
For the first time in days, I thought of the Orient Express, and I remembered the contest that would determine my future. I was suddenly struck by inspiration, a notion as brilliant as it was terrible.
The flesh of this creature, artfully prepared, would be a dish Emile could neither identify nor reproduce!
“Dietgar! Can you hear me?”
I could and did, but several moments passed before I could remember the speaker’s name. Tomas, the waiter.
Light flared above me, blinding in its intensity. I quickly turned away and cut a generous collop of flesh from the creature.
“Dietgar?”
“I am here—have been here, all these days,” I called back as I hurriedly shrugged off my coat and wrapped the meat. “Have you a rope?”
A thick length slithered down the rock wall. I tied the coat and its precious contents around my waist and grasped the rope. Climbing was easier than I expected it to be, given my long ordeal and weakened state.
Strong hands helped me climb free of the pit. The blinding light turned out to be a single oil lantern, and the rescue party consisted only of Tomas and the nun. The holy mother, it must be said, did not look well, but her face was a most welcome sight.
“You came back,” I marveled. “After all this time, I’d given up hope.”
She sent me a strange look and leaned closer to peer into my eyes. “He must have suffered a knock to the head,” she told Tomas. “Help him back to the train, and see that he does not sleep for a few hours.”
I had many questions, but the look of alarm on the nun’s face when I asked the date silenced me. We walked in that silence back to the train. It stood where I last saw it, which was a matter of no small concern. Certainly, I was glad of my rescue, but the thought that my misadventure might have disrupted the schedule—not just for hours, but days!—filled me with unease.
So absorbed was I with these thoughts that I almost missed the mushrooms growing in a small patch of weeds. Most were white cylinders, oddly scaled, but a few had opened. I picked one and studied the gills. As I suspected, they were pink.
And with that revelation, my triumph was assured. Shaggy ink cap mushrooms were a favorite childhood delicacy, but I doubted Emile knew of them and was certain there were none on the train. Though wholesome when young and freshly picked, they dissolved within hours into a disgusting black mass. I had perhaps six hours to make a broth that Emile could not hope to duplicate.
If one unknown ingredient was good, two could only be better.
The mountain passage was worse than any I’d experienced in my four years of service. The train lurched and bumped until even the most amiable staff members grew surly, and the stories filtering into the kitchen proved that the passengers were no more immune to the unpleasant conditions than the staff. Indeed, a sort of madness seemed to have settled over the train.
The maharajah, not content with a mere seven women, had enlivened luncheon by making lewd suggestions to the wife of a Turkish diplomat. Shortly thereafter, a Greek businessman was discovered in the viscountess’s compartment, his pockets bulging with her jewelry. The Greek insisted that he had entered her compartment by mistake. He also insisted that the viscountess was already dead when he arrived. I wondered if this might be the nun’s brother, and allowed that I might have dismissed her opinion of him too hastily.
Few of the passengers wanted dinner, and those who did ordered vast quantities of food delivered to their compartments. I wondered if some of the strange miasma that had so sickened the nun and me had crept into the train and spread over the course of the last few days like a summer fever. Whatever the case, most passengers stayed in their compartments, more than a few of them making wretched use of the vases supplied for privy purposes.
And so it was that dinner was finished earlier than usual, despite a short-handed kitchen. Most of the staff who’d helped clear the track were afflicted with the illness, and they’d been crammed into three vacant compartments in second class until they were fit for duty. I had the kitchen entirely to myself, as well as the chef’s blessing to begin the contest with Emile.
Starvation adds a rare savor, one that no art can duplicate. To my relief, a sliver of the creature’s meat, sautéed in butter, still tasted delicious. I cut the collop into thin slices and put the meat in a marinade of wine and oil while I sautéed the shaggy ink cap mushrooms. This mushroom releases a great deal of liquid, which I reduced into a sauce flavored with white truffles. By dawn, the fragrant dish was ready. The chef entered the kitchen car, closely shadowed by Emile, just as I finished garnishing the second tasting plate.
Without comment, I handed one plate to the chef, the other to Emile. They reached for forks, tasted, considered. Tasted again. I waited, hands folded and face serene with confidence.
“How much of this did you make?” the chef asked. “Is there enough to serve with the brunch?”
This was high and unexpected praise! “Not enough for all, but for some, yes,” I said. “Unless, of course, Emile can duplicate the dish before noon.”
“You had a full night to prepare, and the kitchen to yourself,” Emile snapped. “I demand the same.”
“And miss a night’s sleep? Perhaps you would rather concede now.”
Some feral thing stirred behind Emile’s eyes. I stood a full head taller than my nemesis, but it was all I could do to stand my ground as he took a quick step closer.
“Do not mistake me,” he hissed. “Do you truly think me incapable of doing all that you did, and more?”
The dish I created was well received. Only a few passengers attended brunch, but Tomas, the only waiter who felt well enough to serve, assured me that everyone who tasted it had seemed pleased.
“That one Indian woman? The one with the …” He cupped the air several inches in front of his chest and looked at me inquiringly. I’d never seen the woman in question, but I nodded to show that I understood his pantomime. “She all but licked the plate.”
I sent a sidelong look and a smug little smile in Emile’s direction. “Tomorrow morning, no doubt she will be unable to refrain. You have, I trust, decided how to improve the dish? After you reproduce it, of course?”
“It is well that you speak German,” he snarled. “You’ll have need of it in Vienna.”
His intemperate response pleased me—it was a gratifying departure from his supercilious airs—but the chef snatched a dish from the worktable and hurled it at Emile.
The crash and clatter seemed to echo in the shocked silence. Work ceased as the kitchen staff stared in astonishment at the chef.
“Enough!” he howled.
Before I could savor this delightful turn of events, the chef threw his hat to the floor and stalked into the restaurant car, kicking the fallen dish as he went. I noticed that the dish was square and metal—one of the boxes that held the Englishman’s packaged meals—and realized that Emile had not been the target of the chef’s ire.
The sounds of battle—albeit a battle fought with porcelain—rose above the chef’s screams and curses and the Englishman’s ou
traged shouts. In the short time it took me to reach the dining car, the fight had progressed to cutlery and blood. It took every member of the kitchen staff to drag the chef off the half-conscious passenger and confine him to his compartment.
The dining car was deserted when we came back through. After directing the waiters and cleaners to tend to the battle’s aftermath, I returned to the kitchen.
But here, too, chaos reigned. One of the ice chests stood open, and several pieces of meat lay unwrapped on the floor. An exotically beautiful woman sat cross-legged on the floor, holding a large piece of raw meat with both hands. A trickle of blood ran from one corner of her painted mouth.
“I wanted lamb,” she said, as if that explained all.
Tomas entered the kitchen, muttering as he fingered a tear on the thigh of his blue velvet breeches. He jolted to a stop, and a delighted leer spread across his face as he beheld the woman who was, I suspected, the curvy beauty who’d so enjoyed her morning meal.
The Indian woman returned his gaze, her eyes dark with female knowledge. Her lips curved in a smile of devastating power and promise. “Will there be more lamb, after?”
“Entire sheep, as many as you like,” he said as he reached for her raised hand.
I planted myself between them. “There will be no ‘after.’ She is a passenger, and the wife of Indian nobility!”
Tomas pushed me aside and reached for the woman. I seized a skillet, lofted it with both hands, and brought it down hard on his head.
He turned to face me, an expression of astonishment on his face. I hit him again, and this time he went down.
The woman wriggled out from under the fallen waiter and, after extracting from me many promises of lamb curry and erotic delights, deigned to grab an ankle and help me drag Tomas into the pantry. Luncheon preparations would begin soon, and the kitchen car was small enough without a supine waiter taking up most of the floor.
I offered to see the woman to her compartment, but not for the reason she surmised. According to the passenger list posted in the kitchen, her compartment was next to the nun’s, and the holy mother held the answer to a question of great importance.
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