The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By

by Georges Simenon

  ‘Louis?’ the waiter asked her, as if that one word was worth a whole sentence.

  ‘Don’t know. I suppose he’ll be along.’

  At three o’clock, he had still not arrived. Jeanne Rozier left a message for him and went to a local cinema, where it was five o’clock before a man came to sit next to her. It was Louis.

  ‘You’re late,’ she whispered.

  ‘I had to go to Poitiers.’

  ‘Well, well! We need to talk. Careful, there might be someone eavesdropping behind us.’

  They left the cinema and went into a crowded café on Place Blanche.

  ‘They hauled me down to Quai des Orfèvres this morning. Lucas, it was. The one who always pretends he’s treating you like his own daughter, but he’s more of a bastard than all the rest put together. Where did you leave our package?’

  ‘At Goin’s place. He’s an odd fish, the Dutchman. Fernand, who was in the first car with me, said he’d never make it to Place d’Italie with a car. But he did. We’d hardly got there ourselves when we saw this car flashing at us. We headed off to Juvisy at top speed. Then we went inside the garage and he followed us, as if he’d been doing it all his life.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing! Goin was waiting with his mechanic. We all set to work, and we were finished in an hour. Rose made us some coffee. We were away again before first light, in three cars, heading in different directions, except for your Dutchman, who’ll have to stay at Goin’s until I can see how to get him out of there. He must have some money stashed away.’

  ‘You need to be careful. The police already knew I’d spent a night with him. If Lucas called me in on a day like today at ten in the morning, it’s because he suspects something.’

  ‘That’s a bit of bad luck,’ Louis grumbled. ‘I’ll have to phone Goin and tell him.’

  ‘What if they listen in on you?’

  Seeing them sitting at their table, anyone would have simply taken them for a young and elegant couple. Their faces gave nothing away about their feelings.

  ‘We’ll find something else,’ said Jeanne Rozier finally, ending the conversation. ‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Tonight you’d better go somewhere you’ll be visible, a boxing match, the cycle track, that kind of thing.’

  ‘OK. What about dinner?’

  ‘No, I told them you’d been cheating on me with some girl. You’d best find one to take along.’

  As she said this, while looking round, she pinched his thigh and added:

  ‘But keep your hands off her. Or else!’

  • • •

  Why should Kees have been astonished, since he had heard the confessions of Julius de Coster in the Petit Saint-Georges and had decided there and then that everything he had ever believed in did not exist?

  In the past, he would not have noticed that this was a service station like no other. Now, on the contrary, he realized that a bona fide one would not be located a hundred metres off the highway, on a road leading nowhere, with two unlit petrol pumps and doors that swung open automatically at a certain signal from a car horn.

  He had also noted that on a piece of waste ground alongside, there were at least a dozen cars in pieces, not old bangers but quite new-looking vehicles which had been in accidents; one of them indeed was partly burned out. He had had time to read by the light from the car’s headlamps the sign ‘Goin & Boret. Specialists in electrical auto accessories’.

  And then he had watched, smoking a cigar, the scene that had followed their arrival. Two men were waiting for them, one who was large and heavily built, and must be Goin, and a boy who probably wasn’t Boret and whom everyone called Kiki. Goin was in brown dungarees with spanners in every pocket. He shook hands only briefly with Louis before getting to work.

  It seemed that they were all used to this. The second car was driven by an amiable young man, whose name Kees did not hear, and who was wearing a dinner-jacket, like Louis and Fernand.

  Apart from a van and some tools, the garage was empty: its floor was made of beaten earth and the walls whitewashed. In one corner stood a huge stove and two powerful electric lamps shedding bright beams.

  While the others were working, Louis took a suitcase out of the van, stripped off his outer clothes and calmly, like an actor changing his costume behind the scenes, put on a brown suit, knotted a yellow tie, and then put dungarees on top of everything, so as to give a hand to his companions.

  Fernand and the young man did the same, while Goin was manipulating a blowtorch and Kiki was unscrewing the number plates of the cars.

  ‘Rose not here?’ asked Louis.

  ‘She’ll be down soon. I rang the bell when I heard you coming.’

  And Kees noticed a bell-push near an inner door which must lead to accommodation. And indeed, a few minutes later a woman appeared: still quite young, obviously just woken from sleep and having dressed quickly, she came into the garage, greeted everyone as a friend, including Popinga, whom she looked at, however, in surprise.

  ‘Just three this time! Slim pickings, eh? That’s Christmas for you.’

  ‘Get us some coffee quickly, you! Want anything to eat, Louis?’

  ‘No thanks! I’m still full of turkey.’

  No one seemed concerned about anything that might be happening outside. They felt completely safe. Between two turns of a spanner, they exchanged news and jokes.

  ‘Jeanne OK, is she?’

  ‘It was her found our friend here, and you’re going to keep him with you till further notice. But look out, he’s in deep trouble, and if he’s caught . . .’

  In an hour, the number plates had been changed, as had the serial numbers on the engines and chassis. There was a kitchen behind the garage, a surprisingly clean one, where Rose served them coffee, bread, butter and salami.

  ‘Now you,’ said Louis to Kees, in between short sips of his scalding hot coffee, ‘you’re going to lodge here, and you do whatever Goin says. Until you’ve got some new papers, no monkeying about. Next week, we’ll try to get you away somewhere. Understood?’

  ‘I understand perfectly,’ said Popinga with satisfaction.

  ‘On our way, then, boys! Fernand’s going to head for Reims. You, go round the outside of Paris, and try to flog the car in Rouen. I’m off to Orléans. See you tonight, kids. See you later, my beautiful Rose!’

  At first Kees found it amusing to be in this completely new atmosphere with people he did not know. Once the work was finished on the cars, Goin, who stood one metre eighty, and was more strongly built than the captain of the Ocean III, was sipping his coffee, while rolling a cigarette, as Rose looked dreamily around, elbows on the table.

  ‘You’re foreign?’

  ‘Dutch.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t want to be found out, better say you’re English, there are more of them round here. You speak English, do you? Cops got your description?’

  While Kees helped himself to more coffee with plenty of milk, Goin went upstairs and came back down with a pair of old blue trousers and overalls like his own, plus a heavy grey woollen pullover.

  ‘Here, try these. They should fit you. Rose’ll make you up a bed in the box room off our bedroom. If I’ve got this right, you’d better spend a lot of time asleep for now.’

  Rose went up in turn, to prepare his bed, no doubt. Goin, who was sleepy, half-closed his eyes and sat still, legs stretched out in front of him, until they heard a voice call down:

  ‘You can come up now!’

  ‘Hear that? Go to bed. Good night.’

  The staircase was dark and narrow. Kees had to go through Goin and Rose’s bedroom, which was untidy, and found himself in a smaller room, furnished with a camp bed, a table and a cracked mirror on the wall.

  ‘There’s a wash-basin on the landing. I hope noise doesn’t bother you. Because night and day you’ll hear the trains whistling. We’re near the goods yard.’

  She closed the door. He went to look out of the dormer window, and by peering through t
he half-light, saw railway tracks stretching out into the distance, carriages, whole trains, and ten locomotives at least, belching out pure white plumes of steam against the muddy sky.

  He smiled, stretched, sat on his bed, and a quarter of an hour later he was fast asleep, fully dressed.

  He was still asleep when Jeanne Rozier was summoned to police headquarters. He was even asleep when she went into Chez Mélie, and when at two o’clock Rose peered in at the door, astonished at his long silence.

  He rose only at three, pulled on the new clothes, which made him look stockier, felt his way down the unlit stairs, and found a place laid for him at one end of the kitchen table.

  ‘Rabbit stew all right for you?’

  ‘Certainly!’

  He liked anything edible.

  ‘Where’s your husband gone?’

  ‘He’s not my husband, he’s my brother. Gone to a football match fifteen kilometres away.’

  ‘The others aren’t back?’

  ‘No, they never come back.’

  ‘And Jeanne Rozier? Does she come sometimes?’

  ‘Why would she come here? She’s the boss’s woman.’

  He would have liked to see Jeanne again, without quite knowing why. It irked him to be cut off from her like this, and he went on thinking about that as he ate his rabbit stew, dipping his bread crusts in the thick gravy.

  ‘Can I go for a walk?’

  ‘Charlie didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Who’s Charlie?’

  ‘My brother, of course. Call him Goin if you prefer.’

  A strange woman, this was, who acted more like a servant than anything else. Her complexion was pale, almost otherworldly, she had far too much lipstick on and was wearing an unbecoming orange silk dress and very high heels.

  ‘And you stay here in the garage all afternoon?’

  ‘Somebody has to. Tonight I’m going dancing.’

  He preferred to go out. He found himself walking through the streets of Juvisy, where since it was Christmas Day the only people out were in their Sunday best. Wearing the pullover and Goin’s old trousers, he strolled about, hands in pockets, and thought of buying a pipe. They only had very ordinary models, but he bought one, packed it with shag tobacco, then went into a café where some customers were playing bar billiards.

  It was there that he discovered a complicated slot machine, where you put in a franc to set spinning a combination of wheels with pictures of different fruits, which might win you two, four, eight or sixteen francs, or the jackpot.

  ‘Can you give me fifty one-franc coins?’ he asked.

  Half an hour later, he asked for another fifty, since he was now addicted to the fruit machine. People were staring at him. They came over to watch him play. He had taken his little red notebook out of his pocket and was writing down all his results.

  At five o’clock, when the air was blue with smoke, he was still playing, without paying attention to his surroundings, since he was beginning to understand.

  ‘I see how it works,’ he told the café proprietor. ‘One coin in every two falls into a special slot which is the owner’s profit.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that. It doesn’t belong to us. These people came and fixed it here and they come to collect the takings.’

  ‘How often?’

  ‘Once a week, near enough. It depends.’

  ‘And how much do they collect?’

  ‘That I don’t know.’

  The regulars winked at each other as they watched him doing complicated calculations and playing with a look of bland concentration. When eight or twelve francs fell out, he picked them up without expression, wrote down a number and carried on.

  The customers were mostly railwaymen, and without stopping his game Kees asked one of them:

  ‘Is this a big station?’

  ‘This is the most important marshalling yard for Paris. You know, if you go on playing, you’ll lose all you put in . . .’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘And you’re still playing?’

  He had had to put down his pipe, because it got in the way. He bought some cigars. He drank an aperitif with a name he didn’t recognize, but which he saw most of the other customers drinking. And he liked its colour.

  A funny kind of Christmas Day this was! Nobody seemed to have any concern for religious services, and he could hear no church bells ringing. At one table, people were playing cards. A whole family was sitting there, father, mother, two children. The father and his friends were playing while the three others looked on, the children taking sips from his glass from time to time.

  Popinga had finished doing his sums.

  With an air of importance, he approached the bar and declared to the owner:

  ‘Do you know how much a machine like that brings in? At least a hundred francs a day. And supposing that it cost five thousand francs . . .’

  ‘But what if someone gets the jackpot?’ a voice objected.

  ‘That doesn’t matter, I’ll explain how it works . . .’

  Two pages of his notebook were covered with equations. They listened to him without understanding. When he left, someone asked:

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘No idea. Sounded like a foreigner.’

  ‘Where does he work?’

  ‘Don’t know that either. He lost two hundred francs in the fruit machine. Oddball, eh?’

  ‘Did he strike you as a bit crazy?’

  And a railwayman concluded:

  ‘Foreigners, they’re all the same. That’s why we don’t understand them.’

  Goin returned from the football match, and Rose went out dancing. They closed the garage. Goin, in his bedroom slippers, opened a newspaper in the kitchen, rolled himself a cigarette and looked the most serene and contented of men, while Kees made a few notes in his book.

  Profit on three cars: at least thirty thousand francs. If that’s repeated every week, which would be quite easy, it would work out for the year at . . .

  Then underneath:

  Would like to see Jeanne Rozier and find out why she made me come here.

  Upon which, he went to bed and slept, but not before looking out for a while at the railway tracks in the night, the red and green lights, and the dark trains going by. But it was of Jeanne Rozier that he was thinking all the time, and curiously he recalled with pleasure the moments of intimacy which at the time had left him indifferent.

  Next day, he got up at ten and saw a thin layer of snow, not on the road, where it had melted, but on the hedges and the railway tracks. He found Rose, still in her night clothes, in the kitchen and asked where her brother was.

  ‘Gone to Paris.’

  In the garage, there was no one but Kiki, who was repairing a battery, sticking his tongue out like a conscientious schoolboy.

  ‘I’d like to go to Paris too,’ Kees said to Rose.

  ‘My brother said not to let you. Seemingly you’ll see why when you read the morning paper.’

  ‘What does he mean by that?’

  ‘Dunno, I haven’t seen it.’

  Evidently she was without curiosity. She was busy frying onions in a pan and did not turn round when he opened the paper.

  In a case as delicate as this, our readers will understand that we have to observe the greatest discretion. Nevertheless we can report that Christmas was not a holiday for everyone, and that Chief Inspector Lucas of the Police Judiciaire has been hard at work. The arrest of the Amsterdam sex maniac is expected any minute . . .

  Still that way of describing him! He underlined with scorn the words ‘sex maniac’, and looked across with a strange smile at Rose’s back and her broad hips, which the folds of the kimono made even wider.

  We have also learned from Holland that the case has taken an unexpected turn, given that the firm of Julius de Coster en Zoon has been placed in the hands of the receivers. Was it when he discovered the loss of all his savings, which he had placed in the firm he worked for, that Kees Popinga decided to visit vengean
ce on his employer? Should we seek any other explanation . . .?

  From all this, he retained three words above all: Chief Inspector Lucas. Then he went over to lift the lid of the saucepan. After that, until midday, he went to play the fruit machine, in the deserted café, chatting to the owner.

  When he returned to the garage, Goin had come back for lunch – a Goin he hardly recognized, since he was wearing an elegant tailored suit.

  ‘There you are!’ he exclaimed bad-temperedly. ‘Are you out of your mind? Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Just to this nice little café.’

  ‘You don’t know what’s going on? I saw the boss this morning. Yesterday, a police inspector came and hauled Jeanne Rozier out of bed, and took her down to headquarters. If we don’t get in deep trouble over you, we’ll be lucky.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jeanne Rozier’

  ‘How would I know? But anyway, the boss says you’re not to stir from your room. Rose will bring you your meals. You’ve got to stay out of sight for a few days until Louis contacts you.’

  ‘Don’t you want anything to eat?’ Rose asked with indifference.

  ‘I was waiting for you to serve me.’

  ‘When he brought you here, I didn’t know how serious it was. For crying out loud. What got into you? Are you up the pole or what?’

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

  ‘Do you go around strangling women?’

  ‘It was the first time. If she hadn’t laughed . . .’

  And he began to eat his beef stew and fried potatoes.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you this for a start, lay a finger on my sister and I’ll smash your face in. If I’d known what kind of a pervert you were . . .’

  Kees decided it was not worth replying to this. The other man would not have understood, and it was better to eat his meal without a word.

  ‘So you can just go back to your room and stay there. Bad enough that you’ve been cavorting about in the Juvisy cafés. You didn’t speak to anyone, I hope.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  The funny thing was it was Goin who was getting worked up, while Kees calmly ate his food with appetite.

  ‘We’ll soon see if the boss has made a very big mistake. And to think I took you for someone interesting.’