The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By

by Georges Simenon

  Not on your life!

  Or that he would continue to frequent Montmartre?

  That was no more likely!

  So when and how did he think he would catch him?

  Did he think Popinga would try to escape, and was therefore having the railway stations watched?

  In spite of himself, Popinga began to turn round every now and then, and especially to stop in front of shop windows, to check that he was not being followed. Standing in front of a map by the Métro station, he wondered which neighbourhood he would choose for the night. Yes, which one, that was the question.

  In at least one district of Paris, and possibly in two or three, the police would be checking up on cheap hotels and asking for the papers of all the guests.

  But which district would Lucas choose? And why not avoid going to bed at all, since he was not sleepy? After all, he had noticed, the previous day on one of the major boulevards, a cinema which had films showing uninterruptedly until six in the morning.

  Would Lucas think of looking for him in a cinema?

  But come what may, he must take care about one thing: he must not look into people’s faces, women’s especially, with an ironic expression, and that air of saying:

  ‘Don’t you recognize me? Don’t I frighten you?’

  Because he was somehow searching for occasions to do so. As was proved by his having gone once more, without meaning to, into a restaurant where there were only waitresses serving.

  ‘Take care about the way you look at people,’ he noted in his book, stopping under a gas lamp.

  One sentence was troubling him from the last article he had read. The one insisting that he would give himself away somehow.

  How could they have guessed that there was a sort of dizziness inside him, that he found it hard to resign himself to being a face in the crowd, that he was dying to blurt out, especially if he met someone on a dark and lonely street:

  ‘Don’t you know who I am?’

  But now that he was forewarned, there was no risk. He would make sure to look at people naturally, as if he was just a nobody, not the man all the papers were talking about.

  And come to think of it, what was Julius de Coster making of all this? For he would surely have heard of it. There were articles in the English papers as well as the French ones.

  Well, that gentleman, for one, would have to admit that he had been entirely mistaken about his employee. He must feel humiliated about the tone he had used when taking him into his confidence in the Petit Saint-Georges, talking to him as if he were an imbecile incapable of understanding anything.

  And now the employee had gone one better than his boss, Popinga was more notorious than Julius. Who could deny it? Julius, whether in London, Hamburg or Berlin, was trying to create a business by the book, going through all the correct channels. While he, Popinga, was telling the world, crudely, exactly what he thought of it!

  One of these days, just to see how De Coster would react, he would put an announcement in the Morning Post, as they had agreed. But how would he receive the reply?

  Popinga was still walking. This had become half his life, wandering through the streets, across the light cast by shop windows, mingling with the crowd which jostled him without knowing who he was. And his hands, in the pockets of his overcoat, automatically caressed the toothbrush, shaving brush and razor.

  He found the solution. He was always sure of finding solutions, just as he did at chess. He simply had to stay two nights in the same hotel, and write himself two letters in a made-up name. That would provide him with two envelopes addressed to himself, which would be enough to be able to withdraw mail from a poste restante.

  And why not start tonight? He went once more into a brasserie. He didn’t like traditional Paris cafés, the ones with small round-topped tables where customers had to sit too close to each other. He was used to bars in Holland, where there was less risk of being shoulder to shoulder with one’s neighbours.

  ‘Can you give me the telephone book?’

  He opened it at random, and chanced on Rue Brey, a street he did not know, where he chose a hotel, the Beauséjour.

  After which he wrote a letter to himself, or rather put a blank sheet inside an envelope and addressed it to:

  Monsieur Smitson, Hôtel Beauséjour, 14, Rue Brey.

  Why not kill two birds with one stone and do both envelopes now? He disguised his handwriting. Now he had a second envelope.

  And why not use the pneumatic service?

  Why not take advantage of it to the utmost, and ask for money from De Coster, who must be on tenterhooks, in case Kees might reveal his story?

  He composed the notice:

  Kees to Julius. Send five thousand, Smitson, poste restante, Bureau 42, Paris.

  These small tasks kept him busy until eleven o’clock, since he was in no hurry, taking his time and enjoying writing in his careful readable hand.

  ‘Waiter, some stamps!’

  Then he went down to the telephone cabin, called the Hôtel Beauséjour, and began speaking at first in English, then switching to French with a strong English accent.

  ‘Hello. This is Mr Smitson . . . I’ll be arriving to take a room tomorrow morning. I’m expecting some mail, so can you please keep it for me?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Had he outwitted Chief Inspector Lucas? Would he have been able to imagine Kees Popinga to be such a cool customer?

  ‘With bathroom, sir?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  In spite of which, he could not help feeling a pang, simply because the voice at the other end was that of a woman. He must avoid that at all costs. The evening paper had made it very clear: they were expecting him to make another attack on a woman, which would provide the police with more information.

  But I won’t attack anyone! he decided. And to prove it, I’m going calmly to the cinema. Tomorrow at six in the morning, I shall turn up at the Hôtel Beauséjour, as if I’ve just got off the night train.

  Proving that he had thought of everything, in another café he asked for the railway timetable, and found that there was a train due in from Strasbourg at 5.32.

  So, I’ll be arriving from Strasbourg!

  There. Job complete!

  He could go to the cinema, and was all the more relieved to find that there were no usherettes, only some lanky youths in uniform showing patrons to their seats.

  So what might Lucas do now? Or Louis, who would surely be back from Marseille? Or Goin? Or Rose, whom he detested without knowing why?

  9.

  The girl in blue satin and the young man with the crooked nose

  Why couldn’t the newspapers have given out more information? Normally, they tell you more than you want to know, reveal what the police are thinking about this and that, announce that the authorities have taken the following steps, and publish conspicuous photographs of those in charge of hunting the criminal.

  Yet Popinga had noticed that not a single paper had published a photo of Chief Inspector Lucas. Obviously, it was not of capital importance. The inspector would not be running round the streets in person like a junior officer searching for Kees, but he would still have liked to know what his adversary looked like, if only to form an opinion.

  It was not so much the silence of the press that struck him as the instructions from on high that this silence must imply. For example, the paper which had published Popinga’s long letter had printed the following passage underneath it:

  Chief Inspector Lucas, after reading this document with a smile on his face, gave it back to us and shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘What do you think of it?’ we asked him.

  And the chief inspector vouchsafed only these words, unwilling to say more:

  ‘It’s in the bag!’

  Which meant nothing at all to Popinga, and was of no use to him. What interested him was whether, among other things, the prostitute whose name he didn’t know, the one he had slept with in Faubourg Montmartre, and who had bou
ght his razor for him, had recognized him in retrospect, and whether she had been to the police.

  It was important, because if they discovered that he was carrying his shaving brush and razor around in his pocket, and if he kept on being unwilling to spend a night alone, he would quickly be spotted.

  And yet sleeping alone was painful to him. He had done so at the Hôtel Beauséjour in Rue Brey, where he had collected the two letters that would enable him to claim mail at a poste restante in the name of Smitson.

  He had slept alone the next night too, in a hotel in the Vaugirard district where he had almost got up in the middle of the night to go and find someone. It was an odd thing. If he had a woman alongside him, he dropped straight off to sleep, and would not wake till morning. Alone, by contrast, he started to think, at first comfortably, without much emotion, like a car setting out down a gentle slope, then faster and faster, and always of many things at once, unpleasant things, so that in the end he preferred to sit up and put the light on.

  If he had told anyone this, they would have claimed he was feeling remorse, but that was not true. If proof were needed, he never thought about Pamela, who was dead, whereas he often saw in his mind’s eye Jeanne Rozier, who had been injured, though not too seriously, and who would not have denounced him of her own accord. He also thought of Rose, whom he saw as hostile, although she had never done anything to him. Why, in all these fantasies, had she become his wicked fairy? And why did he keep dreaming that Jeanne Rozier, after looking at him for a long time with her green eyes, placed her lips with tender irony on his eyelids and her cool hand on his?

  Was it better to spend restless nights than to risk being recognized by a woman he had picked up on the street? And could there not be a single journalist who would take enough pity on him – or be stupid enough – to write:

  The police know such-and-such details about the wanted man. They are now keeping a watch on the following places . . .

  Since he had sent his letters from various brasseries, including the pneumatic express to Chief Inspector Lucas, would they now be watching all the brasseries? Even if there was no police presence, it was still a dangerous environment, since café waiters are observant by profession; they also read the newspapers, and as they come and go, they have plenty of time to look closely at their customers.

  Why couldn’t the papers come right out with articles saying:

  Just yesterday, five foreigners who were in cafés in central Paris and asked for writing materials were reported to the police and taken in for questioning.

  Since there was no sign of that, Popinga was reduced to taking ten times more precautions, and this evening, in particular, he was prey to a certain indecision.

  It was because this was New Year’s Eve. In most of the cafés, it was impossible to find a seat, because they were preparing the place for dinner, and the waiters were standing on tabletops, hanging up mistletoe and paper chains.

  Popinga remembered his first festive evening, Christmas Eve, a week earlier in the bar in Rue de Douai, where Jeanne Rozier had come to sit by him. And she had taken the trouble to meet him twice, despite being out with Louis and his friends! Then there had been the strange journey in a stolen car, his arrival at Juvisy, the snow covering the goods yard and all the trains, the engines blowing out steam, the sounds of railway trucks shunting.

  And he kept walking. He had walked a great deal these last two days, for fear of the waiters in cafés, and when he did stop, he chose little bistros such as exist in every district, the kind where no one ever comes in, so that you wonder how they can survive.

  He didn’t have the heart to go to bed, and he wondered whether Chief Inspector Lucas was out celebrating. If he was, just where would such a man choose to go?

  He felt a certain weariness! But that would pass once the holidays were over, when this exhausting atmosphere in Paris had subsided, when people were no longer haunted by the necessity of enjoying themselves at all costs.

  For fear of being tempted to go and see whether the flower-seller was still on Rue de Douai, he had chosen tonight to go to the neighbourhood almost the furthest away, the Gobelins district, and found it one of the saddest in Paris, with its wide avenues that were neither ancient nor modern, where the houses were as monotonous as barracks, and the cafés thronged with people who were neither rich nor poor.

  It was eventually in one of these places that he ended up, a brasserie on a street corner, where a placard announced: New Year’s Eve dinner: forty francs, champagne included.

  ‘You’re alone?’ the waiter asked in surprise.

  Not only was he alone, but he was almost the first person there, and had time to take in all the details, seeing the five musicians arriving one by one and chatting to each other as they tuned up, while the waiters were putting miniature sprigs of mistletoe in the place settings, and folding the napkins into fans, as they might at a small-town wedding.

  Then customers began to arrive and it became more and more like a wedding breakfast, so much so that Popinga wondered whether it would not be more discreet of him to leave.

  Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and people were pushing the tables together, so that the impression was of a banquet. The customers were all families, like those in the Saint-Paul cinema, local shopkeepers no doubt, well scrubbed, pomaded, in their Sunday best, the wives almost all in new dresses.

  It took hardly a quarter of an hour for the café, which had felt icy-cold when Popinga had entered it, to become alive with conversations, laughter, music, the sound of knives and forks, the tinkle of glasses.

  And the entire clientele seemed to be ready to enjoy themselves: that was what they had come for, and they all joined in the festive mood, especially older women, particularly if they were fat.

  Kees ate his dinner like the others, without thinking too much. The atmosphere reminded him, heaven knew why, of the story of the sugar in the oxtail soup, at his friend’s celebration dinner party. Why did the papers expect him to do something like the attack on Pamela again?

  He was sitting in a corner. Not far from him, a long table occupied by several families who knew each other was being presided over by a man who looked at ease, imposing, wearing a dinner-jacket a little too tight for him, with a watch chain and a moustache which seemed to have been waxed. From the conversation, Kees guessed that he must be a municipal councillor or something of the kind.

  His wife was no less impressive, squeezed into a dress of black silk and bedecked with diamonds, real or false, like a shop window.

  Then to the left of the father was their daughter, who looked like both her parents, but was nevertheless not unattractive. Perhaps one day she would resemble her mother, but for now she was fresh and rosy-cheeked in her blue satin dress; not yet what you might call plump, she was still healthily buxom, and her bodice was so tight that you sensed she was having trouble breathing.

  But what was all that to Popinga? He went on eating. He listened vaguely to the music and when, between courses, couples stood up to dance, he did not think for a moment that he might do the same, weaving between the tables.

  And yet that was what happened, stupidly. He was looking at the girl in blue satin, while absently thinking about something else, at the very moment a waltz struck up, and no doubt she had taken his gaze for an invitation, since she made a slight gesture seeming to say:

  ‘Are you asking me?’

  Then she stood up, smoothed down her dress and moved towards Popinga, who consequently found himself in the midst of the dancing couples. His partner had clammy hands, and gave off a rather bland odour, not unpleasant. She danced close up to him, crushing her chest against his, while her parents looked on approvingly.

  Popinga, truth to tell, had still not got over the situation in which he now found himself. Seeing his reflection in the mirror, in this pose, he wondered whether it was really him and pulled a sardonic face. What would this shapely young woman have thought if she knew . . .

  Then the band
suddenly stopped playing, the drums beat out an ear-shattering roll, everyone started shouting, laughing and embracing each other, and Kees saw the soft face look up at him, before he received kisses on both cheeks.

  It was midnight! People were milling around, laughing, threatening each other jovially, hugging strangers. Somewhat at a loss, Popinga, having received two kisses from the girl, received two more from the father and from another woman at their table, apparently a greengrocer.

  Streamers were being thrown in all directions, as were little coloured cotton-wool balls that the waiters were hurriedly giving out. The band struck up another dance and without wanting to, Popinga found himself with the girl in his arms again.

  ‘Don’t look to the left,’ she whispered.

  And as the dance gathered pace and became wilder, she told him:

  ‘I don’t know what he’s going to do! No! Take me over to the right of the room. I’m really afraid he’s going to make a scene . . .’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t look or he’ll know we’re talking about him! You’ll see him in a minute. A young man in a dinner-suit, on his own. Very dark, side parting. We were on the point of getting engaged, then I called it off, because I heard these things about him.’

  No doubt the glasses of champagne she had drunk had put her in a mood to give away confidences, and it was true that the atmosphere was one of fraternity, bonhomie and openness. Everyone had embraced everyone else, after all. Now people were going round finding others in neglected corners, and leading women under the mistletoe to give them kisses on the cheek, with cries of happiness.

  ‘I’m telling you this, just to warn you.’

  ‘Er, yes,’ he said, without conviction.

  ‘Perhaps it would be best if you didn’t ask me to dance again. The way he is, I know he’s capable of anything. He told me I’ll never be anyone else’s fiancée.’

  Luckily, the dance was over and the girl returned to her seat, while her mother sent a discreet and grateful smile at Popinga, as if he had just done the whole family a favour.