by Pawel Huelle
Steam trains, electric trains, diesel locomotives, dozens of varieties of passenger coaches, special mountain rolling stock, and all possible configurations of goods trains filled their imagination, not just with the clatter of wheels, the lights of signals and the whistle of locomotives. Over this entire world of stations, timetables, signal boxes, tunnels and viaducts there floated a veil of mystery. They did not realise at the time that it was a yearning for a distant journey that would change their lives. As they pored over the mail-order catalogue from Franz Carl Weber’s toy store, they sensed that one day they would simply set off into the great wide world, and that what they were doing now, leaning over the printed pages in the flickering candlelight, was merely preparation.
When he got back to the hotel, he was greeted at the reception desk by two gentlemen who looked like twins and introduced themselves as Hugin and Munin – the former was Peter, the latter Paul, as they informed him in the bar, where the three men sat down together.
He was unable to conceal his surprise when Hugin put a photograph on the table, taken a few hours earlier at the main station, and Munin claimed in a confident tone, ‘We know you had never met her before, but she may have revealed something to you.’
‘She said nothing remarkable,’ he muttered reluctantly, as he gazed at the photograph, in which he was handing his beautiful fellow passenger her case, ‘and anyway, what is this about? Am I being accused of something?’
‘You soon may be,’ said Munin gruffly.
Before he had a chance to react to this incredible impudence, Hugin whispered almost ingratiatingly: ‘If we ask for your discreet cooperation, it is because this woman’ – he tapped a finger on the photograph – ‘is a particularly dangerous terrorist.’ Hugin gave a friendly smile, at which Munin immediately hissed: ‘There’s no joking, any detail might be important to us. Did she talk to anyone on her mobile phone? Did she send any text messages?’
He looked at Munin, then at Hugin with sincere doubt.
‘If she really is a terrorist, there can be no texts or conversations you aren’t already aware of. Why are you questioning me?’
‘She is a terrorist in a special sense of the word,’ said Munin.
‘A very special one,’ added Hugin.
‘She might have confided something,’ Munin continued, ‘which in your view is not of the least significance, but as we have known her for years, we are perfectly aware that in a conversation with a stranger she can sometimes say something about her plans.’
‘Unwittingly,’ put in Hugin.
‘Exactly,’ agreed Munin. ‘For instance that tomorrow she would be performing. Didn’t she say anything like that?’
‘No. She just asked how to get to the hotel. Can you please explain what this is about?’
‘Not just yet,’ said the plainly disappointed Munin. ‘But in any case, we would be grateful for your discretion. For understandable reasons.’
‘If she were to accost you in the corridor, let’s say, or at breakfast in the restaurant,’ said Munin, handing him a business card on which there was nothing but a phone number, ‘if she were to say anything at all, please call, alright?’
‘But you are not from the police,’ he stated confidently, ‘are you? What strange machinations. Perhaps I should actually call the police? I am a foreigner here and I came on business. I don’t want any trouble.’
After saying this, he stood up and headed for the lift without looking behind him. On the third floor, as he was walking down the corridor to his room, he saw the stranger. She was walking towards him, dressed in a blue coat and a lovely, old-fashioned pillbox hat.
‘Excuse me,’ he said almost in a whisper. ‘Please be careful. I was stopped downstairs by two fellows, I think they’re detectives. They questioned me. At the station, as I was handing you your case, they took our picture.’
‘Really?’ She did not look surprised. ‘And what did you tell them?’
‘Nothing. I told them to get off my back. After all, I don’t know you in the least.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘it’s very kind of you. Please don’t let it bother you. They probably said I’m a terrorist.’
‘Yes, how did you guess?’
‘Because I know them. Luigi hired them. I wonder how they introduced themselves?’
‘Hugin and Munin, Peter and Paul, or maybe vice versa.’
She giggled. As she walked off to the lift, she waved to him and loudly added: ‘You can sleep in peace. I don’t plant bombs!’
Standing behind the open drapes he saw the stranger through the window, getting into a taxi in the hotel forecourt. Moments later, Herr Hugin and Herr Munin were piling into the next one. Only now did he notice that he could see the neon sign for Franz Carl Weber’s toy store from this window. He decided that tomorrow, on his way back from the Rossets’ office, he would drop in there and inspect the model trains. He wouldn’t buy anything – his son was already over twenty – but he would certainly ask for a catalogue.
It would be an extraordinary thing, he thought, if at one of the counters I were to find an express train set, just the same as the one my brother and I drove so many times from Geneva to Ostend, though it was rather unlikely: since that era, long ago, everything had undergone radical changes, including the outside appearance of passenger and sleeping cars.
He was the sort of person on whom travel fatigue and new impressions do not have a soporific effect, but quite the opposite, and now, in a state of extreme tension, he could not get to sleep. After a shower, as he lay on his back in the comfortable bed, idiotic thoughts kept coming into his head. For instance, if Sebastian Rosset were to throw up his hands tomorrow and say that unfortunately he wasn’t going to pay him the money because some scrap of paper was missing, would he stay here a couple more days, or leave Zurich and Switzerland at once? Or if Herr Hugin and Herr Munin were to force their way into his room right now and subject him to elaborate tortures in the bathroom, for how long would he protect the stranger from the other side of the wall by concocting some ad hoc fibs?
Her scent was strong, but also had something very subtle about it, which reminded him of Grandmother Maria’s garden in the south of Poland. On August days, intense with light and heat, the odour of some plants, especially the flowers, hung around the solid block of the house like an invisible cloud, and towards evening, when its sun-warmed stonework began to return the warmth to its surroundings, those invisible waves of strong fragrance would float into the sitting room through the open windows, the large doors onto the veranda and the glass walls of the conservatory almost fully unfolded. That was why, as he now realised, his fellow passenger had instantly seemed close to him. However, although he very much wanted to, he couldn’t remember the actual name and species of flowers whose scent was the main ingredient of her perfume. Phlox? Wild rose? Carnation? Definitely not lily-of-the-valley, because those flowers bloom in spring, and he was only ever at the house in the south in summer, during the school holidays.
Briefly, under his closed eyelids he saw her figure amid a broad strip of irises. She had a sari flung about her. Just then in the garden an oriole began to sing, and turning towards the bird, the stranger let the floaty white fabric fall to the lawn.
He lit a cigarette and extracted a small bottle of claret from the mini-bar. If her naked body looked like that in reality, he thought, as he went back to bed with a glass of wine, she is quite simply beautiful. Extremely beautiful.
But he did not want to surrender his imagination to the mercy of unrealistic sexual desires. He tried to think about anything else. It wasn’t easy. For a while longer her face, reflected in the train carriage window, continued to tempt him with the shape of her brightly painted lips. Only a little later did he manage to summon up a different image from his memory: he and his brother were sitting on the floor of their small bedroom, amid railway tracks, stations and junctions. His brother opened the world atlas on his knees and announced: ‘Chile, highest railway line in
the world. Thirty-six tunnels, fifty-three viaducts. Let’s go across the Andes! All aboooard, we’re off!’
With the aid of a compass and ruler they calculated the length of the route, and then painstakingly divided it into the number of circuits. They already had Africa under their belts, numerous journeys to Istanbul, the Trans-Siberian line from tsarist times, the route from London to Edinburgh, and also a long journey across the prairies on the United Pacific line.
They would ask each other questions on their knowledge of the routes: Next city? Regional capital? The river we’re just about to cross? Name of the lake? Highest peak in the mountain range?
For hours on end they were utterly absorbed. Sometimes their father would quietly enter the room and watch their journeys for ages without being noticed. Then he would gently say: ‘Time for bed, you can travel onwards tomorrow.’
Sometimes they awoke at night, and in silent agreement, without a word they would lay out the tracks, to ride across the Asian jungle or the African savannah by the light of a few well-positioned candles. Wild animals would come up to the tracks, and the brilliance of the speeding express would be reflected in their eyes. The boys were happy, though they only understood that years later.
When several men in long overcoats took their father from the flat late one evening, the moon was shining over the woods and above the roof of their house at the edge of the suburbs.
Their mother left them on their own. She had to go to the neighbour’s house, where there was a phone. They did not set out the tracks, but lay in their beds, paralysed by fear, until sleep came. Awoken in the middle of the night, he heard his brother’s regular breathing and saw the pale light of the moon breaking through the thin curtain. Quietly he went into the hall and put on his shoes, sweater and jacket. A light was still on in the janitor’s flat on the ground floor, and through the exposed window he caught sight of that guardian of the proletariat, leaning over a newspaper. He was dozing with his elbows propped on the kitchen table, when his wife came in from the living room. The ugly, wrinkled woman flicked a dishcloth at the janitor’s egg-shaped, bald head to punish him for some offence or other. He shooed her away like a fly, then finally got up, straightened his string vest, seized his wife by the throat and picked her up like a rag doll before disappearing into the depths of the flat. Perhaps he would have remained at their window a little longer, amazed at the sight of these people tormented by hatred, but the whistle of a locomotive summoned him away from the courtyard, a sound he had never heard here before.
Their house stood not far from a defunct railway line. The bridges blown up by the Germans, which he and his brother used to climb as if they were rocks, the sleepers overgrown with moss and the tracks gone rusty amid the ferns had always attracted him with hypnotic force, and yet now, as he clambered up the steep slope of the embankment, he felt genuine fear. He wasn’t dreaming, though what he was seeing was totally unreal. Coupled onto a locomotive, which was puffing out steam, was a single carriage with a row of doors along its entire length.
‘Are you getting on board?’ said a low-pitched voice right beside him. ‘We’re off in a minute.’
At the sight of the uniformed conductor, holding a torch in one hand and a block of tickets in the other, he mustered his courage.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘Wherever you like. This is your train.’
‘But how will I get home?’
‘On a circuit you always end up at home again.’
He let himself be persuaded. Once he was sitting on a hard, wooden bench, he saw the conductor jumping onto the carriage steps: he gave a signal with the torch and put to his lips the whistle that was hanging round his neck. They moved off with a slight jerk, but the carriage rolled along smoothly for the next few metres, picking up speed. He didn’t even notice when they drove into a tunnel. On the other side it was already day. The flood of bright light made him squint, but once his eyes had got used to it and finally took in their surroundings, he almost cried out in delight. They were travelling along a sandy riverbank, across meadows and scattered copses. Here and there sheep, horses and cows were grazing. Over the water, on the other side, rose a chain of majestic mountains. There were eye-catching villages and towns lying in the valleys, with stone churchtowers, a patchwork of red roofs, and avenues of trees. The vineyards and orchards were full of lively activity as people with baskets on their backs busied themselves among the greenery like hard-working beetles. Cargo ships were sailing up and down the river. A little girl waved to them from the deck. Far away, on some of the peaks, fortified castles lurked below the snow line. He had once seen a similar landscape on an old postcard.
‘Is that the Rhine?’ he asked the conductor.
‘No,’ he replied, looking up from the book he was browsing, ‘it’s the river of all rivers.’
‘I don’t understand that. Please can you explain?’
‘One day you will. Today I’ll just tell you this: each thing in this world has its prototype. Take my whistle, for example: there are millions of whistles – ones for scouts, for sportsmen, policemen, or ones like mine, for conductors. You see?’
He nodded.
‘They’re similar to each other, yet different. But all of them without exception must have had their original model. This is one of them. It contains the features of all the others.’
‘Do you mean a blueprint?’
‘More or less.’
‘So this river...?’
‘Is the model for all the other rivers in existence.’
‘But on our river there are no mountains or vineyards!’
‘That’s right, but look at the riverbank. Sand and meadows. Even some willow trees. Doesn’t that remind you of something?’
Indeed it did. But it was a difficult conversation, and he didn’t ask any more questions, for fear of hearing some even more difficult answers. He pressed his face to the window, beyond which, on the other side of the water, there were no more mountains, just a vast wilderness as far as the eye could see. Here and there he could make out riverside clearings where, amid log cabins, people were moving about by campfires. He also saw canoes dug out of tree trunks, with men dressed in skins catching fish from them. After an indeterminate time the landscape had changed beyond all recognition. Now they were travelling along the vast flood basin of a boundless plain, flat as a table. At the mouth of the river where it entered the sea, the train turned a corner and glided right along the beach, passing widespread dunes. Then they drove into a tunnel, after which the locomotive began to brake.
‘You see?’ said the conductor. ‘We’re back at our starting point. Run off home.’
‘Will you take me on another journey one day, sir?’
‘It’s impossible to predict,’ he replied, opening the door for him, ‘but be prepared.’
When he got back to the flat, there was a light on in his parents’ room. His mother was not asleep. He could hear her anxious footsteps as she paced a short distance to and fro. As he nodded off, there, before his eyes, he could still see far-reaching views of the river, which made him feel thrilled and threatened all at once. And now, lying in his hotel bed, he would have fallen asleep under the spell of that memory, if not for a loud noise from the other side of the wall.
The stranger had returned to her room and was talking to someone non-stop, in a very strident voice. A chair scraped as it was shifted. He could not resist the temptation, and as before, he put his ear to the back door inside the wardrobe. He found it astonishing that the someone – whoever it was – never responded at all, while the room’s occupant let loose more and more words by the minute. Until finally he heard an answer: a male baritone made a short, abrupt remark in Italian, at which the woman burst into laughter, and then shouted – now he could hear it clearly – ‘Stupido Luigi! Stupido Luigi!’
As he pressed against the door even harder, he lost his balance and grabbed an old brass doorknob. Although he didn’t turn it a millimetre le
ft or right, the door gave way and he fell headlong onto the floor of the other people’s room. He lay there for a few seconds, weighing up the seriousness of his position: he was in pyjamas, his bare feet were still stuck in the wardrobe by the tips of his toes, and his head was all but touching his neighbour’s feet, clad in court shoes.
‘I’m extremely sorry,’ he said, getting up, ‘I was just hanging my suit in the wardrobe, I leaned against the wall, and it’s a door! And it’s not locked either! How embarrassing! I really am extremely sorry.’
As he said this, he approached the door, and as proof of his veracity, extracted from behind it his jacket, which was hanging on the rail.
‘Here it is!’
There was no man in her room.
She eyed him closely, and then finally replied, in the same baritone he had heard a little earlier: ‘Please put that in its place! Do you always step inside the wardrobe to hang up your suit?’
And then, in her own voice, she added: ‘Really, what are the hotels in this city coming to?’
And laughed out loud.
He bowed, said ‘I’m sorry’ once again, and was about to go back into his room through the wardrobe when she said: ‘How about a glass of champagne? My name is Teresa. What’s yours?’
‘Piotr.’
‘That’s not very original either.’
While she went to fetch some glasses, he returned to his room, pulled on his trousers, put shoes on his bare feet and threw a jacket over his pyjama top. He took a small bottle of sparkling wine from the mini-bar.
‘It’s all because of Luigi,’ she said as they clinked glasses and sat down. ‘What a bastard he is. He ruined my life and he’s still setting detectives and the police on me! Can you imagine? The police! In Mainz I spent three days in custody. they wouldn;t even let me go to church!'
Her English was much better than his, though occasionally she dropped a complete Italian word into her sentence.
‘I’ll be after him as soon as he emerges from his lair! What about you? You probably haven’t come here for the skiing. Are you a Czech?’
