The sense of strangeness survived even the customary gestures; lying in the berth she proved awkward in a mysterious innocent fashion which astonished him. Her laughter stopped, not coming gradually to an end, but vanishing so that he wondered whether he had imagined the sound or whether it had been a trick of the glancing wheels. She said suddenly and urgently, ‘Be patient. I don’t know much,’ and then she cried out with pain. He could not have been more startled if a ghost had passed through the compartment dressed in an antique wear which antedated steam. He would have left her if she had not held him to her with her hands, while she said in a voice of which snatches only escaped the sound of the engine, ‘Don’t go. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .’ Then the sudden stopping of the train lurched them apart. ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘A station.’ She protested with pain, ‘Why must it now?’
Myatt opened the window a little way and leant out. The dim chain of lights lit the ground for only a few feet beside the line. Snow already lay inches thick; somewhere in the distance a red spark shone intermittently, like a revolving light between the white gusts. ‘It isn’t a station,’ he said. ‘Only a signal against us.’ The stilling of the wheels made the night very quiet with one whistle of steam to break it; here and there men woke and put their heads out of windows and spoke to each other. From the third-class carriage at the rear of the train came the sound of a fiddle. The tune was bare, witty, mathematical, but in its passage through the dark and over the snow it became less determinate, until it picked from Myatt’s mind a trace of perplexity and regret: ‘I never knew. I never guessed.’ There was such warmth in the carriage now between them that, without closing the window, he knelt beside the berth and put his hand on her face, touching her features with curious fingers. Again he was overwhelmed with the novel thought, ‘How sweet, how dear.’ She lay quiet, shaken a little by quick breaths of pain or excitement.
Somebody in the third-class carriages began to curse the fiddler in German, saying that he could not sleep for the noise. It seemed not to occur to him that he had slept through the racket of the train, and that it was the silence surrounding the precise slow notes which woke him. The fiddler swore back and went on fiddling, and a number of people began to talk at once, and someone laughed.
‘Were you disappointed?’ she asked. ‘Was I awfully bad at it?’
‘You were lovely,’ he said. ‘But I never knew. Why did you agree?’
She said in a tone as light as the fiddle’s, ‘A girl’s got to learn some time.’ He touched her face again. ‘I hurt you.’
‘It wasn’t a picnic,’ she said.
‘Next time,’ he began to promise, but she interrupted with a question which made him laugh by its gravity: ‘There’ll be another time? Did I pass all right?’
‘You want another time?’
‘Yes,’ she said, but she was thinking not of his embrace, but of the flat in Constantinople and her own bedroom and going to bed at ten. ‘How long will you stay out there?’
‘Perhaps a month. Perhaps longer.’ She whispered with so much regret, ‘So soon,’ that he began to promise many things he knew very well he would regret in daylight. ‘You can come back with me. I’ll give you a flat in town.’ Her silence seemed to emphasize the wildness of his promises. ‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Oh,’ she said in a voice of absolute trust, ‘it’s too good to be true.’
He was touched by the complete absence of coquetry, and remembered again with sudden force that he had been her first lover. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘will you come again tomorrow?’ She protested with real apprehension that he would tire of her before they reached Constantinople. He ignored her objection. ‘I’d give a party to celebrate.’
‘Where? In Constantinople?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ve no one to invite there,’ and for a moment the thought of Mr Eckman cast a shadow over his pleasure.
‘What, in the train?’ She began to laugh again, but this time in a contented and unfrightened way.
‘Why not?’ he became a little more boastful. ‘I’ll invite everyone. It’ll be a kind of wedding dinner.’
She teased him, ‘Without the wedding,’ but he became the more pleased with his idea. ‘I’ll invite everyone: the doctor, that person in the second class, the inquisitive fellow (do you remember him?)’ He hesitated for a second. ‘That girl.’ ‘What girl?’ ‘That niece of your friend.’ But his grandiloquence was a little dashed by the thought that she would never accept his invitation; she is not a chorus girl, he thought with shame at his own ingratitude, she is not pretty and easy and common, she is beautiful, she is the kind of woman I should like to marry; and for a moment he contemplated with a touch of bitterness her inaccessibility. Then he recovered his spirits. ‘I’ll get the fiddler,’ he boasted, ‘to play to us while we eat.’
‘You wouldn’t dare to invite them,’ she said with shining eyes.
‘I will. They’ll never refuse the kind of dinner I’ll pay for. We’ll have the best wine they can give us,’ he said, making rapid calculations of cost and choosing to forget that a train reduces all wine to a common mediocrity. ‘It’ll cost two pounds a head.’
She beat her hands together in approval. ‘You’ll never dare tell them the reason.’
He smiled at her. ‘I’ll tell them it’s to drink the health of my mistress.’ For a long time then she lay quiet, dwelling on the word and its suggestion of comfort and permanence, almost of respectability. Then she shook her head ‘It’s too good to be true,’ but her expression of disbelief was lost in the whistle of steam and the grinding of the wheels into motion.
While the couplings between the carriages strained and the signal burning a green light lurched slowly by, Josef Grünlich was saying, ‘I am the President of the Republic.’ He woke as a gentleman in a tail-coat was about to present him with a golden key to open the new city safe deposits; he woke at once to a full knowledge of his surroundings and to a full memory of his dream. Leaning his hands upon his fat knees he began to laugh. President of the Republic, that’s good, and why not? I can spin a yarn all right. Kolber and that doctor both deceived in one day. Five English pounds he gave me, because I was sharp and spotted what he was when he said, ‘Police spy.’ Quick, that’s Josef Grünlich all over. ‘Look over there, Herr Kolber.’ Flick at the string, aim, fire, all in one second. And I’ve got away with it too. They can’t catch Josef. What was it the priest said? Josef began to laugh deep down in his belly. ‘Do you play cricket in Germany?’ And I said, ‘No, they teach us to run. I was a great runner in my time.’ That was quick if you like, and he never saw the joke, said something about ‘Sobs and Hudglich’.
But it was a bad moment all the same, thought Josef, staring out into the falling snow, when the doctor spotted that his bag had been moved. I’d got my finger on the string. If he’d tried to call the guard I’d have shot him in the stomach before he could shout a word. Josef laughed again happily, feeling his revolver rub gently against the sore on the inside of his knee: I’d have spilt his guts for him.
PART FOUR
SUBOTICA
I
The telegraph receiving set in the station-master’s office at Subotica flickered; dots and dashes were spilt into the empty room. Through the open door Lukitch, the clerk, sat in a corner of the parcels office and cursed the importunate sounds. But he made no effort to rise. ‘It can’t be important at this hour,’ he explained to the parcels clerk and to Ninitch, a young man in a grey uniform, one of the frontier guards. He shuffled a pack of cards and at the same time the clock struck seven. Outside an indeterminate sun was breaking over grey half-melted snow, the wet rails glinted. Ninitch sipped his glass of rakia; the heavy plum wine brought tears to his eyes; he was very young.
Lukitch went on shuffling. ‘What do you think it’s all about?’ asked the parcels clerk. Lukitch shook his grimy tousled head. ‘One can’t tell of course. But I shouldn’t be surprised all the same. It will serve her right.’ The parcels cl
erk began to giggle. Ninitch raised his dark eyes, that could contain no expression save simplicity, and asked: ‘Who is she?’ To his imagination the telegraph began to speak in an imperious feminine way.
‘Ah, you soldiers,’ said the parcels clerk. ‘You don’t know half of what goes on.’
‘That’s true,’ Ninitch said. ‘We stand about for hours at a time with our bayonets fixed. There’s not going to be another war, is there? Up to the barracks and down to the station. We don’t have time to see things.’ Dot, dot, dot, dash, went the telegraph. Lukitch dealt the pack into three equal piles; the cards sometimes stuck together and he licked his fingers to separate them. He ranged the three piles side by side in front of him. ‘It’s probably the station-master’s wife,’ he explained. ‘When she goes away for a week she sends him telegrams at the oddest times, every day. Late in the evening or early in the morning. Full of tender expressions. In rhyme sometimes: “Your little dove sends all her love,” or “I think of you faithfully and ever so tenderly.”’
‘Why does she do it?’ asked Ninitch.
‘She’s afraid he may have one of the servants in bed with him. She thinks he’ll repent if he gets a telegram from her just at the moment.’
The parcels clerk giggled. ‘And of course the funny part is, he wouldn’t look at his servants. His inclinations, if she knew it, are all the other way.’
‘Your bets, gentlemen,’ said Lukitch and he watched them narrowly, while they put copper coins on two of the piles of cards. Then he dealt out each pack in turn. In the third pack, on which no money had been placed, was the knave of diamonds. He stopped dealing and pocketed the coins. ‘Bank wins,’ he said and passed the cards to Ninitch. It was a very simple game.
The parcels clerk stubbed out his cigarette and lit another, while Ninitch shuffled. ‘Was there any news on the train?’
‘Everything quiet in Belgrade,’ said Lukitch.
‘Is the telephone working?’
‘Worse luck.’ The telegraph had stopped buzzing, and Lukitch sighed with relief. ‘That’s over, anyway.’
The soldier suddenly stopped shuffling and said in a puzzled voice, ‘I’m glad I wasn’t in Belgrade.’
‘Fighting, my boy,’ said the parcels clerk hilariously.
‘Yes,’ said Ninitch shyly, ‘but they were, weren’t they, our own people? It was not as if they were Bulgars.’
‘Kill or be killed,’ said the parcels clerk. ‘Come, deal away, Ninitch, my boy.’
Ninitch began to deal; several times he lost count of the cards; it was obvious that something was on his mind. ‘And then, what did they want? What did they want to get by it all?’
‘They were Reds,’ said Lukitch.
‘Poor people? Make your bets, gentlemen,’ he added mechanically. Lukitch piled all the coppers he had won on the same heap as the parcels clerk; he caught the clerk’s eye and winked; the other man increased his bet, Ninitch was too absorbed in his slow clumsy thoughts to realize that he had shown the position of the knave when he dealt. The parcels clerk could not restrain a giggle. ‘After all,’ said Ninitch, ‘I am poor, too.’
‘We’ve made our bets,’ said Lukitch impatiently, and Ninitch dealt out the cards. His eyes opened a little wider when he saw that both bets had been successful; for a moment a faint suspicion affected his manner; then he counted out the coins and rose. ‘Are you going to stop?’ asked Lukitch.
‘Must be getting back to the guard-room.’
The parcels clerk grinned. ‘He’s lost all his money. Give him some more rakia before he goes, Lukitch.’ Lukitch poured out another glass and stood with bottle tipped. The telephone-bell was ringing. ‘The devil,’ he said. ‘It’s that woman.’ He put the bottle down and went into the other room. A pale sun slanted through the window and touched the crates and trunks piled behind the counter. Ninitch raised his glass, and the parcels clerk sat with one finger on the pack of cards listening. ‘Hello, hello!’ bellowed Lukitch in a rude voice. ‘Who do you want? The telegraph? I’ve heard nothing. I can’t hang over it the whole time. I’ve got a lot to do in this station. Tell the woman to send her telegrams at a reasonable hour. What’s that?’ His voice suddenly changed. ‘I’m very sorry, sir. I never dreamed . . .’ The parcels clerk giggled. ‘Of course. Immediately, sir, immediately. I’ll send at once, sir. If you would not mind holding the line for two minutes, sir . . .’
Ninitch sighed and went out into the bitter air of the small platformless station. He had forgotten to put on his gloves, and before he could huddle them on, his fingers were nipped by the cold. He dragged his feet slowly through the first half-melted and then half-frozen mud and snow. No, I am glad I was not in Belgrade, he thought. It was all very puzzling; they were poor and he was poor; they had wives and children; he had a wife and a small daughter; they must have expected to gain something by it, those Reds. The sun getting up above the roof of the customs-shed touched his face with the ghost of warmth; a stationary engine stood like a stray dog panting steam on the up-line. No train would be passing through to Belgrade before the Orient Express was due; for half an hour there would be clamour and movement, the customs-officers would arrive and the guards be posted conspicuously outside the guard-room, then the train would steam out, and there would be only one more train, a small cross-country one to Vinkovce, that day. Ninitch buried his hands in his empty pockets: then would be the time for more rakia and another game of cards: but he had no money. Again a slight suspicion that he had been cheated touched his stubborn mind.
‘Ninitch. Ninitch.’ He looked round and saw the station-master’s clerk plunging after him through the slush without overcoat or gloves. Ninitch thought: He has robbed me, his heart has been touched by God, he is going to make restitution. He stopped and smiled at Lukitch, as much as to say: Have no fear, I am not angry with you. ‘You fool, I thought I should never make you hear,’ said the clerk, panting at his side, small and grimy and ill-natured. ‘Go at once to Major Petkovitch. He’s wanted on the telephone. I can’t make the guard-room answer.’
‘The telephone went out of order last night,’ Ninitch explained, ‘while the snow fell.’
‘Incompetence,’ fumed the clerk.
‘A man was coming from the town to see to it today.’ He hesitated. ‘The major won’t come out in the snow. He has a fire in his room so high.’
‘Fool. Imbecile,’ said the clerk. ‘It’s the Chief of Police speaking from Belgrade. They were trying to send through a telegram, but you were talking so hard, how could anyone hear? Be off.’ Ninitch began to walk on towards the guard-room, but the clerk screamed after him, ‘Run, you fool, run.’ Ninitch broke into a trot, handicapped by his heavy boots. It’s curious, he thought, one’s treated like a dog, but a moment later he thought: After all, it’s good of them to play cards with me; they must earn in a day what I earn in a week; and they get paid, too, he said to himself, considering the deductions from his own pay for mess, for quarters, for fires. ‘Is the major in?’ he asked in the guard-room and then knocked timidly on the door. He should have passed the message through the sergeant, but the sergeant was not in the room, and in any case one never knew when an opportunity for special service might arise, and that might lead to promotion, more pay, more food, a new dress for his wife.
‘Come in.’
Major Petkovitch sat at his desk facing the door. He was short, thin, sharp-featured, and wore pince-nez. There was probably some foreign blood in his family, for he was fair-haired. He was reading an out-of-date German book on strategy and feeding his dog with pieces of sausage. Ninitch stared with envy at the roaring fire. ‘Well, what is it?’ the major asked irritably, like a schoolmaster disturbed while going through his pupils’ exercises.
‘The Chief of Police has rung up, sir, and wants you on the telephone in the station-master’s office.’
‘Isn’t our own telephone working?’ the major asked, trying, not very successfully, as he laid down the book, to hide his curiosity and excitement; he wa
nted to give the impression of being on intimate terms with the Chief of Police.
‘No, sir, the man hasn’t come from the town yet.’
‘How very trying. Where is the sergeant?’
‘He’s gone out for a moment, sir.’
Major Petkovitch plucked at his gloves and smoothed them. ‘You had better come with me. I may need a messenger. Can you write?’
‘A very little, sir.’ Ninitch was afraid that the major would choose another messenger, but all he said was, ‘Tut.’ Ninitch and the dog followed at the major’s heels across the guard-room and over the rails. In the station-master’s office Lukitch was making a great show of work in a corner, while the parcels clerk hung round the door totting up entries on a folio sheet. ‘The line is quite clear sir,’ said Lukitch and scowled at Ninitch behind the major’s back; he envied his proximity to the instrument.
‘Hello, hello, hello,’ called Major Petkovitch acidly. The private soldier leant his head a little towards the telephone. Over the long miles between the frontier and Belgrade came the ghost of a cultured insolent voice with an intonation so clear that even Ninitch, standing two feet away from the instrument, could catch the measured syllables. They fell, like a succession of pins, into a deep silence: Lukitch and the parcels clerk held their breath in vain; the stationary engine across the track had stopped panting. ‘Colonel Hartep speaking.’ It is the Chief of Police, Ninitch thought, I have heard him speak: how proud my wife will be this evening: the story will go round the barracks, trust her for that. She has not much reason to be proud of me, he considered simply, without self-deprecation, she makes the very most of what she has.
‘Yes, yes, this is Major Petkovitch.’
The insolent voice was a little lowered; Ninitch caught the words only in snatches. ‘On no account . . . Belgrade . . . search the train.’
Stamboul Train Page 14
