Stamboul Train (21 page)

‘Thank you,' Coral said.

‘And me?' said the newcomer in a furious voice. ‘And me?'

‘I know nothing about you, Herr Grünlich.'

‘The customs they came and they search me. They take my cannon. They say: “Why haven't you declared that you keep a cannon in possession?” I say, “No one would travel in your country without a cannon.”' Coral Musker began to laugh; Josef Grünlich glared at her wickedly, then he smoothed his rumpled waistcoat, glanced at his watch, and sat down. With his hands on his fat knees he stared straight in front of him, considering.

He must have finished his cigarette by now, Coral thought. He'll have gone back to the compartment and found I'm not there. Perhaps he'll wait ten minutes before he asks one of the men at the station whether they've seen me. In twelve minutes he'll have found me. Her heart leapt when a key turned in the lock, wondering at the speed with which he had traced her, but it was not Myatt who entered, but a fair fussed officer. He snapped an order over his shoulder and two soldiers came in behind him and stood against the door.

‘But what's it all about?' Coral asked Dr Czinner. ‘Do they think we've smuggled something?' She could not understand what the foreigners said to each other, and suddenly she felt lost and afraid, knowing that however much these men might wish to help her, they could not understand what she said or what she wanted. She implored Dr Czinner, ‘Tell them I must catch this train. Ask them to tell my friend.' He took no notice, but stood stiffly by the stove with his hands in his pockets answering questions. She turned to the German in the corner, staring at the toes of his shoes. ‘Tell them that I've done nothing, please.' He raised his eyes for a moment and looked at her with hatred.

At last Dr Czinner said, ‘I have tried to explain that you know nothing of the note I passed you. But he says he must keep you a little longer until the Chief of Police has questioned you.'

‘But the train?' she implored, ‘the train.'

‘I think it will be all right. It will be here for another half an hour. I have asked him to let your friend know and he says that he will see what can be done.' She went to the officer and touched his arm. ‘I must go by this train,' she said. ‘I must. Do understand me, please.' He shook his arm free, and rebuked her in a sharp precise tone, his pince-nez nodding, but what the terms of the rebuke were she could not tell. Then he left the waiting-room.

Coral pressed her face to the window. Between two fronds of frost the German passed, walking up and down the track; she tried to see as far as the restaurant-car. ‘Is he in sight?' Dr Czinner asked.

‘It's going to snow again,' she said, and left the window. Suddenly she could bear her perplexity no longer. ‘Why do they want me? What are they keeping me here for?'

He assured her, ‘It's a mistake. They are frightened. There has been rioting in Belgrade. They want me, that's all.'

‘But why? You're English, aren't you?'

‘No, I'm one of them,' he said with some bitterness.

‘What have you done?'

‘I've tried to make things different.' He explained with an air of distaste for labels: ‘I am a Communist.'

At once she exclaimed, ‘Why? Why?' watching him fearfully, unable to hide that she felt her faith shaken in the only man, except Myatt, able and willing to help her. Even the kindness he had shown her on the train she now regarded with suspicion. She went to the bench and sat down as far as she could from the German.

‘It would take a long time to tell you why,' he said. She took no notice, shutting her mind to the meaning of any words he uttered. She thought of him now as one of the untidy men who paraded on Saturday afternoons in Trafalgar Square bearing hideous banners: ‘Workers of the World, Unite,' ‘Walthamstow Old Comrades,' ‘Balham Branch of the Juvenile Workers' League.' They were the kill-joys, who would hang the rich and close the theatres and drive her into dismal free love at a summer camp, and afterwards make her walk in procession down Oxford Street, carrying her baby behind a banner: ‘British Women workers.'

‘Longer than I've got,' he said.

She took no notice. She was, for the moment in her thoughts, immeasurably above him. She was a rich man's mistress, and he was a workman. When she at last took notice of him it was with contempt: ‘I suppose you'll go to gaol.'

‘I think they'll shoot me,' he said.

She stared at him in amazement, forgetting their difference in class: ‘Why?' He smiled with a touch of conceit: ‘They're afraid.'

‘In England,' she said, ‘they let the Reds speak as much as they like. The police stand round.'

‘Ah, but there's a difference. We do more than speak.'

‘But there'll be a trial?'

‘A sort of trial. They'll take me to Belgrade.'

Somewhere a horn was blowing, and the cold air was split by a whistle. ‘They must be shunting,' Dr Czinner said to reassure her. A film of smoke was blown across the windows, darkening the waiting-room, and voices called and feet began to run along the track outside. Links between coaches groaned and pushed and strained, and then the thin walls shook to the grinding of pistons, the beat of heavy wheels. When the smoke cleared, Coral Musker sat quite still on the wooden bench. There was nothing to be said and her feet were stone cold. But after a while she began to read in Dr Czinner's silence an accusation, and she spoke with warmth, ‘He'll come back for me,' she said. ‘You wait and see.'

Ninitch let his rifle fall into the crook of his arm and beat his gloved hands together. ‘That new engine's noisy,' he said, as he watched the train stretch like elastic round a bend and disappear. The points groaned back into place, and the signal on the passenger up-line rose. A man came down the steps from the box, crossed the line and disappeared in the direction of a cottage.

‘Gone for lunch,' Ninitch's companion said enviously.

‘I've never heard an engine as noisy as that,' Ninitch said, ‘all the time I've been here.' Then his companion's remark reached him. ‘The major's having a hot meal down from the barracks,' he said. But he did not tell his friend that the Chief of Police was coming from Belgrade; he kept the news for his wife.

‘You are a lucky one. I've often thought it must be good having a meal all right. I've often thought it must be good to be married when I see your wife come down of a morning.'

‘It's not too bad,' said Ninitch modestly.

‘Tell me, what does she bring you?'

‘A loaf of bread and a piece of sausage. Sometimes a bit of butter. She's a good girl.' But his thoughts were not so temperate. I am not good enough for her; I should like to be rich and give her a dress and a necklace and take her to Belgrade to the theatre. He thought at first with envy of the foreign girl locked in the waiting-room, of her clothes which seemed to him very costly and of her green necklace, but in comparing her with his wife he soon forgot his envy and began to regard the foreigner, too, with affection. The beauty and fragility of women struck him with pathos, as he beat his great clumsy hands together.

‘Wake up,' his friend whispered, and both men straightened and stood ‘at ease' in a stiff attitude as a car plunged up the road to the station, breaking through the frozen surface and scattering water. ‘Who the devil?' his friend whispered, hardly moving his lips, but Ninitch proudly knew; he knew that the tall ribboned officer was the Chief of Police, he even knew the name of the other officer who bounded out of the car like a rubber ball and held the door open for Colonel Hartep to alight.

‘What a place,' said Colonel Hartep with amused distaste, looking first at the mud and then at his polished boots.

Captain Alexitch blew out his round red cheeks. ‘They might have laid some boards.'

‘No, no, we are the police. They don't like us. God knows what sort of a lunch they'll give us. Here, my man,' he beckoned to Ninitch, ‘help the chauffeur out with these cases. Be careful to keep the wine steady and upright.'

‘Major Petkovitch, sir . . .'

‘Never mind Major Petkovitch.'

‘Excuse me,' said a precise angry voice behind Ninitch.

‘Certainly, Major,' Colonel Hartep smiled and bowed, ‘but I am sure that there is no need to excuse you.'

‘This man is on guard over the prisoners.'

‘You have captured a number of them. I congratulate you.'

‘Two men and a girl.'

‘In that case I should imagine a good lock, a guard, a bayonet, a rifle, and twenty rounds of ammunition will meet the case.'

Major Petkovitch licked his lips. ‘The police, of course, know best how to guard a prison. I bow to superior knowledge. Take the things out of the car,' he said to Ninitch, ‘and bring them to my room.' He led the officers round the corner of the waiting-room and out of sight. Ninitch stared after them, until the chauffeur called out to him, ‘I can't wait here in the car all day. Look lively. You soldiers aren't used to a spot of work.' He began to take the boxes out of the car, telling over their contents as he did so: ‘A half-case of champagne. A cold duck. Fruit. Two bottles of sherry. Sausage. Wine biscuits. Lettuce. Olives.'

‘Well,' Ninitch's friend called out, ‘is it a good meal?'

Ninitch stood and stared for a moment in silence. Then he said in a low voice, ‘It's a feast.'

He had carried the sherry and champagne and the duck to the major's room when he saw his wife coming up the road bringing his own lunch wrapped in a white cloth. She was small and dark with her shawl twisted tightly round her shoulders; she had a malicious humorous face and big boots. He put down the case of fruit and went to meet her: ‘I shall not be long,' he told her in a low voice, so that the chauffeur might not hear. ‘Wait for me. I've something to tell you,' and very seriously he went back to his task. His wife sat down by the side of the road and watched him, but when he came back from the major's office, where the table was already spread and the officers were making headway with the wine, she was gone. She had left his lunch by the side of the road. ‘Where is she?' he asked the other guard.

‘She talked to the chauffeur and then she went back to the barracks. She seemed excited about something.'

Ninitch suffered a pang of disappointment. He had looked forward to telling his wife the story of Colonel Hartep's coming, and now the chauffeur had anticipated him. It was always the same. A soldier's life was a dog's life. It was the civilians who got high wages and robbed the soldiers at cards and abused them and even interfered between a soldier and his wife. But his resentment was brief. There were secrets he could yet discover for his wife, if he kept ears and eyes open. He waited for some time before he carried the last case to the major's room. The champagne was bubbling low; all three men spoke at once, and Major Petkovitch's glasses had fallen in his lap. ‘Such bobbles,' Captain Alexitch was saying, ‘such thighs. I said to His Excellency if I was in your place . . .' Major Petkovitch drew lines on the tablecloth with a finger dipped in wine. ‘The first maxim is, never strike at the wings. Crumple the centre.' Colonel Hartep was quite sober. He leant back in the chair smoking. ‘Take just a trifle of French mustard; two sprigs of parsley,' but neither of his juniors paid him any attention. He smiled gently and filled their glasses.

The snow was falling again, and through the windblown drifts Dr Czinner saw the peasants of Subotica straggling across the line, thrusting inquisitive bodies towards the waiting-room. One man got close enough to the window to stare in and examine the doctor's face. They were separated by a few feet and a sheet of glass and the lines of frost and the vapour of their breath. Dr Czinner could count his wrinkles, name the colour of his eyes, and examine with brief professional interest a sore upon his cheek. But always the peasants were driven back by the two soldiers, who struck at them with the butts of their rifles. The peasants gave way and moved on to the line, but presently they swarmed back, obstinate, stupid, and hopeless.

There had been silence in the waiting-room for a very long while. Dr Czinner went back to the stove. The girl sat with her thumbs joined and her head a little bent. He knew what she was doing; she was praying that her lover would come back for her soon, and from her secrecy he guessed that she was not accustomed to prayer. She was very frightened, and with a cold sympathy he was able to judge the measure of her fear. His experience told him two things, that prayers were not answered and that so casual a lover would not trouble to return.

He was sorry that he had involved her, but he regretted it only as he might have regretted a necessary lie. He had always recognized the need of sacrificing his own integrity; only a party in power could possess scruples; scruples in himself would be a confession that he doubted the overwhelming value of his cause. But the reflection for some reason made him bitter; he found himself envying virtues which he was not rich or strong enough to cherish. He would have welcomed generosity, charity, meticulous codes of honour to his breast if he could have succeeded, if the world had been shaped again to the pattern he loved and longed for. He spoke to her angrily: ‘You are lucky to believe that that will do good,' but he found to his amazement that she could instinctively outbid his bitterness, which was founded on theories laboriously worked out by a fallible reason. ‘I don't,' she said, ‘but one must do something.'

He was shocked by the ease of her disbelief, which did not come from the painful reading of rationalist writers and nineteenth-century scientists; she had been born to disbelief as securely as he had been born to belief. He had sacrificed security in order to reach the same position, and for a moment he longed to sow in her some dry plant of doubt, a half-belief which would make her mistrust her judgement. He allowed the inclination to pass and encouraged her. ‘He'll come back for you from Belgrade.'