Dine and Die on the Danube Express (3 page)

“
Alles im Ordnung
,” he told me, an expression you hear widely in Germany. “Everything in order” it means, and it expresses German satisfaction that everything is, indeed, in order and that all is well; all is as mandated and nothing is being allowed to disturb the methodical and systematic way in which Germans like life to run.

He handed me my documents and waved me through. I walked onto the almost empty platform and there it stood—the Danube Express.

I felt as if I had stepped decades into the past. The green-and-gold monster brought back instant memories of a model train I once had. Some lights were on, and a greenish glow from low-voltage halogen floodlights made the Express look unreal. Brass glinted—rails, panels, fittings, and handles. I moved a few paces closer. A voice from behind me asked in German, “Can I help you?”

An elderly man in a one-piece working suit was there. He had a lined face, and, as he came toward me, I noticed a limp. He was probably one of the many who had survived the ordeal of the Russian Front and still bore the wounds.

I explained that I was to be a passenger on the train tomorrow and his face lit up. “Ah, the twenty-fifth anniversary! It will be a famous day!”

I told him of my boyhood fascination with trains, and he gestured to the metal creature as proudly as any father would indicate his child. “I have worked on her since she was built. She is a wonderful creation, is she not?”

I agreed and we strolled closer.

“The locomotive is based on the Laterus design.”

“It’s like the English Buddicomb, isn’t it?”

His face widened in a smile. “Ah, you know trains! Yes, in those days, most trains were copies of either the Furst or the Buddicomb. This one is similar to both, but it resembles most closely the model that was selected for the maiden voyage of the original Danube Express in 1878.”

“Those driving wheels,” I said. “They are immense.”

“Two meters in diameter,” he said. The wheels stood well above my head. “The originals weighed twenty tons each. They have been redesigned and now use light alloys instead of cast iron, but they—like the rest of the train—resemble the original almost exactly. One of the outstanding features is the outside cylinders.”

“I was just marveling at those; they’re enormous, too.”

“Yes, they’re inclined at an angle, you’ll notice. They reduce friction on the bearings, which was a common cause of failure in earlier trains—it caused fracture of the crank axles.”

“I don’t see any smoke,” I complained. “Surely you’ve started to stoke up the boilers already?”

He grinned. “Oh, you’ll see smoke sure enough. It will look real, too, but it won’t bother your lungs. As for boilers, well”—he smiled—“they aren’t necessary with electromagnetic motors.”

“And I suppose they’re silent?”

“Almost—but don’t worry about that. We have a recording from one of the trains of 1935, and we play that at a low volume level.”

“Including the steam whistle?”

“Oh, of course, wouldn’t be authentic without it.”

“Ingenious,” I conceded. “Does the train run on a special track?” I asked.

“Special tracks are only necessary for the very-high-speed trains. That has been one of the factors which made high-speed train travel a long time in coming—it was necessary to lay all-new rails capable of handling the extremely high stresses placed on them.”

“So the Danube Express can use existing railbeds?”

“Yes, and these are widely distributed all over Europe. The Danube Express does not exceed a hundred kilometers an hour”—that was about sixty-five miles an hour—“and even European railbeds that are nearly a hundred years old are adequate. We have laid new rails on these, and they conform to German Standard D-156, a special steel with superior properties.”

I looked up and down the platform. It was deserted except for two indistinct figures down at the far end. The greenish glow of the halogen lights was almost subdued by the cavernous darkness that soared up to the roof.

“This will all look very different in the morning, I suppose?”

He nodded. “
Ja,
very different. The mechanical and electronic checks on the train and the track have just been completed. The food and drink supplies will arrive about 1:00
A.M.
” He pointed down to the end of the platform. “The cargoes will be loaded in a few minutes. We are told the guards will come with them and stay here until the train departs.”

“Cargoes? Guards?”

“
Ja
,” he said unhelpfully.

“Must be valuable cargoes—what are they?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. We have one coach—an armored vault—it is where the mail is carried.”

“Can you compete with airmail?”

“We carry parcels and heavier freight. The Danube Express is a secure way to carry valuable items—much safer than a plane and far safer than road. Alas, hijackings on the Autobahn are not unknown.”

He waved a hand. “Here comes the first cargo.”

Two uniformed men carrying automatic rifles walked onto the platform, looking all around them with practiced movements. A small, hand-drawn truck came after them, and two more armed guards followed. The truck was operated by a cable and had on it what looked like a cubic steel box, about two feet on a side.

The man operating the control maneuvered the truck into position alongside a coach, which I now noticed was shorter than the others. He took out a key and unlocked first one door, then another inside it. The guards helped him place it inside the coach.

Two guards and the man handling the small truck left the platform while the other two guards stood, one on either side of the door. Within a minute, the truck and the guards reappeared. This time a larger cargo was on the truck. It was over six feet long and about two feet wide and two feet deep.

The man and I watched as they loaded that, too. The man with the truck carefully locked both doors, and one of the guards checked each to make sure it was secure.

“Whatever is in those boxes certainly must be valuable,” I commented.

The other nodded. I gathered he knew nothing more than he had told me, and, even if he had, he was not going to divulge it.

I thanked him for the information he had given me, and he wished me a safe journey, concluding with the traditional Bavarian greeting and farewell, “
Gruss Gott
.”

As I walked off the platform, I was speculating over the nature of the cargoes we were taking with us tomorrow. The first box was cubic in shape and could contain anything.

It was the second box that caused me apprehension. Its size and its shape were associated with one type of container and one alone.

It looked exactly like a coffin.

I
KNOW THAT COFFINS
are not lethal weapons and that their threat is merely symbolic. I suppose my superstitious fear of them arises from an incident a few years ago in Italy.

I was flying from Padua in the north of Italy to Palermo in Sicily, and found myself seated next to an Italian lady who spent the first part of the flight looking out the window and sniffing quietly into a handkerchief.

I did not want to intrude on her grief, but national volubility soon emerged, and she apologized for her tears and explained. She was one of a group of over thirty ladies of Palermo. They had been on a pleasure trip in the north, and one of their members had died suddenly. Her body was in a coffin that was now in the hold of this plane, as her friends insisted that she would want to be buried in Palermo.

When I extended her my sympathy on the loss of her friend, she explained that her grief was more than that. She, and all of her friends, firmly believed that they would never arrive in Palermo, as a coffin on board was bad luck.

Trying not to scoff, I assured her that her fears were unfounded—just as the captain announced that due to engine problems, we would have to land in Bologna. After some time on the ground, the plane was declared fit to continue. My companion shook her head. More was to come, she assured me.

Fifteen minutes after takeoff, we were told that Palermo was fogged in and not likely to clear. We would have to make an emergency landing in Perugia. We circled the Perugia airport for a seemingly endless time, and it was only when we landed that we saw the blazing wreckage of a previous aircraft being dragged off the runway. A near miss, my companion told me. Fate had intended that should have been us.

Our crew had now reached its duty hours limit and left. No other crews were there, and no other aircraft were available. We bussed to the Al Italia office in town, where we learned that the few hotels were full. I tried the two car rental offices, neither had any cars. Bed-and-breakfast places, youth hostels, even the Salvation Army were full. No more trains were scheduled for that evening. My path crossed that of other groups of passengers from our flight, all on similar quests. The ladies of Palermo were among them, and my companion was there, reminding me that she had told me so. Soon all the taxis in town were filled or gone off duty. All the restaurants were closed by then.

The rest of the night was a miserably uncomfortable one, but we left the next day on another aircraft, and it was that night that the headline news concerned the plane that had taken us to Perugia. It, too, had crashed, killing the entire crew. Perhaps it was not sufficient reason to be concerned about the coffin on board the Danube Express, but I could not dismiss the memory entirely.

The star herself was crossing the platform the next morning as I arrived. Magda Malescu looked glamorous in a light gray, pin-striped pantsuit. I saw her close-up for the first time and marveled at her high, Slavic cheekbones, big wide-set eyes, and flawless complexion. What was less apparent was how she managed to project that aura of stardom. It hung on her like a cloak.

It was more than the flashing eyes, the magnificent carriage, the opulent figure, and the dazzling smile—but the secret eluded me. It was far more than all of those, and, whatever it was—Magda Malescu had it in abundance.

I managed to be next in line to board, as it seemed we were both in the same coach. She flashed me a smile, and I introduced myself.

“I didn’t have the opportunity to meet you last night,” I added.

“You are going to Budapest?” she asked. Her voice was a little less sultry and inviting than it was on the screen, but only a little.

“I’m going on to Bucharest,” I told her. “I hope to spend more time in Budapest on the way back. Budapest has always been one of my favorite cities.”

“Ah, you know it then?”

“I have been there a few times. I find it to have all the charm that is expected of Vienna but that is sadly not there anymore. Budapest has not lost it yet.”

She smiled in full agreement. I was speaking the truth although I knew that she was passionate about it as her home and birthplace.

“We must talk further on the train,” she said, retrieving her passport and papers. I could understand that officials invariably found them in order.

We puffed out of the Munich
Hauptbahnhof
on time.

The entry into my compartment confirmed the most extravagant claims of the DS Bahn. The compartment walls and car doors were made of teak-and-mahogany paneling with inlaid marquetry. A deep armchair was covered in soft Spanish leather and embossed in silver patterning. The roller blinds were augmented by flowered-damask drapes held by silk cords and tassels of gold thread. En suite was the bathroom area with Italian marble tub and basin and gold knobs and fittings. Light fixtures were of Bohemian crystal, and the carpets appeared to be from Hyderabad.

My table companions from the evening before were either on the platform or boarding other coaches, and I saw several of those I had met during the reception. All of them, like me, were sufficiently concerned about getting established in the compartment that was to be their home for the next days that they had no time for fraternizing.

Once that was accomplished, however, several stood by the windows and watched the delightful rolling countryside of Bavaria stream by with its occasional slender church spire, its herds of fat brown cows, and its impossibly neat farms.

The design of the coaches was such that a corridor ran along one side and the compartments along the other side. One could view the passing scene through the windows in the compartment or go into the corridor and view the other side.

This truly was a train for the seasoned traveler, since reaching the destination was not the main reason for the journey—it was the journey itself.

After unpacking, I walked along the corridor. The lack of tilt was immediately noticeable, and it was clear that the claims made for the efficiency of the stabilizing system were not exaggerated. The electromagnetic engines were as silent as they were alleged to be—at least, I assumed that the faint swooshing noise was a sound track to allay the fears of passengers unaccustomed to silent travel.

I walked along the corridor. At the end, a glass door swung open at my approach, and I was able to go through into the next coach with none of the jerking and swaying that I recalled from early trains. Passage from one coach to the next had been a minor adventure in itself in those days, especially that glimpse beneath one’s feet of the speeding ground beneath.

The next coach was the lounge. I had thoroughly digested the literature on the Danube Express and learned that this coach was originally called The Gentlemen’s Smoking Room. In this modern era, ladies as well as gentlemen not only smoke but receive equal rights in all other areas. Still, the lounge looked much as it always had in its gentlemanly days, with leather fauteuils and footstools, bookcases with the day’s newspapers, up-to-date magazines, and a section of travel literature describing the countries being traversed. It was all very much like a superior London club.

Helmut Lydecker greeted me with a nod. He was glancing through a magazine but also looking out the window at the countryside, which unraveled like a screen travelogue.

“First trip on this train?” I asked, wanting to break the ice.

“No,” he said. “I have made it many times.”