The Train Was On Time (2 page)

The smell of bodies is the same as ever. The smell of dirt and dust and boot polish. Funny, wherever there are soldiers there’s dirt. The spectral fingers had found the bug.…

He lit a fresh cigarette. I’ll try and picture the future, he thought. Maybe it’s an illusion, this Soon, maybe I’m overtired, maybe it’s tension or nerves. He tried to imagine what he would do when the war was over. He would … he would … but there was a wall he couldn’t get over, a totally black wall. He couldn’t imagine anything. Of course he could force himself to complete the sentence in his mind: I’ll go to university … I’ll take a room somewhere … with books … cigarettes … go to university … music … poetry … flowers. But even as he forced himself to complete the sentence in his mind he knew it wouldn’t happen. None of it would happen. Those aren’t dreams, those are pale, colorless thoughts devoid of weight, blood, all human substance. The future has no face now, it is cut off somewhere; and the more he thought about it the more he realized how close he was to this Soon. Soon I’m going to die, that’s a certainty that lies between one year and one second. There are no more dreams.…

Soon. Maybe two months. He tried to imagine it in terms of time, to discover whether the wall rose this side of the next two months, that wall he would not be going beyond. Two months, that meant the end of November. But he can’t grasp it
in terms of time. Two months: an image that has no power. He might just as well say: three months or four months or six, the image evokes no echo. January, he thought. But the wall isn’t there at all. A strange, unquiet hope awakens: May, he thought with a sudden leap ahead. Nothing. The wall is silent. There’s no wall anywhere. There’s nothing. This Soon … this Soon is only a frightening bogey. November, he thought. Nothing! A fierce, terrible joy springs to life. January: January of next year, a year and a half away—a year and a half of life! Nothing! No wall!

He sighed with relief and went on thinking, his thoughts now racing across time as over light, very low hurdles. January, May, December! Nothing! And suddenly he was aware that he was groping in a void. The place where the wall rose up couldn’t be grasped in terms of time. Time was irrelevant. Time had ceased to exist. And yet hope still remained. He had leaped so splendidly over the months. Years.…

Soon I’m going to die, and he felt like a swimmer who knows he is near the shore and finds himself suddenly flung back into the tide by the surf. Soon! That’s where the wall is, the wall beyond which he will cease to exist, will cease to be on this earth.

Krakow, he thought suddenly, and his heart missed a beat as if an artery had twisted itself into a knot, blocking off the blood. He is on the right track—Krakow! Nothing! Farther. Przemysl! Nothing! Lvov! Nothing! Then he starts racing: Cernauti, Jassy, Kishinev, Nikopol! But at the last name he already senses that this is only make-believe, make-believe like the thought: I’ll go to university. Never again, never again will he see Nikopol! Back to Jassy. No, he won’t see Jassy again either. He won’t see Cernauti again, Lvov! Lvov he’ll see again, Lvov he’ll reach alive! I’m mad, he thought, I’m out of my mind, this means I’ll die between Lvov and Cernauti! What a crazy idea … he forced himself to switch off his thoughts and
started smoking again and staring into the face of the night. I’m hysterical, I’m crazy, I’ve been smoking too much, talking, talking for nights on end, days on end, with no sleep, no food, just smoking, it’s enough to make anyone lose their mind.…

I must have something to eat, he thought, something to drink. Food and drink keep body and soul together. This damn smoking all the time! He started fumbling with his pack, but while he peered toward his feet in the dark, trying to find the buckle, and then began rummaging around in his pack where sandwiches and underwear, tobacco, cigarettes, and a bottle of schnapps all lay in a heap, he became aware of a leaden, implacable fatigue that clogged his veins … he fell asleep … his hands on the open pack, one leg—the left—next to a face he had never seen, one leg—the right—across someone’s luggage, and with his tired and by now dirty hands resting on his pack he fell asleep, his head on his chest.…

He was awakened by someone treading on his fingers. A stab of pain, he opened his eyes; someone had passed by in a hurry, bumped him in the back and trodden on his hands. He saw it was daylight and heard another resounding voice hospitably announcing a station name, and he realized it was Dortmund. The man who had spent the night behind him smoking and murmuring was getting out, cursing as he barged along the corridor; for that unknown gray face, this was home. Dortmund. The man next to him, the one whose luggage his right leg had been resting on, was awake and sat up on the cold floor of the corridor, rubbing his eyes. The man on the left, whose face his left foot was resting against, was still asleep. Dortmund. Girls carrying steaming pots of coffee were hurrying up and down the platform. The same as ever. Women were standing around weeping; girls being kissed, fathers … it was all so familiar: he must be crazy.

But, to tell the truth, all he knew was that the instant he opened his eyes he knew that Soon was still there. Deep within
him the little barb had drawn blood, it had caught and would never let go now. This Soon had grabbed him like a hook, and he was going to squirm on it, squirm until he was between Lvov and Cernauti.…

Like lightning, in the millionth part of a second it took him to wake up, came the hope that this Soon would have disappeared, like the night, a bogey in the wake of endless talking and endless smoking. But it was still there, implacably there.…

He sat up, his eye fell on his pack, still half open, and he stuffed back a shirt that had slipped out. The man on his right had let down a window and was holding out a mug into which a thin, tired girl was pouring coffee. The smell of the coffee was horrible, thin steam that made him feel queasy; it was the smell of barracks, of army cookhouses, a smell that had spread all over Europe … and that was meant to spread all over the world. And yet (so deep are the roots of habit) and yet he also held out his mug for the girl to fill; the gray coffee that was as gray as a uniform. He could smell the stale exhalation from the girl; she must have slept in her clothes, gone from train to train during the night, lugging coffee.…

She smelled penetratingly of that vile coffee. Perhaps she slept right up close to the coffeepot as it stood on a stove to keep hot, slept until the next train arrived. Her skin was gray and rough like dirty milk, and wisps of her scanty, pale-black hair crept out from under a little cap, but her eyes were soft and sad, and when she bent over to fill his mug he saw the charming nape of her neck. What a pretty girl, he thought: everyone will think she’s ugly, and she’s pretty, she’s beautiful … she has delicate little fingers too … I could spend hours watching her pour my coffee; if only the mug had a hole, if only she would pour and pour, I would see her soft eyes and that charming nape, and if only that resounding voice would shut up. Everything bad comes from those resounding voices;
those resounding voices started the war, and those resounding voices regulate the worst war of all, the war at railway stations. To hell with all resounding voices!

The man in the red cap was waiting obediently for the resounding voice that had to say its piece, then the train got under way, lighter by a few heroes, richer by a few heroes. It was daylight but still early: seven o’clock. Never again, never ever again will I pass through Dortmund. How strange, a city like Dortmund; I’ve passed through it often and have never been in the town itself. Never ever will I know what Dortmund is like, and never ever again will I see this girl with the coffeepot. Never again; soon I’m going to die, between Lvov and Cernauti. My life is now nothing but a specific number of miles, a section of railway line. But that’s odd, there’s no front between Lvov and Cernauti, and not many partisans either, or has there been some glorious great cave-in along the front overnight? Is the war suddenly, quite suddenly, over? Will peace come before this Soon? Some kind of disaster? Maybe the divine beast is dead, assassinated at last, or the Russians have launched an attack on all fronts and swept everything before them as far as between Lvov and Cernauti, and capitulation.…

There was no escape, the sleeping men had woken up, they were beginning to eat, drink, chat.…

He leaned against the open window and let the chill morning wind beat against his face. I’ll get drunk, he thought, I’ll knock back a whole bottle, then I won’t know a thing, then I’ll be safe at least as far as Breslau. He bent down, hurriedly opened his pack, but an invisible hand restrained him from grasping the bottle. He took out a sandwich and quietly and slowly began to chew. How terrible, to have to eat just before one’s death. Soon I’m going to die, yet I still have to eat. Slices of bread and sausage, air-raid sandwiches packed for him by his friend the chaplain, a whole package of sandwiches with plenty of sausage in them, and the terrible thing was that they tasted so good.

He leaned against the open window, quietly eating and chewing, from time to time reaching down into his open pack for another sandwich. Between mouthfuls he sipped the lukewarm coffee.

It was terrible to look into the drab houses where the slaves were getting ready to march off to their factories. House after house, house after house, and everywhere lived people who suffered, who laughed, people who ate and drank and begat new human beings, people who tomorrow might be dead; the place was teeming with human life. Old women and children, men, and soldiers too. Soldiers were standing at windows, one here, one there, and each man knew when he would be on the train again, traveling back to hell.…

“Hey there, mate,” said a husky voice behind him, “want to join us in a little game?” He swung round: “Yes!” he said without thinking, at the same time catching sight of a deck of cards in a soldier’s hand: the soldier, who was grinning at him, needed a shave. I said Yes, he thought, so he nodded and followed the soldier. The corridor was deserted except for two men who had taken themselves off with their luggage to the vestibule, where one of them, a tall fellow with blond hair and slack features, was sitting on the floor, grinning.

“Find anybody?”

“Yes,” said the unshaven soldier in his husky voice.

Soon I’m going to die, thought Andreas, squatting down on his pack, which he had brought along. Each time he put down the pack his steel helmet rattled, and now the sight of the steel helmet reminded him that he had forgotten his rifle. My rifle, he thought, it’s standing propped up in Paul’s closet behind his raincoat. He smiled. “That’s right, mate,” said the blond fellow. “Forget your troubles and join the game.”

The two men had made themselves very snug. They were sitting by a door, but the door was barricaded, the handle tightly secured with wire, and luggage had been stacked up in front of it.
The unshaven soldier took a pair of pliers out of his pocket—he was wearing regular blue work pants—he took out the pliers, fished out a roll of wire from somewhere under the luggage, and began to wind fresh wire still more tightly around the door handle.

“That’s right, mate,” said the blond fellow. “They can kiss our arses till we get to Przemysl. You’re going that far, aren’t you? I see you are,” he said when Andreas nodded.

Andreas soon realized they were drunk; the unshaven soldier had a whole battery of bottles in his carton, and he passed the bottles around. First they played blackjack. The train rattled, daylight grew stronger, and they stopped at stations with resounding voices and stations without resounding voices. It filled up and emptied, filled up and emptied, and all the time the three men stayed in their corner playing cards.

Sometimes, at a station, someone outside would rattle furiously at the locked door and swear, but they would only laugh and go on with their game and throw the empty bottles out of the window. Andreas didn’t think about the game at all, these games of chance were so wonderfully simple there was no need to think, your mind could be somewhere else.…

Paul would be up by now, if he had slept at all. Maybe there had been another air-raid alarm, and he hadn’t had any sleep. If he had slept, then it could only have been for a few hours. He must have got home at four. Now it was almost ten. So he had slept till eight, then got up, washed, read mass, prayed for me. He prayed for me to be happy because I had denied human happiness.

“Pass!” he said. Marvelous—you just said “Pass!” and had time to think.…

Then he would have gone home and smoked cigarette butts in his pipe, had a bite to eat, some air-raid sandwiches, and gone off again. Some place or other. Maybe to a girl having an illegitimate baby by a soldier, maybe to a mother, or maybe to the black market to buy a few cigarettes.

“Flush,” he said.

He had won again. The money in his pocket made quite a packet now.

“You’re a lucky bastard,” said the soldier who needed a shave. “Drink up, my friends!” He passed the bottle around again, he was sweating, and beneath the mask of coarse joviality his face was very sad and preoccupied. He shuffled the cards … a good thing I don’t have to shuffle them. I need one more minute to think about Paul, to concentrate on Paul, tired and pale; now he’s walking through the ruins and praying, all the time. I gave him hell, you should never give anyone hell, not even a sergeant.…

“Three of a kind,” he said, “and a pair.” He had won again.

The other men laughed, they didn’t care about the money, all they wanted was to kill time. What a laborious, frightful business it was, this killing time, over and over again that little seconds-hand racing invisibly beyond the horizon, over and over again you threw a heavy dark sack over it, in the certain knowledge that the little hand went racing on, relentlessly on and on.…

“Nordhausen!” proclaimed a resounding voice. “Nordhausen!” The voice announced the name of the station just as he was shuffling the cards. “Troop-train now departing for Przemysl via …” and then it said: “All aboard and close the doors!” How normal it all was. He slowly dealt the cards. It was already close on eleven. They were still drinking schnapps, the schnapps was good. He made a few complimentary remarks about the schnapps to the soldier who needed a shave. The train had filled up again. They had very little room now, and quite a few of the men were looking at them. It had become uncomfortable, and it was impossible to avoid overhearing the men’s chatter.