Flight Without End

XVI

He had to change trains once on the way. He did not halt anywhere. Of Germany he saw only the stations, the sign-boards, the posters, the churches, the hotels by the railway, the silent grey streets of the suburbs, and the suburban trains looking like tired animals emerging from their stables. He saw only the changing passengers, solitary gentlemen in cutaways, carrying brief-cases, who balefully regarded every open window and occupied an empty seat with the threatening resolution of a fortress. They seemed to be waiting in readiness for an enemy who, to their chagrin, never arrived. Meanwhile they studied the papers they had extracted from their brief-cases with the zeal with which one prepares for an imminent campaign. They must have been important papers, for the gentlemen sheltered them in their arms, cradled them, as it were, under their wings, so that they might not meet with any unauthorized glance.

Other, less austere gentlemen without brief-cases, in the latest grey travelling outfits, sat themselves down with a sigh, amiably inspected those sitting opposite, and soon initiated a conversation with an earnest, moralistic, if not currently political content. Here and there a hunter climbed in, in his right hand a rifle in a brown leather case, in his left — or perhaps the other way round — a stick with an antler as handle. It seemed both genial and menacing.

Tunda thought longingly of the Russian railways and their harmless, garrulous passengers.

In every carriage there hung maps and scenic views, advertisements for German wine and cigarettes, for scenery, mountains, valleys, leather coats, dining-cars, newspapers and magazines, for chains with which to fasten one’s suitcases so securely to the luggage-racks that prospective thieves would get caught up in them, too, and one could comfortably lay hold of the miscreants on returning from the dining-car and hand them over to the station-master for a reward. But one might also — if one wanted to make easy money — insure oneself against so-called journey-thefts, by which was meant not the theft of a journey but that incidental to a journey, against railway accidents, in readiness for which pickaxes, hatchets and saws were displayed warningly in glass cases. It was possible to insure one’s own life, one’s children and one’s grandchildren, so that one raced gaily through tunnels in the expectation of an imminent collision, emerged disappointed from the gloom, and survived to eat frankfurters with mustard at the next station.

What a dependable undertaking! The magazines, the sausages, the bottles of mineral water, the cigarettes, the trunks and mailbags lay tidily on shelves, behind glass, in tinfoil and on wheeled carts; and when the train glided out of the great halls which resembled cathedrals, it seemed as if those left behind, waving handkerchiefs, crying, calling out till the very last moment, also glided away as if on roller-skates. Even the stations did not stand still. Only the signal-boxes and the signals stood like posts of honour. That they did not shoot up into the air seemed a dereliction of duty.

Tunda stood in the corridor and smoked. He did not see the notice which strictly forbade this because men do not see the irrelevant. Thus Nature wills it. In any case, another gentleman was also smoking, but he concealed his cigarette in the hollow of his hand when his practised ear heard the guard coming. The guard certainly saw the hidden cigarette but did not call this honest gentleman to account, for most authorities are concerned less with the observance of regulations than with the respect that is due to them. The guard merely drew Tunda’s attention to the fact that he would incur penalties, under certain circumstances, that is if he, the guard, did not happen to be such a good-natured man. Whereupon Tunda obediently stubbed out his cigarette, unfortunately on the window pane. The honest gentleman, who seemed bent on voluntarily assuming the duties of the guard, took the opportunity to say that ashtrays were available for stubbing out cigarettes, albeit in the compartments.

Tunda, taken to task from two sides, endeavoured by civility to evade a threatening lecture, expressed his thanks, bowed his excuses, and began to praise the scenery, to some extent to get his own back. The gentleman asked if he was a foreigner. Tunda was as delighted as a schoolboy who makes a human contact with his form-master and has the privilege of carrying his exercise-books home. He readily announced that he had come straight from Siberia, by way of Vienna.

In the light of this circumstance the gentleman opined that it was natural that Tunda should have attempted to stub out his cigarette on the window pane.

Probably there were lice, too, in Siberia.

‘Indeed there are lice in Siberia,’ said Tunda accommodatingly.

‘Where exactly?’ asked the gentleman, in a high voice which emerged from a glassy larynx.

‘Why, everywhere where people live,’ replied Tunda.

‘Surely not where clean folk live,’ said the gentleman.

‘There are clean folk living even in Siberia,’ said Tunda.

‘You seem very fond of the country?’ asked the gentleman ironically.

‘I love it,’ Tunda acknowledged.

Thereupon ensued a pause.

The gentleman said nothing for a few minutes.

‘It’s easy to get used to foreign countries.’

‘Under certain circumstances, yes.’

‘I was in Italy last spring,’ began the gentleman — ‘Venice, Rome, Sicily — a belated honeymoon, you understand, there was never any time while I was studying — excuse me —’

Here the gentleman underwent a remarkable transformation, he was suddenly a head taller, his bleary eyes flashed bold and blue, a tiny co-ordinate system of creases appeared over the bridge of his nose.

‘Excuse me,’ said the gentleman, bowing stiffly: ‘Public Prosecutor Brandsen.’

At the same time he clicked his heels together with a sharp crack.

For a moment Tunda believed himself in danger of imminent arrest.

He collected himself, became equally serious, made a noise with his boots, assumed an alert posture, and rattled off his name:

‘First Lieutenant Tunda.’

After the Public Prosecutor had inspected him for a space of time, he resumed the narrative of his postponed honeymoon.

A later development was that the State Prosecutor actually offered Tunda a cigarette, surreptitiously glanced right and left for the guard, and declared with respect to him:

‘A fine fellow!’

‘A conscientious man!’ added Tunda.

This designation seemed to irritate the Public Prosecutor; perhaps he did not take kindly to the conjunction of ‘conscientious’ and ‘man’. He therefore said only:

‘Come, come!’

So passing the time, they arrived at the city on the Rhine.