Tours of the Black Clock

140

Z AND I ARE not arrested at the mainland. I pull the old man up from the boat’s bottom and we climb out, trying to lose ourselves among the hundreds of Italians milling around under the eyes of the Germans on the ridge of the banks. The old man and I are wearing brown cloaks and hoods like two monks, one small and shriveled and the other oversized and lame; we’re surrounded by fishermen, the same ones who smiled at me from their boats, who now take no notice of us at all. Everyone begins to head into the town on the mainland. Z and I travel with them, soldiers watch us as we pass. At the mainland station I pull from my cloak a wad of the Eurodeutsch currency Giorgio’s put there for us; it takes most of it to buy two tickets for the train. The station’s swarming with German soldiers. The whole thing seems ridiculous, it’s obvious we’ll be arrested any moment. We climb onto the train heading for Milan and, beyond Milan, the territories that were formerly France. The train’s packed. Someone gives up a seat for the old man; I set him there with his train ticket sticking out of his coat pocket underneath the cloak. In his hands he still holds pathetically the last pages I wrote before leaving the sinking city, the ink on them having long since run in wet indecipherable streaks. I take my own place out in the car’s aisle. After thirty minutes there’s a shudder beneath our feet and the station, with its platforms full of German soldiers, begins to drift past us. In another thirty minutes the lagoon is far behind us. Halfway to Milan a conductor wanders up the car and punches our tickets without a second look or thought.

In Milan we don’t get off the train. I find a window seat for the old man. He’s dazed, stupid with silence; he stares straight ahead. From the window of the train I buy some bread and wine from one of the passing food vendors. After a little less than an hour we pull out again. At the border they’ll take us, I know that. I have my eye out at all times for the officials. No one carries passports anymore within Greater Germany but at the territories someone will no doubt want to see our identification. Occasionally one soldier or another comes through the car looking us over. Two hours outside Milan, the train’s full again, and the conductor and a train official and two guards come down the aisle. With them is also a German lieutenant; the passengers watch him with fear. Everything’s routine until our cabin, where the conductor asks Z for his identification. Z sits in stunned incomprehension. The lieutenant with the conductor and train official and two guards is considering me rather closely. The conductor and official begin to berate the old man; then the lieutenant says to me, Are you with this old man? There’s no reason for him to assume I am, since Z is sitting in the car and I’m standing in the aisle. No one has told him, as far as I know, that I’m with the old man. After a moment I say, Yes, I’m with the old man. The conductor and the official turn to me and ask me for my papers, and after another moment I tell them I don’t have my papers. He doesn’t have his either, I say, nodding at my client. The conductor and the official take great indignant satisfaction in this news and the guards seem about to arrest me, when the lieutenant raises his hand and says to me, Where did you get on this train? Thinking about it, I’m prepared to say Milan, but instead I decide to astonish him with the truth. He nods at this, looks at the old man, looks back at me. Then he signals the conductor, train official and guards to move on to the next cabin. Dumbfounded, they compose themselves and comply. The five of them pass by me; I’m a bit dumbfounded myself. I’m trying to study the face of the German lieutenant for an answer, but he never looks my way again.