Tours of the Black Clock

93

ON THE NIGHT BEFORE she arrived in Amsterdam the lover came again. It was her second night on the train, past one in the morning; they’d just pulled out of Paris. Her father begged her not to go by way of Munich and so the trip had taken nearly a day longer than it might have otherwise. She’d just returned from the dining car where she had a sandwich and some wine, sitting alone at a table as the bottle bounced nervously on the cloth to the clatter of the tracks. The wine left little red droplets on the cloth before her. The old bartender sat beneath one thin light reading a newspaper; he offered it to her when he finished and she took it. The train passed several villages where men swung lanterns from the station platforms. She finally rose from the table and returned to her car; a mother and daughter who’d been in her compartment were no longer there and she had the cabin to herself. She stood in the aisle of the empty train snaking through Europe at two-thirty in the morning and the cold air through the open window blew against the part of her face that was slightly yellow from the fading bruise. A lantern clamped to the wall of the train jiggled wildly. When her face was cold she returned to her seat and lay there some time underneath the newspaper before she slept.

Because she slept, she’d say to herself, while it was happening, It’s a dream. But she never really believed that, not from the first moment when she found herself startled to attention by the realization that, as in her room in Vienna, someone was there in the compartment. It was dark but not that dark; she saw the looming form of him above her. “What are you doing here?” she actually said; he stopped for a moment, as though he might try and explain. Then she heard a sound like something ripped, and understood the fabric of the dress had torn around her thighs; she heard another rip and flinched. She sat upright as though to hold him off. The buttons of her dress scattered across the floor; she scrambled to her feet only to realize in the cold air that came through the windows of the aisle outside her cabin door that he’d pulled everything off her. Her bare body fell against the window. The heat of it sent the cold of the glass running down the wall. She had one foot on the floor and the other knee on the seat, and held her arms to her breasts; perhaps she believed something might yet be protected. Take your arms away from your breasts, he said to her. She rose to him in the frosted glow of the compartment. The definition of his eyes bled into two sightless blazes of glass through which she could see the night beyond him. Through his glass eyes she could see the passing small fences and blue silos and little houses in the distance with lights; when the lids of his eyes fell shut she felt the top of her legs glisten. He put his mouth there and held her ankles to the red velvet seat; she flailed at the seat in the cold of the moonlight. He pulled her down and she clutched the armrest as she’d clutched the bedposts; amidst the thump of the train she felt him enter her. She kept expecting him to dim and die with some rush of light. It was like waking in the night to find some part of her numb, feeling as though she didn’t have an arm or leg, and waiting for the feeling to come back slowly in a warm throb. She let go of the armrest. The newspaper rustled beneath her chest. When she pounded at the glass he took her hands in his. He flooded the center of her and she screamed into the seat, opening up to him again.

When she woke she guessed she’d slept a quarter of an hour. She was still folded across the red velvet seat in the dark; she could smell him running out of her, and his sweat on her back. She untwisted herself and burned anew. The train was somewhere in Belgium. She slowly dressed and went down to the end of the car to use the bathroom and wash her legs; she slumped against the toilet gasping. Back outside she stood staring out the window. Dutch rivers fled across her vision. After some time the train came to a station; it was possible she was now in Holland. She took her one small bag and left the train, walking across the dissipated light of the platform. She walked through the station and out into a small Flemish village. She walked down the one road and within minutes she was out by the tall grass where the little houseboats could be seen bobbing on the river. A windmill stood against the night. She turned to look over her shoulder once and then walked out through the grass under the moon; she heard the train pulling out and for ten minutes she walked slowly amidst the grass toward the river, listening to the train disappear toward Amsterdam. The clouds tumbled above her. She whistled a song she’d heard some of the other women sing in the office at the school. At the end of the tall grass she could see a wooden fence that ran along the river; over to the south were the houses of the village, dark but for a single light each one burned for a stranger lost on a hot night in Holland. She pulled her torn dress closer to her when she looked over her shoulder again. For a moment she had the sinking feeling there was no one there at all, but she reassured herself. The small boats were drifting on the river a few meters before her; unlike the village houses they burned no lights. The smell of the grass and the water mixed with the smell of him and she liked it. At the fence her feet sank into water. She continued watching out over the river even when he came up behind her; she didn’t turn to him. Her ragged dress blew around her. As he separated her, she leaned her body over the rail of the fence; her hair fell into her face and brushed the tall grass. He reached in front of her and held her breasts. She moaned into the grass, her ragged dress caught on the fence; her hair was tousled in the wind. He was talking to her and she wanted him to be quiet. She didn’t move from the fence while he had her, she only brushed her hair away. The sails of the windmill were full, drifting on the field of grass a few meters from them. She didn’t move until she simply couldn’t stand the sound of him anymore, and the things he said to her. “You bastard,” she finally turned to him furiously, spitting in his face, “my eyes are brown not blue, and that’s not my name.”