they secretly wanted? “I know you want to kiss me,” she said. “What are you afraid of?” So he locked the door and they went ahead with it, his hands exploring her until he encountered a stiff and unyielding girdle. She stood, removed hat and dress, then took the waistband of the awful thing in her fists and said, suddenly self-conscious, “Would you look away for a moment?” He did, discovering a perfect image of the dimly lit compartment in the dark window as she wriggled out of the girdle, freeing a cascade of soft, rosy flesh.
They went on from there but it was this particular image that Ferrar would forever remember. He turned it this way and that way in his imagination, then his mind drifted away to the women he’d known in his past; Eileen Moore, others. Eventually he dozed off, but the train would stop, for no apparent reason, then lurch forward, waking him up, coal smoke from the engine flavoring the air of the compartment with the smell of cinders. Ferrar knew where he was: the land of war. A few miles north and south of the tracks were the towns that had given their names to battlefields: Douai, Compiègne, Verdun, Cambrai, Sedan, Waterloo. For a long time, the track wound its way through forest, the Ardennes, the route of the German invasion in 1914. As the train clattered along the bank of the river Meuse, Ferrar could see broken sheets of ice floating on the dark water. Then, after the track curved away from the river, the engine rolled to a halt at a road crossing and two men in hats and overcoats, both carrying briefcases, got out of a Mercedes automobile and boarded the train. At five in the morning, no hint of dawn, farm trucks moved east along the road that ran by the tracks, headed for the markets of Liège.
Thirty minutes later, when Ferrar had at last fallen asleep, he woke to the conductor’s rap on the door and the words “Liège. The last stop in Belgium. Passengers must wait in the corridor for passport control. Liège.”
As they waited in the corridor, a man and a woman hurriedtoward the head of the line, baggage in hand, murmuring, “Excuse us, please, we must get off here. Pardon. Pardon.” An anxious couple, Ferrar thought, deciding to end their journey in Liège, the “last stop in Belgium,” rather than enter Germany. The Belgian border guard was barely awake, his eyes heavy with sleep, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he stamped passports without bothering to look at the passengers. The anxious couple, once the guard was done with them, got off the train.
A few minutes later, Aachen Station; they had crossed the frontier into the German Reich and, had some traveler not noticed, there were numerous flags to remind him, the swastikas glowing a powerful red and black under the station lights. Through static, high-volume loudspeakers made announcements in German. Directions to waiting passengers no doubt, but the sound had its effect on Ferrar. There were uniformed officers everywhere, the SS in black, the Wehrmacht in field gray, all of them very conscious of their appearance, standing tall and straight, holstered sidearms on their heavy belts.
Two uniformed border guards, stern and hard-eyed, appeared at the end of the corridor as, passports in hand, the passengers waited to have their documents examined. The officer attending to Ferrar’s papers took his time with them, looking up and down to match face and photograph, then again, and once more. His stamp remained unused. “Herr Ferrar,” he said, “you are a Spanish citizen, resident in France?” Thus on the side of the Republic .
“I am,” Ferrar said. “I was taken to Paris as a child, in 1909.” So not on anyone’s side .
“Ah, I see. You gentlemen are traveling together?” he said with a nod at de Lyon. It had, Ferrar realized, been a mistake not to have separated for the border control.
“We are,” de Lyon said.
The officer peered at de Lyon’s passport, then looked up and said, “And you,
They went on from there but it was this particular image that Ferrar would forever remember. He turned it this way and that way in his imagination, then his mind drifted away to the women he’d known in his past; Eileen Moore, others. Eventually he dozed off, but the train would stop, for no apparent reason, then lurch forward, waking him up, coal smoke from the engine flavoring the air of the compartment with the smell of cinders. Ferrar knew where he was: the land of war. A few miles north and south of the tracks were the towns that had given their names to battlefields: Douai, Compiègne, Verdun, Cambrai, Sedan, Waterloo. For a long time, the track wound its way through forest, the Ardennes, the route of the German invasion in 1914. As the train clattered along the bank of the river Meuse, Ferrar could see broken sheets of ice floating on the dark water. Then, after the track curved away from the river, the engine rolled to a halt at a road crossing and two men in hats and overcoats, both carrying briefcases, got out of a Mercedes automobile and boarded the train. At five in the morning, no hint of dawn, farm trucks moved east along the road that ran by the tracks, headed for the markets of Liège.
Thirty minutes later, when Ferrar had at last fallen asleep, he woke to the conductor’s rap on the door and the words “Liège. The last stop in Belgium. Passengers must wait in the corridor for passport control. Liège.”
As they waited in the corridor, a man and a woman hurriedtoward the head of the line, baggage in hand, murmuring, “Excuse us, please, we must get off here. Pardon. Pardon.” An anxious couple, Ferrar thought, deciding to end their journey in Liège, the “last stop in Belgium,” rather than enter Germany. The Belgian border guard was barely awake, his eyes heavy with sleep, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he stamped passports without bothering to look at the passengers. The anxious couple, once the guard was done with them, got off the train.
A few minutes later, Aachen Station; they had crossed the frontier into the German Reich and, had some traveler not noticed, there were numerous flags to remind him, the swastikas glowing a powerful red and black under the station lights. Through static, high-volume loudspeakers made announcements in German. Directions to waiting passengers no doubt, but the sound had its effect on Ferrar. There were uniformed officers everywhere, the SS in black, the Wehrmacht in field gray, all of them very conscious of their appearance, standing tall and straight, holstered sidearms on their heavy belts.
Two uniformed border guards, stern and hard-eyed, appeared at the end of the corridor as, passports in hand, the passengers waited to have their documents examined. The officer attending to Ferrar’s papers took his time with them, looking up and down to match face and photograph, then again, and once more. His stamp remained unused. “Herr Ferrar,” he said, “you are a Spanish citizen, resident in France?” Thus on the side of the Republic .
“I am,” Ferrar said. “I was taken to Paris as a child, in 1909.” So not on anyone’s side .
“Ah, I see. You gentlemen are traveling together?” he said with a nod at de Lyon. It had, Ferrar realized, been a mistake not to have separated for the border control.
“We are,” de Lyon said.
The officer peered at de Lyon’s passport, then looked up and said, “And you,
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