The Pegnitz Junction by Mavis Gallant Read Free Book Online

avoid capture and prison sentence. Within ten years they were running the whole country. Had every important public figure tied up – Walter Winchell, everybody. Their real name was Roszenfeldt
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    In 1944 – against a Fourth Term. My cousin had a picture, it looked like a postcard, that showed the President behind bars. Caption said, “Fourth Term Hell!!!!!! I’m in for Life!!!!!”
    Apart from those four times we would never have voted
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    “We are on an electric line again,” Herbert told little Bert, who could not have had the faintest idea what this meant. The child looked wilted with heat. Their conductor had opened all the windows – there seemed to be no further news about fires – but nothing could move the leaden air.
    “I want it all in order,” Herbert said to Christine. “I really do intend to write a letter. Most of the toilets are still locked – true? There isn’t a drop of drinking water. The first vendor had no ice and no paper cups. The second had nothing but powdered coffee. The third had nothing at all. All three were indifferent.”
    “True,” said the woman, answering in place of Christine. She took off her black shoes and put her feet on top of them as if they were pillows.
    The conductor returned to check their seat reservations for the third or fourth time. “This is only a flag stop,” he said, as their train slowed. To make it easier for him, those who were in the wrong places – Christine, the Norwegian, and little Bert – moved to where they were supposed to be. The train was now inching along past a level crossing, then gave a great groan and stopped, blocking the crossroad. The barriers must have been down for some time because a long line of traffic had formed, and some of the drivers, perspiring and scarlet, had got out to yell protests and shake their fists. The sight of grown people making fools of themselves was new to littleBert, or perhaps the comic side of it struck him for the first time; he laughed until he was breathless and had to be thumped on the back. The woman in the corner kept an apple between her teeth while she looked in her purse for the ticket. Her eyes were stretched, her mouth strained, but there was no room on the table now, not even for an apple. As for the three men – Herbert, the conductor, and the Norwegian – something about the scene on the road had set them off dreaming; the look on their faces was identical. Christine could not quite put a name to it.
    The woman found her ticket and got rid of the apple.
    My husband said that if the President got in for a Fourth Term he would jump in deep water. That was an expression they used for suicide where he came from, because they had a world-famous trout stream. Not deep, though. Where he came from everybody was too poor to buy rope, so they said the thing about jumping. That was all the saying amounted to
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    To be truthful, said Christine to herself, all three of them seem to be thinking of rape. She wondered if the victim could be the pregnant young woman – a girl really, not as old as Christine – who was running along beside the tracks, making straight for the first-class carriage. Probably not; she was unmistakably an American army wife, and you could have counted on one hand the American wives raped by German men. There existed, in fact, a mutual antipathy, which was not the case when the sexes were reversed.
But
– here Christine imitated Herbert explaining something – we are not going to explore the attraction between German girls, famous for their docility, and American men, perhaps unjustly celebrated fortheirs. We are going to learn something more about Herbert.
    Christine suddenly wondered if her lips had moved – if it was plain to anyone that her mind was speaking. At that second she noticed a fair, rosy, curly, simpering, stupid-looking child, whose bald and puffy papa kept punching the crossing barrier. Julchen Knopp was her name. Her skirt, as short as a tutu, revealed rows of