The Train by Georges Simenon Read Free Book Online Page A

silence and our train stayed there, as if abandoned in the middle of a complicated network of tracks on which a few empty carriages were standing about. Among others, I can remember a tanker which bore in big yellow letters the name of a Montpellier wine merchant.
    Despite ourselves, we remained in suspense, not saying anything, waiting for the all-clear, which was not sounded for almost another half hour. During this time, the horsedealer’s hand had left Julie’s breast. It settled there again, more insistent than before, and the man pressed his lips on his neighbor’s.
    A countrywoman muttered:
    “Disgusting, I call it, in front of a little girl.”
    And he retorted, his mouth daubed with lipstick:
    “The little girl will have to learn one day! Didn’t you ever learn, in your day?”
    This was the sort of coarse, vulgar remark to which I wasn’t accustomed. It reminded me of the torrent of abuse my mother had poured on the youths who had followed her, jeering at her. I glanced at the dark-haired girl. She was looking somewhere else as if she hadn’t heard, and didn’t notice my interest.
    I have never been drunk for the simple reason that I drink neither wine nor beer. But I imagine that when night fell I was in roughly the condition of a man who has had a drop too much.
    Possibly on account of the afternoon sun, in the valley with the spring, my eyelids were hot and prickly; I felt that my cheeks were red, my arms and legs numb, my mind empty.
    I gave a start when somebody, striking a match to look at his watch, announced in an undertone:
    “Half past ten …!”
    Time was passing at once fast and slowly. To tell the truth, there was no time anymore.
    Some of my companions were asleep, others were talking in low voices. I dozed off, for my part, on the black trunk, with my head against the side of the car, and later on, in a half sleep, while the train was still motionless, surrounded by darkness and silence, I became aware of rhythmicalmovements close beside me. It took me some time to realize that it was Julie and her companion making love.
    I wasn’t shocked, even though, possibly on account of my disease, I have always been rather prudish. I followed the rhythm as if it were music and I must admit that, little by little, a detailed picture took shape in my mind, and the whole of my body was filled with a diffused warmth.
    When I dropped off to sleep again, Julie was murmuring, probably to another neighbor of hers:
    “No! Not now!”
    A long time afterward, toward the middle of the night, a series of jolts shook us, as if our train were shunting about. People were walking up and down the line, talking. Somebody said:
    “It’s the only way.”
    And somebody else:
    “I’ll only take orders from the military commandant.”
    They went off arguing and the train started moving, only to halt again after a few minutes.
    I stopped taking any notice of these movements which I couldn’t understand. We had left Fumay, and, provided we didn’t go back, the rest was a matter of indifference to me.
    There were some whistle blasts, more jolts, more halts followed by the hissing of steam.
    I know nothing about what happened that night at Mézières or anywhere else in the world, except that there was fighting in Holland and Belgium, that tens of thousands of people were crowding the roads, that planes were streaking across the sky nearly everywhere, and that the anti-aircraft guns fired a few random shots every now and then. We heard some bursts of gunfire, in the distance, andan endless convoy of trucks, on a road which must have passed close to the railway.
    In our car, where it was pitch-dark, the sound of snoring created a curious intimacy. Now and then somebody in an uncomfortable position or having a nightmare would give an unwitting groan.
    When I finally opened my eyes, we were moving, and half my companions were awake. A milky dawn was breaking, lighting up a countryside which was unfamiliar to me, fairly high