Glory Read Online Free PDF Page B

baggage cart with a muffled clatter, and on the cart was a crate with the mysterious inscription “ FRAGILE .” Several midges and one large moth circled around a gas lantern; shadowy people shuffled along the platform conversing about unknown things as they went; then there was a jangle of buffers and the train glided off. Lamps passed and disappeared; a small structure, brightlylit inside and housing a row of levers, appeared and also passed. The train rocked gently as it switched tracks, everything grew dark beyond the window, and once again there was only the rushing night. And again, out of nowhere, no longer between two hills but somehow much closer and more tangible, the familiar lights spilled forth, and the engine emitted a long, plaintive whistle as if it, too, was sorry to leave them behind. Then came a sharp bang, and an oncoming train shot past—and vanished as if it had never existed. The undulating black night resumed its smooth course and the elusive lights gradually thinned into nothingness.
    When they had finally disappeared Martin fastened the window shade and lay down. He awoke very early. The train’s motion seemed smoother and more relaxed, as if it had become accustomed to the rapid pace. When he unfastened the shade he felt a momentary dizziness, for the ground was running past in the opposite direction, and the early ash-pale light of the clear sky was unexpected too, and absolutely new to him were the terraced, olive-covered slopes.
    From the station they went to Biarritz in a hired landau along a dusty road bordered by dusty brambles, and since Martin saw blackberries for the first time in his life, and the station was for some reason called “The Negress,” he was full of questions. Today, at the age of sixteen, he kept comparing the Crimean sea with the ocean in Biarritz: yes, the Biscay waves were higher, and the breakers more violent, and the fat Basque baigneur in his perennially wet bathing suit (“That’s a killing profession,” his father used to say) would take Martin by the hand and lead him into shallow water; then they would both turn their backs to the surf and a huge, roaring wave would rush upon them from behind, drowning and overturning the entire world. On the first, mirrorlike strip of beach a swarthy-faced woman with gray wisps of hair on her chin would meet those who had finished bathingand throw a fluffy beach towel over one’s shoulders. Further on, in a cabin that smelled of tar, an attendant would help you yank off the clammy and clingy bathing suit and would bring a tub of hot, almost boiling water, where you had to immerse your feet. Then, when Martin and his parents had dressed, they would sit on the beach—Mother, with her big white hat, under a frilly white umbrella; Father also under an umbrella, but a cream-colored masculine one; and Martin, in striped jersey and sunbrowned straw hat with “H.M.S. Indomitable ” on the ribbon around its crown. His pants rolled all the way up, he would build a sand castle surrounded by moats. A waffle man, wearing a beret, would come by and turn with a grinding noise the handle of the red tin cask that contained his wares, and those large, curved chunks of waffle, mixed with flying sand and sea salt, remained among the most vivid memories of that period. Behind the beach, on the stone promenade, inundated by the waves on stormy days, a pert, well-rouged, far from young flower woman would insert a carnation in the buttonhole of Father’s white jacket, while Father kindly and comically observed the procedure of insertion, thrusting out his lower lip and pressing the folds of his chin against the lapel.
    It was a shame, at the end of September, to leave the happy seaside and the white villa with its gnarled fig tree that refused to yield even one ripe fruit. On the way home they stopped in Berlin, where boys on roller skates, and even an occasional adult with a briefcase under his arm, would clatter by along the asphalt of