Léon and Louise Read Online Free PDF Page A

– like a glove. He was the sole subordinate of his sole superior, Antoine Barthélemy, the stationmaster. A thin, mild-mannered little man who smoked a pipe and sported a moustache à la Vercingetorix, Barthélemy performed his duties in a taciturn and conscientious manner. Day after day, he spent many hours drawing little geometrical patterns on his notepad as he patiently anticipated the moment when he could go back upstairs to his official residence above the booking hall. There he was wistfully awaited around the clock by Josianne, his wife of several decades, who had rosy cheeks and plump hips, laughed heartily at the drop of a hat, and was an excellent cook.
    There wasn’t a great deal to do at Saint-Luc-sur-Marne station. In accordance with the timetable, three local trains travelling in each direction stopped there every morning and afternoon. The expresses sped past at high speed, trailing a slipstream that took your breath away if you were standing on the platform. The Calais-Paris night train went by at 2.27 a.m., its darkened sleeping cars sometimes punctuated by an illuminated window because some wealthy passenger couldn’t get to sleep in his nice, soft bunk.
    To Léon Le Gall’s own surprise, he proved more or less equal to his job as assistant Morse telegraphist from the first day on. His duties began at eight in the morning and ended at eight in the evening, with a one-hour break at lunchtime. He got Sundays off. One of his tasks was to go out on to the platform when a train came in and wave a little red flag at the driver. In the mornings he had to exchange the mailbag and the bag containing the Paris newspapers for the empty bags of the previous day. If a farmer handed in a crate of leeks or spring onions for delivery as freight, he had to weigh the goods and make out a waybill. And if the Morse machine was ticking he had to tear off the paper strip and transfer the messages to a telegram form. They were always official messages because the Morse machine was used exclusively by the railway.
    Léon’s assertion that he could Morse had, of course, been a brazen lie. He had passed the practical test on the mayor’s desk because the mayor knew even less about the subject than he did himself. Fortunately, however, Saint-Luc-sur-Marne station was a remote place that received four or five telegrams a day at most; so Léon had all the time in the world to decipher them with the aid of Le Petit Inventeur, which he had been provident enough to pack.
    It was somewhat more awkward when he himself had a message to send, which happened every two days or so. Before settling down at the Morse machine he would closet himself in the lavatory with paper and pencil and translate the Roman letters into dots and dashes. That was all right as long as the telegrams consisted of a few words only, but on his third Monday in the job his boss handed him the monthly report and told him to send it, verbatim and in full, to regional headquarters in Rheims.
    â€˜By post?’ asked Léon. leafing through the four quite closely-written pages.
    â€˜No, telegraphically,’ said Barthélemy. ‘It’s regulations.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜No idea, it’s just regulations. Always has been.’
    Léon nodded, debating what to do. On the dot of half-past nine, when his boss went upstairs to his Josianne to have some coffee as usual, he picked up the telephone, asked to be put through to regional headquarters in Rheims, and proceeded to dictate the report as if this had been customary for decades. When the telephonist complained about the unwonted extra work, he explained that the Morse machine had been struck by lightning last night and put out of action.
    Léon’s room was on the upper floor of the goods shed, far away from the stationmaster’s flat. He had his own bed, a table and chair, a washstand with a mirror, and a window overlooking the platform. He was