Night Train to Lisbon Read Online Free PDF Page A

corridor, Carson couldn’t help peering into the other compartments. It was like racing through an art gallery at closing time, she thought; each glimpse through a glass door afforded a different combination of poses, of reading or talking or simply staring out at the countryside, but the theme of the various tableaux was the same: first-class passengers in quiet repose. Only at the very end of the car did she find a compartment with an atmosphere that seemed markedly different from the others’. All the passengers in here were young men in shirtsleeves, and they were playing cards, which were spread out on someone’s upturned trunk, and they were drinking bottles of pop and smoking and talking in an animated fashion. Carson couldn’t help herself. She paused, as if she needed a moment to fully absorb a scene where so much was happening at once, and all of it behind a scrim of smoke—as if it really were a scene being presented for her close consideration. The men were so intent on their cards, so serious, yet they were so obviously enjoying themselves, too, with their fast-moving mouths forming wordsshe couldn’t hear. And then one of the men looked up from his fan of cards. He was wearing a white cotton shirt and loosely knotted tie, and he had dark brown hair and a crooked smile. Carson knew these details to be true, because when he looked up, he looked at her, and she looked back, forgetting for the moment that this wasn’t at all a scene being presented for her consideration but lives being actually lived by people who could see her, and seeing her, smile, as this young man did now. Carson caught herself then. She raised a hand to her lips in embarrassment and turned away and quickly hurried on, pushing through the heavy doors that separated the cars.
    â€œWhat was keeping you?” Aunt Jane asked, waiting in the aisle of the next car, but Carson said nothing. She didn’t know why she had stared at that man. No, she did know. It wasn’t simply that the scene she’d witnessed was so lively, or that she’d lost herself in the seeming illusion of the moment. It was the man himself. He wasn’t conventionally handsome, yet she had wanted to keep looking at him—had found herself staring at him for that very reason. His features weren’t predictable. They weren’t classic—weren’t symmetrical. They were…individual, and somehow more interesting for that. This was an idea of “good-looking” that was new to Carson, she realized, one that she’d never before considered. As she and Aunt Jane strode through the train, peeking in at the dining car, which even now was being laid with linen andsilver and glassware by a fleet of efficient-looking Frenchmen in white jackets, Carson felt a light-headedness, and knew that it had nothing to do with the illness from which she was recovering.
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    Was it really coincidence, later, that brought Carson Weatherell elbow to elbow with the man she’d stared at? For that night at dinner, when he was seated beside her in the dining car, she felt an excitement, a prickle of fear and curiosity that seemed to run lightly down the back of her neck.
    Carson and her aunt and uncle were having dinner at a four-person table set for four, when the waiter appeared and apologetically began asking in stilted English if they would mind terribly if “a lone diner, a gentleman he seem very nice,” sat with them this evening. “His friends they come earlier to dinner and he did not join them,” the waiter explained. “So now he is… tout seul, and seeing how you are a table of four…”
    â€œBien sûr,” said Aunt Jane. “Why not?”
    Uncle Lawrence simply rolled his eyes. Carson herself had no opinion on the matter until the lanky young man in the tweed jacket approached the table and Carson realized who he was.
    â€œSit down, sit down,” said Aunt Jane.