The Christmas Train Read Online Free PDF

wouldn’t sell tickets to go there. And anyway, her father lived there, so it couldn’t have been bombed away.
    She felt in the pocket of her corduroy pants for the little note with her father’s address. He lived in Ennis. It was still there.
    Anna decided to ask Miss Eva about something else, something happy. “When did you get married to your husband, Paul?”
    â€œChristmas Eve, 1948.” She answered so quickly, so clearly that Anna took heart.
    â€œDid you have a beautiful wedding dress and a veil and everything?”
    â€œ Ach , no child.” But she was smiling when she said it. “Things were very different back then. Germany was different after the war.”
    â€œWhat war? “
    Miss Eva’s eyes widened. “World War Two, of course. You know, with Hitler und Stalin und Mussolini?”
    So that’s what her memory was about. Anna shook her head. “We never studied that war yet. Just the American Revolution so far. But maybe in the spring we’ll study it. I’m only in the fifth grade, you know.”
    â€œIs no good, that war. No good.”
    â€œBut you got married,” Anna prompted.
    â€œ Ja , I get married. But that was after. After I got away.” She raised her palms up. Shaking her hands back and forth as if she were erasing that time from the blackboard of her memory. “Paul, he would not have liked me in the war. I was too skinny. But I ate and ate after, and when we met I was plump and pretty again . . .”
    She trailed off, staring past Anna to the window and across the several tracks that paralleled their train. “Paul was like me, he liked to eat. He never let me be hungry again. Never.” Her gaze returned to Anna. “Are you hungry, child? Shall we go and get some food?”
    â€œI ate my sandwich. And you have that banana.” Anna gestured to the banana in Miss Eva’s lap.
    â€œOh, yes.” She smiled and began to peel it. “Danke, Liebchen.” Then she took a bite and chewed it slowly, her smile never fading. “Das ist gut. Sehr gut.”
    A fresh wave of passengers was filing into the train car, and it made Eva nervous. And when the doors closed and the train jerked to its slow, straining start, panic seized her by the throat.
    Is all right . You are safe now . You are safe now , she repeated. But the banana she’d eaten weighed heavy in her belly.
    Trying not to be too obvious, she studied the people around her. A Hispanic family sat in front of her. Across the aisle a foursome of young people traveled together, noisy and exuberant. Naive and oblivious to the traps yawning around them, as she once had been. But no more. She turned to her right, pretending to check on the girl who was curled up—no, engrossed in a book. Really, though, she wanted to see who sat behind them. An old man with vague eyes accompanied a middle-aged woman with her hair tucked up in a tall knit cap. Twisting around, she saw opposite them a skinny young man sitting alone, punching his finger at something in his hand. A telephone, she realized when he held it up to his ear. A telephone! Imagine that.
    â€œIs this seat taken?”
    Startled, Eva looked up to see a soldier facing the man with the strange telephone, a short young man, obviously American judging by his uniform. No, her uniform. A woman soldier!
    â€œGott in Himmel,” she muttered, her heart jackhammering in her chest. The woman soldier dropped her duffel bag on the floor and sat down not two feet across the aisle from her.
    Eva tried to swallow her fear, but it stuck in her throat, a huge knot of horror. A soldier here, right next to her. And a woman. When had the Nazis begun drafting women?
    Her purse slid from her frozen hands and landed in the aisle. “Nein,” she cried as the soldier bent to retrieve it. “I get it myself.”
    â€œSure. Whatever.”
    As the soldier stowed her own bag, removed her jacket,