The Train Read Online Free PDF Page A

platform for another train, the refreshment room and the bar being pillaged, the bottles of beer and wine being passed from hand to hand.
    “Hey, you over there … Yes, you, Ginger … You couldn’t go and get me a bottle, could you?”
    For a moment I thought of going to see how my wife and daughter had settled down, and at the same time reassure them with the news that I had found a place; I didn’t do so for fear of not finding it on my return.
    We didn’t wait an hour, as the gendarme had said, but two and a half hours.
    Several times the train gave a shudder and the buffers bumped against one another, and every time we held our breath, hoping that we were moving off at last. Once, it was because some cars were being added to the train.
    The men who were close to the open doors reported on what was happening to those who could not see anything.
    “They’re adding at least eight cars. The train stretches at least halfway round the bend now.”
    A sort of fellowship was being established between those who had found a place on the train and were more or less sure of getting away.
    One man, who had jumped down onto the platform, counted the carriages and freight cars.
    “Twenty-eight!” he announced.
    We didn’t care a jot about the people stranded on the platforms and outside the station. The next rush was no concern of ours, and indeed we hoped that the train would go before it started.
    We saw an old lady in a wheelchair being pushed along by a nurse toward the first-class carriages. She was wearing a mauve hat and a little white veil, and she had white thread gloves on her hands.
    Later on, some stretchers were carried in the same direction, and I wondered whether people already in the carriages were going to be turned out, for a rumor started spreading that the hospital was being evacuated.
    I was thirsty. Two of my neighbors dropped onto the line, ran over to the platform, and came back with bottles of beer. I didn’t dare imitate them.
    Little by little I started getting used to the faces around me, old men, for the most part, for the others had been called up, working-class women and country women, a fifteen-year-old boy with a long scraggy neck, and a girl of nine or ten whose hair was tied with a shoelace.
    I finally recognized somebody after all, indeed two people. First Fernand Leroy, who had been at school with me and had become a clerk at Hachette’s bookshop, next door to the confectioner’s run by my sister-in-law.
    From the other end of the car, where he was wedged in a corner, he gave me a little wave which I returned although I had had no occasion to speak to him for years.
    As for the second person, he was a picturesque Fumay character, an old drunkard whom everybody called Jules and who distributed handbills outside the movie houses.
    It took me some time to identify a third face, even though it was nearer to me, because it was hidden from me by a man with shoulders twice as broad. This third person was a buxom woman of about thirty, who was already eating a sandwich, a certain Julie who ran a little café near the port.
    She was wearing a blue serge skirt, which was too tight and riding up her hips, and a white blouse marked with rings of sweat, through which you could see her brassiere.
    She smelled of powder and perfume, and I remember seeing her lipstick coming off onto the bread.
    The troop train moved off toward the north. A few minutes later we heard a train approaching on the same line, and somebody shouted:
    “Now it’s coming back!”
    It wasn’t the same one, but a Belgian train even more crowded than ours and with only civilians on it. There were even people standing on the footboards.
    Some of them jumped onto our cars. The gendarmes came running up, shouting orders. The loudspeaker joined in, announcing that nobody was allowed to leave his place.
    All the same, a few managed to get in on the wrong side of the train, among them a young brunette in a black dress covered with