“Where did you say you came from?” said the porter suddenly.
“Udine, and that’s where we’re going back to.”
“Then how did you get this way?”
He was looking puzzled. My heart missed a beat. Zaleshoff must have blundered in some way.
“Brought a train of refrigerator vans up from Padova. Special job.” He said it easily enough; but I saw a wary look in his eyes.
The porter nodded, but I could see that he was thinking this over. I saw the blue eyes flicker once from me to Zaleshoff. It was with an inward sigh of relief that I saw that the train had been signalled. Zaleshoff nodded towards the signal.
“Where’s this one going?” he said.
It was the buffet attendant who replied.
“Belgrade and Sofia direttissimo, with a slip coach for Athens. It’s got third all right as far as Trieste.”
“Venezia’ll do for us.”
The porter opened his mouth to speak and then shut it again. I saw him shrug slightly as if dismissing a thought from his mind. Then he strolled away up the platform and began to man?uvre a trolley into position ready to transfer the packages with which it was loaded to the luggage van on the train. But I noticed that from time to time he glanced at us. Another porter appeared with a postal official and a mountainous load of mail bags. The buffet attendant began to test the automatic coffee urn on his trolley. The smell of hot coffee was exquisite torture. The attendant looked at our empty hands.
“Aren’t you eating to-day?”
“We have eaten,” said Zaleshoff promptly; “an hour ago.”
“Coffee?”
Zaleshoff grinned. “At a lira a cup! What do you take us for?”
The attendant laughed and began to push the trolley towards the end of the platform. We were left alone.
“That porter…” I began under my breath.
“I know,” he murmured; “but we’ll be out of it in a minute. Heavens, I could have done with a cup of coffee.” He glanced up at the clock. “Two minutes after six. It’ll probably be late.” He looked casually along the platform at the porter. “It would be our luck,” he muttered vindictively, “to strike a guy with eyes in his head. The only consolation is that he’s feeling afraid of making a fool of himself.”
“I don’t know that our luck’s been so bad.”
“If it hadn’t been for a piece of lousy luck we shouldn’t have been found in that truck. I couldn’t fasten the tarpaulin from the inside, and the wind blew it back. When we stopped in the yard they spotted it and had to climb up to pull it back. We shouldn’t have been spotted otherwise.”
I glanced sideways at him. “I wasn’t thinking about that, and you know it. Why didn’t that wheel-tapper stop us? And it was he who stopped the other man shouting, too, wasn’t it?”
“Why should he? I wish this darn train ’d hurry.”
“It’ll look better if we talk,” I said spitefully. “What sort of game were you playing in that office, Zaleshoff?”
“Game?”
“Yes-game.”
For a moment our eyes met. “This isn’t the time…” he began, then shrugged. “Back in nineteen-twenty,” he went on slowly, “a lot of the Italian workers used to tattoo a small hammer and sickle on the forearm. It was just to show that they didn’t care a hoot who knew they were Communists. Sort of badge of honour, see. When that guy was holding me, I saw that he had a round scar on his arm. I guessed then that he might have had one of those tattoo marks at some time, but that he’d found it safer since to cut away the flesh with the mark on. I thought I’d find out if I was right. I called him comrade. That scared him, because the other guy was too young to remember anything except fascismo and he might talk. But I knew I’d got him. Once a Communist always a Communist. I started humming the “ Bandiero Rossa ”-that’s the old Italian workers’ song. Then, when I was pretending to take that drink, he winked at me. I knew he was O.K. In the darkness he gave that young chap a clip under the jaw that knocked him cold. I had to do the same for him then, so that he’d have something to show when they questioned him. The poor sap!”
I thought for a moment. “You know,” I said then, “I wouldn’t call him a poor sap. and I don’t think you would either if you didn’t feel that you ought to behave like the traditional right-thinking American citizen.”
But he did not answer. The train was coming in.
Through the windows of the sleeping-cars I could see the white sheets on the upper berths. The sight made me start yawning again. I felt suddenly very tired.
There was a concerted rush for the buffet from the three third-class coaches at the front of the train. We got into a second-class coach and walked along the corridors to the front.
The three third-class coaches were very full and very hot. There were soldiers on the train, and their equipment was piled up in the corridors. Through the steamy windows of the compartments I could see weary, harassed women trying to pacify howling children. The air smelt of garlic, oranges and sleep.
“We’ll stick in the corridor,” murmured Zaleshoff.
Five minutes later the train drew out. We were leaning on the rail gazing out of the window. The blue-eyed porter was standing on the platform looking up. Our eyes met his, and his head turned slowly as the coach slid past him. Zaleshoff waved.
But the porter did not wave back. I saw him raise one hand slowly as if he were about to do so. Then the hand stopped. He snapped his fingers and turned on his heel.
“Damn!” said Zaleshoff softly. “He’s made up his mind.”
16
What are we going to do now?”
It was the second time I had said it; I seemed always to be saying it; but he looked as if he had not heard me the first time. He was gazing out of the window vacantly, watching the side of a cutting slip by as the train gathered speed. Again he did not answer.
“I suppose that they’ll be waiting for us at Verona.”
He nodded.
“Then there’s nothing we can do?”
“Sure, there’s plenty we can do; but not yet.”
“I don’t see…”
“Shut up; I’m thinking.”
I shut up and lit a cigarette. I had a pain in my stomach and could not decide whether it was nerves or hunger. Then I noticed that he was examining my face.
“You’re pretty filthy,” he said.
“You don’t look any too clean yourself.” For some reason, I felt suddenly very wide-awake and very quarrelsome. “I’ve always heard,” I added venomously, “that the Russians are a very dirty race. But then, of course, you’re an American, aren’t you?”
I saw the muscles of his face tighten beneath the grime. “I should not have believed, Marlow, that the schoolboy could persist to such an absurd extent in the adult. I wonder if you are typically English. Maybe you are. One can see, then, why the Continental mind fails to understand the English. I have often suspected it. The Englishman is no more than an intellectual Peter Pan, a large red-necked Peter Pan with a grubby little mind and grubby false wings. Sublimely ridiculous.”
I made some angrily cumbersome retort. We bickered on. We snapped and snarled at one another steadily for a good five minutes. It was childish, absurd; and it was Zaleshoff who put a stop to it. We had lapsed into a
