George climbed through the window, held on, found the catwalk with his feet.
“You’re next, Ralph.”
When they both were outside, Jesso stood by the window holding the gun on them. At the next curve, on top of the grade, they jumped.
The train took half an hour to the first stop on the run. Jesso carried the suitcases. They got off and headed for the round booth that said “Information” in German, English, and French. It was the middle of the night but somebody was ahead of them. They waited and then Renette looked up at Jesso. She had to blink her eyes in the light.
“Where are the other two?” she said, but Jesso figured he’d explain that one later.
Chapter Fifteen
Jesso went to the ticket window and pronounced the name of the town he wanted. The man at the information desk had told them the name; the earliest train went there. Renette stood by the train gate and waited. She was awake now. Jesso had told her what had happened and she had said only, “I’ll go with you.” Even if she had said no she knew he would have taken her.
They took a train with short, high cars, and once they were inside they saw that the whole car was one compartment. They rode and every few miles they stopped. Then a gray light started to come, showing fields outside and long stretches of wood. A conductor came through turning off the gas lights in the ceiling.
After a while a woman came in carrying two crates with live hens. She put them on the floor. A farmer wearing a blue shirt that hung down to his hips sat in the seat next to them. He smelled of animals and held a sack of seed grain between his knees. The train made a slow clatter, stopped for a while, clattered again.
“No joy ride,” Jesso said.
She shrugged. “It won’t last long,” she said. Then she looked at the two women across from them, who kept staring at her, and then she looked someplace else.
The market town was Bad Brunn. They got off and walked to the bus terminal across the square. The sun was up now, and the air was clear, without moisture. Not like Hannover or Hamburg, with the constant dampness blowing in from the North Sea. This was a warmer climate, with country smells; the houses looking small and busy.
They climbed into the yellow bus and waited for it to fill up. The motor started to shake the bus, they took a slow turn around the fountain in the middle of the square, and then came the country road. This time it was cherry trees along both sides, cherry trees and every so often a dead one. It was a very old road. They took twenty miles of it and then they got out; over egg baskets, apple crates, and tools lying in the aisle, they finally got out, they watched the bus hobble off with blue dust behind and stood in the gravel where the two streets of the village crossed.
“This is it,” Jesso said.
Renette looked down both streets. She laughed but didn’t say anything. She smelled a cow odor in the air, and when she looked at the rutted dirt roads again she was reminded of Pomerania. Except that the low houses had slate on the roofs, or wood shingles. In Pomerania they used swamp grass.
“The whitewashed job over there, with the balcony,” Jesso said. “That must be the one that rents rooms.” He picked up the suitcase. “At least, that’s what the information guy said.”
But Renette wasn’t listening. She was still looking at the village street. It had been a bad moment, seeing it. Not that there was swamp grass on the roofs; there wasn’t. But the streets with the spaced, squat houses, with the dirt ruts and a chicken walking across, had suddenly felt like the desolate time, like the dank and poor time before Johannes had helped her and she could leave her home. And all this in spite of the sunshine on the street and the peaceful warm smells in the air. Jesso hadn’t noticed, of course. She saw Jesso crossing the road ahead of her and for a moment she felt like running.
Then she followed him. Suddenly it was easy, because everything was different now, as different as having left the rotten estate and having joined Johannes. Now she could even be through with Johannes and it would not turn bad again. She had lost poverty. First, through Johannes, who had given her the comforts of his money Then she had done with another poverty, now that Jesso had come. It was a freedom.
He was waiting on the other side of the road and they went to the whitewashed house together.
The room had a balcony. Inside was the low ceiling of the peasant house, a tile stove in one corner and a monster closet against one of the walls. The rest of the room was mostly bed, and the bed was mostly feather blanket.
“Let’s lie down,” she said.
Jesso put the suitcase in the closet and stepped to the bed. “Like rolling in dough,” he said.
“Good.”
She stretched herself out and sank into the feathers. “Watch your clothes,” he said. “You haven’t got any others.”
“I’ll take them off,” she said.
She got up and stood with her back to him so he could get at the buttons. He undid them.
“Come,” she said. She lay on the feather bed and he sat down beside her.
“Soft,” he said. “Better than that lousy ride on-”
“Your clothes are still on,” she said.
“Yeah. Sure.” He undressed.
“Jesso,” she said.
The sun was going higher outside and the village street was empty because the men worked in the fields and the women worked in the gardens. None of that meant a damn to Jesso or Renette, and later they went to sleep.
Renette had to borrow a pair of shoes from the landlady because her high heels weren’t any good outside. And Jesso bought a clean shirt from her, a heavy linen thing that smelled of lavender because the landlady had been widowed for almost ten years and since that time there had been no call to take her husband’s things out of the trunk.
They went to the Gasthof, where the bus had stopped. Inside there was a sweet odor of freshly ground flour and the smell of beer. The wet beer stink was strong, but after a while they didn’t notice it. They ate at a long wooden table-boiled potatoes, boiled beef, and boiled cabbage, and then coffee that was gritty on the tongue because it had been boiled too. Only the beer was good. Jesso had some, but Renette just smoked and sat by.
After a while they took a walk past the last houses and through the fields. The evening air was full with hay odors and the spice of herbs. It was very quiet. Only insects were singing in the air. They thought of walking a piece farther, to the bridge over the creek ahead, but the mosquitoes got thicker and they turned back.
It was better on the small balcony. They sat in the dark and smoked.
“Sleepy?” he asked.
“No. I slept during the day.”
“I know.”
She laughed and then her cigarette glowed. When it went down again she leaned close, toward his chair.
“Are your legs on the railing?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I bet nobody has sat here like that for years.”
“Ten years, maybe.”
“Yes,” she said.
Jesso stretched in his chair, recrossed his legs.
“For a while that’s going to be the news around here.”
“For a while?”
“A week. Maybe two weeks.”
“Make it a day. Maybe two days.”
