Сэм Истлэнд - The Elegant Lie

Eventually, Carter managed to force aside his confusion long enough to remember what Wilby had said to him the night before◦– that everything he had suffered through would be for nothing if he bailed out now. If he ran, he knew he’d be running for the rest of his life, which probably wouldn’t last long, since the way things stood right now he didn’t even know who he was running from. The only people he could trust now were the ones he’d been sent to betray.

That night, Carter and Teresa boarded the overnight train to Vienna.

Cologne central station was busy, with porters wheeling trunks of luggage towards the baggage car and people milling around with tickets in their hands, looking for which wagon to board. The lights were yellowy and glaring and the sweaty smell of steam from the locomotives mixed with a haze of cigarette smoke. Conductors prowled the platforms, whistles clamped between their teeth and flag batons gripped in their fists. Policemen, armed with submachine guns held against their chests, strolled about in pairs.

Carter carried a suitcase full of new clothes. It was all that he owned in the world.

Teresa wore a dress and high-heeled shoes, and a long coat tied with a belt. Her dark hair was shining in the station platform lights.

Carter looked at her. It was the first time he had seen her in a dress. ‘Shut up,’ she told him.

‘I didn’t say anything!’

‘That was for what you were thinking,’ she replied.

Dasch had come to see them off. Unapologetically, he stared.

Finally Teresa turned to him. ‘What is it?’ she demanded.

‘Well, I…’ Dasch began. ‘I was just going to say…’

‘Yes?’

‘That you are a beautiful couple.’

She stared at him incredulously.

Dasch ignored the glance. He put one hand on each of their shoulders. ‘When you arrive in Carlsbad,’ he said, ‘if it is possible, and without forgetting what you’re going there to do, or how much I am paying for all this, try to find a moment when the weight of the world isn’t resting on your shoulders.’ Without another word, he turned and walked away.

Both Carter and Teresa became suddenly aware that they were alone now.

Whistles blew along the platform.

A conductor leaned out of a carriage doorway and shouted, ‘Alle einsteigen!’

‘I guess maybe we should get on board,’ said Carter. His words came out faint and hollow, like a voice almost lost in the static of a poorly tuned radio.

‘Where is that cocky American confidence now?’ she asked.

‘Same place you left your trousers,’ Carter replied. Then before she could say anything else he held out his hand, and to his surprise she took it without sarcasm or reluctance and they climbed on board the train.

A barrel-chested porter, wearing a dark blue uniform with silver buttons, picked up their bags and escorted them to their private compartment in one of the first class carriages. There, he accepted the bills Carter awkwardly stuffed into his hand, and delivered the bags to the first class steward, a slightly built man with a small potbelly and a narrow face, who moved effortlessly in the cramped space of the train.

Carter, meanwhile, seemed to be banging his elbows into everything he passed and felt the narrow space of the corridor close in as if it were shrinking around him with every step he took.

The steward swung open the door to their compartment, revealing a small room with a window at one end, a table, whose surface was taken up mostly by a lamp with a red shade, and a couch that spanned the length of one wall. The other wall was panelled with mahogany veneer and had a gold-framed mirror in the centre.

Realising that this couch would fold down into their bed, Carter immediately broke out in a sweat. He had imagined that there might be some kind of bunk arrangement, since that was the only type of bedding he had ever seen on trains before, but he had never travelled first class.

Their bags were placed upon a railing that ran along the length of the opposite wall and was fitted with a net in which the suitcases could rest without sliding around.

‘Dinner will be served in half an hour,’ said the steward.

Carter reached for his wallet, ready to tip the man just as he had tipped the one before.

With one sharp, commanding movement, the steward held up one hand, keeping it close to his body. ‘It is not necessary,’ he said quietly.

Carter felt the sweat run down his face.

The steward left, closing the door behind him.

For the first time since they had entered the compartment, Carter looked at Teresa.

She was smiling at him.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘You seem uncomfortable.’

‘I am!’ he almost shouted. He wanted to tell her that he had spent the previous night in a bombed-out building and that he had slept well, so well that it had saved his life, because a part of him knew he belonged there, on the ragged edges of humanity. But this rolling cell, with its cushions and delicately crenellated lampshade, was almost more than he could bear.

Whistles blew out on the platform again. They heard the sound of running footsteps. The train jolted as it began to move.

Teresa gave a short cry and tipped backwards onto the couch.

The lights of the station flickered past. A moment later, they slid into a sheath of darkness, fractured by the lights of houses that overlooked the tracks. Carter glanced around the compartment in case there was a chair somewhere that he might have missed. But there was no place to sit except beside her. Slowly, he lowered himself down, careful not to put himself too far away and also not too close.

Minutes passed.

Neither of them spoke.

Carter got up and opened the window to let in some air, but it was loud and cold and rain came in, so he closed it up again and took his seat once more.

‘I suppose there is no point in my asking why we’re on this honeymoon,’ said Teresa.

The word ‘honeymoon’ rang like a gong in Carter’s ears. He had already given up the struggle to conceal how he felt about Teresa. In spite of what Dasch had told him, it seemed an affection so entirely one-sided that any revelation of his feelings would only cause the walls to close on him completely, smothering him to death between the first class cushions, first class lamp and first class mahogany veneer. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There would be no point in that.’

‘Is it going to be dangerous?’ she asked.

For the past few minutes Carter had been staring at his shoes, but now he looked up and the first thing he saw was her reflection in the mirror. ‘It might,’ he said to the reflection, ‘but the fewer questions you ask now, the safer you will be.’

There was a sudden sharp, clattering sound, which made both of them jump. It was a moment before they realised that the steward was knocking on the door. ‘Dinner is served,’ he announced, his voice muffled through the polished wood. Then they heard him knocking on the next door down the corridor, and the one after that, telling them dinner was ready.

Carter and Teresa stood. It was really too small a place for them both to be standing at the same time and they had to shuffle past each other to get to the door. For a brief moment, as she stood directly in front of him, as close as partners in a waltz, he had to stop himself from looking her in the eye, convinced that she would know each thought that trampled through his mind.

The dining car had actual chairs, upholstered in red cloth with yellow piping, the same colour scheme as the exterior paint on the carriages. The tables had been set with white cloths and lamps that were the same as the ones in the compartment. Curtains gathered with silk bell ropes had been drawn back from the windows, even though there was almost nothing to see outside except the occasional cube of light from some window out there in the night.