Maurice Level - Thirty Hours with a Corpse, and Other Tales of the Grand Guignol

“My brain grew as active as my body was inert. First I saw clearly the line stretching before me. I saw the rails shining in the moonlight. We were rushing along… how we tore along!… I became aware of the sensation of speed that habit had made me lose. The train passed a little station like a flash of lightning, but not too quickly for me to see a signalman dozing in his box near a telegraphic apparatus. A jolt or two on the turntable; a clanging of plates; the line marked by rails that crossed each other, suddenly large, then small… the deep cutting, and once more the dash into darkness.

“Then came the tunnel into which we plunged like a raging hurricane… Once again the open line. Now I knew where we were, and I told myself we were bound to derail, that in two minutes we should come to a sharp curve, and that at the rate we were going at we were certain to bound off…

“But the good God didn’t mean it to be that. The engine, the whole train, leaned over… the rails ground frantically against the wheels… and we passed…

“This curve had been my chief fear. I breathed again. The fire would go out for want of fuel… The engine would stop… The guard would hurry round to the front of the train… I would tell him what had happened… He would put fog-signals in front of and behind us… we would be saved!…

“But my relief did not last long. We had just dashed through a station when I saw something that made my hair stand on end: the signal was against us! The block I was entering wasn’t free…

“I don’t know why I didn’t go mad. Imagine what can go through a man’s mind when, tearing along on an engine going at seventy miles an hour, he is warned that an obstacle bars the road…

“I said to myself: ‘If you don’t stop, you, and with you the whole train, will be smashed to pieces… to stop this awful thing, you need only make a slight movement, the simple movement of taking hold of that lever two feet away from you… but you won’t make the movement… you can’t make it… and you will see the whole thing happen, will have the agony, a hundred times worse than death itself, of sighting the thing on which you will smash… of watching it grow larger… of rushing on to it…

“I tried to shut my eyes… I couldn’t… In spite of myself I kept watching, watching… and I saw it all, sir, I saw it all! I guessed what the obstacle was before it appeared, and soon there was no doubt about it… It was a train that had broken down that was blocking our way. I could see its shadow, its rear-lights. It came nearer… It came nearer! Why did I shriek? ‘Help! Stop!’ Who could hear? It came nearer. All of me was dead except my head. And that was alive with the terrible life of eyes that could see everything even in the blackness of the night, of ears that could hear everything even through the roaring of the wheels, of a frantic will that kept giving me orders like those an officer gives to routed soldiers he is trying to rally.

“It came nearer… Only five hundred yards away… only three hundred… shadowy forms ran about the line… only one hundred… one hundred yards… just a flash!… It was the end… the crash… the charnel heap… Annihilation!

“Sir, those who haven’t seen it…

“…I came to myself under a pile of wreckage. Agonized calls for help filled the air. I could see people running through the fields carrying lanterns, and others with the injured in their arms… and shrieks… and moans… and weeping…

“I saw, I heard all that, and I didn’t care. I was no longer thinking. I didn’t call for help…

“Between two beams that crossed over my head, so close that my lips touched them, I could see a little bit of sky, very soft, very pure; I just lay looking at a tiny star that trembled there, bright, pretty… it amused me…”

WRAPPED IN a loose hospital wrap that made her seem even thinner than she was, the sick girl was standing lost in thought at the foot of her bed.

Her childish face was wasted, and her blue eyes, sad, fathomless and circled with dark rings, were so unnaturally large they seemed to light up her whole face. Her cheeks burned with a hectic flush, and the deep lines that ran down to her mouth looked as if they had been worn there by the flow of unceasing tears.

She hung her head when the house-surgeon stopped beside her.

“Well, little No. 4, what’s this I hear? You want to go out?”

“Yes, sir…” The voice was hardly more than a whisper.

“But that’s very foolish… You’ve only been up two or three days. In weather like this, too. You’d certainly fall ill again. Wait a day or two. You’re not unhappy here?… has anyone been unkind to you?”

“No… oh, no, sir…”

“What is it, then?…”

There was more energy in her tone as she said:

“I must go out.”

And as if anticipating his question she continued quickly:

“This is All Saints’ Day. I promised to take some flowers to my sweetheart’s grave… I promised… He has only me… If I don’t go, no one will… I promised…”

A tear shone under her eyelid. She wiped it away with a finger.

The house-surgeon was touched, and either out of curiosity, or so as not to seem awkward and leave her without some word of comfort, he asked:

“Is it long since he died?”

“Nearly a year…”

“What was the matter with him?”

She seemed to shrink, to become more frail, her chest more hollow, her hands thinner as, her eyes half closed, her lips trembling, she murmured:

“He was executed…”

The house-surgeon bit his lip and said in a low voice:

“Poor child… I’m very sorry. If you really must go out, go… But take care not to catch cold. You must come back tomorrow.”

Once outside the hospital gates, she began to shiver.

It was a dreary autumn morning. Moisture trickled down the walls. Everything was gray: the sky, the houses, the naked trees and the misty distance where people hurried along anxious to get out of the damp streets.

It had been the middle of summer when she had fallen ill, and her dress was a brightly hued one of thin cotton. The crumpled ribbon that encircled her wasted neck made her look even more pitiable. The skirt, blouse and necktie might have smiled back at the sunshine, but they seemed to droop in sadness in the chill gray setting.

She started off with an uncertain walk, stopping every now and then because she was out of breath and her head swimming.

The people she passed turned to look after her. She seemed to hesitate as if wishing to speak to them, then, afraid, walked on, glancing nervously from right to left. In this way she crossed half of Paris. She stopped when she came to the Quais, standing to watch the slow, muddy flow of the river. The piercing cold cut through her, and feeling she could not bear much more, she started off again.

When she got to Place Maubert and the Avenue des Gobelins she felt almost at home, for she was now in the neighborhood in which she had lived. Soon she began to see faces she knew, and she heard someone say as she passed:

“Surely that’s Vandat’s girl… How she has changed!”

“Which Vandat?”

“Vandat the murd…”

She quickened her steps, pressing her hands against her face so as not to hear the end of the word…

It was getting dark when she at last arrived at the wretched little hotel where she had lodged before she fell ill. She went in. Street girls and the men they kept were playing cards in the little café downstairs. When they saw her they called out:

“Hullo! Here’s Blue Eyes”—that used to be her nickname. “Come and have a drink, Blue Eyes. Here’s a seat… come along…”