Paul Theroux - The Great Railway Bazaar

'Oh, look,' said a woman, unfolding a handkerchief on her lap.

'It's so neat and orderly,' said the man at the window.

'Fresh flowers.' The woman gently bandaged her nose with the handkerchief and snorted on one side, then the other.

The man said, 'War Graves Commission takes cares of them.'

'They do a lovely job.'

A small figure carrying paper parcels bound with string walked down the passage, his elbows thumping the corridor window. Duffill.

The Nigerian lady leaned over and read the station sign: 'Frockystoon.' Her mispronunciation was like sarcasm and she looked as unimpressed as Trollope's Lady Glencora ('there was nothing she wanted so much as to see Folkestone').

The wind, rising from the harbour, which was lead grey and pimpled with drizzle, blew into my eyes. I was squinting with the cold I had caught when the first September chill hit London and roused in me visions of palm trees and the rosy heat of Ceylon. That cold made leaving all the easier; leaving was a cure: 'Have you tried aspirin?' 'No, I think I'll go to India.' I carried my bags into the ferry and made for the bar. Two elderly men stood there. One was tapping a florin on the counter, trying to get the barman's attention.

'Reggie's got awfully small,' said the first man.

'Do you think so?' said the second.

'I'm afraid I do. Awfully small. His clothes don't fit him.'

'He was never a big man.'

'I know that. But have you seen him?'

'No. Godfrey said he's been sick.'

'I'd say very sick.'

'Getting old, poor chap.'

'And awfully small.'

Duffill came over. He might have been the person under discussion. But he wasn't: the elderly gentlemen ignored him. Duffill had that uneasy look of a man who has left his parcels elsewhere, which is also the look of a man who thinks he's being followed. His oversized clothes made him seem frail. A mouse grey gaberdine coat slumped in folds from his shoulders, the cuffs so long, they reached to his fingertips and answered the length of his trampled trousers. He smelled of bread crusts. He still wore his tweed cap, and he too was fighting a cold. His shoes were interesting, the all-purpose brogans country people wear. Although I could not place his accent – he was asking the barman for cider – there was something else of the provinces about him, a stubborn frugality in his serviceable clothes, which is shabbiness in a Londoner's. He could tell you where he bought that cap and coat, and for how much, and how long those shoes had lasted. A few minutes later I passed by him in a corner of the lounge and saw that he had opened one of his parcels. A knife, a length of French bread, a tube of mustard, and discs of bright red salami were spread before him. Lost in thought, he slowly chewed his sandwich.

The station at Calais was dark, but the Paris Express was floodlit. I was comforted. Lady Glencora says to her friend, 'We can get to the Kurds, Alice, without getting into a packet again. That, to my way of thinking, is the great comfort of the Continent.' Well, then, to Paris, and the Orient Express, and the Kurds. I boarded and, finding my compartment oppressively full, went to the dining car for a drink. A waiter showed me to a table where a man and woman were tearing their bread rolls apart but not eating them. I tried to order wine. The waiters, hurrying back and forth with trays, ignored my pleading face. The train started up; I looked out the window, and when I turned back to the table I saw that I had been served with a piece of burned fish. The roll-shredding couple explained that I'd have to ask the wine waiter. I looked for him, was served the second course, then saw him and ordered.

'Angus was saying in The Times that he did research,' the man said. 'It just doesn't make sense.'

'I suppose Angus has to do research,' said the woman.

'Angus Wilson?' I said.

The man and woman looked at me. The woman was smiling, but the man gave me a rather unfriendly stare. He said, 'Graham Greene wouldn't have to do research.'

'Why not?' I said.

The man sighed. He said, 'He'd know it already.'

'I wish I could agree with you,' I said. 'But I read As If By Magic and I say to myself, "Now there's a real agronomist!" Then I read The Honorary Consul and the thirty-year-old doctor sounds an awful lot like a seventy-year-old novelist. Mind you, I think it's a good novel. I think you should read it. Wine?'

'No, thank you,' said the woman.

'Graham sent me a copy,' said the man. He spoke to the woman. 'Affectionately, Graham. That's what he wrote. It's in my bag.'

'He's a lovely man,' said the woman. 'I always like seeing Graham.'

There was a long silence. The dining car rocked the cruets and sauce bottles, the dessert was served with coffee. I had finished my half-bottle of wine and was anxious for another, but the waiters were again busy, reeling past the tables with trays, collecting dirty plates.

'I love trains,' said the woman. 'Did you know the next carriage on is going to be attached to the Orient Express?'

'Yes,' I said. 'As a matter of fact – '

'Ridiculous,' said the man, addressing the small pencilled square of paper the waiter had given him. He loaded the saucer with money and led the woman away without another glance at me.

My own meal came to forty-five francs, which I estimated to be about ten dollars. I was horrified, but I had my small revenge. Back in my compartment I realized I had left my newspaper on the table in the dining car. I went back for it, but just as I put my hand on it, the waiter said, 'Qu'est-ce que vousfaites?'

'This is my paper,' I snapped.

'C'est votre place, celaV

'Of course.'

'Eh bien alors, qu'est-ce que vous avez mange?' He seemed to be enjoying the subtlety of his cross-examination.

I said, 'Burned fish. A tiny portion of roast beef. Courgettes, burned and soggy, cold potatoes, stale bread, and for this I was charged forty-five, I repeat, forty-five-'

He let me have my paper.

At the Gare du Nord my car was shunted on to a different engine. Duffill and I watched this being done from the platform and then we boarded. It took him a long time to heave himself up, and he panted with effort on the landing. He was still standing there, gasping, as we pulled out of the station for our twenty-minute trip to the Gare de Lyons to meet the rest of the Direct-Orient Express. It was after eleven, and most of the apartment blocks were in darkness. But in one bright window there was a dinner party ending, like a painting of a city interior, hung and illuminated in the shadowy gallery of rooftops and balconies. The train passed and printed the window on my eye: two men and two women around a table on which there were three wine bottles, the remains of a large meal, coffee cups, a raided bowl of fruit. All the props, and the men in shirt sleeves, spoke of amiable intimacy, the sad comedy of a reunion of friends. Jean and Marie had been away. Jean was smiling, preparing to clown, and had pulled one of those confounded French faces. He waved his hand back and forth and said, 'She got up on the table like a madwoman and began shaking it at me like this. Incredible! I said to Marie, "The Picards will never believe this!" This is the truth. And then she – '

The train made its slow circuit of Paris, weaving among the dark buildings and shrieking frseeeeeeeee-fronnnng into the ears of sleeping women. The Gare de Lyons was alive, with that midnight glamour of bright lights and smoking engines, and across the gleaming tracks the ribbed canvas over one particular train turned it into a caterpillar about to set off and chew a path through France. On the platform arriving passengers were yawning, shambling with fatigue. The porters leaned on luggage carriers and watched people struggling with suitcases. Our car met, and coupled with, the rest of the Direct-Orient Express; that bump slid the compartment doors open and threw me forward into the lap of the lady opposite, surprising her from sleep.