Paul Theroux - The Great Railway Bazaar

I said, 'What do you aim to do in Turkey?'

'Me?' Duffill said, as if the compartment was crammed with old men bound for Turkey, each waiting to state a reason. He paused, then said, 'I'll be in Istanbul for a while. After that I'll be travelling around the country.'

'Business or pleasure?' I was dying to know and in the confessional darkness did not feel so bad about badgering him; he could not see the eagerness on my face. On the other hand, I could hear the tremulous hesitation in his replies.

'A little of both,' he said.

This was not helpful. I waited for him to say more, but when he added nothing further, I said, 'What exactly do you do, Mr Duffill?'

'Me?' he said again, but before I could reply with the sarcasm he was pleading for, the train left the tunnel and the compartment filled with sunlight and Duffill said, 'This must be Italy.'

Duffill put on his tweed cap. He saw me staring at it and said, 'I've had this cap for years – eleven years. You dry clean it. Bought it in Barrow-on-Humber.' And he dug out his parcel of salami and resumed the meal the Simplon tunnel had interrupted.

At 9.35 we stopped at the Italian station of Domodos-sola, where a man poured cups of coffee from a jug and sold food from a heavily laden pushcart. He had fruit, loaves of bread and rolls, various kinds of salami, and lunch bags that, he said, contained 'tante belle cose’ He also had a stock of wine. Moles worth bought a Bardolino and ('just in case') three bottles of Chianti; I bought an Orvieto and a Chianti; and Duffill had his hand on a bottle of claret.

Molesworth said, 'I'll take these back to the compartment. Get me a lunch bag, will you?'

I bought two lunch bags and some apples.

Duffill said, 'English money, I only have English money.'

The Italian snatched a pound from the old man and gave him change in lire.

Molesworth came back and said, 'Those apples want washing. There's cholera here.' He looked again at the pushcart and said, 'I think two lunch bags, just to be safe.'

While Molesworth bought more food and another bottle of Bardolino, Duffill said, 'I took this train in nineteen twenty-nine.'

'It was worth taking then,' said Molesworth. 'Yes, she used to be quite a train.'

'How long are we staying here?' I asked.

No one knew. Molesworth called out to the train guard, 'I say, George, how long are we stopping for?'

The guard shrugged, and as he did so the train began to back up.

'Do you think we should board?' I asked.

'It's going backwards,' said Molesworth. 'I expect they're shunting.'

The train guard said, 'Andiamo. '

'The Italians love wearing uniforms,' said Molesworth. 'Look at him, will you? And the uniforms are always so wretched. They really are like overgrown schoolboys. Are you talking to us, George?'

'I think he wants us to board,' I said. The train stopped going backwards. I hopped aboard and looked down. Molesworth and Duffill were at the bottom of the stairs.

'You've got parcels,' said Duffill. 'You go first.'

'I'm quite all right,' said Molesworth. 'Up you go.'

'But you've got parcels,' said Duffill. He produced a pipe from his coat and began sucking on the stem. 'Carry on.' He moved back and gave Molesworth room.

Molesworth said, 'Are you sure?'

Duffill said, 'I didn't go all the way, then, in nineteen twenty-nine. I didn't do that until after the second war.' He put his pipe in his mouth and smiled.

Molesworth stepped aboard and climbed up – slowly, because he was carrying a bottle of wine and his second lunch bag. Duffill grasped the rails beside the door and as he did so the train began to move and he let go. He dropped his arms. Two train guards rushed behind him and held his arms and hustled him along the platform to the moving stairs of Car 99. Duffill, feeling the Italians' hands, resisted the embrace, went feeble, and stepped back; he made a half-turn to smile wanly at the fugitive door. He looked a hundred years old. The train was moving swiftly past his face.

'George!' cried Molesworth. 'Stop the train!'

I was leaning out the door. I said, 'He's still on the platform.'

There were two Italians beside us, the conductor and a bedmaker. Their shoulders were poised, preparing to shrug.

'Pull the emergency cord!' said Molesworth.

'No, no, no, no,' said the conductor. 'If I pull that I must pay five thousand lire. Don't touch!'

'Is there another train?' I asked.

'Si',' said the bed-maker in a tone of irritation. 'He can catch us in Milano.'

'What time does the next train get to Milano?' I asked.

'Two o'clock.'

'When do we get to Milano?'

'One o'clock,' said the conductor. 'We leave at two.'

'Well, how the hell-'

'The old man can take a car,' explained the bed-maker. 'Don't worry. He hires a taxi at Domodossola; the taxi goes varooml He's in Milano before us!'

Molesworth said, 'These chaps could use a few lessons in how to run a railroad.'

The meal that followed the abandoning of Duffill only made that point plainer. It was a picnic in Molesworth's compartment; we were joined by the Belgian girl, Monique, who brought her own cheese. She asked for mineral water and got Molesworth's reprimand: 'Sorry, I keep that for my teeth.' We sat shoulder to shoulder on Molesworth's bed, gloomily picking through our lunch bags.

'I wasn't quite prepared for this,' said Molesworth. 'I think each country should have its own dining car. Shunt it on at the frontier and serve slap-up meals.' He nibbled a hard-boiled egg and said, 'Perhaps we should get together and write a letter to Cook's.'

The Orient Express, once unique for its service, is now unique among trains for its lack of it. The Indian Rajdhani Express serves curries in its dining car, and so does the Pakistani Khyber Mail; the Meshed Express serves Iranian chicken kebab, and the train to Sapporo in Northern Japan smoked fish and glutinous rice. Box lunches are sold at the station in Rangoon, and Malaysian Railways always include a dining car that resembles a noodle stall, where you can buy mee-hoon soup; and Amtrak, which I had always thought to be the worst railway in the world, serves hamburgers on the James Whitcomb Riley (Washington-Chicago). Starvation takes the fun out of travel, and from this point of view the Orient Express is more inadequate than the poorest Madrasi train, where you exchange stained lunch coupons for a tin tray of vegetables and a quart of rice.

Monique said, 'I hope he takes a taxi.'

'Poor old chap,' said Molesworth. 'He panicked, you see. Started going backwards. "You've got parcels," he said, "you go first." He might have got on if he hadn't panicked. Well, we'll see if he gets to Milan. He should do. What worries me is that he might have had a heart attack. He didn't look well, did he? Did you get his name?'

Tuffill,'Isaid.

'Duffill,' said Molesworth. 'If he's got any sense at all, he'll sit down and have a drink. Then he'll get a taxi to Milan. It's not far, but if he panics again he's lost.'

We went on eating and drinking. If there had been a dining car we would have had a simple meal and left it at that. Because there was no dining car we ate all the way to Milan, the fear of hunger producing a hunger of its own. Monique said we were like Belgians, who ate constantly.

It was after one o'clock when we arrived at Milan. There was no sign of Duffill either on the platform or in the crowded waiting room. The station, modelled on a cathedral, had high vaulted ceilings, and simple signs like uscita gained the metaphorical quality of religious mottoes from their size and dramatic position on the walls; balconies served no further purpose than to provide roosts for brooding stone eagles that looked too fat to fly. We bought more lunch bags, another bottle of wine, and the Herald Tribune.