Paul Theroux - The Great Railway Bazaar

'Poor old chap,' said Molesworth, looking around for Duffill.

'Doesn't look as if he's going to make it.'

'They warn you about that, don't they? Missing the train. You think it's shunting, but really it's on its way. The Orient Express especially. There was something in the Observer about it. Everyone misses it. It's famous for that.'

At Car 99, Molesworth said, 'I think we'd better get aboard. I know I don't want to be duffilled.'

Now, as we travelled to Venice, there was no hope for Duffill. There wasn't the slightest chance of his catching up with us. We finished another bottle of wine and I went to my compartment. Duffill's suitcase, shopping bag, and paper parcels were piled in a corner. I sat down and looked out the window, resisting the urge to rummage through Duffill's effects for a clue to his going to Turkey. It had grown hotter; the corn fields were baked yellow and strewn with shocks and stubble. Beyond Brescia, the shattered windows in a row of houses gave me a headache. Moments later, drugged by the Italian heat, I was asleep.

Venice, like a drawing room in a gas station, is approached through a vast apron of infertile industrial flatlands, criss-crossed with black sewer troughs and stinking of oil, the gigantic sinks and stoves of refineries and factories, all intimidating the delicate dwarfed city beyond. The graffiti along the way are professionally executed as the name of the firms: motta gelati, lotta COMMUNISTA, AGIP, NOI SIAMO TUTTI ASSASSINI, RENAULT, UNITA. The lagoon with its luminous patches of oil slick, as if hopelessly retouched by Canaletto, has a yard-wide tidewrack of rubble, plastic bottles, broken toilet seats, raw sewage, and that bone white factory froth the wind beats into drifts of foam. The edges of the city have succumbed to industry's erosion, and what shows are the cracked back windows and derelict posterns of waterlogged villas, a few brittle Venetian steeples, and farther in, but low and almost visibly sinking, walls of spaghetti-coloured stucco and red roofs over which flocks of soaring swallows are teaching pigeons to fly.

'Here we are, mother.' The elderly American man was helping his wife down the stairs, and a porter half-carried her the rest of the way to the platform. Oddly appropriate, this couple who had seen Venice in better days: now the city and its visitors were enfeebled, suffering the fatal poisoning of the age. But Mrs Ketchum (for that was her name: it was the very last thing she told me) looked wounded; she walked with pain, using joints that had turned to stone, leaning on her stick. The Ketchums would be going to Istanbul in a few days, though it struck me as foolhardy, to say the least, for them to carry their feebleness from one remote country to another.

I handed over Duffill's violated belongings to the Venetian Controllare and asked him to contact Milan and reassure Duffill. He said he would, but spoke with the kind of Italianate carelessness that mocks trust. I demanded a receipt. This he provided, showing me his sour resignation as he slowly and distastefully itemized Duffill's parcels on the chit. As soon as we left Venice I clawed it to pieces and threw it out the window. I had asked for it only to chasten him.

At Trieste, Molesworth discovered that the Italian conductor had mistakenly torn out all the tickets from his Cook's wallet. The Italian conductor was in Venice, leaving Molesworth no ticket for Istanbul, or, for that matter, Yugoslavia. But Molesworth stayed calm. He said his strategy in such a situation was to say he had no money and knew only English; 'That puts the ball in their court.'

But the new conductor was persistent. He hung by the door of Molesworth's compartment. He said, 'You no ticket.' Molesworth didn't reply. He poured himself a glass of wine and sipped it. 'You no ticket.'

'Your mistake, George.'

'You,' said the conductor. He waved a ticket at Molesworth. 'You no ticket.'

'Sorry, George,' said Molesworth, still drinking. 'You'll have to phone Cook's.'

'You no ticket. You pay.'

'I no pay. No money.' Molesworth frowned and said to me, 'I do wish he'd go away.'

'You cannot go.'

'I go.'

'No ticket! No go!'

'Good God,' said Molesworth. This argument went on for some time. Molesworth was persuaded to go into Trieste Station. The conductor began to perspire. He explained the situation to the stationmaster, who stood up and left his office; he did not return. Another official was found. 'Look at the uniform,' said Molesworth. 'Absolutely wretched.' That official tried to phone Venice. He rattled the pins with a stumpy finger and said, 'Pronto! Pronto!' But the phone was out of order.

Finally Molesworth said, 'I give up. Here – here's some money.' He flourished a handful of 10,000 lire notes. 'I buy a new ticket.'

The conductor reached for the money. Molesworth withdrew it as the conductor snatched.

'Now look, George,' said Molesworth. 'You get me a ticket, but before you do that, you sit down and write me an endorsement so I can get money back. Is that clear?'

But all Molesworth said when we were again underway, was, 'I think they're all very naughty.'

At Sezana, on the Yugoslav border, they were very naughty, too. Yugoslav policemen with puffy faces and black belts crossed on their chests crowded the train corridor and examined passports. I showed mine. The policeman pawed it, licked his thumb, and wiped at pages, leaving damp smudges, until he found my visa. He passed it back to me. I tried to step by him to retrieve my wine glass from Molesworth's compartment. The policeman spread his fingers on my chest and gave me a shove; seeing me stumble backwards he smiled, lifting his lips over his terrible teeth.

'You can imagine how these Jug policemen behave in third class,' said Molesworth, in a rare display of social conscience.

'"And still she cried and still the world pursues,"' I said, "Jug Jug' to dirty ears." Who says The Waste Land's irrelevant?'

'Jug' seemed uncannily exact, for outside the train little Jugs frolicked on the tracks, big parental Jugs crouched in rows, balanced on suitcases, and uniformed Jugs with leather pouches and truncheons strolled, smoking evil-smelling cigarettes with the apt brand name, 'Stop!'

More passengers had installed themselves in Car 99 at Venice: an Armenian lady from Turkey (with a sister in Watertown, Massachusetts), who was travelling with her son – each time I talked to this pretty woman the boy burst into tears, until I got the message and went away; an Italian nun with the face of a Roman emperor and traces of a moustache; Enrico, the nun's brother, who was now in DuffiU's berth; three Turkish men, who somehow managed to sleep in two berths; and a doctor from Verona.

The doctor, a cancer specialist on his way to a cancer conference in Belgrade, made a play for Monique, who, in an effort to divert the man, brought him to Moles-worth's compartment for a drink. The man sulked until the conversation turned to cancer; then like William Burroughs' Doctor Ben way ('Cancer! My first love!'), he became quite companionable as he summarized the paper he was going to read at the conference. All of us tried as well as we could to be intelligent about cancer, but I noticed the doctor pinching Monique's arm and, feeling that he might have located a symptom and was planning a more thorough examination, I said good night and went to bed to read Little Dorrit. I found some inspiration in Mr Meagles' saying, 'One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind,' and, with that thought repeating in my brain, fell into that deep slumber familiar to infants in old-fashioned rocker cradles and railway travellers in sleeping cars.

I was shaving the next morning, amazing Enrico with my portable electric razor as I had Duffill, when we pulled level with a train that bore an enamelled plate on its side inscribed moskva-beograd. The Direct-Orient halted, making its couplings grunt, and Enrico dashed out of the door. This was Belgrade, calling attention to the fact with acronyms, centrocoop, ateks, rad, and one I loved, transjug. It was here, at Belgrade Station, that I thought I would try out my camera. I found a group of Yugoslav peasants, Mama Jug, Papa Jug, Granny Jug, and a lot of little Jugs; the men had Halloween moustaches, and one of the women wore a green satin dress over a pair of men's trousers; the granny, wearing a shawl that hid everything but her enormous nose, carried a battered Gladstone bag. The rest of their luggage, an unmanageable assortment of cardboard boxes and neatly sewn bales, was in the process of being transferred across the track, from one platform to the other. Any one of the bundles would have caused a derailment. Migrants in Belgrade: a poignant portrait of futility. I focused and prepared to snap, but in my view finder I saw the granny muttering to the man, who whipped around and made a threatening gesture at me.