William Maxwell: The Chateau

The train began to move. Cherbourg was left behind.

The coach was not divided into compartments but open, like an American railway car. Looking out of the train window, they saw that the sky was now overcast. They saw hedgerows enclosing triangular meadows and orchards that were continually at a slant and spinning with the speed of the train. House after house had been shelled, had no windows or roof, had been abandoned; and then suddenly a village seemed to be intact. They saw poppies growing wild on the railroad embankment and could hardly believe their eyes. That wonderful intense color! They were so glad they had seen them. They saw a few more. Then they saw red poppies growing all through a field of wheat—or was it rye? They saw (as if seeing were an art and the end that everything is working toward) a barn with a sign painted on it: Rasurel .

Their eyes met, searching for some relief from looking so intently at the outside world. “We’re in France,” he said, and let his hand rest lightly in hers. The train came to a stop. They looked for the name on the station: Valognes . They saw flower beds along the station platform. Blue pansies. “Pensées,” it said in the pocket dictionary. They saw a big blond man with blue eyes and bright pink cheeks. They saw a nice motherly woman. They saw a building with a sign on it: Café de la Gare . The station was new. In a moment this tiny world-in-itself was left behind. He looked at his watch.

“What time do we change?” she asked, smothering a yawn.

“At two. It’s now seventeen minutes of one.”

“We’d better not fall asleep.”

He felt his right side and was reassured; his wallet and their passports were in his inside coat pocket, making a considerable bulge. “Is it the way you remembered it?” he asked anxiously. “I know there weren’t any ruined buildings, but otherwise?”

“Yes. Except that we were in a car.”

That other time, she was with her father and mother and two brothers. They went to England first. They saw Anne Hathaway’s cottage, and Arlington Row in Bibury, and Oxford, and Tintern Abbey. And because she was sick in bed with a cold, they left her alone in the hotel in London while they went sight-seeing, and she had a wonderful afternoon. The chambermaid brought her hot lemonade with whisky in it, and it was the first time she had ever had any whisky, and the chambermaid took a liking for her and gave her a gold locket, which she still had, at home in her blue leather jewel case.

After England, they crossed the Channel and spent two weeks in Paris, and then they drove to Concarneau, which they loved. In her snapshot album there was a picture of them all, walking along a battlement at Carcassonne. That was in 1933. The hem of her skirt came halfway to her ankles, and she was twelve years old.

“What is Cinzano?” she asked.

“An apéritif. Or else it’s an automobile.”

… five, six, seven. Knowing that nothing had been left behind, he nevertheless could not keep from insanely counting the luggage. He looked out of the train window and saw roads (leading where?) and fields. He saw more poppies, more orchards, a church steeple in the distance, a big white house. Could it be a château?

The yawn was contagious, as usual.

“Where do you suppose the Boultons are now?”

“Southampton,” he said. “Or they might even be home. They didn’t have far to go.”

“It was funny our not speaking until the last day—”

“The last afternoon.”

“And then discovering that we liked them so much. If only we’d discovered them sooner.” Another yawn.

“I have their address, if we should go to England.”

“But we’re not.”

She yawned again and again, helplessly.

They no longer had to look at each hedgerow, orchard, field, burning poppy, stone house, barn, steeple. The landscape, like any landscape seen from a train window, was repetitious. Just when he thought he had it all by heart, he saw one of Van Gogh’s little bridges.

Her chin sank and sank. He drew her over against him and put her head on his shoulder, without waking her. His eyes met the blue eyes of the priest across the aisle. The priest smiled. He asked the priest, in French, to tell him when they got to Carentan, and the priest promised to. Miles inland, with his eyes closed, he saw the gulls gliding and smelled salt water.

His eyelids felt gritty. He roused himself and then dozed off again, not daring to fall sound asleep because they had to change trains. He tried willing himself to stay awake, and when that didn’t work, he tried various experiments, such as opening his eyes and shutting them for a few seconds and then opening them again immediately. The conductor came through the car examining tickets, and promised to tell him when the train got to Carentan. Though the conductor seemed to understand his French, how can you be sure, speaking in a foreign language, that people really have understood you?… The conductor did come to tell them, when the train was slowing down, on the outskirts of Carentan, but by that time the luggage was in a pile blocking the front of the coach, and they were standing beside it, ready to alight.

What should have been a station platform was, instead, a long, long rock pile. Looking up and down it as the train drew to a stop he saw that one of his fears, at least, was justified: there were no porters. He jumped down and she handed him the lighter suitcases, but the two big ones she could not even lift. The other passengers tried to get by her, and then turned and went toward the other end of the coach—all except a red-headed man, who saw that they were in trouble and without saying a word took over, just as Harold was about to climb back on the train.

What a nice, kind, human face …

All around them, people were stepping from rock to rock, or leaping, and it was less like changing trains than like a catastrophe of some kind—like a shipwreck. The red-haired man swung the dufflebag down expertly and then jumped down from the train himself and hurried off before they could thank him. Until that moment it had not occurred to Harold to wonder how much time they would have between trains.

He stopped a man with a light straw suitcase. “Le train à Coutances?”

“Voie D!” the man shouted over his shoulder, and when they didn’t understand, he pointed to the entrance to an underpass, far down the rock pile. “De ce côté-là.”

“Oh my God!”

“Why aren’t there any porters?” she asked, looking around. “There were porters in Cherbourg.”

“I don’t know!” he said, exasperated at her for being logical when they were faced with a crisis and action was what was called for. “We’ll have to do it in stages.” He picked up the big brown suitcase, and then, to balance it, two smaller ones. “You stay here and watch the rest of the luggage until I get back.”

“Who is going to watch those?” she demanded, pointing at the suitcases he had just picked up. “What if somebody takes them while you are coming back for more?”

“We’ll just have to hope they don’t.”

“I’m coming with you.” She picked up two more suitcases.

“No, don’t!” he exclaimed, furious at not being allowed to manage the crisis in his own way. “They’re too heavy for you!”

“So are those too heavy for you.”

Leaving the big white suitcase and the dufflebag (two thousand cigarettes, safety matches, soap, sanitary napkins, Kleenex, razor blades, cold cream, cleaning fluid, lighter fluid, shoe polish, tea bags, penicillin, powdered coffee, cube sugar, etc.—a four months’ supply of all the things they had been told they couldn’t get in Europe so soon after the war) behind and unguarded, they stumbled along in the wake of the other passengers, some of whom were now running, and reached the underpass at last, and went down into it and then up another long flight of steps onto Track D, where their train was waiting.