COMPATRIOTS
W
e marched out of the sanatorium arm in arm: compatriots. We marched like those American revolutionaries in that painting
The Spirit of ’76
—the old man with the fixed and somewhat insane gaze, the young man with the bandage around his head and the fife (or in my case, the generator) in his grip, and the drummer who glanced nervously at the other two.
“You know of a train out of here?” Silence asked, his eyes riveted to the road.
“Hey, Harry, you remembered something! Good for you. Short-term memory is better than no memory,” I said, slapping him on the back. “And, yeah, I can get us on the Bern Express, no questions, no tickets.”
Silence nodded as we marched toward the outdoor market. A breeze moved among the particolored tents and brought the aroma of roasted chestnuts to our noses.
Anna took a deep breath. “I’m hungry. I wish we had some money.”
Silence growled, “I wish we’d eaten at the sanatorium—wish we’d hijacked a food trolley.”
“No need for trolley or money,” I replied. “We’ve got Silence.”
He ended his staring contest with the road and looked at me querulously. “What have I got to do with it?”
“Don’t you remember, Silence? You’re a master pilferer. You can walk into that market with nothing and walk out with two bushels of potatoes in your back pocket.”
“You’re daft.”
“Pot calling the kettle …”
Silence halted there in the cobbled lane. “Even if I am a master at … pilfering … I don’t remember how to do it. And if I can’t remember how to do it, I can’t do it.”
“I beg to differ. In Cambridge, I studied the brain. It’s not just a big blob like the liver. Different parts do different things. This part, here—” I said, touching the swollen side of his head.
Silence howled, caught his hands between his knees, and doubled over.
I cringed and shot an apologetic look at Anna. “Sorry, Silence. Still sensitive … eh?”
He heaved a few breaths. “I—I—that spot … that spot …”
“That spot holds your identity—the memories of your life. Everything else is working fine. And one of the things that works fine is your talent for thievery.”
Silence gave me a baleful glare.
“You fed us yesterday—an apple here, a carrot there, no one the wiser. I tried my hand this morning and nicked a leek and nearly got collared by a mad German.”
Silence set his long, thin face toward the marketplace. He blinked in consideration. “You want me to go in there and … pilfer a lunch for us?”
“Yes.”
Silence nodded and strode into battle.
Anna grabbed my arm. “What are you doing? The man’s been poisoned, and you send him to steal food?”
“I’ve been poisoned
and shot
,” I reminded her, “and just watch what he does.”
Silence meandered into the market and paused for a moment beside a rugmaker’s stall. He struck up a polite conversation with the gray-haired woman seated there, smiled and garnered a smile from her, examined her tassels with peculiar attention … . Bidding her good day, Silence moved to the next stall, where some sort of meat—I think it was pigeon—was skewered on thin sticks of bamboo and jutted from a rotating stand. Silence spoke to the swarthy man who sold the stuff, seemed to ask him about his cooking methods, and then, with hands folded behind his back, moved on.
“He doesn’t know what to do,” Anna said.
“I wouldn’t bet on that.”
As Silence walked farther into the market, the two of us followed. He chatted up a greengrocer, spent a good five minutes admiring the work of a blacksmith, tried a comb at the haberdashers, inspected eels at the fresh fish market, and ended his spree at the shop of a photographer who specialized in pictures of topless women.
Anna and I followed Silence out of the market and into a narrow alleyway. Anna approached him. “Sorry about that.”
I said, “I’m not apologizing until I see how you made out.”
Silence looked sidelong at me. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it. They were such friendly people.”
“Then what is that in your pocket?” I asked.
Silence patted the bulging spot, and confusion wrote itself across his brow. He reached in to drag out a picture of a woman in pantaloons and nothing else.
I snatched the photograph from him and took a long look. “Well done, my friend! I’ll be keeping this.”
“No you won’t,” said Anna, snatching the picture away, folding it once, and flinging it to land in the slop channel at the center of the street.
I laughed and pointed at Silence’s shirt. “You’re still bulging.”
Silence dipped his hand in between buttons and pulled out a long, slim dagger.
“Brilliant!” I said. “You got the best one from the shop.”
Before I had finished speaking, Silence reached into another pocket and produced a yam, two pears, and a stalk of celery. “I don’t know how this got here.”
“I do,” I said, gathering the loot into the belly of my shirt. “But there’s something else.”
With a look of chagrin, Silence reached into his trousers and dragged out not one but three bamboo stakes with meat on them.
“This is scandalous!” Anna said.
I grabbed a stake and a pear and started in on my meal. Speaking around a mouthful of food, I said, “What else’ve you got?”
Silence shook his head in confusion, reached into his collar, winced, and pulled out a rose. His finger was bleeding where a thorn had pricked him. Ignoring the injury, Silence bowed his head and handed the rose to Anna.
Her annoyance melted away, and she accepted the flower. Then, with unseemly speed, she snatched up one of the meat sticks and started eating. I laughed, and Silence did as well, and soon all of us were giggling and eating and marching away down the alley.
Our walking feast was nearly done when we rounded a half-timbered cheese shop and spotted our destination: the train bridge where I had spent my sleepless night. My whole body shivered to see that merciless trestle, to think of the smoldering rat that remained beneath. Still, I put on a brave face.
“Here’s our salvation!” I gestured grandly toward the train trestle. “The Bern Express stops there, the paying passengers lug their luggage to the porters and bustle about with tickets and all that nonsense—”
“While the unpaying scamps scramble up the ironwork of that bridge and clamber on between cars,” Anna supplied, her brow furrowed.
I smiled sheepishly. “Great minds think alike?”
Silence meanwhile stared with starry eyes at the train bridge. “This seems an excellent ptan—”
“Compared with being straitjacketed and poisoned,” Anna observed, “it would.”
“I’m glad we’re in agreement,” I said, extending an arm around each of them and propelling them onward.
We descended to the riverbank and walked along it until we reached the underside of the bridge. Night was full upon Bern, lending us its anonymity. I was about to brag about how I had spent the night here when Anna and Silence let loose a torrent of complaint against the place.
“Is that a fried rat?” Anna wondered, pointing.
I laughed nervously. “Must have fallen into the nrebox—”
“The moss beneath the girders is worn away,” Silence broke in. “Probably the bed of some opium addict with syphilis.”
“Very perceptive,” I allowed.
“What’s that smell?” Anna asked. “They’re not supposed to use the toilet while the train’s in the station.”
“Aha! Here comes the train now!” I lifted myself on tiptoes and listened intently. Yes, the train was on its way, some mere mile off, but still, my comrades could see through the ruse.
“You
stayed here last night, didn’t you?” Silence asked.
“I what?”
“You slept here last night,” he repeated.
“Well … I … um …”
“Someone did,” Silence elaborated, “as evidenced by that spot up there beneath the girders.” He lifted the green-stained edge of my coat. “Moss.” He sniffed. “Then, there’s the smell. I’d first noticed it in the sanatorium. I thought it was fish, or rat, or some combination.”
“It was fish and fried rat,” Anna announced.
“Yes, but what about the burn holes in his coat? There’s no sign of a fire built here—only … charred fabric, as if from sparks.”
“Thomas!” Anna said with mock outrage. “You electrocuted a rat!”
“It was dead already. I was trying to … bring it back.”
They laughed at me. When you are laughed at by a man who has spent two days in a straitjacket and a woman who wears clothes two sizes too large and three decades too old, you have been laughed at indeed.
“Here it is! The express!” I proclaimed above the sudden roar and rush and hiss of the arriving machine. It clanged and clattered across the bridge over our heads and pulled to a stop in the station.
“The express to what?” Anna asked.
I shrugged. “Does it matter?”
Silence gave a desultory shake of his head. “No.” He scrambled up the slope before us, and Anna and I traded glances before we followed quickly after.
In moments, we had reached the level of the bridge. The train loomed large on the tracks, steam hissed from the engine, and dark figures moved around it. A metal arm swung out to pour fuel into the coal car and an elephantine tube poured water into the engine. I glanced toward the front of
the train and saw the driver lean against the engine rail and light a pipe. Beside the passenger cars, conductors helped passengers. Directly ahead of us, a man stepped from one car, crossed the coupling, and entered the car behind.
“Here’s our chance,” I said. I vaulted toward the coupling and climbed up. Anna and Silence scurried after. I grasped Anna’s hand, pulled her up beside me, and gave her an impetuous kiss. “For luck.” Then I wrenched open the door of the rearward car. We stumbled through, Anna and I and Silence behind, into the packed passenger car. Folk still settled luggage into the overhead racks or beneath the benches.
“I think I’d better visit the powder room,” Anna said, opening the door beside us.
“An excellent idea,” I replied.
Silence piled in after us, closed the door, and turned the handle that said OCCUPIED.
Anna stared at us with a shocked expression. “Don’t you think it’s unseemly for two gentlemen and a lady to use the same lavatory simultaneously?”
“No one saw,” I said.
“And it would be even more unseemly,” Silence said, “for three people to be on a train without a single ticket among them.”
Anna studied us both and then cast a glance at the metal toilet that emptied onto the ties below. “So, we have to stay here until the train is in motion?”
“Well, until the conductor passes by,” I clarified.
Any tight space—a cloakroom, a closet, a boudoir—would have been uncomfortable for the three of us, but the tight-packed, stale-smelling lavatory on a transcontinental train was perhaps the most uncomfortable of all. Our feet crowded the tiny floor, our hips swayed outward to try to avoid intimate contact, our shoulders pressed the wooden walls of our enclosure,
and our faces rose not only to avoid eye contact but to lift our noses out of the rising odor from the toilet. We listened.
Beyond the door came the clamor of a packed car, with passengers jostling for space, the occasional cry of a paperboy on the platform, and the hiss of pistons firing. Then—jolt and heave—the train lurched, car by car, into motion.
“
Billets!
” cried the conductor in the back of the car.
“Billets!
” Amid the chatter of passengers and the flutter of proffered papers, we could hear the man’s patient punch, marking each ticket.
“Once he passes, we’ll slip out and find seats,” I said.
A sharp rap came at the door.
“Billets!”
We traded fearful stares.
“Monsieur, je dois composter votre billet.”
“Pas monsieur, mais mademoiselle,”
chimed in Anna,
“et pas maintenant!”
“Toutes mes excuses
,
mademoiselle,”
came the man’s reply, and he moved on. We heard the swish of the carriage door opening, the cacophony of the world outside, and then the quiet murmur of other passengers.
“He’s in the next car. Let’s sneak out,” I said.
“One at a time,” replied Anna.
“Right. One at a time.” I opened the door and stepped out, closing it behind me.
The car was tight-packed, with every seat filled. I knocked on the lavatory and whispered, “I’m moving farther down, into the next car.” Then I went to the end of the coach, opened the door, stepped out across the rushing gangplank, and looked through the window into the next coach. It was a sleeper, with a long aisle that luffed with thick curtains. At the far end, the conductor punched a pair of tickets, positioned them in a clip beside the bed, and then exited the car.