The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By

by Georges Simenon

  The porter nevertheless said into the telephone: ‘Hello? Miss Pamela? There’s a gentleman here who says he’s come on behalf of Mr Julius de Coster. Should I send him up?’

  The bellhop suspected nothing.

  Pamela, who was arranging her hair in front of a mirror, called out ‘Come in!’ in a quite ordinary voice, then turned round, because, although she had heard the door open and shut again, nobody had spoken.

  She saw Kees Popinga standing there, briefcase under his arm and hat in hand, and she murmured:

  ‘Please, sit down.’

  To which he replied:

  ‘Thank you, but no.’

  They were in one of the hundred or more suites of similar rooms in the Carlton. The door leading to the bathroom was open and the light on. An evening gown was spread out on the bed.

  ‘Did De Coster send you with a message? Do you mind if I go on doing my hair? I’m late. By the way, what time is it?’

  ‘Half past eight. Plenty of time.’

  And he put down his briefcase and hat, took off his coat and practised a smile, looking in the mirror.

  ‘You probably don’t remember me, but I often used to see you in Groningen. I might add that for two years now, I have desired you . . . So yesterday, Julius de Coster and I were chatting, and I’ve come—’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t you understand? I’ve come because the situation has changed from when you lived in Groningen.’

  He had moved closer, and was standing behind her, which was making her feel uncomfortable, although she carried on fixing her dark hair.

  ‘It would take too long to explain. The main thing is that I’ve decided to come and spend an hour with you.’

  • • •

  When he left the room he was even calmer, if possible. There were five floors to go down, and he did not take the lift. It was only when he reached the ground floor that he realized he had left his briefcase in Pamela’s bedroom, and wondered if the porter would notice it.

  Kees was clear-headed, since he realized that the man was looking at his empty hands!

  ‘I left my briefcase upstairs,’ he said non-committally. ‘I’ll be back for it tomorrow.’

  ‘You don’t want me to send the bellhop up?’

  ‘No, thank you, it’s not worth it.’

  He made only one faux pas, but that was because he was not used to grand hotels: he took a quarter florin from his pocket and gave it to the porter.

  Ten minutes later, he was at the railway station. The fast train to Paris was not until 11.26, in two hours’ time, and he spent the interval wandering along the platforms looking at the stationary trains.

  At 10.45 precisely, a young dancer who went out every evening with Pamela arrived at the Carlton, and asked:

  ‘Isn’t she down yet? I’ve been waiting for her in the restaurant for an hour.’

  ‘I’ll call her room.’

  The porter let the phone ring once, twice, three times. And said with a sigh:

  ‘I haven’t seen her go out, though.’

  He called the bellhop who was passing.

  ‘Nip up and see if Miss Pamela is asleep.’

  On the station platform, Popinga did not show the least sign of impatience. He was pacing about as he waited for his train, amusing himself by watching the passengers walk past.

  The bellhop came running down several flights of stairs and collapsed on to an armchair, panting out:

  ‘Quickly – up there!’

  He had left the lift where it was, and they had to walk up. Pamela was stretched out on the bed, a towel knotted round her face as a gag. They had to notify the hotel manager and call a doctor. By the time the police arrived, it was 11.30 and the Paris train had just left.

  • • •

  This time it was a real night train, like those that haunted Popinga’s dreams, a train with sleeping compartments, curtains at the windows, little lamps, and travellers speaking a variety of languages, an international train, what was more, crossing two frontiers in a few hours.

  He had bought a second-class ticket and found a car where there was only one other traveller, a man who was already lying full length on a banquette, and whose face he could not see.

  Kees was not sleepy, but did not wish to sit up either, so he walked up and down the train a few times, slowly, trying to see inside the compartments and guess at their occupants.

  The inspector punched his ticket without looking at him. The Belgian police merely glanced at his identity card, and he took advantage of the stop at customs to write in his notebook:

  Took Paris train at 23.26 from Amsterdam, travelling second-class.

  A little later, he felt the need to write more:

  I really can’t understand why Pamela laughed at me when I said I had to have her. Well, too bad! I couldn’t just leave like that. She’s got the message by now.

  If only she had smiled, or made an ironic remark! Or if she had even been angry! But no. After looking Kees up and down, she had burst out laughing, hysterical, uncontrolled laughter that went on and on, making her bosom heave so that she was even more alluring.

  ‘I forbid you to laugh,’ he had said severely.

  But that only made her laugh all the more, until tears poured from her eyes, and he had grabbed her wrists.

  ‘Stop laughing, now!’

  He pushed her roughly towards the bed, and she fell across it.

  As for the towel, it just happened to be lying there, alongside her evening gown.

  ‘Tickets, please!’

  This time it was a Belgian inspector who did, in spite of everything, glance curiously at this passenger standing in the corridor despite the cold. But was that enough to prompt any misgivings . . .?

  In the compartment, Popinga’s travelling companion had woken up briefly at the frontier and Kees had been able to see his nondescript face, with its little moustache.

  It was a strange night, all the same, almost as disturbing as the one before, and the hours spent at the Petit Saint-Georges listening to Julius de Coster. What would he say now, Julius the Younger, if he could see him?

  Would Pamela press charges? In that case, since they would find his briefcase in her room, the name Popinga would be all over the newspapers.

  But that was surely completely unthinkable? So much so that it was impossible for him to consider the consequences. Frida, for example, was at a convent school. Would they keep on the daughter of a man who . . .

  And at the chess club! Copenghem’s face! Or that of Dr Claes, who must think himself the only man capable of having a mistress. And . . .

  He half-shut his eyes. Not a feature of his face moved. Sometimes through the windows he saw lights, or heard the louder reverberation as the train went through a station. He guessed at a large plain covered with snow, in the middle of which was a little house, still lit up deep into the night, God only knew why, perhaps because of a birth or a death.

  Was it for the best that he had forgotten his briefcase at Pamela’s? he wondered. Every moment, he felt the urge to jot down something in his little red notebook.

  At the French frontier, he got out on to the platform and asked if the bar was open, had to take a roundabout route because of the customs office, drank a large cognac, and noted hastily in his book:

  I register that alcohol has no effect on me.

  The last leg of the journey was the longest. He had tried to strike up a conversation with the man in his compartment, who was a broker in precious stones. But this man, who did the trip twice a week, had his regular routine and preferred to sleep.

  ‘You don’t know whether the Moulin Rouge will still be open, do you?’ Popinga nevertheless asked him.

  He had a desire to see people’s faces and started walking along the corridors again, stepping across the moving plates between carriages, and pressing his face up against the windows of compartments where people were asleep.

  The Moulin Rouge or anywhere else. If he had m
entioned the Moulin Rouge, it was because he had read so much about it.

  He could already see himself in a nightclub amply furnished with mirrors and red plush seats, a champagne bucket on the table, and beautiful girls with low-cut necklines around him . . . He would remain unmoved. The champagne would have no more effect on him than the genever or the cognac had. And he would give himself the surreptitious pleasure of uttering sentences that his female companions would not be able to understand.

  Suddenly, without warning, Gare du Nord, the great draughty station forecourt, the exit, a taxi waiting.

  ‘To the Moulin Rouge!’ he ordered.

  ‘No luggage?’

  The Moulin Rouge was closed, but the car stopped in front of another cabaret, where a porter hurried out to meet Popinga. No one would have guessed that this was the first time in his life he had set foot in such a place. He went in unhurriedly, looked calmly around, then selected his table, without taking any notice of the head waiter.

  ‘Champagne and a cigar!’

  And there he was! Everything had happened just as he had decided and he found it entirely natural that a woman in a green dress should come to sit beside him, murmuring, ‘May I?’

  He said:

  ‘Be my guest!’

  ‘Are you a foreigner?’

  ‘I’m Dutch, but I speak four languages, my own, French, English and German.’

  What a magnificent form of relaxation! And the strangest thing, once again, was that the slightest details corresponded to what he had foreseen.

  It was almost as if he were already familiar with this cabaret, with its red plush seats, its jazz band whose fair-haired saxophonist was surely from the north, perhaps a Dutchman like himself, and this redhead, who now put her elbows on the table and asked him for a cigarette.

  ‘Waiter,’ he called, ‘some cigarettes.’

  A little later, he took his notebook out of his pocket and asked his companion:

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘My name? You want to write down my name? Funny idea. Well, if it makes you happy, Jeanne Rozier. But look, this place is about to close.’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘Go to your place.’

  ‘No, that’s impossible. But a hotel room, if you like.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘You’re very easy-going, aren’t you, sonny boy?’

  He smiled tightly. It was funny, but he couldn’t have said why.

  ‘Do you come to Paris often?’

  ‘This is the second time in my life. The first time was on my honeymoon.’

  ‘And your wife’s with you this time?’

  ‘No, I left her at home.’

  He was tempted to burst out laughing. He called the head waiter over to order more champagne.

  ‘So you like the little ladies, do you?’

  This time he did laugh, and said:

  ‘Not the little ones, no!’

  She didn’t understand. But Pamela was not at all little. She was as tall as him! And as for Éléonore de Coster she stood one metre seventy.

  ‘Well, you certainly seem to be in a good mood. You’re in business?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing. You’ve got freckles. That’s nice.’

  What he liked above all was to watch as his companion glanced furtively at him, trying in vain to make him out. She did have freckles under her eyes, yes, and striking red hair, olive skin and wide lips. He had only ever met one redhead before, the wife of one of his chess club friends, a tall, thin woman who squinted and had five children.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘No reason. I just think it’s marvellous to be here. I’m thinking of Pamela’s face when—’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Never mind. You don’t know her.’

  ‘How about paying the bill and leaving? Everyone’s waiting to get to bed.’

  ‘Waiter! Change me these florins, please.’

  And he pulled the five hundred florins from his pocket and gave the entire bundle to the head waiter with a nonchalant air.

  He was tired, in spite of everything. There were moments when he felt an irresistible desire to stretch out on a bed, but it wasn’t worth making a day like this shorter by dropping off to sleep.

  ‘Why can’t I come and sleep at your place?’

  ‘Because I have a gentleman friend.’

  He looked at her suspiciously.

  ‘What’s he like? Is he old?’

  ‘No, he’s thirty.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He’s in business.’

  ‘Ah. Well, so am I.’

  He was understanding himself more and more, enjoying himself, delighting in his own words and gestures, and in his face glimpsed in a mirror.

  ‘Here we are, sir.’

  That did not prevent him carefully counting his money and remarking:

  ‘A poor exchange rate. In Amsterdam I’d have got point three more.’

  Outside, Jeanne Rozier, now wearing a squirrel fur coat, looked at him, with a last-minute hesitation.

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘Nowhere. I came straight from the station.’

  ‘And your luggage?’

  ‘I haven’t got any.’

  She stood for a moment, wondering whether she might not do better to drop him.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, surprised at her attitude.

  ‘Nothing. Come along, there’s a hotel in Rue Victor-Massé which is clean . . .’

  There was no snow on the ground in Paris. It wasn’t freezing. Popinga felt as light as the champagne he had been drinking. As for his companion, she went into the hotel as if it were her home, and called through a glass partition:

  ‘It’s only me, don’t worry. I’m taking room 7.’

  She turned back the counterpane herself, locked the door, and gave a little sigh.

  ‘Aren’t you going to get undressed?’ she called from the bathroom.

  Why not, after all? He could do anything he liked.

  He was as docile and cheerful as a child. He wanted everyone to be happy.

  ‘Are you staying long in Paris?’

  ‘Perhaps for good.’

  ‘But you came without any luggage.’

  She felt uneasy and was undressing with some regret, while he, sitting on the bed, looked at her with an amused expression.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘Nothing. That’s a pretty petticoat. Is it silk?’

  She slipped between the sheets, still wearing her slip, left the light on and waited.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked after a moment.

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  He was simply finishing his cigar, lying on his back and looking up at the ceiling.

  ‘You’re not worried, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you mind if I put the light out?’

  ‘No.’

  She switched it off and sensed him alongside her, in the same position, unmoving, his lips pursed round his cigar, making a little red glow in the dark.

  She was the one who was restless.

  ‘Why did you come here with me?’ she asked, after tossing and turning a few times.

  ‘Well, isn’t it nice here?’

  He could feel her warm body near him, but it brought him a purely abstract pleasure, since he was saying to himself:

  ‘If only Mama could see me now . . .’

  Then abruptly, he got up, switched on the light, went over to his jacket, took out the notebook and asked:

  ‘What’s the address?’

  ‘What address?’

  ‘This place, where we are.’

  ‘It’s 37a, Rue Victor-Massé. You really need to write all this down?’

  Yes! Just as some travellers collect picture postcards or restaurant menus. He lay down again, stub
bed out the cigar in the ashtray and murmured:

  ‘I don’t feel sleepy yet. What kind of business is he in?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your friend.’

  ‘He’s in the motor trade. But look, if that’s all you’ve got to say, I’d prefer it if you let me get to sleep. You seem like an odd customer to me! What time will I wake you tomorrow?’

  ‘Don’t wake me.’

  ‘All right. You don’t snore, do you?’

  ‘Only if I sleep on my left side.’

  ‘Well, try to sleep on the right, then.’

  He stayed awake a long time, eyes wide open, and the funny thing was that it was his companion who began to snore regularly, while he laughed silently to himself.

  What followed was a little like the day before when, in Groningen, through half-open eyes, he had watched Mrs Popinga getting dressed without her knowledge.

  It was after daybreak but still rather dark, and the curtains hadn’t been drawn back, so that more than half the room was in shadow. Just a feeble shaft of light was striking in.

  And there, silhouetted against it, was Jeanne Rozier, fully dressed, holding Kees’s trousers in her hand.

  She was going through his pockets, since she had seen the night before that he had put his money into his trousers. She was being so careful not to make a sound that she was pulling a strained face, and Popinga, without meaning to, began to smile.

  That smile, although it was silent, must have alerted her, since she turned towards him suddenly. Just as quickly, he closed his eyes and she wondered whether he was sleeping or just pretending.

  It was amusing to feel her there, suspended in the ray of pale daylight, holding the trousers, not daring to make another move, holding her breath. For a moment, she was taken in, and her hand went into a pocket, but the next instant she cottoned on, and said in a casual voice:

  ‘Well, I never!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve really been having me on, haven’t you?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You needn’t pretend! I know the score.’

  And she dropped the trousers on to a pale-yellow armchair, picked up her coat, and came to stand over the bed.

  ‘Can you tell me why you arrived in Paris with no luggage and a pocketful of cash? Don’t play the innocent with me! Yes, you did take me in.’

  ‘But—’