The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By

by Georges Simenon

  Kees, back in his corner, looked around for the young man who had been mentioned, and quickly recognized him, since he was the only one corresponding to the description, with a side parting that accentuated the irregularity of his features, further emphasized by a very crooked nose.

  The young man was furious, there was no need to look at him for long to realize that! He was livid. He had fixed on the girl in blue satin a gaze of terrible intensity, and his lips were trembling.

  Why did all this look to Popinga like a daub by a Sunday painter, the colours all too crude, the people depicted with every hair in place? Everything stood out in sharp and unexpected relief, and the five musicians seemed to have filled the café with a sound like the wrath of God. Everyone was screaming hysterically with laughter, over nothing, over a streamer or a cotton-wool ball hitting a man on the neck or in the face; all the customers were looking thoroughly pleased with themselves, almost inhumanly so, except for the young man with the crooked nose, who seemed to be playing the role of the villain in a melodrama.

  In fact, Popinga had been wrong not to drink sparkling wine like everyone else. He might then have been in the right mood and it would have been fun to celebrate the New Year in such a vulgar and emotional family atmosphere.

  From time to time, the girl shot him a complicit glance, as if to say:

  ‘You’re doing the right thing. Better not ask me again. You can see for yourself how threatening he is.’

  Who could this boy be? A bank clerk? Or rather a sales assistant in a department store, judging by his rather studied elegance. A passionate young man, at any rate, who was playing out a whole novel for himself, a tragedy, and who had chosen as his partner the blonde daughter of the municipal councillor.

  The father danced with his wife, then with his daughter, then with all the ladies at his table, bobbing about, playing the fool, amusing onlookers, wearing a cardboard fireman’s helmet on his head.

  Party hats had been given out and Popinga had received a naval officer’s cap, with a lot of white on it, which he took care not to put on.

  Twice, the girl’s mother turned to him with a flirtatious smile that meant:

  ‘Not dancing any more?’

  And she had surely said to her husband:

  ‘He looks like a really respectable gentleman.’

  But meanwhile a different young man had emerged from some corner, where Popinga had not seen him, and was dancing with the blue satin dress. And suddenly, Kees realized that the danger was not imaginary, that the expression of the lover with the crooked nose was becoming tragic.

  A number of times during the dance, he made as if to stand up, and Popinga did not like the way his right hand kept going to his pocket.

  ‘Waiter!’ he called.

  ‘Yes, sir, what . . .?’

  He had an intuition. He felt something was about to happen, and he wanted to leave as fast as possible. Everyone else was enjoying themselves without any suspicion, but to him it was as though the young man with the crooked nose had already caused a scandal.

  ‘Waiter, I said!’

  ‘Yes, sir. Going already? But it isn’t one o’clock yet!’

  ‘What do I owe you?’

  ‘As you wish, sir. As I was saying . . . Forty, plus eight, plus seven, that’s fifty-five francs.’

  Popinga’s intuition was verging on panic. It seemed to him it would be dangerous to lose a second, and he was impatient as he waited to collect his overcoat from the cloakroom, still looking back at the angry young man, who could hardly contain himself, while the girl in blue was still dancing and now and then smiling vaguely over at Kees.

  ‘Thank you.’

  He dashed out so quickly that he almost knocked over a table.

  The councillor’s wife looked at him with mute reproach.

  ‘Already!’ she appeared to be saying. ‘And you never even asked me to dance!’

  He reached the revolving door. He was still holding his hat in his hand, and he had stepped into the first division of the door . . .

  . . . when the shot rang out, above the music, followed by a stupefied silence. Kees almost turned round, but he realized that he must resist that temptation at all costs. He understood that he was in danger and had barely time to escape from this bourgeois family café, where a lover’s quarrel had just turned into a drama.

  He went left, then right, taking streets he did not know, walking quickly and wondering whether the girl in blue satin was dead, and what effect it would have to see her lying on the floor, like a big doll, in the middle of all the paper streamers and cotton-wool balls.

  He was already some distance away when he saw a van full of policemen speeding in the direction of the Gobelins, and he did not stop walking until a quarter of an hour later, when he suddenly realized he had reached Boulevard Saint-Michel, and on the left was the café where he had played the Japanese student at chess.

  It was only after the event that he registered the shock. He realized the danger he had been in. He mopped his brow and felt his knees tremble.

  How stupid would it have been – when he was waging a battle of wits, scientifically, so to speak, against Chief Inspector Lucas and against the whole world, including the journalists – to get caught, just because some jealous young man had pulled a gun!

  From now on, he must be wary of crowds, because in a crowd there is always something happening, a drama, an accident, and then everyone’s papers get checked.

  And he shouldn’t stay on Boulevard Saint-Michel either, since it seemed to him, rightly or wrongly, that this was one of the places where they might be looking for him. Or Montmartre! Or Montparnasse! It would be better to go back to a district like the Gobelins, find a quiet hotel and go to sleep.

  And did he not have work to do? He had not brought his notebook up to date for a whole day. It was true that, apart from the gunshot in the café, there was not a great deal to report.

  But he had taken another decision. Since something might happen to him, and since the notebook would not be enough, because nobody would understand, he had promised himself, now that he had the time, to start writing his true memoirs.

  What had given him the idea was the newspaper which had published his letter the day before under the headline:

  The strange confessions of a killer

  Then under the article, an added paragraph:

  As our readers can see, we have been able to offer them a human document of great value, very few of which exist in the archives of crime.

  Is Kees Popinga sincere? Or is he playing a role? Indeed, is he even deceiving himself? And at all events, is he mad or sane, which is something we are not competent to judge.

  That is why we have shown his letter to two of our most eminent psychiatrists, and we hope from tomorrow to be able to print their reactions, in the firm conviction that we will thus be providing precious assistance to the police.

  He had read and re-read his letter, and had felt dissatisfied. His words and phrases did not have the same effect when printed in the newspaper as they had on the writing paper in the brasserie. Many things were imperfectly explained and others not at all. To the point that the paper had brought in two psychiatrists, and asked them to wait a little before making any judgement!

  What he had said about his father, for instance, might incline people to think there was some family history of alcoholism, whereas his father had not actually started to drink seriously until several years after his son’s birth.

  Nor had he explained properly that while he had been a loner since his schooldays, that was because he had felt he would not be granted the place in society to which he had a right.

  He would have to start again, from the beginning, that is from his birth. He would have to say that he could have come first in everything, which was the truth. Because as a child he had been excellent at all games. When he saw someone doing a gymnastic exercise he would say:

  ‘That’s nothing.’

  And without any prepa
ration, improvising, he could do it at the first attempt.

  As for his family life, that was where people would really get the wrong idea. He had not been able to explain how it actually was.

  For instance, he would be accused of never having loved his wife and children, which was completely false.

  He liked them well enough, that was the truth of it. In other words, he did everything expected of him, he had indeed been what people would describe as a good father, and no one could reproach him with anything on that score.

  Basically, he had always done his best. He had made a great effort to be normal, like everyone else, a respectable, well-behaved, honourable man, and he hadn’t stinted his time or effort.

  His children had been well fed, well clothed, well housed.

  They each had a bedroom in the villa, and their own bathroom, which was not the case for all families. He was not stingy over household expenses. And therefore . . .

  Still, it was possible to do all that and end up alone in a corner with the confused feeling that it was not enough to fill a life, and that one might perhaps have been able to achieve something else!

  That was what he wanted to convey to others. In the evenings, when Frida – how strange now to pronounce her name! – when Frida was doing her homework and Mama was sticking pictures in her album, and when he, Kees, was twiddling the knobs on the wireless set and smoking his cigar, he could not help feeling isolated.

  When, for example, he heard the whistle of a train, less than thirty metres from the house . . .

  For now, he went on walking, through streets sometimes too brightly lit, sometimes dark. He met from time to time groups of merrymakers who were linking arms and, like the municipal councillor, wearing paper hats.

  He also came across other men, walking slowly, picking up cigarette ends from the pavements, stopping in front of cafés, and vaguely hoping for something. He went past uniformed policemen who were spending the festive evening standing on street corners, keeping an eye on the city, without any enthusiasm.

  As was obvious, since none of them thought of looking at him closely!

  He would write his memoirs, and in fact he had already tried to make a start that morning, but had been unable to do so because he was alone in a hotel bedroom.

  And when he was alone, his ideas all vanished, or rather his thoughts all turned in a different direction, and he felt like looking in the mirror, to see whether his face had changed.

  He preferred to write in a large café, where the essence of other people’s lives could be breathed in, like the warm smell from a coal-burning stove. Only now, he couldn’t ask for writing materials, for fear of seeing the waiter frown and go to the telephone to call the police.

  But what could he do, in fact? He didn’t know, because Chief Inspector Lucas had not told the press what he was doing, or else had managed to make the papers maintain a news blackout on it.

  He certainly could not take a train. That was elementary! There couldn’t be a single railway station without a policeman scrutinizing the passengers and armed with Popinga’s description.

  Prostitutes? He couldn’t be sure of them. It was worth a try, but very risky. On the other hand, if he slept alone again, he knew he would have a bad night, which would be unhelpful next day, since he would wake up feeling listless and without his usual lucidity.

  What he really needed was a woman like Jeanne Rozier, who could have understood and helped him, since she was intelligent enough for that. And indeed he was sure that she had felt it too, that she had guessed he was a different kind of man from her pimp Louis, a man good for nothing but stealing cars and selling them in the provinces, which is a very basic kind of crime. As Popinga had proved by being able to join in, at his first attempt, without batting an eyelid!

  Were the police watching the garage in Juvisy as he had suggested to them? Who knows? He had not sent that message by chance. Once Louis was under lock and key, where he would no doubt remain for some years, with Goin and the others, Jeanne Rozier would be alone and then . . .

  Meanwhile, he needed somewhere to sleep, and the problem was becoming urgent, since it recurred every night with all the risks it carried. Kees was not sure quite where he was now. He had to look at the names of two streets and find a Métro station to see that he was on Boulevard Pasteur, in an unfamiliar district which seemed just as uninteresting as the Gobelins.

  Some windows were still lit. People who had been spending the evening with friends were now emerging from doorways, looking for taxis. One such couple were having words, and he heard the woman say:

  ‘Just because it’s New Year’s Eve, you didn’t have to keep asking her to dance!’

  What a strange life! And a strange night. An old man was fast asleep, stretched out full-length on a bench, and two policemen were walking along in step, chatting about their trivial affairs, their pay no doubt.

  It was really hard to resign himself to sleeping alone, not to mention . . . How stupid! At the time he hadn’t noticed. Still, the plump girl in blue satin, whom he had held in his arms, annoyed him in retrospect. And anyway, he had grown accustomed to the squalor and sordid intimacy, night after night, with an unknown woman in his bed . . .

  So why not try it once again? It was true that tonight there were very few women alone on the streets. Even near the hotels, where they usually took up position, he couldn’t see any. Perhaps they too were out celebrating New Year?

  He walked on again. From a distance, he saw Gare Montparnasse, and avoided going too near it, since he was sure that was a dangerous place.

  Half an hour later, he had still not found anyone. Feeling morose, his legs tired, he went into a hotel, hoping that perhaps there would be a chambermaid to greet him. But it was an elderly night watchman who received him, in as bad a temper as he was himself, and who, since Popinga had no luggage, made him pay in advance and gave him a key.

  On top of everything else, Popinga’s watch had stopped and he had no idea at what time he finally dropped off to sleep nor when he woke up, since he was in a room looking on to a courtyard and could not judge by the activity in the street.

  He only realized once he was outside that it was very early, that the city was empty and desolate, as always after a holiday. There was nobody about, except for people alighting in the stations from the suburbs, wearing their best clothes, on their way to visit relations with New Year wishes. As the sky was grey and an icy breeze was scouring the streets, it could have been All Saints’ Day in November just as well as New Year.

  At least he would discover in the paper he had bought what the two psychiatrists thought about him, and he opened it as he walked along a street leading to the École Militaire.

  Professor Abram, who was willing to talk to us last night despite the public holiday, had only been able to read quickly through Kees Popinga’s letter, preparatory to studying it at greater length. He summed up his first impressions in a single word. In his view the Dutchman is a paranoiac, and if his pride were to be seriously wounded, he could become very dangerous, especially since people of this kind maintain a cool and calculating demeanour, whatever the circumstances.

  Professor Linze, who is away from Paris for the next two days, will give us his opinion on his return.

  At police headquarters, there is no immediate news. Chief Inspector Lucas was taken up for the whole of yesterday with a drug-trafficking affair which left him little free time, but his colleagues are pursuing the Popinga case. From what we could gather through our inquiries, there is a new element, but at Quai des Orfèvres, total discretion is being observed.

  All we can say is that Popinga is unlikely to remain at large for much longer.

  Why was that? He was talking to himself. Yes, why shouldn’t he remain at large for much longer? And why wouldn’t they give any details? And why were they treating him as a paranoiac?

  He had heard the word before, certainly. And he vaguely suspected what it meant. But couldn’t they have explained it a
bit? If only he could have consulted a dictionary! But where? In Groningen, if you went into a public library, you had to sign a register. It would no doubt be the same in Paris. And the cafés, although they usually had a phone book and a railway timetable, wouldn’t be in the habit of making dictionaries available to their customers.

  How infuriating this was! It was starting to look like a conspiracy, an act of gratuitous cruelty, like that allusion to some ‘new element’ which they refused to divulge.

  Hadn’t Jeanne Rozier, who knew her way around police headquarters, said that Lucas was ‘a mean beast’? Popinga once more had the feeling that the inspector was doing nothing, was not bothering to search for him, expecting that his victim would give himself away somehow.

  Wasn’t that the impression one got of his approach, as described in the press, and from the few ambiguous sentences he had deigned to utter?

  Well, he was wrong, because Popinga was not at all ready to walk naively into a trap. He was at least as intelligent as this gentleman, or that other man, the psychiatrist, who had just said one word in a scornful tone:

  ‘Paranoiac.’

  Like other people had said ‘madman’. Or ‘sex maniac’. Or like that woman in Faubourg Montmartre who had said he was ‘a sad case’. Or the skinny girl in Rue de Birague, who had declared that he ‘must prefer fatter girls’.

  Was he not superior to all these people, in that at least he knew himself?

  He re-read the article – it seemed insultingly short – as he drank a coffee and ate a croissant in a little bar with walls tiled in 1900 style. Then he remembered the girl in blue satin and looked through the paper until he found a few lines in the section on minor incidents.

  Last night during New Year festivities, in a café near the Gobelins, a jealous lover, Jean R—, fired a revolver at Germaine H—, the daughter of a wine merchant who is also one of our most popular municipal councillors. Fortunately the bullet only slightly injured another dancer, Germain V—, who was allowed home after hospital treatment. Jean R— meanwhile has been taken into custody.