The Sunday Gentleman

by Irving Wallace

  About the immobile train, the storm grew in intensity. Within a matter of hours the snow was piled many feet high, and by early morning, it almost obscured the windows of the Wagons-Lits coaches. The thirteen passengers—most of the other travelers had been dropped at previous stops in Lausanne, Milan, Belgrade—found themselves trapped within a fortress of white. These thirteen passengers, according to Wagons-Lits personnel who swear to the fact, represented exactly thirteen different nationalities. One was a sleek Italian countess who wore low-cut dresses, another was a young British diplomatic courier, the third was an American corporation lawyer, and among the several couples there was an ex-Prussian officer with his pretty Swiss bride.

  The employees of the Simplon-Orient Express (or plain Orient Express, as they and everyone else preferred to call it), engineers, conductors, cooks, led by the chef de train, immediately held a council of war in the restaurant car. Several had been snowbound for as long as four days on previous trips, and they knew that this present imprisonment might last even longer. Their first concern was for the passengers who, sealed in by a wall of hard-packed snow and representing all types of nationalities, might become irritable, troublesome, even dangerous. A rule was made, promptly announced, and as far as possible, strictly enforced. Passengers must not discuss politics with each other. They might discuss, nostalgically, their homes, friends, experiences, they might discuss art, literature, sex, sports, but absolutely no politics. This was a sage rule that Orient Express personnel, themselves representing seven nationalities, observed oil their hectic trips three times weekly between Paris and Istanbul, and it had prevented friction on the run for almost half a century.

  With this censorship established, all hands settled down to mingled boredom and hope of rescue. As it turned out, there was no boredom, and rescue proved long deferred. The first cook was given complete dictatorship over rations. Instead of three sumptuous meals a day, he ladled out only one meager repast, since the train had been almost at the end of its journey and the cupboards were practically bare.

  On the sixth day, disaster seemed unavoidable. The food ran out. And late in the afternoon, just as in the most improbable of adventure stories, wolves began howling. The seventh day was not a day of rest. The snow melted and receded slightly, and the weary passengers, peering from their windows, could see the wolves at a distance, erratically circling the train. The conductors found three guns, and stood guard, in shifts, on the open platforms between the coaches.

  The food problem now approached desperation since there was no means of communication with the outside world and no way of knowing when help might arrive. Soon almost all the coal was gone, and the train became bitterly cold. The passengers sat huddled and hungry in their compartments. When the water supply ran out, all optimism went with it.

  The personnel of the Express did not despair. The second cook, with the ingenuity of Robinson Crusoe, solved the water situation. He began melting snow and boiling the water from it, and that helped. Meanwhile, others of the Orient Express personnel tried to burrow a tunnel through the snow, but the first two tunnels collapsed after a dozen yards. A third tunnel was begun. Reinforced with the train’s furnishings, the red plush seats, the silk armchairs, the dismantled berths, it held, and on the ninth day they broke out into daylight at the foot of a shallow bank. Conductors, armed against the wolves, climbed into the open and after brief exploration found semisolid footing. They knew by checking their timetables that the village of Tcherkeuy was nearby. That was their only hope. Two conductors, lightly dressed, often slipping and sinking waist-deep in snow, set out on foot for aid. For another day, the passengers, in the snowbound train, alternately paced and prayed.

  And then the break came. The conductors, driven by a Turkish farmer in a primitive sleigh, returned. They had found the village and bargained with the villagers for sheep and coal, and there would be roast lamb for dinner. And they had telephoned of their plight, and learned that help was already on its way from several directions.

  On the fifteenth day, Turkish soldiers, in horse-drawn sleighs, arrived with food, clothing, first aid. On the following day, a snow sweeper arrived from Switzerland. Shortly thereafter, its latest misadventure at an end. the famed Orient Express, two and a half weeks overdue, limped into Istanbul and disgorged its baker’s dozen of exotic, long-suffering passengers.

  Occurrences such as this, although regarded as strictly routine by the sophisticated personnel of the Orient Express, are the stuff of which thriller fiction is spun. For example, five years after the incident at Tcherkeuy, Agatha Christie, who often accompanied her archeologist husband on the Orient Express to diggings in the Near East, wrote a suspense novel entitled Murder in the Calais Coach. Her mystery, if not based directly on the incident at Tcherkeuy. was at least compounded of several such near catastrophes that have befallen the Orient Express.

  “High in the mountains of Yugoslavia,” states a blurb on the dust wrapper of Miss Christie’s novel, “the Orient Express, speeding northward, was halted by heavy storms and huge snowdrifts. One compartment of the Calais coach was occupied by one of the most delightful of all detective characters, Hercule Poirot. In another lay the body of a murdered man!” Among those also stranded in Miss Christie’s Orient Express were a British colonel returning from India, a Belgian director of Wagons-Lits, a young English lady from Baghdad, an American commercial traveler, a White Russian princess, a Hungarian diplomat, a German maid, a female Swedish missionary—and, of course, the knifed body.

  To those who like their stories straight, Miss Christie may seem to have been spreading it on a bit thick. But the most jaded world traveler will quickly confirm that the Orient Express is one institution that does not disappoint—it offers an authentic romantic experience, one of the few left available, where fact and fiction merge.

  For what the Orient Express sells is glamour. It has none of the standard attractions. It is neither as fast as the Super Chief or the City of Los Angeles ripping across the United States, nor as old a scheduled train as the Royal Scot running from London to Edinburgh, nor does it travel as long and as far as the Trans-Siberian chugging from Moscow to Vladivostok in nine days. In place of records for speed, longevity, or distance, the Orient Express, the world’s first and foremost international train, offers romance.

  In a single journey of two days and three nights, the Orient Express crosses seven foreign frontiers, more than any other train in the world. It is the only train in existence whose passage from country to country has been arranged by diplomatic treaty among governments, rather than by mere contracts between railways. Most important, it links two worlds. In connecting Paris, metropolis of Western Europe, with Istanbul, colossus of the Near East, it promises that, for the price of a one-way ticket, the twain shall meet—three times a week.

  More than its physical journey, more than its highly advertised luxuries, it is something else that makes the Orient Express the most colorful and dramatic rolling stock on earth. It’s the people you meet.

  Even though the Orient Express, like its more mundane counterparts in America, carries its share of traveling salesmen (conductors refer to the late Sir Basil Zaharoff, a regular passenger, as “that salesman”), the specialty of the house is still, as it has been since 1883, female secret agents swathed in mink, bearded men in monocles, inscrutable heads of armament cartels, pretty girls in distress, royalty in flight. “Ah, if I had but the pen of a Balzac, I would depict this scene,” an Agatha Christie character sighs, observing the assortment of passengers boarding the Orient Express. “All around us are people, of all classes, of all nationalities, of all ages. For three days, these people, these strangers to one another, are brought together. They sleep and eat under one roof, they cannot get away from each other. At the end of three days, they part, they go their several ways, never perhaps to see each other again.”

  No journey on this train is without its strange drama. The cast of characters, especially before World War II, often incl
uded Franz von Papen, King Michael of Romania, Greta Garbo, Toscanini, King George of Greece, W. Somerset Maugham, Pierre Laval, Sonja Henie, Edda Ciano, King Gustaf of Sweden, Philippe Petain, Lily Pons, Baron Edouard de Rothschild, King Boris of Bulgaria, the Duchess of Kent, Maurice Chevalier, the Duke of Windsor, King Alfonso of Spain, Marlene Dietrich.

  Personnel of the Orient Express affectionately remember Pope Pius XII, when he was Cardinal Pacelli, as a frequent passenger. He would chat with the conductors, or fellow passengers, in perfect French, often probing into their lives and hearing out their problems. Sometimes he would retire to his apartment, leave the door ajar, and could be seen pecking away on a pure white portable typewriter. The 244-pound Aga Khan, direct descendant of Mahomet’s daughter, Fatima, is remembered by the personnel with less affection. The Aga, an owlish mountain of flesh, was always remote, uncommunicative, and he devoted hours to lolling back listening as his male secretary read aloud to him from a book or newspaper. Many times, there were ex-King Carol and his redheaded, pudgy Pompadour, Magda Lupescu. Since they never lived openly together in Romania, they remained equally discreet on the Orient Express, riding in separate compartments.

  The majority of passengers, however, were not celebrities, but they were no less provocative. There was the cameo-faced French girl, gowned by Schiaparelli, dripping with orchids, who kissed her elderly French husband good-bye, cried a little, boarded the Express and, as it pulled out, joined a young Czech artist in his compartment. There was the French countess who traveled on the Orient Express monthly, picked up wealthy industrialists in the diner, and lived on the expensive gifts she obtained from them. There was also the cute Italian actress, all ingenue, who stole jewels and was finally apprehended. Most memorable of all, there was the quiet little Englishman, with unruly rust hair and quick smile, who, as the Orient Express was moving across a bridge high in the Swiss Alps, was seen suddenly plummeting from the train to his death thousands of feet below. The French Sûreté, in the best manner of Vidocq and Bertillon, later combed the train and its luggage for a clue, questioning everyone, but never learned whether he fell, jumped, or was pushed.

  It is because of such incidents, because everything (and everyone) happens on the Orient Express, that writers of international tales of intrigue like Agatha Christie, Eric Ambler, Leslie Charteris, Georges Simenon, Graham Greene, persist in starring the intrigue train in their fiction. For the same reason, Hollywood producers have used this mobile Grand Hotel as inspiration for settings of suspense, while some of the classic English adventure films (like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes and Carol Reed’s Night Train) have played all their action on the Orient Express, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, even though they have taken a necessary dramatic license and attached crowded day coaches to the Express (a proletarian liberty its proprietors would never permit in the lush prewar days), so that their strange characters might all be depicted before the camera together.

  When World War II broke out, and the Orient Express, in September of 1939, made its last full run from Paris to Istanbul and back again—“with only four of us in the diner on that last ride,” a newspaperwoman representing the Istanbul Vatan recalls, “and two were Americans eating chicken”—it was feared by the train’s owners, the French and Belgian officials of the Wagons-Lits company, that the old train might never be the same again. Their fears, stemming from the knowledge that Herr Hitler had his eye on the famed Express and its luxurious equipment, were well justified. When Hitler marched into France, he confiscated most of the glittering coaches and baggage cars of the Orient Express for the use of German officialdom and its military hierarchy. However, while it is difficult to hide a train, the French managed to salvage a handful of the Orient Express coaches by the process of sending them to the cities of Lyons, Vichy, and Dijon as temporary shelters for war refugees. During the war, these coaches of the Orient Express, along with other Wagons-Lits cars put out to pasture, managed to house more than 58,000 persons.

  With the dawn of V-E Day, the Wagons-Lits people began collecting and reassembling the remnants of their stock. They brought coaches back from Germany, the Lowlands, the Balkans and from every corner of France, and by September, 1945. they had a shabby, makeshift edition of the Orient Express traveling from Paris to Istanbul. At last, after months of steady repair work and reupholstering, after two international conferences at Lugano and Montreux It was officially announced that the Orient Express was ready to go three times a week as far as Milan, while its numerous sister trains were ready to proceed to Vienna and Prague. With that announcement, there was the merest hope among the romantics that glamour might again be had for the cost of a $138 one-way ticket.

  Today, if ever before they entertained doubts, the romances may rest easily. Despite endless complications—the Russians creating difficulties for branch coaches of the Express passing through Austria, the Greeks declaring they could not possibly repair bridges for several years, Marshal Tito refusing the Express permission to traverse Yugoslavia unless he might have his way about loading the train with Yugoslav conductors and obtain a better share from the money exchange—the Orient Express, in January of 1947 with too much makeup and too much fuss, and creaking at the joints like an actress who has come out of retirement once too often, again got up steam for its historic run into the Near East. The usual staff of multilingual employees bustled about, but instead of the old label-plastered leather luggage, there was a dismaying preponderance of barracks bags and briefcases, and most of the first passengers were staid businessmen, army officers, and French railway officials. With this cargo, the Express puffed out of the chilly Gare de Lyon en route through broken Europe.

  Today, again, the conductors walk down the corridors chanting. “Paris…Lyons…Lausanne…Milan Trieste…Ljubljana…Zagreb…Belgrade…Sofia “Now, three times weekly, five coaches of the Orient Express roll as far as Sofia, Bulgaria. Then the passengers tumble out, climb into Turkish sleepers, and continue overnight across a corner of Greece and into Istanbul.

  Today, the Wagons-Lits company—in preparation for the 300,000 American tourists the American Express Company has predicted will visit Europe this year, in preparation for the dollars these tourists will spend, according to the promise of the U. S. Department of Commerce—has printed timetables and travel folders for the old-fashioned, undiluted trip from Paris to Istanbul, without the Bulgarian changeover, and Wagons-Lits has officially announced that this trip will be resumed in the next few months.

  While a prewar first-class ticket from Paris to Istanbul could be purchased for $138, today’s American tourist will find that the purchase of through passage is no longer simple, nor is the price quite so definite. In Paris, the average tourist will visit the five-storied Wagons-Lits Cook building in the Place de la Madeleine, or the American Express offices in the Rue Scribe, wait in line an hour, learn that he must make his reservations at least twenty-eight days in advance, and be advised that he cannot purchase or pay for a through ticket. Because of the eccentricities of money-exchange control regulations, the tourist can buy, with French francs, rail tickets and sleeper reservations on the Orient Express only as far as Italy. There, in American dollars, he must pay for extensions on his ticket to Belgrade, and in Belgrade, using Yugoslav currency, he must pay for an added ticket to Sofia. The whole process will cost him $134, more or less, depending upon the fluctuations of exchange, and at journey’s end he will be an economist or a madman.

  In return for these financial acrobatics, the tourist will have the finest railroad accommodations in Europe today—although veteran travelers will assure him that, comfortable as they are, the Orient Express just is not what it used to be. At least, not yet. While the 57-ton sleeping coaches, each containing eleven private compartments, are still paneled in mahogany, and expensively carpeted, the added touches are missing all down the line. In the palmy days, for example, there were showers on the train. They are no more. Also, before the war, the Orient Express featured a deluxe
special compartment for dogs only. Now passengers must keep their Pekingese, Scotties, and Russian wolfhounds on the floors of their own compartments.

  In the good old days, the Orient Express diner, gleaming with silver, sparkling with bone china and mirrors, abounding in deep leather chairs, was a mobile mess for epicures. Now, though still physically attractive, it is simply a mess.

  The Orient Express often changes dining cars four times on a single run. It starts with a French diner, staffed by French chefs, switches to a Swiss diner, then to an Italian kitchen, and finally to a Yugoslav one. Before the war, the first and second chefs, in white uniforms, supervised six cupboards on each diner, each cupboard representing a nation through which the Express passed and containing the choice delicacies and vintages of that country. Because each European nation had its food restrictions and drink monopolies, all cupboards were kept securely locked, except the one containing the food and drink of the land through which the Express happened to be moving. As the Orient Express left Paris, the chefs extracted French wines from the French cupboard, and waiters in silk breeches and buckled shoes served these in Belgian crystal goblets during the two-hour evening dinner period. When the train crossed into Switzerland, a French customs official boarded it, locked the French cupboard with its array of wines and liqueurs, then a Swiss customs man came on and unlocked the Swiss cupboard with its chocolates, cheeses, and jams. When the train entered Italy, a Swiss customs man came on, sealed the Swiss food cupboard, and an Italian official followed him and opened the Italian cupboard. And so it would go through Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Turkey.

  Today, these cupboards are anything but a gourmet’s delight. No longer can the Orient Express chefs prepare, and the three train waiters (sporting immaculate white gloves) serve on rich silver platters the old menu of eight hors d’oeuvres, omelets, fish, a choice of four meat dishes, and a selection of the best white and red wines in the Old World. Now, due to shortages and government rationing, the dinners are frugal. When the Orient Express goes through France, the dining car features, for 150 francs or $1.25, a set menu of soup, a choice of fish or meat, two vegetables and, for dessert, an apple. The best meal to be had on the journey, if the passenger will rise before dawn, is breakfast in Switzerland, where everything may be ordered from high-grade coffee and fresh eggs to real butter and white bread. After that, in Italy and on through Bulgaria, the quality and quantity of the food deteriorate and the local chefs shrug, and in their awkward French invariably explain, “C’est la guerre.” Payment for these various meals is as complex as the food is simple, since payment must be made in the currency of the country in which the food happens to be served.