by Alan Furst
The dining car, each table lit by candles, was even more romantic than his compartment-well-dressed couples and foursomes gathered over white tablecloths, conversation low and intimate, the rhythmic beat of wheels on rails perfecting a luxuriant atmosphere of suspended time. Seated at a table for one, Mercier immediately noticed a handsome woman at the adjacent table, also alone, in black velvet jacket, her face lean and imperious beneath ash-blond hair going gray. The waiter arrived immediately and addressed her as Baronin, the German form of baroness, and, after he’d taken her order, she and Mercier exchanged an appreciative glance of recognition: here we both are, how interesting. When the waiter reappeared, he brought an apple on a plate-nowhere to be found on the menu-which she ate slowly, with knife and fork, her every motion precise and graceful and, somehow, suggestive. Meanwhile, Mercier abjured the cream of asparagus soup and toyed with a trout fillet in wine sauce. Too forlorn to eat, he sent the fish away and ordered a brandy. And so did the baroness.
A few minutes after nine o’clock, Cracow. As the locomotive idled in the station, the baroness finished her brandy, rose from the table, smiled at Mercier, and made for the door to the first-class wagon-lit. Well, he was done with his brandy as well, waited until she’d left the dining car, then headed in the same direction. Walking down the corridor, he saw that she was just entering her compartment, Compartment C, and her door closed gently as he passed.
Back in his own compartment, he found that the bed had been made up, the Polish National Railways blanket turned down at a crisp angle. He stretched out on top of it, raised the shade, and turned off the reading lamp. Outside, southern Poland in moonlight. They were going west now, a few miles above the border, the train rattling along at high speed. The little station at Oswiecim flew past, followed by Strumien, as they neared Karvina, where they would enter Czechoslovakia. Mercier was hard on himself. No more wild fantasies, he thought, that would never see the light of reality. Restless and unhappy, he realized he could not sleep in this condition, and decided to go for as much of a walk as the train would allow. He went out into the corridor, where, to the right, lay only a few compartments, from H to A, including C, and turned left.
Past the other first-class wagons-lits, a succession of second-class carriages, where the passengers sat on faded leather seats. Very smoky here, some travelers already asleep, others, lost in their thoughts, gazing into the darkness beyond the windows. He walked the length of the carriage, and was halfway down the next, when he saw a woman in a long gray coat, severely cut. She wore soft leather boots and a black beret, set slantwise on dark-blond hair pinned up in back. Engaged in conversation with a young woman in the seat by the window, she was facing away from the aisle. As Mercier paused by the seat, the young woman looked up at him. “Hello,” he said. “Anna?”
She turned, startled to see him there, and said, “Oh.” For a moment, she froze, eyes wide with surprise, lips apart. Finally she said, in Polish, “Ursula, this is Colonel Mercier.”
The young woman acknowledged him with a formal nod and said, “Pleased to meet you, colonel.”
“Ursula used to work at our office in Danzig,” Anna said. “We met at the station in Cracow.”
Mercier looked at his watch. “One can have a drink in the dining car now, the second seating has ended. Would you and your friend care to join me?”
“Ursula?” Anna said. “Want to come for a drink?”
Ursula thought it over, but her sense of the situation was sharp enough. “I don’t think so. Why don’t you go?”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh …”
“Don’t be shy, you’ll enjoy it! Ursula?”
“Thank you, but you go ahead, Pana Szarbek. Maybe later, I might join you.”
As they walked toward the forward part of the train, Mercier said, “Do you have a suitcase?”
“I dropped it off-my compartment’s up here somewhere-then I went back to visit with Ursula.”
“Your own compartment?”
“A double. I’ve got the upper berth.”
They reached the dining car and were shown to a table by a window. When they were settled, Anna said, “This is a surprise. Are you going to the conference?”
“Well, I could. The subject is certainly interesting.”
Her eyes searched his, uncertain.
The waiter appeared, and Mercier said, “What would you like? A cocktail?”
“Maybe I would. Yes, why not.”
“It’s a long night ahead, might as well do what you like.”
“Then I’ll have a gin fizz.”
“For me a brandy,” Mercier said to the waiter.
Anna looked around, then said, “Very luxurious. You always seem to be in nice places.”
Mercier nodded. “I’m fortunate, I think. My fellow officers are either in barracks or stuck on an island somewhere, taking malaria pills.”
“You are fortunate.”
“Well, not always, but sometimes. It depends.”
She was again uncertain, hesitated, then said, “What interests you, colonel, about the conference?”
He went on about it for a time-national minorities, political tensions-until their drinks arrived. She took a sip of the gin fizz, then a second. “Good,” she said. “They know how to make these.”
“You can have another, if you like.”
She grinned and said, “Don’t tempt me.”
“No? I shouldn’t?”
“You were saying, about the conference.”
“I really don’t care about the conference, Anna.”
“Perhaps you have-ah, a professional reason, to go there.”
“I don’t.”
“Then …?”
“I’m on this train because I found out about the conference, and guessed, hoped, that you would be on this train.”
She hunted around in her handbag and found her cigarette case-Bacchus and the naked nymphs-put a cigarette between her lips, and leaned forward as he lit it. “So,” she said, “an adventure on a train.”
“No,” he said. “More.”
She looked out the window, then said, voice husky, her faint accent stronger, “There’s no need to say such things, colonel.” When she turned back toward him it was clear that she didn’t at all mind the idea of an adventure.
“But it isn’t just something to say.” He paused, then added, “And, by the way, it’s Jean-Francois. I think we agreed on that.”
Suddenly, she was amused. “If I had a pocket mirror …”
He didn’t understand.
“Well, you look quite a bit like a colonel, at the moment,” she said. “Jean-Francois.”
The tension broke. His face relaxed, and he put his hand on the table, palm up. After a pause, she took it, then inhaled on her cigarette and blew the smoke out like a sigh of resignation. “Oh Lord,” she said. “I’d bid all of this goodby, you know, after the night of the storm.” She waited a little, then said, “I suppose you’ve taken a fancy room, all to yourself.”
“I have.”
“And there we shall go.”
“Yes. Now?”
“I’d like that second gin you suggested, if you don’t mind.”
“Why would I? I’ll have another brandy.”
She squeezed his hand.
He beckoned to the waiter.
They carried their drinks back to his compartment. “My, my,” she said. “Lilies.” He helped her off with her coat, inhaling her perfume, and hung it on a hook as she put her beret on the luggage shelf. The compartment was almost entirely filled by the bed, so she sat across the far end, her back against the panel by the window. She took her boots off, revealing black stockings, wiggled her toes, and sighed with relief.
Unlacing his shoes, Mercier said, “A long day?”
“Dreadful. All sorts of people to see in Cracow.”
The train slowed, then entered a small station and, with a hiss of steam, came to a halt.
“What’s this?” she
said. “Not Brno, not yet.”
“Kravina. Border control. Did you give your passport to the conductor?”
“Yes. When I got on.”
Mercier took his jacket off and folded it on the luggage rack above him, put his tie on top of it, and settled at the head of the bed, back against the pillows, legs stretched diagonally down the blanket. A group of Polish and Czech customs officers came walking along the platform, heading for the second-class carriages. One of them glanced in the window.
“Did Marie Dupin tell you about the conference?”
“I heard about it; then I asked her.”
“This was her idea all along, I suspect. Putting us together.”
“She likes to take part in her friends’ lives.”
“True. She does.”
She took the last sip of her drink and put the glass on the shelf below the window. Then she laced her fingers behind her head, closed her eyes, and moved around to get comfortable, sliding forward so that the hem of her skirt slid well above her knees. In the station, someone called out in Czech and a woman laughed.
“A nap?” he said, teasing her.
Very slowly, she shook her head. “Just thinking.”
A porter, pushing a baggage cart that squeaked as it rolled, trudged past the window. Anna opened her eyes, turned to see what was going on, then closed them again. “Ahh, Kravina.”
The locomotive vented steam, a passenger went past in the corridor, a suitcase bumping against the wall, and the train started forward, very slowly, the pillars of the station creeping past the window. Anna extended her leg and put her foot on top of his. Warm and soft, that foot. The train gained a little speed, crossing the town, past snow-covered streets and lamplit squares. A faint smile on her face now, she reached beneath her skirt, left and right, undid her garters, and rolled her stockings down, not far, just enough so that he could see the tops. Mercier turned off the reading lamp, then crawled over to her, and, telling himself not to be awkward, finished the job-his hands sliding over her legs, white and smooth, as the stockings came down. She opened her eyes, met his, and spread her arms. It was very quiet in the compartment, only the beat of the train, but, when he embraced her, she made a certain sound, deep, like ohh, in a way that meant at last. Then they kissed for a while, the tender kind, touch and part-until she raised her arms so he could take her sweater off. Small breasts in a lacy black bra. For a day at the Cracow office?
Madame Dupin, you told.
He kissed her breasts, the lace of the bra against his lips, and they wrestled out of their clothes until she wore only panties-again black and lacy-and he took the waistband in his fingers. They paused, shared a look of exquisite complicity, and she raised her hips.
Somewhere between Kravina and Brno, he woke, cold, the covers down, the speeding train hammering along the track between low hills. She slept on her stomach, curved bottom pale in the light made by the moon shining on snow. As he ran his fingers up and back, he watched her come awake, her mouth opened slightly, then widened as her eyebrows lifted-the delicately wicked face of anticipation.
At Brno station, the sleep of exhaustion.
But after Bratislava, as the train roared through a tunnel, he woke again, to find her making love to him, very excited, her hand between his legs, while her lower part, moist and insistent, straddled his thigh. “Easy … easy,” she whispered.
Coming into Budapest, in the first trace of dawn, only a fond embrace. But very fond.
They went to the dining car for breakfast. The same waiter, discreet as he could be, yet somehow he made them aware that he knew exactly how they’d spent the night, and that he was a man who believed in love. “Do you eat breakfast?” she said.
“No, usually coffee and a cigarette. But I didn’t eat yesterday, so”-he searched the brief menu-“I’ll have the Vienna roll, whatever that might be.”
“A sexual act?”
“Perhaps, we’ll see. Not much privacy in here so it’s probably cake.”
It was, walnuts and apricot filling in butter-laden pastry. “Lord!” he said. “Try a little bite, anyhow.” He fed her.
“What’s next? Belgrade?”
“In two hours. Should we talk about Warsaw?”
“Maybe a few words.”
“I’m in love with you, Anna. I want you with me.”
“I will have to make things final, with Maxim.”
“I know.”
For a moment, she was lost in thought. Then touched his knee, beneath the table. “It’s just the prospect of working it all out, saying things, leaving.”
He nodded that he understood.
“I think I would have left him anyhow. But, are you sure? That you want to do this?”
“Yes. You?”
“Very sure. Since the storm. No, a day or two later. Anyhow, we can talk all this out in Belgrade.”
“Not for long. I have to go back tomorrow: Sunday.”
“What? No rights of national minorities?”
“Which hotel are you staying at?”
A long trip back to Warsaw. After a night together at the Serbski Kralj-King of Serbia-hotel, she’d accompanied him, late Sunday afternoon, to the railway station. In his compartment, he’d lowered the window, and she’d stood on the platform, hands in the pockets of her long coat, and they’d gazed at each other as the train pulled away, until he could see her no longer. Then he’d stared out at the winter dusk for a while, reliving various moments of the time they’d shared. But, finally, it was Simenon-all too soon finished-and, inevitably, Stendhal-far more compelling than he’d remembered-followed by the trout, this time consumed, and, back in his compartment, deep and dreamless sleep.
Paradise, really, compared to what Monday held in store. He’d gone directly to the embassy from the station, and into a meeting with Jourdain and the other military attaches. The usual grim business. He stayed on afterward, to speak privately with Jourdain.
“There’s been no signal from the Rozens,” Jourdain said. “We’ve had our Poles in and out of the post office.”
“They missed the meeting on the eighteenth,” Mercier said.
Jourdain looked up from his papers. “Has something happened?”
“Perhaps. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Jourdain made a small sound of frustration. “We spend our lives waiting,” he said.
“On a different subject, I’ve had a change in my-ah, personal life. Somebody I like. What would happen if she were to join me, in the apartment?”
Jourdain thought for a moment, then said, “I wouldn’t, if it were me. They can’t really tell you what to do, in your private life, but I suspect they think of the apartment as a kind of semi-official residence. Somebody will write a memorandum, you can count on that, and, after everything that’s gone on the last few weeks, I’m afraid there might be a storm. The ambassador likes you, but I wouldn’t want to ask him, if I were you, for protection in this area. Forgive me, Jean-Francois, but it’s better if I tell you what I really think.”
“I knew. More or less. Just thought I’d ask.”
“Anyhow, congratulations. Who is she?”
“Anna Szarbek.”
“The League lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. Lucky man,” Jourdain said.
Back in his office, a clerk delivered mail from the diplomatic pouch. Wading through drivel of every degree-a change in the form for filing certain reports, a new charge d’affaires appointed in Riga-he came upon a yellow manila envelope. Inside-attached to a note from Colonel Bruner-a white envelope addressed to “Andre,” his work name in the Edvard Uhl operation, holding a letter, handwritten, in German: 6 January, 1938
Dear Andre,
I write from Paris, and I am informed that this letter will reach you in Warsaw. I leave soon, for a new life in Canada, a new job, with a small company, and a new place to live, a small town near the city of Quebec. So, I have already started to learn to speak French. Now, I do not regret wha
t I did. As I look toward Germany and see what goes on there, perhaps it was for the best.
I am writing on the subject of the Countess Sczelenska. I know now that she was not a countess, and her name was not Sczelenska. This doesn’t matter to me. I still have dear memories of our love affair. I don’t care how it came to happen-my feelings for her are undiminished. I miss her. I like to think she might have some feeling for me, as well. At least I can hope.
Would you say farewell for me? Tell her of my affection for her? And that, should this unhappy Europe some day find itself in better times, perhaps, on that day, we might meet again. I would be eternally grateful if you would say these things to her on my behalf.
A flowery German closing was followed by Uhl’s signature.
The note from Colonel Bruner stated that the letter was being sent on to him because it was now felt that the bureau might, in certain circumstances, have further use for Uhl, and they wanted to keep him happy. Of course Mercier would not reveal to Hana Musser, who’d played the role of Sczelenska, where Uhl was, or what he was doing, but it might not be the worst thing to let her know of the letter’s existence and Uhl’s sentiments. “Just in case, in future, we need to induce him to undertake new work on our behalf.”
Mercier had maintained Hana Musser’s small stipend; he might require her services, and, also, he liked her-though he would never tell Bruner that. He wrote out a brief dispatch: acknowledged receipt of the letter and agreed to let Hana Musser know of Uhl’s safety, his affectionate farewell, and his hope to, some day, see her again.
25 January. Mercier’s regular meeting with Colonel Vyborg was scheduled for that morning, but there would be no ponczki-or so it seemed-since Vyborg had shifted the meeting from their usual cafe to his office at General Staff headquarters, in the Tenth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel: a vast fortress, containing the Savka Barracks, built under the nineteenth-century Russian occupation and located north of the central city, facing the Vistula. Vyborg’s office was down a long hallway from the room where, famously, Marshal Pilsudski had been held prisoner, in 1900, by the Russian secret police.