The Sixteen Pleasures

by Robert Hellenga

  I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. Something funny had happened. My initial animosity toward these women had turned into a kind of love; not erotic, I don’t mean that, but the kind I felt for my sisters, whose memory caught me like a stitch in the side, and not inexplicably either. I’d taken—stolen—a ten-dollar bill from my mother’s purse once, and since no one would confess to the crime we’d all three been sent to bed without supper. My sisters, though they had refused to tattle on me, had been hungry and ill tempered, not about to let me off the hook. Like Ruth and Yolanda, they’d wanted me to suffer for what I’d done. But not for long. They were never mad for long, and pretty soon we were fooling around just like we always did. Three travelers we’d been, starting out on a journey together, and then somehow we’d been separated, not by miles or kilometers but by husbands and lovers and children and Mama’s death and Papa’s money troubles. I tried to remember what I’d done with the ten-dollar bill. How had I spent it? Movies? Candy? Books? Toys? Had I spent it at all? Was it still hidden securely between the pages of some book? I couldn’t remember, but I could remember Papa coming upstairs and saying that if we didn’t settle down he’d have to spank us, and then he came up again and brought his guitar and sang “Pony Man” and “Bottle of Wine,” our favorite songs. But we didn’t get anything to eat till breakfast.

  When the train arrived at what I took (correctly) to be Mulhouse, I decided to redeem myself by getting something for us to eat. If the dining car was going to be detached, I would have at least ten minutes, plenty of time to buy three cestini. I couldn’t remember the French word, but I could remember quite distinctly one of the lessons in the French textbook we had used at the liceo: a young Italian, visiting France for the first time, leans out the window of the train and buys one of these little box lunches—a sliver of pâté wrapped in foil, a crusty roll, a demiliter of delicious vin rouge, and so on—from a friendly campagnard who instructs him on the geographical features of the region and on the nature of French food and wine and hopes that he will enjoy his visit.

  I glanced out the window as I slipped on my loafers. No friendly campagnards in sight, but I was undeterred. I had found an opportunity to redeem myself, and I wasn’t going to let it go by. Besides, I was hungry myself. Starving. I took it as a good sign.

  “I’m going to get something to eat,” I announced, popping out of the compartment before they had a chance to respond.

  The platform was crowded with disembarking passengers, including my cadet. He gave me a friendly nod, but I had no time for him now. “Ten minutes?” I asked a uniformed man on the platform. He looked at his watch: “Dix minutes? C’est ça.”

  I went through the waiting room to the station restaurant. “I want to buy something to eat for the train,” I said slowly in my best French. “Quelque chose à manger pour le chemin de fer.”

  The garçon-type at the stand-up bar in the station restaurant, which was nearly empty, looked alarmed, as if I had threatened him. I suppose now that I asked for something for the railroad to eat, but you’d think he could have figured it out, since we were in a restaurant. I was reminded of my first (and only) time in Paris, asking a taxi driver to take me to the Tour Eiffel, only to be met with a blank, uncomprehending stare.

  “Speak slowly, please,” said the man behind the bar. “Lentement.”

  It was funny. I could understand him, but he couldn’t understand me. (You sometimes get telephone connections like that. You shout and shout and shout and the person on the other end says “Hello? Hello? Hello?”)

  “Cibo,” I said in a loud voice. “Un cestino”—Italian words driving out French. I pointed at my mouth and at my stomach. “Caisse,” I said quite plainly. “Poitrine, commode, boîte.” Still aiming at cestino, what I was saying was cashbox, breast, dresser, box. Box, that was it: “boîte de picnic.”

  “Boîte de picnic?” Once again his face assumed a pained expression.

  A quick glance at my watch informed me that four and one-half minutes had elapsed since I’d disembarked from the train. I ran through the scene in the textbook once more, remembering as I did so that it had taken place in the station in Avignon, and that Petrarch had been born in Avignon, or else he’d gone to live there.

  “Would you like something to eat?”

  “Si, Si. I mean Oui, oui. S’il vous plaît.”

  “Yes, of course, mais oui. Please take a seat.” He gestured at a row of empty tables. “I’ll bring you a menu. The poached chicken”—I think that’s what he said—“is very good this evening.”

  “Non importa!” I shouted, once again in Italian. “It doesn’t matter. Anything. J’ai faim.”

  I could still hear him perfectly, but something was wrong at my end of the connection. Probably it simply didn’t occur to a Frenchman that anyone would order a meal in this haphazard, thoughtless fashion. In any case I found it difficult to convey in words the sense of urgency that I felt, though my body must have indicated that I was in distress.

  “Do you need to use the WC?” he asked.

  “Non, non, non. Le train parte tout de suite.”

  Another two minutes had elapsed.

  “Le train? Ahhh! You would like un panier-repas to take with you on the train?” He jerked his head in the direction of the platform, where the train was making hooting noises and letting out loud bursts of hot air from the brakes.

  “Si, si, si. Oui, oui. oui.”

  “Moment.”

  As he disappeared through a curtained door behind the bar I realized I had forgotten about Ruth and Yolanda. “Three!” I shouted. “Siamo in tre. Trois personnes. Quelque chose pour trois personnes.” He glanced over his shoulder and nodded, holding up three fingers: “Trois?”

  “Oui, oui, oui.”

  I decided I would give him three minutes. From where I was standing I could still see the last car of the train, which had backed into the station.

  Two minutes passed. Three. By the time he returned I was almost-but-not-quite frantic. He presented me with a long, flat box tied with white butcher’s string and a bill for one hundred francs, which I paid at the cashier.

  I hadn’t expected to eat for nothing, but one hundred francs was an astonishing sum, about twenty dollars for a couple of sandwiches. It was more money than I had, in fact, in francs, but I was able to cash a traveler’s check without too much difficulty, though I had trouble signing my own name.

  The train, having parted from the last three cars, was already in motion when I reached the platform. I hesitated a second or two to get my bearings, unable to believe in my heart of hearts that it would actually leave without me. In my head, of course, I knew that even in Italy trains didn’t wait for late comers and that French trains might actually leave a little early, just for the pleasure of spoiling someone’s trip. But in my heart I knew it wasn’t right that I should be left behind when all I was trying to do was get something to eat for myself and those two American women—my sisters—who would think I got what I deserved and never know that I’d done it for them. It was simply too unjust, too unfair. Why hadn’t the conductor made sure I was back on the train? I simply couldn’t believe it, and then I was running along the long platform that stretched out into the night.

  My legs almost buckled at first, but then I found them and they began to carry me faster and faster, speeding past benches and drinking fountains and, as I approached the far end of the platform, pushcarts piled high with boxes and bags and suitcases. In a film the scene would have been shot with a telephoto, cutting back and forth from me, Margot, the box of twenty-dollar sandwiches banging against my side, to the train itself; it would have peered into a lighted window, as I did, to see an old man’s face pressed against the pane, or perhaps (in the film version) two lovers embracing. In the camera’s foreshortened vision the train would chug and chug and chug without covering much ground and I would run and run and run without gaining on i
t. Actually I was gaining on the train. Overtaking it wasn’t the problem; the problem was finding a place to get on, judging how far to lead—the way a hunter leads a bird or a bounding deer—the open platform on the last car of the train.

  If the station platform had been longer—another twenty meters—I think I would have made it, but it wasn’t and I didn’t. Instead of catching the train, I took a leap in the dark at the end of the platform, landed on my feet, stumbled, tumbled on rough white rocks, and picked myself up (still holding the box of sandwiches). The train, carrying my luggage, my passport, my Icelandic ticket (open return), all my bookbinding tools, chugged indifferently down the track, displaying three red lights, like stars—fading red giants—the sign I’d been looking for, unambiguous. You could only read it one way.

  I experienced a brief moment of relief and absolute calm in which I went over in my mind what I had to do, reminding myself that I had enough money for a hotel room and that my baggage—my nylon suitcase and my Harvard book bag—would certainly be returned the next day. This moment lasted about two seconds, and then I started to scream, to curse the train, first in English and then in Italian, in which I was quite proficient: porcavaccamadonna, porcamadonnavacca, and so on. Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—the only French swearword I knew was sacrebleu, which seemed pretty tame, but a sentence from my textbook suddenly popped into my head, an imperative: “Stop that man. He has stolen my umbrella!” and I began to yell at the receding red lights: “Arrêtez cet homme. Il a volé mon parapluie! Arrêtez cet homme! Arrêtez ce train!” Much to my surprise, the train stopped.

  I didn’t notice it right away. In fact I walked half the length of the long platform before giving a backward glance, and even then it wasn’t immediately obvious that the three red lights were no longer receding. Sitting on a bench, trying to come to grips with the dramatic turn in my circumstances, wondering whether or not to call Papa and what he would say—would he be glad to have me back so soon, or would this disaster merely confirm his suspicion that I was not and never would be able to look after myself? should I ask him to call the Newberry Library, to tell them I was coming home? I looked once again in the direction of the departed train, and this time I noticed that the red lights were as bright if not brighter than ever, and soon they were brighter still. I was too astonished to get up from my bench. It didn’t occur to me at the moment that the train might be backing up for any reason other than my own convenience. I was delighted—overjoyed, in fact—and I had to hug myself to keep from laughing hysterically.

  By the time the train had backed into the station, the crowd of railroad employees who had gathered to greet it had been joined by half a dozen gendarmes in their handsome uniforms, and something told me to stay put, not to call attention to myself. The lights were on now in most of the compartments, and I caught a glimpse of Yolanda’s face pressed briefly against one of the windows of what was now the last car. It was white as chalk in the artificial light of the carbon lamps. Then Ruth’s, equally white. The gendarmes and the railroad men boarded the train. After a discreet interval I followed and immediately popped into one of the toilets. I was nervous and somewhat shaken, but pleased with myself.

  When I emerged from the toilet I was told, roughly, by a gendarme, to return to my compartment toute de suite. I was also told (I think) that I shouldn’t flush the toilet in the station.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay.” The gendarme let his fingertips brush against my bottom as I squeezed past him in the corridor. The French are so romantic. I brought my heel down on the toe of his shiny black boot.

  The train was delayed for almost an hour and a half while the railroad people checked couplings and brakes and air hoses and the gendarmes interrogated the passengers. Someone had pulled the emergency-stop cord, a serious offense, not a prank. Computers in three countries were rearranging timetables to accommodate the Luxembourg-Venise Express. Passengers, we were admonished, might be forced to disembark and wait several hours in the station. The gendarmes in general wanted to know who had pulled the cord. And the gendarme in particular whose fingers had tickled my rear end wanted to know who had pulled the cord, and he thought my emergence from the WC was a clue of some kind. There was something odd about it, but he was no Sherlock Holmes and didn’t know what to do with it.

  He questioned us in French, and I translated as best I could for Yolanda and Ruth, who remained in their berths holding their paper blankets up around their necks.

  “Why on earth would we pull the emergency-stop cord?”

  “Pourquoi tireront-ils,” I said, “le signal d’alarme?”

  “Non, non,” he corrected me. “Pourquoi est-ce qu’elles tireraient le signal d’alarme?”

  That’s what he wanted to know.

  I glanced again at the warning, in three languages, but not in English: Défense d’actionner le signal d’alarme, and at the penalty: 5,000 FF. No joke. A thousand dollars. And up to a year in a French prison.

  And why was I in the WC? he wanted to know, after the train had stopped and the passengers had been told to remain in their compartments?

  “Because I had to pee,” I shouted at him in a sudden burst of fluency. “I had to faire pipi. Can’t you understand that?”

  We were all relieved when he left our compartment and went on to the next, and even more relieved when, after a nerve-numbing delay, the train once again pulled out of the station.

  The truth is, I’ve never cared for the French, who, in my experience, have always been as rude and boorish as the Italians are charming and gracious. I even prefer Italian cooking. What it lacks in subtlety and polish it makes up for being true to the original ingredients, which are treated not as raw materials to be disciplined and totally transformed into something one would never have expected, but as, as, as . . . How should I put it? As themselves, I suppose, whose essential characteristics must be respected. And yet I have to admit that our hastily assembled quelque chose à manger pour le chemin de fer was a gastronomic joy, un repas extraordinaire. More than that, actually. Under the circumstances, it was a joy pure and simple.

  We ate standing up, the food spread out before our faces on the top berth. The box of food had been tumbled around pretty thoroughly, and some olives had gotten pressed into the currant tart, but we soon had things sorted out. Tiny mottled olives, they were, that I’ve never eaten anywhere else. I stood between Ruth and Yolanda and we touched each other as we stretched out our arms for this or that, a sampling from the cold buffet: slivers of pate, tiny boiled crayfish, a lucious pork-and-veal pie, marinated in red wine, that we ate, like everything else, with our fingers; smoked sausages and Gruyere cheese. We had to take down Yolanda’s suitcase once again to get a corkscrew for the wine, which we drank out of the bottle, a delicious Riesling, somewhat shaken but still cool and presentable. There were small golden plums for dessert, along with the tart. I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a meal more.

  We talked while we ate. I told them about Papa and the Saint-Cyr glacés and how Mama had found a rat in the toilet and how my sisters and I had been punished and how I couldn’t remember what I’d done with the ten-dollar bill I’d stolen from Mama’s purse, and how I’d happened to go to Italy.

  I had a pretty good idea by that time who had pulled the cord, but I didn’t want to ask in case it wasn’t true. But it was true, though they didn’t tell me till we were halfway into the second bottle of wine. They had pulled it together, their hands interlaced over the wooden knob at the end of the cord.

  “What if there was some way to figure out which compartment it was? Like in a dorm room, when you plug in an iron and blow the fuse, they can tell whose room it was.”

  “We had to take a chance. We couldn’t just leave you. We could see you running, you know. You were going like the wind. We had to do something.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Maybe you can write a story about it. Two stories. I’ll look for th
em in Redbook.”

  “Good idea. Our first European adventure.”

  It was midnight by my watch when we turned out the light and crawled back under our paper blankets, but I didn’t have any idea what time it was when I woke up in the pitch-dark night. I didn’t know if I’d slept half an hour or five hours. I listened for a moment to see if Yolanda or Ruth was awake, and then I climbed out of bed and pressed my face against the window to see what I could see. What invisible borders had we crossed in the night? Were we still in France? In Switzerland? Italy? If I looked up, was I looking at a high-peaked mountain? If I looked down, was I looking into a deep green-rimmed valley? If I looked straight ahead, was I looking at vineyards on terraced slopes? At high pastures sprinkled with old-world cows? I couldn’t make out a thing in the rich darkness. But it didn’t matter. It was a funny thing: I didn’t know where I was, but I knew I was where I wanted to be.

  2

  Pockets of Silence

  I didn’t really know what I was going to do when the train pulled into the station in Florence, which it did at eight o’clock in the evening. I suppose I was only a phone call away from warmth, shelter, food, a glass of wine, but no one was expecting me. No one had asked me to come; and the many friends, bright images in the memory, who would doubtless have been glad to see me, had long ago ceased to write. For reasons I never fully understood, I had never answered their letters. And so I decided, although it was cold and raining, to stay in a pens tone, at least for the first night.

  According to a copy of Il Paese Sera that I’d picked up in Rome things had pretty much returned to normal, but in fact none of the pensioni around the station were open, and the taxi driver who picked me up as I was making my way back to the station from the unlit Via Fiume and drove off in the direction of the Fortezza da Basso launched into a tale of bitter recrimination against the government without bothering to ask where I wanted to go. Rome had announced normalità, he said, because the water had gone down! “Normalità! No public assistance, no bulldozers, no trucks, no food, no drinking water, no nothing. You call that normalità?” He tipped his head as far back as it would go and gestured aggressively with his right hand, fingertips pressed together, as if he were shoving something up something.