Now all this family of visitors save one, the child, were struck dead before long. Five of them carried the germ of the cancer that would destroy them, and one died of a stroke. The little boy was allowed to grow up, but his parents were killed when a military helicopter exploded over a crowded highway on a Saturday afternoon. As for the horrible Jürgen, he was found murdered in a parking lot. A man who signed an IOU for five hundred marks in Jürgen’s favor disappeared one day. The man’s wife said he was dead, but Jürgen had yet to see an account of the funeral. He grew tired of waiting and went to call on the widow. She was obstinate, said she knew nothing about a debt, that her husband was buried. The death certificate had been lost. There was no stone on the grave because she had no money to pay for one. When she began to contradict herself, turned vague and weepy, Jürgen gave up talking and looked to see what he could take instead of the money. He lifted a coffee table out of the way and began rolling up a small rug. All the while he was doing this the widow howled that it was her best carpet, the only thing she owned worth selling. True — everything else was trash, probably bought secondhand to begin with.
Instead of crossing the road to the parking lot Jürgen strode down to the corner and the traffic lights (he was law-abiding) and around the corner; made a detour to compare his new rug with some in a store window; turned up a side street and back to the parking lot across from the widow’s place. There he saw one of her sons, aged about thirteen. “What now?” Jürgen sang out. He held the rug overhead, thinking the kid would grab for it. He was good-tempered, laughing. He had an advantage; not only was he powerful and large, but he was not afraid of harming anyone.
The kid broke into a run, with a hand behind his back.
“You don’t want to do that,” said Jürgen. He was ready to cripple the kid with a knee and step on his right hand, but only if he had to. He must have seemed like a great statue to the boy, standing with both arms straight up supporting the carpet. Jürgen brought his knee up too high and too soon; he was used to fighting with men. The kid bent gracefully over the knee and pushed the length of the blade of a kitchen knife above the buckle of Jürgen’s belt.
The train trembled and slid round a curve, out of sight of the dappled lawn and the people climbing slowly up to the castle, on their last excursion together. Christine moved back to the compartment to make way for a vendor in a white coat pulling an empty trolley.
“We have had drinks without ice,” said Herbert. “Coffee without cups. Now nothing at all.”
The woman in the corner fanned herself briskly with a fan improvised out of postcards. They came over every night and for lunch on Sundays. When the other couple had God’s own darling, our precious Carol Ann, they would bring her in a basket lined with dotted Swiss. I remember Carol Ann’s first veal cutlet. I had a wooden hammer — no American butcher knew how to slice veal thin enough. Later they went on their diets, wanted broiled steaks, string beans, Boston lettuce, fat-free yogurts. Carol Ann the little cow came home from summer camp with a taste for cold meat loaf made from stray cats and chili sauce. The little bitch grew older, demanded baker’s cakes, baker’s pies, cupcakes in cellophane, ready-mix peach ice cream, frozen lasagna, pineapple chunks, canned chop suey, canned spaghetti, while the big cow, the little cow’s mother, got a craving for canned fudge sauce their way, poured it over everything, poured it over my fresh spice cake. I stopped making spice cake.
“We could move, you know,” said Christine to Herbert. “I’ve noticed one or two empty compartments.”
“I have seen them too,” said Herbert, “but the seats in those compartments have been reserved and we would eventually have to come back here.”
“It’s just that I don’t feel well,” she said.
“Heat and hunger and thirst,” said Herbert. He shrugged, though not through indifference; he meant that he was powerless to help.
They wanted Aunt Jemima pancakes, corn syrup, maple syrup, hot onion rolls, thousand-island dressing, butter that would give you jaundice just to look at, carrots grated in lemon Jell-O, and as for the piglet Carol Ann, one whole winter she would not eat anything but bottled sandwich spread on ready-sliced bread, said only Jews and krauts and squareheads ate the dark. Had been told this by her best friend at that time, Rose of Sharon Jasakowicz.
“There’s too much interference!” said Christine, though little Bert was not being a bother at all, was nowhere near her. She sprang up and went back to the corridor, untied her scarf and let the wind lift her hair. The Norwegian stood close beside her and showed her his yoga method of breathing, pinching his nostrils and puffing like a bullfrog. The train stopped more and more erratically, sometimes every eight or nine minutes. Presently she noticed they were standing in a station yard that seemed so hopeless, so unlikely to offer even the most primitive sort of buffet, that none of them made a move to go out. The yard buildings were saturated with heat, gray with drought, and the shrubs and trees beyond the station contained not a drop of moisture in their trunks and stems. A loudspeaker carried a man’s voice along the empty platform: “All the windows on the train are to be shut until further orders.”
“They can’t mean this train,” said the Norwegian.
Herbert, evidently annoyed by such a senseless direction, immediately went off to find the conductor. The woman in the corner began peeling an orange with her teeth. “I have diabetes, I am always hungry,” she said suddenly, apparently to little Bert.
Herbert soon came back with an answer: There had been grass and brush fires along the tracks. “They may even have been set deliberately,” he said. She could hear him explaining calmly to little Bert about the fires, so the child would not be alarmed.
“We can’t shut all the windows in this heat,” said Christine. “Certainly not for long.” No one answered her.
After the train had quit the gray station yard she continued to stand at the open window, her hair flying like the little girls’ purple crepe-paper streamers. Each time the train approached a curve she imagined the holocaust they might become. She thought of the ties consumed, flakes of fire on the compartment ceilings, sparks burned black on the first-class velvet. All the same, she kept hold of the two window handles, ready to slide the pane up at the first hint of danger. No one challenged her except for the bun-faced conductor, who asked if she had heard the order.
“Yes, but there aren’t any fires,” she said. “We need air.” It was true that there were no signs of trouble except for burned-out patches of grass. Not even a trace of ash remained on the sky, not even a cinder. The conductor continued to look at her in his jolly way, head to one side, a smile painted on his face, looking as round and as stuffed as a little clown. “All right,” she said. “I shall close the window, at least until Backnang. Then you can say that we all obeyed you.”
“The train has been rerouted because of the danger,” he said. “No Backnang.”
“That seems fairly high-handed of you,” she began, but of course she was wasting her breath. He was only a subaltern; he had no real power.
With its shut window, the compartment was unbearable now. Even little Bert was looking green.
“I was going to tell you about the change,” said Herbert. “But you were having a yoga lesson and I didn’t want to interrupt. We go through Coburg now. We shall be a couple of hours late, I imagine. I believe we change trains. Coburg is a pretty place,” he added, to console her.