Midnight Train to Amsterdam Part Two

After the struggle of wading through crowds that were scrambling to gain entrance onto the train, he flung her suitcase up against the wall of the coupler room. She stared at him half in shock and in half in anger.

“Hey! What did you do that for? All my stuff is in there. What if someone wants to steal it?"

“No one will want to,” He glared sardonically, “Most of them are too lazy to take something that heavy.”

Leading her out of the coupler room, he held her hand as they threaded their way down the narrow aisle supported by the rows of second class compartments. Choosing a secluded one he gestured for her to go in and sit down.

She was tired but too wired to sleep.

He hung up his jacket, stretched out on the bench and stared out the window. The train was still taking on passengers and he heard the muffled noise of the loudspeakers announcing the new arrivals. Suddenly he spoke out toward the window, almost as if in reverie.

“People, the train beckons, they respond. Mindless figures move like starchy robots. They trample over youths of Europe that sleep, just to get to the train. No heed, only trample the youth of Europe under, make them swear. I despise this. Although…some would find it amusing.”

The girl held her arms up over her head putting her back pack up on the overhead rack above the seat. As she heard him say this she mouth to it, “What the Hell?”

Within his own thoughts, the guy thought further on what he had said, “Once the robots are able to get on the train they will dangle themselves over the tops of the windows like caged animals, laughing, jeering passing out derogatory advice. They will take out all of their hostilities on the fully awakened angered youths. It is like a battlefield. Some will even climb out of their cages and resort to physical violence.” He tore his gaze away, but was accutely aware of what was happening in Europe. He felt the train lurch forward as it left the sadists behind. “I’ll never be like them,” He said out loud.

He turned to look at the girl. She was staring through the glass thinking one more time, “What the hell?”

“I must apologize for my behavior.” He addressed her again, “About your suitcase, I am sorry to throw it. But, not so many clothes are need as you might think.” He lit another cigarette and he proffered his hand. She shook it curtly, and shook it as was the custom. He asked what she was called.

The girl told him her name and a little bit about why she had the name.

He responded half aloof. “Mine is Tomas, I do not know it’s meaning, nor do I care," He snapped quickly but then softened his voice, “However, your name is of interest.” He returned his gaze out the window.

It was now that the girl noticed the coldness in his eyes. It was the coldness of ice crystals hanging off of steel. But to make conversation because it would be another long train ride, she asked, “Where are you from Tomas?”

With an unemotional answer, he stated flatly, “I am from Bremen. A steel jungle full of animals. My personal hell. I am glad to escape for a while.”

“Okay….” She bent her head and looked into her lap. She rolled her eyes and thought to herself, “Is he like trying out for MacBeth or something?” Then to be polite she raised her head back up and smiled at him.

He turned and looked at the assessing curiosity that radiated from her eyes. All of a sudden he asked, “A sandwich and a beer?”

“No, thank you,” She replied thinking about the money in her pocket. She was determined to make it last until she got to Amsterdam then get something to eat there.

“Okay, well I am hungry, be back in a while.” He slid the door tightly shut.

For some reason she felt greatly relieved when he left. It was as if he took the heavy air with him. She stood up and stretched in what seemed like relief from tension, then she pulled her back pack down off of the overhead rack from above the seat. After she sat back down she returned her gaze back out the window. Her eyes became fixed in the passing village lights. They looked like elongated star trails strafing through darkness. It was as if she were shifting inside of a continuous tunnel. As if she wasn’t there on the train but, rather, viewing passing time through the window in a neutron collider. The train lulled her with its rocking and jostling. It purred to her in a strange melody as she continued to stare out into never ending depth. Depth created by a vacuum that would eventually inhale all the available light, however sparsely distributed it might be. After quite some time she shook herself from her trance like state and opened the book in her hand. “A Pair of Blue Eyes” found Steven downstairs, in Elfrieda’s father’s parlor. His things were packed. He was lacing together a folder that held some papers. Barely dawn, Elfrieda had awoken early because she had thought she had detected the sound of thread being pulled in and out of a box. Elfrieda tip toed down the stairs with a candle in her hand. Confronted by her in his almost surupticious retreat from her father’s residence, Steven had just sighed to gain his composure, at the bottom of the paragraph, the girl was on. The girl had the page poised tantalizingly within her fingers. It was so she could get to Steven’s announcement, but not hurry it along too quickly, because she wanted to imagine the scene through Elfrieda’s eyes. She wanted to walk in Elfrieda’s desperation, where at the top of the next page, Steven begs what seems to be his final leave of her. She wanted to feel the sheer terror as Elfrieda grabbed what ever propriety she had by slipping into actions it took her to display the sensibility expected of her. While inside she secretly ceased to be as she listens to Steven’s warped pleasant parting couched in his empty sunny promises. She sighed for Elfrieda’s racing heart as she realized Steven had decided to go back to London because he knew that he could never give Elfrieda the life that she required. He was explaining the differences in their classes to her….

The compartment door slowly slid open. A long arm covered in army green fatigue cloth snaked in and rapped twice on the inside of the door. Almost as disturbed as Elfrieda was, upon discovering Steven’s cowardly with drawl, the girl looked up instantly.

“Hey, Amerika, you want I should buy you a coffee?” The question came from the boy who offered her the first cigarette.

As if they had been watching a movie together, instead of her singly being involved in a book, she said, “But, I was just to the point where Steven was going to leave Elfrieda. I can’t leave her in her devastation,” The girl pleaded almost as if she was in the voice Elfrieda would use.

As if in momentum with the train, the boy said, “Such devastation can return after a coffee.”

“But, this is Hardy.”

“A proletariate. Wrote about separation of class, yes.” He winked. “Books are bad for you.”.

“Granted that he was, but, this is a classic.”

“Classic fantasy, maybe. Same story. Royalists convince poor they have responsibility toward their harsh reality. Is way to laugh at them publically for greed and profit.” He confirmed his statement with a logical reason.

“It is just a creative story.” She defended.

“Is it?” His dark eyebrows rose in a question.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The boy waved his fingers toward his palm in a beckoning manner, “Come, a fish sandwich calls too.”

She shook her head and smiled as she grabbed her back pack. “Well, ok, a cup of coffee is starting to sound good. The way you keep inserting it into the conversation it is starting to sound like a suggestion.”

He smiled and she followed him out into the narrow corridor that balanced out the compartment side of the train. They passed the coupler room as soon as they left the compartment. Her suitcase caught her eye and she deviated from behind him to go check on it. He sensed the breath that shadowed him was no longer there so he turned.

“What are you doing?” He asked.

“Checking on my suitcase. Don’t want to get it stolen.” She said as she rattled the handle to see if the suitcase would separate because it had been thrown.

“No one would care to. Is large and conspicous.” He observed.

“Ok, that is the second time today that I’ve heard that.” She scowled knitting together her eyebrows as equally dark as his. She leaned over the suit case some more and fussed over it like a mother protecting her baby against a monster from the dark. Then she protested to him, “Yeah, but all the latest European fashions are in it. My German sister said that I would have them three years before they became popular in the states.”

“And, popular, this is important to you?” He said, as he stood over her, patiently waiting for her to finish checking her things over.

“Well, sort of, I guess?” She said.

As she raised her head up, to pay attention to his voice that was almost too hard to hear because of the rumbling train, she caught the seriousness in the question that announced itself from his gray eyes. Looking further into them she noticed that they were not completely gray, because they had a near indigo ring around their outer rim. Briefly, she became lost in them.

“Can a paper doll change her soul as often as clothes?” He asked again.

“What?” The train noise had heightened and she wasn’t sure where she had been. “What did you say?”

He didn’t repeat it, he just asked another question.

“You said, ‘German sister’, but you are an American, yes?”

“Well, yeah, but, well, I have been a foreign exchange student for this past year.” She answered as if she was being pointedly interrogated.

He nodded in confirmation to something he was possibly thinking, but, then he reminded her again, “Coffee awaits. Leave the baggage. The train will keep it save.”

As they wound their way down to the dining car she watched his long dark hair bounce off of his perfectly parallel green shoulder blades. They moved in a fluid motion, with purpose, as if he was on his way out to inspect the troops. She felt as if she was his attache accompanying behind him with a notebook tucked against her chest. Listening to her commanding general she was scrambling to catch up with him jotting down the orders he was issuing from his determined lips.

In the dining car, the girl stood beside the boy while he stood in front of the smiling cashier. He had dug deep into the pocket of his brown, tan, and green cammoflauge pants. The green was the same color of green that was in his fatigue jacket. He looked into the annoying perpetual smile of the cashier as if he was assessing her idiocy. Then, he unfolded some bills and knit his eyebrows together in a scowl as he handed them to her. After he paid for the food, he carefully handed the girl her cup of coffee. Then he picked up the cup of hot water and set the tea bag beside it on the saucer. Next he grabbed his paper wrapped fish sandwich. He motioned toward a table by a dark window that shone his glossy reflection leading her as she followed him over. Standing there a second, he dipped his eyes onto the seat in front of the girl. Sensing that he had invited her to sit first, she placed her cup on the table then sat almost immediately. He then took a seat in the chair opposite her. Without looking up at her he placed the cup and sandwich neatly on the table then went about his task of preparing his meal.

She watched as he carefully took the tea bag out of the envelope and, then squared the envelope sideways at the bottom of the cup of hot water. Then holding the tea bag string between his fingers, she saw him give it a little shake as if a dog was checking it prey to find out if it was dead. As he unfolded it for maximum flow through capability, a look of pleasure slid into the faint smile that seemed to continually tease his lips. He dipped the bag three times as if he was playing with a yoyo. He dunked it in and out of the steam, until magic turned the cup the proper shade of readiness. Satisfied with the saturation of the level of tea in the water, he let the string hang loosely over the side of the cup. He looked at the color one last time to determine if there needed to be a return engagement of dunking. A small quick nod and he went about the next motion in his meal preparation. He took a napkin from the dispenser and unfolded to its full dimension. Then he took the bottom of the napkin and folded it up toward the middle of the table to obtain a half of napkin. Next he unwrapped the fish sandwich and placed it the center of the napkin. When he folded the sides back over the top of the sandwich the napkin made a perfect horizontal white line around it. His eyes darted over it as if to evaluate it at the same time that he was giving it a warning.

Almost mesmerized by this display, she absently took a sip of her coffee and almost burned her lip. In spite of this, she decided that it did taste good. It was dark and rich, just the way she had learned to like it in Germany. The first sip made her want another, then another until she was surprised at how much she had really wanted the cup of coffee after all.

He took a bite of the sandwich and put it down on top of yet another napkin that he had laid out in its full dimension and had squared parallel with the edge of the table. He picked up the tea looked at the water again. Then he took a careful sip.

Noticing the look that came across his face she asked, “What’s the matter?”

His voice was blunt as he said, “Fish sandwiches they serve on trains taste old.”

“I’m sorry,” She sympathized naturally. Then she became surprised when she saw him take another bite.

“You know, people have hunger, need food. People go from place to place in vehicle transport.
Food comes from restaurant. Restaurant always mess it up through handling or other means.” He lit a cigarette. “But, we are on train, so….food arrives in even more inedible condition. Restaurant worker get wage of slave. Beer awaits to bring fantasy to his misery. What care they that train get three day old fish?” The scathing he pronounced on the fish ended in another smile, as he rationalized, “But…use to it, I am. All is tasteless after a while, anyway. What does it matter?” He flicked the ash off of the end of his cigarette then, returned to his mouth for one more considered drag, and, then, he balanced it against the ashtray. Carefully he picked up the sandwich again so as not to disturb the symmetry of its wrapping, and he took yet another bite. He followed with a hard swallowed from a sip of tea.

Again she repeated, “I’m sorry.” She thought she sounded like a myna bird. But, what was she to do? She wasn’t sure where all this intensity was going to lead to. Hadn’t she just avoided the stifling mists of obscure implications from that other guy a little while earlier?

“Amerika, is not your fault. Is economic system in this country.” The boy placated her.

She brightened a bit, in that she could get away from the uncomfortable emotion hovering over the food. Uncomfortable because she didn’t know how she could fix it for him so that he could have a more pleasant experience.

“This country? Do you come here very often then?” She looked into her cup as she raised it for another sip.

“I live here.” He spread his arms wide as if to say, ‘I’m the only one to see the humor in this joke.’

“Oh, well, you said it like….”

“I do not want to live here?” He adjusted himself in his chair to lean a little closer in as if to confide a truth, “Yes, I guess I do not.”

“Why? From what I saw of it after I crossed the border, it is beautiful.” She said.

“For tourist, maybe, for me is not home.” He said. He picked up his cigarette drew on another thoughtful puff.