The Train Was on Time Read online

  “I …” she said, embarrassed, “music … but of course.” It’s always a good idea to start with yes. You can always say no later. If you say no right off, your chances of doing business are nil.

  Andreas had straightened up again. “Will you sell me some music?”

  “Not without a girl,” smiled the woman.

  Andreas threw Willi an agonized look. He didn’t know what it would cost. Music and a girl, and strangely enough Willi understood that look at once. “Remember the mortgage, my lad,” he cried, “long live the Lvov mortgage! It’s all ours!”

  “All right,” Andreas said to the woman, “I’ll take some music and a girl.” The door was opened by three girls who stood laughing in the hall, they had been listening to the negotiations, two were brunettes and one was a redhead. The redhead, who had recognized Willi and flung her arms around his neck, called out to the oldish woman: “Why don’t you sell him the ‘opera singer’?” The two brunettes laughed, and one of them appropriated the blond fellow and laid a hand on his arm. He gave a sob at her touch, buckled at the knees like a straw, and the brunette had to grab him and hold on to him, whispering: “Don’t be scared, dearie, there’s no need to be scared!”

  Actually it was a good thing the blond fellow was sobbing; Andreas wanted to weep too, the waters behind the floodgate were pressing forward to where the wall had been pierced. At last I’ll be able to cry, but I’m not going to cry in front of this slot of a mouth that’s only interested in money. Maybe I’ll cry when I’m with the “opera singer.”

  “That’s right,” said the remaining brunette pertly. “If he wants music, send him the opera singer.” She turned away, and Andreas, still leaning against the wall, could hear the door being opened again, and again his ear caught a snatch of music, but it wasn’t Schubert … it was something by Liszt … Liszt was beautiful too … and Liszt could make me cry, he thought, I haven’t cried for three and a half years.

  The blond fellow was leaning against his brunette like a child, his head resting on her breast; he was weeping, and this weeping was good. No more Sivash marshes in these tears, no more terror, and yet much pain, much pain. And the redhead, who had a good-natured face, said to Willi, whose arm was clasped around her waist: “Buy him the opera singer, he’s a sweetie, I think he’s a real sweetie with his music.” She blew Andreas a kiss: “He’s young and a real sweetie, you old rascal, and you must buy him the opera singer and a piano.…”

  “The mortgage, the whole Lvov mortgage is ours!” Willi shouted.

  The oldish woman led Andreas up the stairs and along a corridor, past many closed doors, into a room furnished with some easy chairs, a couch, and a piano.

  “This is a little bar for special occasions,” she said. “The price is six hundred a night, and the opera singer—that’s a nickname, of course—the opera singer costs two hundred and fifty a night, not including refreshments.”

  Andreas staggered over to one of the armchairs, nodded, waved her away, and was glad to see the woman go. He heard her call out in the corridor: “Olina … Olina.…”

  I ought to have rented just the piano, thought Andreas, just the piano, but then he shuddered at the idea of being in this house at all. In despair he dashed to the window and flung back the curtain. Outside it was still light. Why this artificial darkness, it’s the last day I’ll ever see, why draw the curtains over it? The sun was still above a hill and shining with gentle warmth into gardens lying behind handsome villas, shining on the roofs of the villas. It’s time they harvested the apples, Andreas thought, it’s the end of September, the apples must be ripe here too. And in Cherkassy another pocket has been closed, and the pickpockets will manage it somehow. Everything’s being managed, everything’s being managed, and here I sit by a window in a brothel, in the “rubber-stamp house,” with only twelve more hours to live, twelve and a half hours, and I ought to be praying, praying, on my knees, but I’m powerless against this floodgate that’s been opened, pierced open by the dagger that was thrust into me downstairs in the hall: music. And it’s just as well I’m not going to spend the whole night alone with this piano. I’d go crazy, a piano especially. A piano. It’s a good thing Olina is coming, the “opera singer.” The map! I forgot the map, he thought. I forgot to ask the blond fellow for it; I just have to know what lies thirty miles beyond Lvov … I just have to … it can’t be Stanislav, not even Stanislav, I won’t even get as far as Stanislav. Between Lvov and Cernauti … how certain I was at first about Cernauti! At first I would have been ready to bet I’d get to see Cernauti, a suburb of Cernauti … only another thirty miles now … another twelve hours.…

  He swung round in alarm at a very soft sound, as of a cat slipping into the room. The opera singer was standing by the door, which she had closed softly behind her. She was small and very slight, with fine, delicate features, and her golden, very beautiful hair was tied loosely back on the crown of her head. There were red slippers on her feet, and she wore a pale-green dress. As soon as their eyes met her hand went to her shoulder, as though to undo her dress then and there.…

  “No!” cried Andreas, and instantly regretted letting fly at her like that. I’ve already bawled out one of them, he thought, and I’ll never be able to wipe that out. The opera singer looked at him less offended than surprised. The strange note of anguish in his voice had caught her ear. “No,” said Andreas more gently, “don’t.”

  He moved toward her, stepped back, sat down, stood up again, and added: “Is it all right to call you by your first name?”

  “Yes,” she said, very low. “My name is Olina.”

  “I know,” he said. “Mine’s Andreas.”

  She sat down in the armchair he gestured toward and gave him a puzzled, almost apprehensive look. He walked to the door and turned the key in the lock. Sitting beside her he studied her profile. She had a finely drawn nose, neither round nor pointed, a Fragonard nose, he thought, and a Fragonard mouth too. She looked wanton in a way, but she could just as easily be innocent, as innocently wanton as those Fragonard shepherdesses, but she had a Polish face, the nape of her neck was Polish, supple, elemental.

  He was glad he had brought cigarettes. But he was out of matches. She quickly got up, opened a closet that was crammed with bottles and boxes, and took out some matches. Before handing them to him she wrote something down on a sheet of paper lying in the closet. “I have to note down everything,” she said, her voice still low, “even these.”

  They smoked and looked out into the golden countryside with the gardens of Lvov behind the villas.

  “You used to be an opera singer?” asked Andreas.

  “No,” she said, “they just call me that because I studied music. They think if you’ve studied music you must be an opera singer.”

  “So you can’t sing?”

  “Oh yes I can, but I didn’t study singing, I just sing … like that, you know.”

  “And what did you study?”

  “The piano,” she said quietly, “I wanted to be a pianist.”

  How strange, thought Andreas, I wanted to be a pianist too. A stab of pain constricted his heart. I wanted to be a pianist, it was the dream of my life. I could play quite nicely, really, quite well, but school hung around my neck like a leaden weight. School prevented me. First I had to finish school. Everyone in Germany first has to finish school. You can’t do a thing without a high-school diploma. First I had to finish school, and by the time I’d done that it was 1939, and I had to join the labor service, and by the time I was through with that the war had started; that was four and a half years ago and I haven’t touched a piano since. I wanted to be a pianist. I dreamed about it, just as much as other people dream of becoming school principals. But I wanted to be a pianist, and I loved the piano more than anything else in the world, but nothing came of it. First school, then labor service, and by that time they’d started a war, the bastards.… The pain was suffocating him, and he had never felt as wretched in his life. It’ll do me good to su
ffer. Perhaps that’ll help me to be forgiven for sitting here in a brothel in Lvov beside the opera singer who costs two hundred and fifty for a whole night without matches and without piano, the piano that costs six hundred. Perhaps I’ll be forgiven for all that because this pain is numbing me, paralyzing me, because she said the words “pianist” and “piano.” It’s excruciating, this pain, it’s like an acrid poison in my throat and it’s sliding farther and farther down, through my gullet and into my stomach and spreading all through my body. Half an hour ago I was still happy because I’d drunk Sauternes, because I remembered the terrace above Le Treport where the eyes had been very close to me, and where I played the piano to them, to those eyes, in my imagination, and now I’m consumed with agony, sitting in this brothel beside this lovely girl whom the entire great-and-glorious German Wehrmacht would envy me. And I’m glad I’m suffering, I’m glad I’m almost passing out with pain, I’m happy to be suffering, suffering so excruciatingly, because then I may hope to be forgiven everything, forgiven for not praying, praying, praying, not spending my last twelve hours on my knees praying. But where could I kneel? Nowhere on earth could I kneel in peace. I’ll tell Olina to keep watch at the door, and I’ll get Willi to pay six hundred marks for the piano, and two hundred and fifty marks for the beautiful opera singer without matches, and I’ll buy Olina a bottle of wine so she won’t get bored.…

  “What’s the matter?” Olina asked. There was surprise in her gentle voice since he had cried no.

  He looked at her, and it was wonderful to see her eyes. Gray, very gentle, sad eyes. He must give her an answer.

  “Nothing,” he said; and then suddenly he asked, and it was a tremendous effort to force the few words out of his mouth through the poison of his pain: “Did you finish your music studies?”

  “No,” she said shortly, and he saw it would be cruel to question her. She tossed her cigarette into the large metal ashtray that she had placed on the floor between their two armchairs, and asked, her voice low and gentle again: “Shall I tell you about it?”

  “Yes,” he said, not daring to look at her, for those gray eyes, that were perfectly calm, scared him.

  “All right.” But she did not begin. She was looking at the floor; he was aware when she raised her head, then she asked suddenly: “How old are you?”

  “In February I would be twenty-four,” he said quietly.

  “In February you would be twenty-four. Would be … won’t you be?”

  He looked at her, astonished. What a sensitive ear she had! And all at once he knew he would tell her about it, her alone. She was the only person who was to know everything, that he was going to die, tomorrow morning, just before six, or just after six, in.…

  “Oh well,” he said, “it’s just a manner of speaking. What’s the place called,” he asked suddenly, “that lies thirty miles beyond Lvov toward … toward Cernauti?”

  Her astonishment was growing. “Stryy,” she said.

  Stryy? What a strange name, Andreas thought, I must have overlooked it on the map. For God’s sake, I must pray for the Jews of Stryy too. Let’s hope there are still some Jews in Stryy … Stryy … so that’s where it will be, he would die just this side of Stryy … not even Stanislav, not even Kolomyya, and a long long way this side of Cernauti. Stryy! That was it! Maybe it wasn’t even on that map of Willi’s.…

  “So you’ll be twenty-four in February,” said Olina. “Funny, so will I.” He looked at her. She smiled. “So will I,” she repeated. “I was born February 12, 1920.”

  They looked at each other for a long time, a very long time, and their eyes sank into one another’s, and then Olina leaned toward him, and because the chairs were too far apart she rose, moved toward him, and made as if to put her arms around him, but he turned aside. “No,” he said quietly, “not that, don’t be angry with me, later … I’ll explain.… My … my birthday’s February 15.”

  She lit another cigarette, he was glad he hadn’t offended her. She was smiling. She was thinking, after all he’s hired the room and me for the whole night. And it’s only six o’clock, not even quite six.…

  “You were going to tell me about it,” said Andreas.

  “Yes,” she said. “We’re the same age, I like that. I’m three days older than you. I expect I’m your sister.…” She laughed. “Maybe I really am your sister.”

  “Please tell me about it.”

  “I am,” she said, “I am telling you. In Warsaw I studied at the Conservatory of Music. You wanted to hear about my studies, didn’t you?”

  “Yes!”

  “Do you know Warsaw?”

  “No.”

  “Well then. Here we go. Warsaw is a big city, a beautiful city, and the Conservatory was in a house like this one. Only the garden was bigger, much bigger. During recess we could stroll in that lovely big garden and flirt. They told me I was very talented. I took piano. I would rather have played only the harpsichord at first, but no one taught that, so I had to take piano. For my entrance test I had to play a short, simple little Beethoven sonata. That was tricky. It’s so easy to make a mess of those simple little things, or one plays them too emotionally. It’s very difficult to play those simple things. It was Beethoven, you know, but a very early Beethoven, almost classical in style, almost like Haydn. A very subtle piece for an entrance test, d’you see?”

  “Yes,” said Andreas, and he could sense that soon he was going to cry.

  “Good. I passed, with Very Good. I studied and played till … let’s see … till the war started. That’s right, it was the fall of ‘thirty-nine, two years; I learned a lot and flirted a lot. I always did like kissing and all that, you know. I could play Liszt quite well by that time, and Tchaikovsky. But I could never really play Bach properly. I would have liked to play Bach. And I could play Chopin quite well too. Fine. Then came the war.… Oh yes, and there was a garden behind the Conservatory, a wonderful garden, with benches and arbors, and sometimes we had parties, and there would be music and dancing in the garden. Once we had a Mozart evening, a wonderful Mozart evening.… Mozart was another one I could already play quite well. Well, then came the war!”

  She broke off abruptly, and Andreas turned questioning eyes on her. She looked angry. The hair seemed to bristle above that Fragonard forehead.

  “For God’s sake,” she burst out, “do what the others all do with me. This is ridiculous!”

  “No,” said Andreas, “you have to tell me.”

  “That,” she said frowning, “is something you can’t pay for.”

  “Yes I can,” he said, “I’ll pay in the same coin. I’ll tell you my story too. Everything.…”

  But she was silent. She stared at the floor and was silent. He studied her out of the corner of his eye and thought: she does look like a tart after all. There’s sex in every fiber of that pretty face, and she’s not an innocent shepherdess, she’s a very wanton shepherdess. It gave him a pang to find that she was a tart after all. The dream had been very lovely. She might be standing anywhere in the Gare Montparnasse. And it did him good to feel that pain again. For a time it had completely gone. He loved listening to her gentle voice telling him about the Conservatory.…

  “It’s boring,” she said suddenly. She spoke with complete indifference.

  “Let’s have some wine,” said Andreas.

  She rose, walked briskly to the closet, and in a businesslike voice asked: “What would you like to drink?” She looked into the closet: “There’s some red wine and some white, Moselle, I think.”

  “All right,” he said, “let’s have some Moselle.”

  She brought over the bottle, pushed a little table up to their chairs, handed him the corkscrew, and set out glasses while he opened the bottle. He watched her, then poured the wine, they raised their glasses, and he smiled into her angry eyes.

  “Let’s drink to the year of our birth,” he said, “1920.”

  She smiled against her will. “All right, but I’m not going to tell you any more.”


  “Shall I tell you my story?”

  “No,” she said. “All you fellows can talk about is the war. I’ve been listening to that for two years now. Always the war. As soon as you’ve finished … you begin talking about the war. It’s boring.”

  “What would you like to do then?”

  “I’d like to seduce you, you’re a virgin, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Andreas, and was taken aback at the way she promptly jumped up. “I knew it,” she cried, “I knew it!” He saw her eager, flushed face, the eyes flashing at him, and thought: Funny, I’ve never seen any woman I’ve desired less than this one, and she’s beautiful, and I could have her right now. Oh yes, sometimes a thrill has gone through me, without my trying or wanting it, and for that split second I’ve known that it must be truly wonderful to possess a woman. But there’s never been one I desired as little as this one. I’ll tell her about it, I’ll tell her everything.…

  “Olina,” he said, pointing to the piano, “Olina, play the little Beethoven sonata.”

  “Promise you’ll … promise you’ll make love to me.”

  “No,” he said quietly. “Come and sit here.” He made her sit beside him in the armchair, and she looked at him without saying a word.

  “Now listen,” he said, “I’m going to tell you my story.”

  He looked out of the window and saw that the sun had gone down and that only a very little light remained over the gardens. Very soon there would be no more sunlight outside in the gardens, and never again, never again would the sun shine, never again would he see a single ray of sunshine. The last night was beginning, and the last day had passed like all the others, wasted and meaningless. He had prayed a bit and drunk some wine and now he was in a brothel. He waited until it was dark. He had no idea how long it took, he had forgotten the girl, forgotten the wine, the whole house, and all he saw was a last little bit of the forest whose treetops caught a few final glints from the setting sun, a few tiny glints from the sun. Some reddish gleams, exquisite, indescribably beautiful on those treetops. A tiny crown of light, the last light he would ever see. Now it was gone … no, there was still a bit, a tiny little bit on the tallest of the trees, the one that reached up the highest and could still catch something of the golden reflection that would remain for only half a second … until it was all gone. It’s still there, he thought, holding his breath … still a particle of light up there on the treetop … an absurd little shimmer of sunlight, and no one in the world but me is watching it. Still there … still there, it was like a smile that faded very slowly … still there, and now it was gone! The light has gone out, the lantern has vanished, and I shall never see it again.…