She was frightened. Not so much about the
unknown territory that lay before them, but about
the unknown man she was snuggling up to. Now
that he was so close, everything she had seen and
become used to from a distance seemed to
disappear.
She listened for his heartbeat, but the rattle of the
train on the rails was too loud, so she had to take it
on trust that there was a heart in there. She smiled
to herself and waves of pleasure washed over her.
What a wonderful, wonderful insanity! She knew
absolutely nothing about him; he had told her so
little about himself, he had told her only these
stories.
His uniform smelled of mildew, and for a second
it struck her that it was probably the smell a
soldier’s uniform had when he had been lying dead
on the battlefield for a while. Or had been buried.
But where did these ideas come from? She had
been so tense for so long that only now did she
realise how tired she was.
‘Sleep,’ he said in response to her thoughts.
‘Yes,’ she said. She vaguely recalled hearing an
air-raid siren in the distance as the world around
her shrank.
‘What?’
She heard her own voice, felt Uriah shaking her
and she jumped. The first thing that came into her
head when she saw the uniformed man in the
doorway was that they had been caught.
‘Tickets, please.’
‘Oh,’ she exclaimed. She tried to pull herself
together and felt the ticket conductor’s probing
eyes on her as she rummaged feverishly in her bag.
Finally she found the yellow cardboard tickets she
had bought in Vienna and passed them to the
conductor. He studied the tickets while rocking on
his heels in rhythm with the train. It took longer
than was comfortable for Helena.
‘You’re going to Paris?’ he asked. ‘Together?’
‘ Ganz genau,’ Uriah said.
The conductor was an older man. He looked at
them.
‘You’re not from Austria, I can hear.’
‘No. I’m Norwegian.’
‘Oh, Norway. I’ve heard it’s beautiful.’
‘Yes, thank you. You could say that.’
‘So you voluntarily enlisted to fight for Hitler
then?’
‘I did. I’ve been on the Eastern Front. In the
north.’
‘Really? Where in the north?’
‘Up by Leningrad.’
‘Hm. And now you’re going to Paris. Together
with your . . . ?’
‘Girlfriend.’
‘Girlfriend, exactly. On leave?’
‘Yes.’
The conductor punched their tickets. ‘From
Vienna?’ he asked Helena, handing them back. She
nodded. ‘I can see you’re Catholic,’ he said,
pointing to the crucifix she wore on a chain over
her blouse. ‘My wife is too.’
He leaned back and scanned the corridor. And
then, turning to Uriah, he asked, ‘Has your
girlfriend shown you Stephansdom in Vienna?’
‘No, I’ve been laid up in the hospital, so
unfortunately I haven’t had much of a chance to see
the city.’
‘Right. A Catholic hospital by any chance?’
‘Yes, the Rudo—’
‘Yes,’ Helena interrupted. ‘A Catholic hospital.’
‘Hm.’
Why doesn’t he go away? Helena wondered.
The conductor cleared his throat again.
‘Yes?’ Uriah said finally.
‘It’s none of my business, but I hope you’ve
remembered your papers as proof that you’re on
leave.’
Papers? Helena thought. She had been to France
twice before with her father, and it had never even
occurred to her they might need anything other than
a passport.
‘Yes, it’s not a problem for you, Fräulein, but for your uniformed friend here it’s essential that he
carries papers documenting where he’s stationed
and where he’s going.’
‘Of course we have papers,’ she burst out.
‘Surely you don’t imagine that we would travel
without them.’
‘No, no, of course not,’ the conductor responded
hastily.‘I just wanted to remind you. A couple of
days ago . . .’ He shifted his attention to the
Norwegian. ‘. . . they arrested a young man who
clearly had no orders to go where he was going,
and he was consequently treated as a deserter.
They took him on to the platform and shot him.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘I’m afraid I do. I don’t mean to frighten you, but
war is war. And since you have official papers,
you shouldn’t have any problems when we get to
the border immediately after leaving Salzburg.’
The carriage lurched and the conductor had to
grab hold of the door frame. The three people