God Speed the Night Read Free

all right,” Rachel said over and over. Her voice and then her whole presence became familiar, and he knew at once why she was on the other side of the dream: they had married less than a week ago, and the dream had commenced before. “He has bad dreams,” she explained to the others in the compartment.
    “Who does not?” a man said.
    Marc turned to the window. Close alongside the train, their helmeted heads bobbing up and down, the German soldiers moved forward. The tremor of fear ran through him. Rachel said, “They are outside, we are inside.”
    The man opposite overheard although she had spoken softly. “No, madame. They are inside everywhere.”
    Marc looked at him: a mournful, sweating face. He was wearing far too many clothes for the summer day. He too was on a one-way journey, Marc thought, and his wife was trying to elbow him into silence.
    Another man trod on their feet, trying to climb over the luggage to the window. “What are they looking for?”
    Marc looked out again. The soldiers had squatted down, their rifles poised. “For the traveler without an Ausweis ,” Marc said.
    “Inside everywhere,” the man repeated.
    “We are almost there,” the man at the window said. “I can see the spire of St. Hilaire.”
    “You should have wakened me,” Marc said, leaning close to Rachel.
    “You never sleep enough.”
    “Never is too big a word. You haven’t known me that long.” He spoke lightly, wanting to forestall more tension if he could. He brushed her forehead with his lips.
    The color rose to the pale girl’s cheeks. It pleased him to see it. It meant her fears were less than his, he thought, and he had mastered his before.
    The woman opposite Rachel said, “You are just married, madame—monsieur?”
    “No, madame,” Marc said. The papers they traveled on showed them to have been married for a year. The fact was their marriage had been a compact in the presence of a witness: there was no public record of it.
    “Do not ask questions,” the woman’s husband said. “Leave the questions to the Boches. ” He curled the sweat from his forehead with his fingers and whipped it onto the luggage at his feet. The splash of it crawled through the dust like something alive.
    The man at the window stumbled back to his seat.
    “There is no more conversation anywhere,” the woman lamented.
    “Soon it will be different,” Rachel smiled at her. It was almost impossible for Rachel not to smile, Marc thought, and for just an instant he conjured a picture of what she would be like in the daylight of their lives if that time ever came: a laughing girl who loved the sun.
    A whistle sounded, a gutteral command and the soldiers scrambled up the embankment. A moment later the train lurched forward. The soldiers waved. No one in the compartment waved back to them. Those with a view of the aisle began to grope in their pockets for their papers. The team of inspectors soon arrived, the French conductor, a German in the uniform of the French railways, and a national policeman. Marc steeled himself and watched what happened to the couple opposite who he suspected were also in flight. They were passed without question, their papers stamped for arrival at St. Hilaire. Marc gave over his to the conductor.
    The German asked at once his military status. Marc was the only man under thirty in the compartment. He described another’s history. His identity card showed him to be a medical student. The German watched him closely, and in the midst of his recitation, interrupted. “Why do you travel now, monsieur?”
    “It is between terms and we are permitted to go home to assist in the harvest,” Marc said.
    “Let me see your hands, palms up.”
    Marc showed them like a beggar seeking alms, but they were steady. “They will harden quickly,” he said.
    The German moved on to the next compartment, the gendarme following him. The conductor returned the papers to Marc but without the terminal stamp on the travel permit.