The Chateau Read Free Page A

down, on the outskirts of Carentan, but by that time the luggage was in a pile blocking the front of the coach, and they were standing beside it, ready to alight.
    What should have been a station platform was, instead, a long, long rock pile. Looking up and down it as the train drew to a stop he saw that one of his fears, at least, was justified: there were no porters. He jumped down and she handed him the lighter suitcases, but the two big ones she could not even lift. The other passengers tried to get by her, and then turned and went toward the other end of the coach—all except a red-headed man, who saw that they were in trouble and without saying a word took over, just as Harold was about to climb back on the train.
    What a nice, kind,
human
face …
    All around them, people were stepping from rock to rock, or leaping, and it was less like changing trains than like a catastropheof some kind—like a shipwreck. The red-haired man swung the dufflebag down expertly and then jumped down from the train himself and hurried off before they could thank him. Until that moment it had not occurred to Harold to wonder how much time they would have between trains.
    He stopped a man with a light straw suitcase. “Le train à Coutances?”
    â€œVoie D!” the man shouted over his shoulder, and when they didn’t understand, he pointed to the entrance to an underpass, far down the rock pile. “De ce côté-là.”
    â€œOh my God!”
    â€œWhy aren’t there any porters?” she asked, looking around. “There were porters in Cherbourg.”
    â€œI don’t know!” he said, exasperated at her for being logical when they were faced with a crisis and action was what was called for. “We’ll have to do it in stages.” He picked up the big brown suitcase, and then, to balance it, two smaller ones. “You stay here and watch the rest of the luggage until I get back.”
    â€œWho is going to watch those?” she demanded, pointing at the suitcases he had just picked up. “What if somebody takes them while you are coming back for more?”
    â€œWe’ll just have to hope they don’t.”
    â€œI’m coming with you.” She picked up two more suitcases.
    â€œNo, don’t!” he exclaimed, furious at not being allowed to manage the crisis in his own way. “They’re too heavy for you!”
    â€œSo are those too heavy for you.”
    Leaving the big white suitcase and the dufflebag (two thousand cigarettes, safety matches, soap, sanitary napkins, Kleenex, razor blades, cold cream, cleaning fluid, lighter fluid, shoe polish, tea bags, penicillin, powdered coffee, cube sugar, etc.—a four months’ supply of all the things they had been told they couldn’t get in Europe so soon after the war) behind and unguarded, they stumbled along in the wake of the other passengers, some of whom were now running, and reached the underpass at last,and went down into it and then up another long flight of steps onto Track D, where their train was waiting.
    â€œHow
can
they expect people to do this?” she exclaimed indignantly.
    Track D was an ordinary station platform, not another rock pile, and all up and down the train the doors of compartments were slamming shut. “It’s like a bad dream,” he said.
    He left her standing with the luggage beside a second-class carriage and ran back down into the underpass, his footsteps echoing against the cold concrete walls. When he emerged onto Track A again, the train from Cherbourg was gone. Far down the deserted rock pile he saw the big white suitcase and the dufflebag; they hadn’t been stolen. From that moment it was not merely France he loved.
    He swung the dufflebag onto his shoulder and picked up the suitcase. It weighed a ton. The traveling iron, he thought. And Christ knows what else … His heart was pounding, and he had a stitch in his side. As he