This Waking Sleep

We’re given free tickets at the train station, and then we board the train to Berlin.

At the station, I’m certain that the Paris police are looking for us. We pass one who stands with his hands on his hips in front of the station surveying the busy afternoon crowd.

I can feel his eyes boring right through both of us, but he never moves. He just stares.

Inside the station it is a little darker and the air is a little cooler. It’s a relief.

I let Sabrine acquire the tickets because the burns to my face have been fairly extensive. The damage is extensive enough that I have taken to wearing a tall hat and a scarf as not to alarm passersby with my recent scarring. This disguise works fairly well from afar, but up close I might as well bite them with my new teeth while speaking to them. My disfigured appearance makes communication difficult, if not altogether impossible.

We board the train and I take the window seat. I stare out across the platform and watch people mill about as they amble to and fro, boarding off and on the different trains.

In the reflection of the window, I see a man in the aisle pause to check our tickets. Thankfully, he does not resemble Hull in any fashion.

We sit and Sabrine whispers into my ear about trains and Berlin and Gassou. I do my best to ignore her words by concentrating on the crowds moving outside the car window, but they cannot be ignored. I feel the steel tips of my new teeth with my tongue and resist the urge to bite her, barely.

A man sits down across from us. He is large and carrying a pair of scotch-patterned carpetbags with him. His girth is such that he takes up both chairs when he sits down adjacent to where we sit. He coughs loudly and bumps against Sabrine as he maneuvers his girth in the narrow space between the seats.

“So sorry,” he wheezes, once seated. He wipes his sweating and rotund face with a white handkerchief.

Sabrine nods, indicating that she accepts his apology, and he takes her gesture as an opening. He leans forward, smiling as a predator might, and offers her his outstretched hand.

She accepts and she takes her hand in his and kisses the top of it.

“I am the Baron Gebberd Von Fridenreich, returning to Berlin after a brief stay of rest in Paris.”

“I am Sabrine and this is my traveling companion. We are both from Paris, visiting relatives in Berlin.”

Baron Fridenreich glances at me, but does not offer to shake my hand. In return, I do not tear my gaze from the train window to acknowledge him. If Sabrine wishes to play the part of the Baron’s whore on this journey, I have little interest in this play.

“My wife, she is in another passenger car. She says I snore when I sleep. I hope that I do not disturb you both during the night.”

“We sleep soundly.”

He rummages through one of his bags and produces a brown bottle and a sandwich made of rough bread. He uncorks the bottle and begins to eat the sandwich, quite contented, until a foursome of men sit down in the seats on the other side of the aisle from us. Each of the men is bearded with curly, hanging locks. They wear the black robes of Catholic priests, except the garments do not possess white collars as I am used to seeing.

The Baron is clearly perturbed by the presence of these men. He stop eating. His mouth hangs open, still half-full with food, and then his face contorts into a sneer. I watch his eyes narrow to slits in hatred at this group of passengers.

Eventually, he leans in and beckons Sabrine close, whispering: “Jews. I recommend you do not look them in the eye. They will take it as some kind of an advance. They will assault you while you sleep.”

I speak for the first time.

“And why should this behavior be any different from the other men on this train?”

The Baron stares at me as if I have just murdered his firstborn child. I feel like tearing into his face with my new teeth, but that will have to wait. My jaws are reserved for a select few.

“Do you realize that the Jewish female is sterile as well as frigid? The Jew… he cannot contain his lust for Western flesh. He is gripped by the Devil.”

Fridenreich struggles to get to his feet, huffing and puffing.

“Excuse me,” he says. “I must send a telegram.”

I watch as he trundles back down the passenger aisle and exits the train.

“Do you think he will return?”

I shrug and turn away, returning to scan the crowded train platform in search of Hull.

I feel for the key inside my pocket and my fingertips find its narrow steel. The metal is cold beneath my touch, and it reminds me of my journey across the ocean. Of the chilling hold filled with goats and water, and of my equally chilling reception upon arrival in Paris.

The reflective surface of the window glass darkens momentarily. It looks like someone is looming behind me on its surface. Of course, nobody is there but Sabrine, and she is still seated harmlessly in the seat beside mine. No. There is something else. Gassou, perhaps, is prying about inside my mind again.

My eyes are affixed to the glass, and I fear I am about to receive a message.

I do, of course.

It feels as if the car is suddenly filled with a crush of people. They are not truly there, but I can smell them and feel them pressing against my back and elbowing me for room in the sudden, overcrowded space.

The trains, again!

I sink down low into my chair, pulling my gaze from the reflection in the window to stare at the patterns on the train floor carpeting. I pull the collar of my coat up over my nose and mouth in an effort to staunch the smells of excrement and strong body odor that assail me. I do my best to swallow back nausea. It would be a shame to vomit all over Sabrine, after all.
She touches my arm out of concern.

“Are you okay?”

Her voice sounds distant and distorted, as if she is talking into my ear from the far side of a glass chemistry tube.

“Do you need to use the restroom?”

I sink lower in my seat and wave her away with my hand. Then I squeeze my eyes tightly and try to block the crawling sensations attacking all of my senses.

The baron returns at some point. I hear him huffing back to his seat and then murmuring things to Sabrine. No doubt he is inquiring as to what might be wrong with me.

I want to open my eyes and assault them both, but I am too fearful of what I might see.

Instead, I sit paralyzed and crippled by the sickness that churns inside of me.

It is going to be a long train ride to Germany.