God Speed the Night Read Online Free

possible from the inspection. Children were crying, families abusing one another. The flies swarmed overhead. A loudspeaker blared unheeded instructions. There were but three doors in the room, Marc observed, the street and platform exits, and one to the Departures waiting room. He guided Rachel toward the latter drifting slowly as with the surge of the crowd. There was no barricade between the two rooms, but no traffic either. The departures, from what Marc could see, were a stolid lot, patiently waiting the prod of bureaucracy. Then he thought he knew why: two policemen conducted a protesting woman into the far room. She would go back to the town she came from, her papers not in order. Marc watched and waited, riding the perimeter of the crowd, holding Rachel’s hand. Her color was no better and he saw her bite her lip.
    Suddenly she said, “Marc, I have a bad pain in my side. I wish I could sit down.”
    “Perhaps it will be useful,” he said coldly. Then he put his arm around her and whispered, “We’ve got to get out of here safely. That’s the first thing.”
    “I know. It’s letting up a little. I’m all right now.”
    They were near the door when the loudspeaker’s blare of “Attention, attention!” coincided with the removal of another traveler turned back from St. Hilaire. A pretty girl, she was weeping and she had the sympathy of the policeman who was trying to justify himself for doing so rotten a job. Marc and Rachel followed them into the Departures room.
    As soon as he passed through the door Marc saw the soldiers out of the corner of his eye. They were armed and stationed along the wall between the waiting rooms. He pressed forward in the close wake of the policeman as though he and Rachel were also to be deported.
    Just before reaching the platform gate, Marc held back. He sent Rachel into the washroom, and waited outside the door. The policeman and the woman went on, disappearing down the platform. Marc measured time, his back to the waiting room: he had to be prepared for the hand on his shoulder, the prod in his back. Neither happened. Slowly, taking first a few steps toward the gate, he turned around. They seemed to have passed safely from one room to the other. But no one would pass unchallenged from this room to the Arrivals. Some thirty or forty men were waiting, sullen and silent, under the military guard. Too many, he thought, to be political prisoners. Labor conscriptees, which accounted for the angry women outside the fence. How ironic if they were ordered out at this minute and he were swept with them, probably all the way to Germany. His fear when Rachel was so long in coming became more of his own panic than anything else. His only control was through action. He dropped the valise on the floor and gave it a little kick toward the washroom. He walked toward the courtyard entrance. There were soldiers out there too, but in the entranceway the ticket-taker sat on his stool, his punch in hand. He yawned while Marc was watching him and took out his watch. He put the punch between his knees and wound the watch. It was the normal in the midst of so much abnormality that sometimes panicked a man, and at other times reassured him. A petty official might not question a show of authority, Marc thought, only the lack of it.
    He strode back to the washroom door, his head high, his shoulders back. When Rachel came out he said, “Take the bag and do not speak to me until we are outside.”
    His hand firm at her elbow, he steered her to the ticket-taker. “Monsieur, this woman is too ill to travel.” He clipped the words as a German might.
    The man looked from him to Rachel. “But monsieur, I cannot give her back her ticket. It is not allowed.”
    “Then she may apply to the French railways. For now she should see a doctor.” He and Rachel moved out into the courtyard.
    The ticket man got off his stool and followed them hesitantly. Marc saw the grey-clad nun even as the railway man called out