The Pegnitz Junction Read Online Free Page A

sake of being the favourite. The bossy blonde won, of course. She smiled adoringly. He appraised her as though she were twenty. All this took less than a minute. They were approaching Stuttgart.
    The little girls filed off the train, leaving a curiously adult smell of sweat behind, followed by Herbert, the Norwegian, and little Bert. These three were still in pursuit of food and running water. She saw Herbert look at his watch. He had his briefcase in one hand and held on to little Bert with the other. The girls buzzed and swarmed. They seemed quite ordinary now; they were only children home from camp, waiting to be picked up by parents. The little gangster was overtaken by a mad mother pushing a pram and a grandmother who was the mother grown mean and fearful, plaintive and soft. The mother opened her thin mouth and cried to the little blonde, who was shaking hands all round with the friends she had so lately been abusing, “While you take hours to say goodbye to everyone, your poor grandmother is standing waiting …”
    Waiting for what? said Christine to herself.
    The grandmother put on the look of someone whose patience will never be rewarded enough. Her face said, No one need think
I
ask for favours. A lie, Christine decided. She asked for nothing but favours.
    The once bossy, once confident little girl who had led the commando raid was all seriousness now, all worry, looking older than her grandmother ever would. She tried to say that she was sorry, but according to family timing it was too late. For a second longer Christine saw her small, upturned, elderly face.
    “That was my grandmother,” said Christine. “Such a blackmailer. So humble.” She wondered if she had said this aloud, but the woman in the corner was busy with a chocolate barand to all appearances had heard nothing except whatever went on in her own head.
    Herbert and little Bert had not found everything they wanted at Stuttgart, but at least there had been time to brush their teeth. The Norwegian had become quite a friend of Herbert’s now; at least, he seemed to imagine he had. He asked easily, casually, what Herbert’s profession might be. Trying not to smoke, Herbert folded his hands and said he was an engineer. He described a method of clearing waste from rivers which consisted of causing an infinite number of tiny bubbles to rise from the bottom of the waters, each little bubble gathering and bearing upwards a particle of poisonous trash, which could then be raked off at the top. Herbert’s information stopped there. If he had created an image of hand rakes, garden rakes, twig brooms; of women in bare feet and men in clogs raking away at the surface of ponds and inlets, he said nothing to change it. He was scrupulous about providing correct information but did not feel obliged to answer for pictures raised in the imagination. Christine thought that she knew what “information” truly was, and had known for some time. She could see it plainly, in fact; it consisted of fine silver crystals forming a pattern, dancing, separating, dissolving in a glittering trail along the window. The crystals flowed swiftly, faster than smoke, more beautiful and less durable than snowflakes. The woman in the corner said “Chck chck,” admiring Herbert’s method, and unfolded a new shopping bag labelled YOUR BEAUTICIAN HAS THE ANSWERS .
    It was from the woman that the silvery crystals took their substance; she was the source.
It started this way
, Christineunderstood. She looked carefully at the woman who was creating information, all the while peeling paper stuck to a cream bun. She licked her fingers before taking the first bite.
This was the beginning. Two first cousins from Muggendorf married two first cousins from Doos. Emigrated to the USA, all four together. Two cousins, boy and girl, married to two cousins, girl and boy. The men got work right away in Flushing. Flushing was full of mosquitoes but these were got rid of in time for the World Fair.