In This Hospitable Land Read Online Free Page A

Gare du Midi the crowded streetcar passed through the city’s heart, where André was astounded to see a steady stream of refugees from the east, identifiable by the possessions on their backs. How had these unfortunates arrived in the capital so soon after the attack? How quickly might the Brussels André knew fade away as if a dream? Would Saint-Michel protect Brussels against the Nazi devil and his bombs? Or would the Grand Place be reduced to rubble as had happened before? And would this be the end of Mannekin Pis? If only that fine famed infant could urinate once more, putting out the flames threatening to engulf the world.

     
    At the ever-impressive train terminal André felt himself pulled into the great swirling crowd and the turmoil of a rapidly changing situation. Hundreds of men and women bustled about frantically, none really knowing what was going on. Even government officials seemed uncertain what was happening, as overwhelmed as everyone else by the sudden German onslaught.
    Some trains were still running. André battled the crowds, trying to see if his regular train to the towns along the North Sea was listed on the big board of arrivals and departures. His seaward train confirmed, André struggled out onto the crowded platform past excited newsboys waving their newspapers overhead with the single headline, WAR!
    The steam engine puffed smoke insistently from its shiny black stack, the smoke diffusing as it drifted up against the roof of the great shed. The sky shone beyond, sunlight still bright against the darkening shadows of the spires and taller buildings of the central city. The deep green of the train’s four carriages, new after the Great War but rather worn now, and the gold lettering on them, faded but clean, proffered a reassuring familiarity.
    Confirming the imminent departure for Ostend, the conductor stood by the last carriage, checking his pocket watch against the large clock above the station waiting room, his whistle at the ready. André clambered up the several steep black steel steps of the third car, pushed open the heavy metal door, and hastened to one of the few available seats of plush green velvet in the center—a window seat, its view obscured by streaks of soot on the outside, dried after trailing down to the sill during a recent rain.
    A rush of last-minute passengers crammed in as the conductor blew his departure-signaling blast, followed by a shrill piping from the engine. The car jerked and latecomers stumbled as the power of the steam thrusting into the pressure cylinders drove the train out of the station and across a switch, onto the rail line leading north and west, toward Alost.
    Suddenly André remembered that the next day was his sister-in-law’s twenty-eighth birthday. He had meant to get her a present before returning to Le Coq, but perhaps, given the situation, Geneviève would understand and forgive.

     
    Staring out the dirty window André could discern through the darkening sky smoke still rising from distant installations bombed many hours earlier. Was it possible this was still the same impossible day?
    At each station as many got on as off, with seated passengers shouting for the newcomers to reveal the latest, though they had nothing better than new rumors to add to the incessant ill-informed chatter about German attacks. André did his best to block out the noise, deep in his own thoughts as he watched automobiles racing along the roads. He peered over at the villages the train passed through, the lights coming on in the cozy-looking homes. It all seemed so normal, a Friday evening like any other. Yet he imagined the fevered, frantic fighting taking place in the eastern part of the country.
    The train pulled out of Alost, a stop André hardly noticed, and continued northwest toward Ghent. The land exuded a peaceful serenity, flat and green, with small farmhouses of weathered brick and red-tile roofs built alongside ditches cut into the rich, dark soil to