The Sheltering Sky - Bowles, Paul [29]
“I’ll come with you,” he said.
“Really, Tunner,” she laughed. “I’m afraid where I’m going you’d be just a little in the way.”
He strove not to show his embarrassment. “Oh! Okay. Sorry.”
The corridor was empty. She tried to see out the windows, but they were coated with dust and fingermarks. Up ahead she could hear the noise of voices. The doors onto the quai were closed. She went into the next coach; it was marked “ll,” and it was more brightly lighted, more populous, much shabbier. At the other end she met people coming into the car from outside. She crowded past them, got off and walked along the ground toward the front of the train. The fourth-class passengers, all native Berbers and Arabs, were milling about in the midst of a confusion of bundles and boxes, piled on the dirt platform under the faint light of a bare electric bulb. A sharp wind swept down from the nearby mountains. Quickly she slipped in among the people and climbed aboard.
As she entered the car, her first impression was that she was not on the train at all. It was merely an oblong area, crowded to bursting with men in dun-colored burnouses, squatting, sleeping, reclining, standing, and moving about through a welter of amorphous bundles. She stood still an instant taking in the sight; for the first time she felt she was in a strange land. Someone was pushing her from behind, obliging her to go on into the car. She resisted, seeing no place to move to, and fell against a man with a white beard, who stared at her sternly. Under his gaze she felt like a badly behaved child. “Pardon, monsieur,” she said, trying to bend out of the way in order to avoid the growing pressure from behind. It was useless; she was impelled forward in spite of all her efforts, and staggering over the prostrate forms and the piles of objects, she moved into the middle of the car. The train lurched into motion. She glanced around a little fearfully. The idea occurred to her that these were Moslems, and that the odor of alcohol on her breath would scandalize them almost as much as if she were suddenly to remove all her clothing. Stumbling over the crouched figures, she worked her way to one side of the windowless wall and leaned against it while she took out a small bottle of perfume from her bag and rubbed it over her face and neck, hoping it would counteract, or at least blend with, whatever alcoholic odor there might be about her. As she rubbed, her fingers struck a small, soft object on the nape of her neck. She looked: it was a yellow louse. She had partly crushed it. With disgust she wiped her finger against the wall. Men were looking at her, but with neither sympathy nor antipathy. Nor even with curiosity, she thought. They had the absorbed and vacant expression of the man who looks into the handkerchief after blowing his nose. She shut her eyes for a moment. To her surprise she felt hungry. She took the sandwich out and ate it, breaking off the bread in small pieces and chewing them violently. The man leaning against the wall beside her was also eating-small dark objects which he kept taking out of the hood of his garment and crunching noisily. With a faint shudder she saw that they were red locusts with the legs and heads removed. The babble of voices which had been constant suddenly ceased; people appeared to be listening. Above the rumbling of the train and the rhythmical clacking of the wheels over the rails she could hear the sharp, steady sound of rain on the tin roof of the car. The men were nodding their heads; conversation started up again. She determined to fight her way back to the door in order to be able to get down at the next stop. Holding her head slightly lowered in front of her, she began to burrow wildly through the crowd.