Train Delayed Due to Horrible,
Horrible Accident

1.

The holiday, to put it mildly, has been spoiled.  From where I am lying on some type of straw pallet frozen hard as a bed of rocks, I can see, through a chink in the logs, snowflakes twirling downward in the moonlight.  Somewhere here—on the floor/ground I suppose—is a mess of scattered papers: my research that had seemed so promising.  Although I believe I have lost most of my senses, including smell and feeling, a phantom trace of vinegar, or rotten wine, haunts my numbed olfactory node.

It seems there’s been an accident.  Someone (I’ve heard) was hit in the head by a train—and though I am not sure who, I am confident that my personal conduct has been blameless.

Yes, there was the inappropriately behaved man with a nub for a hand; the sniveling weirdo whose least crime was the interruption of my snack; the conductor of dubious innocence who may or may not have tried to illegally confine me; and the secret, wholly unmerited hostility of some or all of the other passengers.  But if there was a single moment when I should have been able to see the awful direction things were taking—the escalating series of misguided assumptions and malicious suggestions that seems to have conspired to land me here—I must have somehow missed it.

In any event, I was robbed—yes, robbed—of those few things I still believe I was not wrong in assuming I had in the bag: a juicy bird, gravy boat, plump pillow, warm wife, and sleep.

Or perhaps I merely caught the wrong train.

*

It was the end of my sabbatical in the picturesque hill town of Munktohnville, and I was on my way home for the Thanksgiving holiday.  My wife and son had gone on ahead of me while I stayed behind to tie up a few loose ends in my research (well funded by an enviable grant from the prestigious Krupp-Nudenheim Foundation) into the history of the Munktohnville “Barn.” The Barn—ill-remembered by our amnesiac culture, yet astonishingly well documented—was the site of one of those provincial plague hospitals, whose surrounding knolls are said to have been stuffed, by moonlight, with the unhappy corpses of the victims of that most shadowy and ruinous form of virulent encephalitis, the so-called “sleeping sickness.”

Nowadays the Barn—a squat red brick structure, trimmed in white, with a recently restored mini-cupola—houses nothing more than a sparsely stocked general store, with a few shelves of Yuban and Swiss Miss, toenail clippers and motor oil.  In fact, I only glimpsed the inside of the Barn on those occasions when I’d take Eric, my son, to shop for a few family provisions.  But behind this humdrum country façade was a secret thrill, a private enchantment in which I came alive to the world of history.  This is the same floor upon which they suffered, I’d muse, absently toying with an Eagle Stik—This is the very air in which so many perished.  Although he knew nothing of that awful past, I believe Eric shared in a mutual pleasure: he would beg for those trips, knowing beyond doubt that I’d allow him to purchase some little item—a Glu-Pop or a box of rubber bands—and that as we approached the check-out counter with our plastic basket of goodies, the owner’s nephew, an affable microcephalic named Charlie, would eagerly dip his paw into the enormous display jar of pickled eggs (nestled like ovoid honeycombs in their pinkish matrix, a stray piece of flat greenish matter lodged amongst them) and retrieve for him, with a grunt of satisfaction, a spicy glistening treat, which he’d place in a small paper snackboat—gratis.  My son never ate them, but oh how he loved to get them.

Yet it was not there, but deep in the archives of the Crawhole Memorial Library—named for the local babbling brook—that I read into the extraordinary events surrounding the Munktohnville Barn.  In the late 18th century, the various undesirables of the plague-ridden metropolis who would not or could not be kept shut up safely indoors were strongly urged to accept free transportation via “ambulance” (read: crude wooden cart over unpaved highway) to the newly-established “hospital” (read: brutally mismanaged death-trap—actually a country mansion expropriated by the municipal government against the vehement protests of its absentee landlord) in the outlying hamlet of Munktohnville.

It is recorded that certain of these unlucky individuals—some having unwittingly agreed to be taken to the hospital, some having been plucked off the curb and hoisted in the cart like horrifically mis-sculpted statues, all gnarled fingers and rolled-up eyeballs—“unfroze” from their catatonic states, at some point during the journey, long enough to escape from the cart as it approached Munktohnville, and fled into the village at large.  City officials made some pained effort to recapture these so-called “walking cases” before they had irretrievably vanished, trailing their infectious brume, into the innocuous local citizenry.  There are even some accounts of perfectly healthy Munktohnville residents who, caught napping on a streetside bench, were mistakenly identified as hospital escapees, “recaptured” by the quarantine committees and expatriated straight to the Barn.

The piecing-together of these accounts made for a deeply invigorating autumn—but alas, my work was complete.  My wife, Lynne, had left on the train with young Eric. As I puttered about our rented cottage, switching off the water-heater and taking a few final notes for my book (which I’d been thinking of titling The Road to Unwellville) I was struck by a deep pang of nostalgia for a Munktohnville which even at that moment seemed far away from me, as if I were already long gone.  As I latched my briefcase shut, I was embarrassed to find that my eyes had welled up with tears.  On the front porch, having locked the door, I gazed at my stolid softwood pines through a trembling veil of memories: my little carrel in the Crawhole, dust-motes dancing in a beam of late-afternoon sunlight; Lynne’s sharp cry as her inflatable Poke-Bote slithered over a tiny waterfall in the brook behind our cottage; the nervous smile on Eric’s face as grinning Charlie delved for the lucky egg.

But no—I snapped to: the holidays were here again; my true home beckoned.  Juicy bird, plump pillow, warm wife.  Creaking down the porch steps with bags in hand, I vowed not to look back.  Time marches on: I had a four o’clock train to catch.

As if to affirm my cheerful resignation, the train arrived on the dot.  Soon I was settled into my window seat—I had both seats to myself—with my briefcase snug at my feet.  With a gentle oomph, the train chuffed into motion; frozen bluish fields slipped effortlessly past.  It was dusk, and occasionally there flashed, through brief chinks in the great dark walls of pine forest, freezing ponds whose silver surfaces suddenly burned golden with flames they’d caught from the sinking November sun.

Soon the conductor appeared, to punch my ticket.  He was a pale and rather short elderly man, wearing a woolen uniform coat that was much too baggy and long for him.  He hovered over me eagerly—his frail body seemed animated with a nervous, almost childish energy.  Purplish blood vessels webbed across his bulbous nose and loose cheeks.

“Your ticket?”

He spoke in a disarmingly effeminate tone.  I handed him the ticket—he glanced at it, said “Oh,” and frowned.  Then he peered more closely at the ticket, and scratched at it with his longish thumbnail.  “Oh,” he repeated, with a nervous half-chuckle—then punched the ticket, tore it, and handed me the stub.  I slipped the stub in my jacket pocket and the conductor moved on.

I decided it might be relaxing to glance through some of the old newspaper clippings I’d collected in the course of my research.  I unlatched my briefcase and fondled the clippings: the paper was so smooth and supple in my hand, like a delicate skin.  The print had a stamped solidity, and the pulpy fibers and rich black ink let up a mild, reassuring odor, the scent of history: But even more tragic are the changes in moral character which often follow the disease….

These lines of text, I thought, are from a time not wholly unlike our own.  You can hold them in your hand: you can touch them and read them.  Outside it was almost fully dark, and in the window I saw a ghostly reflection of the clipping.  Perhaps the window of some private carriage trundling urgently through the night had held the reflection of those very words, when they were real.

I felt a renewed pang of nostalgia for my summer home which was now but a home in the mind.  I imagined the inside of that long-ago carriage had reeked with a heady mixture of warm horseshit and fancy imported perfume.

Someone coughed in the seat behind me.  As I mused over the clippings, the coughing continued softly but insistently—eventually I was forced to acknowledge that the distraction was interfering with my quiet pleasure, and I replaced the materials in my briefcase.

I glanced to my left: in the seat across the aisle, a sullen-faced woman slouched against her window.  She seemed enveloped within a shapeless, dull yellow sweatshirt—beneath which, to judge from her small but plainly pointed breasts, she wore no bra.  Her eyes were shut, and her mouth hung partly open in a lazy grimace.

The coughing behind me continued.  The coughs themselves seemed so weak and half-hearted that I began to believe the cougher wasn’t trying hard enough, or was somehow perpetuating the tickle by virtue of the feathery coughs themselves.  I imagined it must be some frail woman or aged person who couldn’t (or perversely wouldn’t) muster the strength to break through the mucous blockage and thereby conclude the fit.

I decided to venture off to the café car.  After all, I was in need of a snack—and perhaps, by the time I returned, the coughing (or the whole person) might have managed to go away.

But when I stood up and began to move down the aisle, I saw that sitting in the seat behind me was not the pathetic valetudinarian I had pictured, but rather a squat, robust man with cropped black hair and a thick moustache.  Although he scowled at me silently, he didn’t appear to be doing any coughing.

Still—it seems unlikely that this, of all things, should have been my mistake.

On my approach to the café car I heard a loud voice and caught a strong whiff of the fumes of microwaved foods.  Two, perhaps three passengers stood waiting in line for service.  The man directly in front of me was tall and fit, with a crisp green polo shirt tucked into stone-colored pants, and a blowdried sweep of chestnut hair.  I was astonished to see that his left arm—otherwise oddly well-tanned for the season—ended not in a hand but in a kind of smoothly fused nub.  He held his arm bent at a ninety-degree angle (with the truncated forearm parallel to the floor) and impatiently tapped a suavely loafered foot.  I wondered what he would order.

“Goddamn unrecognizable,” boomed the voice I’d heard from the entryway.  I now saw that beyond the small group of customers, a corpulent man leant against the service counter.  The elderly conductor who’d punched my ticket stood next to him, looking downward.

“Not something like a hunchback, or a clubbed foot,” said the fat man.  His voice was unusually loud and gregarious, with a folksy twang.  He was bald, with a large moist forehead, and wore a conservative waistcoat against which his pneumatic torso strained.  His shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow; a damp shadow was visible in the crook of his armpit.  “Although I think it can have an effect on the—well, on the physical side.” The man seemed to be lecturing the elderly conductor, who, still looking downward, nodded soberly. 

“Am I right?” he implored the conductor.  Resting his elbow on the counter, he propped his glistening forehead in a meaty palm.  “Eh?”

“Oh, oh yes,” spoke the elderly man quietly.  “I’m sure it could.”

“I know I’m right!” cried the fat man.  After a pause, he said, in a lower voice, “You just can’t always tell till after the—well, till afterward.”

The conductor made a weak gesture of agreement.

The car fell silent.  The café attendant, a grave-faced man in kitchen livery, moved deftly about his confined space, preparing items and swiftly assembling them in neatly divided cardboard trays.

“But by then,” declared the fat man with a heaving sigh, “little can be done.” Retrieving a nasal spray from an inner pocket of his waistcoat, he assumed a thoughtful expression: “Of course sometimes it never shows up.” He plugged one nostril and then the other, shutting his eyes and squeezing the bulb with a deep sniff and a groan.

“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” murmured the elderly man, gazing at the fat man’s procedure.

Meanwhile, the well-dressed man whose hand was a nub was next in line for service.  I watched him as he directed the server from one item to another—he seemed to want a series of rather complicated mixed drinks which I guessed were beyond the capacities of the meagerly-equipped kitchen.

“You want ginger-ale?” asked the server.

“No, I told you: the club soda.”

The server seemed confused—he manipulated a number of miniature bottles of liquor and filled plastic cups with ice.  “Lime?” he asked.

The nub-man sighed and rolled his eyes: they landed on me with a glare.

I looked away.  But as soon as I did so, I felt the nub-man’s glare intensify, as if I had caused him some offense.  In the corner of my eye I saw him hold aloft the interrupted arm, as if to chastise me for some perceived squeamishness or pity.

“Low sodium, please.  Low sodium,” barked the nub-man, as the server added the final items to his tray.

He paid the server, grunted his thanks, and laid a dollar bill on the tip plate.  As he turned and made his way past me, he held the tray poised between hand and nub, eyeing me sternly as he exited the café car.

I ordered my food: a chicken sandwich with cheese, and a lemonade.  When the microwave stopped with a ding, the server peeled away the limp, steaming plastic from the sandwich.  He accepted my money with a self-effacing nod and returned the change to my hand.  I was discouraged to see that the tip of his index finger was enclosed in a grimy-looking bandage; still, he skillfully avoiding touching that fingertip to my hand.

Meanwhile, the fat man was tearing open a small foil package of peanuts.

“Let me tell you something,” he said to the conductor.  He poured the peanuts into his palm and slapped the palm to his mouth.  Munching, he signaled a pause to the elderly man.

As I steadied myself back down the aisle, using the weight of my tray to counterbalance the train’s jostling, I tried to stare straight ahead, so as to avoid the gaze of the nub-man, in case he happened to be sitting in one of the seats I passed by.

Still, I couldn’t help but sneak a peek into the rows of seats.  The passengers, sparsely placed throughout the seats, lolled in various contortions of repose, in the dark or beneath tiny pools of reading light.  Some were collapsed across two seats, their feet or heads protruding into the aisle.  Others sat straight-backed, eyes shut and heads cocked back, vocal chords protruding from their necks like choked-on bones.  Yet others hunched over onto their fold-out trays, thrusting their heads and elbows into the backs of the seats in front of them.  I hurried through this field of exhaustion and unconsciousness, trailing fumes of chicken as I went.

I couldn’t right away find my seat.  The café car was located at the mid-point of the train…could I have walked back in the wrong direction?  In my mind I began to retrace my steps, but I had lost my sense of orientation.  It seemed I could go in either direction, but instead I stood very still in the dark aisle, holding my tray in my hands.  A strange wave of fatigue passed through me.  I shut my eyes, and in a moment of delicious panic a gleaming image of my old Munktohnville cottage shimmered before me, sunlight pouring through the windows onto a pinewood floor where something—my briefcase?—seemed to be missing.  Had I forgotten something in the cottage?  Had a door not been locked, the gas not been shut off?  As I remembered my wife, her face paralyzed in blissful terror, trapped in the inflatable Poke-Bote as it slipped over the little waterfall and down into the frothing spray, I felt the train plunging blindly and evenly across the darkened landscape.

But when I opened my eyes I saw a long pale face peering up at me in the dimness.  I was standing beside my own seat.  There was a young retarded man sitting in it.

2.

In retrospect, as stated previously, it seems that I missed some crucial juncture.  And yet, what can have been done?  When, on the edge of sleep—as now, with the snowflakes falling—some shadow of a voice whispers in one’s inner ear that a grave catastrophe is immanent (a fire, a robbery, a secret evacuation), does that prevent one from slipping yet further into dreams—curious but harmless dreams, to which (once they have consumed one fully) that vague warning turns out to have been merely the cryptic prelude, the quiet clarion?

The blood rushed to my face and I swooned, for I could not immediately see my briefcase, which held all of the documents crucial to my work.  The man wore a loose green jogging suit trimmed with white stripes, and held beneath the reading lamp a small paperback book.  I saw that the man was not in fact retarded—I must have been mistaken—for his eyes, colorless and of indeterminate age, glittered with intelligence and recognition.

Beneath the acute lamp he seemed powdery, like a translucent moth.  The lamp illuminated on his skin a coating of minute white hairs, and his eyelashes were white behind humid spectacles.  Above a high smooth forehead his hairline receded alarmingly, but the pale hair was longish in back, clustering in limp curls around his ears and neck.  His pursed lips looked tender and thin, and he gazed up at me with expectation.  I noticed that his pupils were of slightly differing sizes.

Standing in the aisle, laden with cooling food, I broke my speechlessness: “Are you sitting there?”

The strange man’s eyes came unfocused from mine.  He rose gravely from the seat and gestured for me to sit back down in my place next to the window. 

“How stupid!” he moaned in self-deprecation.  “I bet you think I must have been hit in the head by a train and then forgotten to take my medication!” He burst into a peal of sniffling laughter, clutching with three fingers at his small sunken chin.  “That’s an old joke,” he murmured.

I paused, then stepped forward, muttering an apology in my confusion.

“Hot snacks,” noted the man, oozing past me (almost through me) and re-seating himself immediately to my left.

I gathered together my things, concealing my aggravation, and hunched against the window.  I released the fold-down tray, anxious to begin eating my modest meal, though somewhat vexed by my unexpected seatmate.  Frankly I felt uncomfortable that he’d been left alone with my briefcase.  I mulled over a plan to inconspicuously check over it—to make sure everything was in order—as soon as I’d finished eating.

The chicken sandwich was bland but warm.  I ate quickly and mechanically, regretting the man’s presence, and wiped my mouth with a napkin. Outside the window a cold moon fled through the dull purplish sky, keeping pace with the train over empty black-and-white towns.

“Clume,” spoke the man sitting next to me.  I turned: he extended a hand at me.  “I’m Clume.”

I wiped off my fingers, ruefully accepting his moist, limp grip, and told him my name.

“You know,” he said, “that was pretty unfair.  That scene back there in the café car.”

“Scene?”

“You know, with the—.” Clume balled his fist and retracted it into the sleeve of his warm-up jacket.

My face went hot with embarrassment.  “You’re referring to…?”

Clume nodded knowingly.  “It was like he imposed his own self-consciousness on you.  Not your fault about the—you know…very bad taste.  Speaking of which—.” He gestured at my partially eaten sandwich.  I searched my memory, but was almost sure I hadn’t seen this person—“Clume”—in the café car with me.  There had been the nub-man, the conductor and his corpulent friend, and the few other passengers in line….

“I just wanted to express my sympathies,” said Clume.  Then, in an arch tone: “I tend to notice the little things.” He winked.

Clume’s unwrinkled skin gave off a strong medicinal odor, as if he’d been rubbing himself with lotions or salves.  He began rummaging in a light cloth tote bag near his feet, eventually producing what looked like some kind of oversized, golden-brown baked dumpling, like a calzone or knish, enclosed in a clear plastic deli container.  Clume popped open the container; the item smelled delicious.

“You sure didn’t buy that on this train,” I remarked.

Clume looked puzzled.  “I didn’t?”

“Back there,” I said, gesturing in the direction of the café car.  “I never saw anything like that on the menu.”

“Must have been sold out,” said Clume.  “Here—take this little piece.”

I politely and firmly declined, but Clume insisted.  Using his bony fingers (which tapered at the tips like a woman’s) he tore off a corner of the baked dumpling and dropped it on my tray.  I had no choice now—and plus, it did look awfully good—but when I bit into the piece of food I had to restrain myself from reflexively gagging.  It was the most revolting thing I had ever tasted—sort of like fish, but creamy and sweet, and with an unpalatable eggplantish texture. 

Clume grinned at me as I forced a swallow; his round spectacles caught the glare from the overhead light.

Steeling myself, I grunted and nodded in thanks.

Clume licked his lips: in profile his chin and neck seemed to have more folds than they should for a man of such slim build.  The image reminded me of a sitting portrait of one of those angry and anemic English preachers from the enthusiastic era.  I pictured him spitting forth godly language, condemning sinners to hell.  In fact, he pinced bits of crumb off his clothing, dropped them in the plastic container, and clasped it shut.

“I was noticing,” he said, “your clipping.”

At first I thought he was making some reference to my personal appearance; then, with horror, I followed his eyes to floor of the train, where my shoetips nestled against the soft leather edge of my briefcase. 

There on the floor—stray, single; a light gray rectangle against the black footpad—was one of the newspaper clippings from my research.

I leaned in closer.  For a moment I felt as though I’d lost some part of my body: a tooth, a toe, or a finger.  How had it gotten outside the firmly sealed briefcase?  What was it doing cast on the floor like a disused ticket or candy wrapper?  A neat little hole was punctured in my warm humming world—a black breeze of panic seeped through the hole and suffused my head like an odor.  I assumed that I must have somehow gotten myself into a nightmare—and just then I felt terribly weary.  My ears rang, and the reading light oppressed my eyes like a headache.  I peered at the clipping as if through a penumbra of loss.

“It’s not yours?” said Clume.  I smelled the lotion and could feel the inquisitive, almost insistent puffs of his long nasal exhalations.  He smacked his lips deliberately.

“Oh my god,” I sighed.  My voice buzzed in my throat, and the corner of my eye twitched involuntarily.

“Here, let me—.” Clume extended his fingers to retrieve the clipping.

“No!” I cried, lunging forward to snatch up the small piece of paper, so that my head nearly knocked into his.

I held the clipping up close to my face, and at first my vision seemed blurred so that I couldn’t make out the words.  It was a reproduction of a newspaper headline, the characters printed in 18th-century typeface:

WARPED MINDS AND BROKEN BODIES:
THE HEARTACHE OF OUR SEPTEMBER.

“Are you a scientist?” asked Clume.

“What?” I said.  “No, I’m…I am a scholar.”

“Really?  Well, you’re looking at a fellow who knows his way around a library.”

“I’m very tired,” I said.

It was true.  I felt overwhelmed with exhaustion.  The gently jostling train engulfed me like a womb.  After carelessly folding up the paper and sticking it in my jacket pocket, I jabbed at the reading-light button until I was in darkness.  Pulling my coat tightly around me, I slumped against the window.  The glass was freezing against my cheek, but I was too tired to care.

“I like research so much,” continued Clume.  “In fact, I’ve been thinking about a project of my own.  Although, that kind of work has its risks, you know.”

“Please,” I begged, shutting my eyes.

For a moment Clume was silent.  “Are you sure?” he whispered mildly.  “You know, with the digestion…so soon after you’ve eaten…well, I suppose it’s none of my beeswax.”

My eyes fluttered halfway open.  Was Clume still talking to me?  Through the icy glass, I saw something in the distance.  I must have been too weary to register what it was—though in retrospect, perhaps, I should have paid closer attention.  Whatever it might have been, it was the last thing I saw before slipping fully into a deep, deep doze—it glowed there in the dark distance, hovering on the brink of my unconsciousness, like a dim signal sending forth some strange allegation.

*

Once or twice, during those waning summer days in Munktohnville, I’d enjoyed a clandestine nap in my private library carrel.  Perhaps I’d been reading accounts of the provincial postmasters who (not understanding the cause of the sleeping sickness) gingerly, using tongs, dipped their letters in vinegar before handling them; or of all those editions of the Munktohnville Evening Gazette which, before the day’s alarming news of the plague’s progress and the mysterious “walking cases” could be read, were disinfected with vinegar and dried before many a household fire.  Thus would I slip off, my inner-ears softly filled with the imagined rustlings of vinegar-cleansed stories crisply crinkling on the hearth, that warm crackle of countrified superstition which wafted down the corridors of history to charm my drowsy head.

My current dream must have drawn me back to those recent yet faraway days, for I found myself seated over a large volume just retrieved for me.  Oddly, the tome was still in its packaging: a wispy, translucent membrane which must have escaped the attention of the librarian.  I hated to mar the delicate skin, to peel at it, but I was eager to look at the words inside, words that would help me to understand the terrible and unknown sickness, and to adumbrate the narrative which would form the evidence for my book.  I used my fingernails, vaguely fearing that I might be wrecking some precious thing, and glanced about warily.  The membrane/wrapping came away unevenly, uncleanly, but I was firmly resolved in my research, and rolled the moist bits into hard gray pellets, quickly flicking them under the table.  I had just released the cover and was opening to the book’s first pages when I sensed an unfamiliar presence, spied a glittering eye—and there was Clume, snooping among the stacks; Clume, disorganizing my information while I was distracted (O, that complicit librarian!) with the unpleasant packaging.  The silence was punctuated by the weak burble of his flabby throat clearing; the odor of salves was unmistakable.  I leapt from my seat, heart pounding, and caught Clume ducking into a restroom, avoiding eye contact yet obviously aware of my presence, feigning nonchalance yet hurrying in arrogant, effete little steps, a robust volume tucked upside-down in the crook of his arm….

A clot of anxiety stopped up my chest, and I woke to a bony finger prodding me gently in the ribs.

It was Clume.  I heard the whistling in his nostrils.

“I like the bones in your face,” he said.  “They settle nicely when you snooze.  It reminds me of my cousin.”

My head throbbed; my throat felt dry and constricted.

“Why isn’t the train moving?” I asked.

Clume peered at me.  “The train?”

In the wintry darkness outside the window, a cluster of lights, like flashlights or portable lamps, bobbed in the near distance.

“Did something happen out there?” I inquired.

Clume leaned past me to look out the window; his pale strands of hair nearly grazed my nostrils.

“Hmm,” he mused.  “I don’t know what that was.  Some kind of accident?” He leaned back and settled his hands in his lap.

“What do you mean ‘was’?” I asked.  “What accident?”

Clume didn’t seem to hear me.  He’d returned his attention to the paperback book.

“Don’t you think we should ask the conductor?” I persisted.

Clume glanced at me with a sigh.  “I suppose, perhaps…but wouldn’t it be impossible for us to do anything?  I mean, that accident—if there ever was one—had nothing to do with this train.”

I looked out the window, but the bobbing lights had vanished.  In fact, the train did seem to be moving again—so smoothly and evenly it felt as though we weren’t moving at all, but nevertheless I discerned the murky shapes of leafless trees and pointed rooftops passing slowly from left to right.

“Anyways,” said Clume, snapping shut his book.  “We were talking about your research.  It sounds so interesting.”

I continued to gaze out the window.  I remembered the clipping that had escaped from my briefcase—the brief dream had allowed no respite from this fact—and a nauseous, sinking feeling pierced me in the gut.  Was I becoming sloppy, my materials disarranged?  With a muted panic, it occurred to me that the Krupp-Nudenheim wasn’t going to sit around forever while I finished my work.  The Foundation would expect clarity and closure. 

“In fact,” Clume went on, “I’ve been thinking of doing an article myself.  Or a book.”

“Oh?” I said with feigned interest.  “On what topic?”

“It would be similar to your thesis.  The expropriation.  Involuntary committal.  There were fakers, you know.  It’s very compelling subject matter.”

I found it difficult to listen to Clume’s prattle, for that painful notion had again begun to nag at me—had I indeed forgotten something back in Munktohnville?  Some vital piece of evidence that I’d overlooked in the Crawhole?  Everything had seemed so secure, so wrapped-up when I’d left: the book deal, the gravy-boat, the four o’clock train…and what, if anything, had changed since then, to make me doubt that success, that impending reward?

I had merely done what I’d planned to do all along: board the train and go home.

It is understood in the medical professions that the type of diffuse and oppressive anxiety from which I was then suffering often leads to fatigue—the brain lapses under the weight of confusion, of contradictory impressions, and warm waves of sleep begin to ebb and lap over its tender, intricately grooved surface.  Such must have been the present case, for once again I stumbled into the dark thicket of sleep—at precisely the wrong moment, perhaps.

This time I awoke on a patch of soft grass mottled with blue shadow and the creeping rose-petal light of a dawn in the Munktohnville countryside.  In the background I heard the twittering of woodland birds; a chirp of laughter pierced the meek burbling of the brook: my beautiful wife Lynne and our son Eric, off in the distance, splashing one another like maniacs.  I lay in a forest clearing, a little grove—and the peace and stillness of the early morning caused my heart to swell with a languid pleasure, until I was distracted by a faint nasal whistling, and I rolled over to find Clume, standing over me in a ridiculous outfit—white and sea-green hospital garb and a sky-blue paper nurse’s cap—winking and glancing over his shoulder.  I followed his glance: there, in the perimeter of trees at the edge of the clearing, some person or persons seemed to be watching.  Clume was subtly gesturing to them or trying to indicate something, or trying to indicate to me that he was gesturing at them—yet I couldn’t see their faces, or who they were…the whole business annoyed me very much.  Clume bent down and whispered: Bad taste.  It was imposed upon you. I began to get up from where I lay, but Clume giggled like a girl and scampered off toward the trees….

Again I felt a prodding in my ribs, and woke with an unpleasant start, expecting to see Clume in the seat beside me.  But Clume was gone.  The train was very dark, except for the small bright reading lamp that remained glowing over Clume’s vacant seat.  My mouth tasted awful.  The elderly conductor (who’d previously punched my ticket) was standing in the aisle with an anxious and regretful expression on his pale, blotchy face.  He was struggling to communicate something to me.

“Um, ticket, please,” he managed to state.  He gazed down at me with his large, watery eyes.

“You already took my ticket,” I said.  “Much earlier.  When I got on the train.”

“Oh, gosh,” said the conductor.  He fidgeted uncomfortably.  “Yes, well, I know…but, you see, there have been some changes…may I see your ticket stub?  The small stub?”

With a disgruntled sigh, I fished the stub from my jacket pocket and handed it to him.  The elderly man examined the stub, turning it over in his oddly tough-looking fingers, as if scrutinizing something printed on it.  “Okay,” he murmured softly, “um, all right, well….”

“Is something wrong with this train?” I asked.

The conductor looked shocked.  “Oh my!” he trembled.  “Oh, of course not.  It’s only the train has been delayed.  So, you know, in the meantime, because of the delay, you see, we won’t be able to—.”

“What delay?” I said indignantly, raising my voice more than I would have liked.  “Does this have to do with an accident?  There was a man, sitting in the seat next to me, I don’t know whether you’d taken his ticket, but he must have…he boarded late, or….” I somehow lost my train of thought. 

The conductor patiently, almost pityingly, attended my rambling interrogation.  Then he said—now in a kind of rapid cheerful monotone, as if repeating some official statement from memory—“Fortunately, because of your class of ticket, we are happy to provide you with a special accommodation for the length of tonight’s trip.”

“Accommodation?” I said.

“A Q-compartment,” he explained.  “That’s, well, a Quality Compartment.”

“Compartment?”

“In, um, the sleeping car.  Because of, you know, the delay.”

“How long could the delay possibly be?” I demanded.  “I certainly did not purchase a ticket for an overnight trip.”

“Oh, oh dear,” stammered the elderly man.  “We like to please all of our customers.  I, um…” Here he bent down close to my face, and lowered his voice.  There was a babyish smell on his breath, like apple juice or custard.  “I think you’ll find the accommodation quite pleasant.”

“I’m hardly concerned with that.  As far as I know, this is not a sleeper train.  What I wish to know, immediately, is when this train is expected to arrive.”

“Oh, well,” he continued, “a determination will be made, you know, in the morning.  Or perhaps even sooner, sometime tonight.  All passengers in the Q receive a complimentary muffin, as well as a Preferred Traveler’s Kit.”

“Couldn’t I be let off at one of the intermediary stops?  Surely there’s another train on this route.”

The elderly man licked his thin lips and smiled at me sadly.  “I’m afraid there’s only, um, the one stop,” he spoke.  “At the end.  And the train, you know, just doesn’t go any faster.”

3.

The “Q-compartment” was furnished with a single berth which folded down from the wall, thus functioning as either a seat or a bed.  There was a small stainless steel wash basin, over which a square mirror was mounted, and a window whose cream-colored vinyl curtains were drawn.

“It’s a shared lavatory I’m afraid,” the conductor explained, hoisting my small suitcase with great difficulty into the compartment.  “But you’ll find, um, the Preferred Traveler’s Kit, with an exfoliating cake and, you know, some other personal items.”

After indicating the call button—a circular bluish knob fixed into a square metallic plaque—and urging me to summon him personally should I need anything, the conductor left me to my peace.

Once he was gone, I stood for several moments in the middle of the compartment, eyes closed, feeling the jostling motion of the train as it rumbled through the vast remote darkness.  The whole business had left me physically and emotionally spent—despite my recent, uncontrollable bouts of napping—and eventually I lapsed onto the fold-out seat/cot and gazed grimly at the ceiling.

Suddenly I heard a knocking at the door to the compartment.  I scrambled up from the cot.  I thought: my briefcase! and spun around in a frenzy, as if unable to locate it—but there it was, resting on the floor beneath the wash basin.  I seized the briefcase and popped it open, while the knocking at the door continued, and hastily rifled through my research.  The mass of papers seemed perplexing and badly misordered.  Bits of language from photocopied newsprint and my own vague scribblings leapt out at me: Public papers were locked up in closed houses when the clerks left…He promised to expose the Doctor’s reply to sun and air for some hours before handling it…the Doctor seemed sure the disease could not be communicated in a letter. I panicked at my failure to discern the place of these sentences in the narrative I had constructed for my book—which Doctor was being referred to?  A doctor from the Barn?  Or was the doctor writing to a Barn administrator about some patient he had sent there?  And what was contained in the papers?  Information about the walking cases?  Had the papers themselves been contaminated?  I thought of the present-day Barn, with its convenience-store shelves of Bisquick and fingernail polish; and poor Charlie, twiddling his slow fingers in the vinegary egg-jar….

“Knock-knock!” chirped a muffled voice from outside, followed by several more quiet raps upon my door.  Breathlessly I reached across the compartment, fumbled at the latch and flung open the door.

It was Clume.  Who else?  Alas Clume had returned—and he held in his hand a single yellow cupcake in a fluted wrapper.

“I thought you might be hungry for a snack,” he whispered conspiratorially.  “The café car closed some time ago, and I thought—.”

“No,” I said.  “I am not in the least bit hungry.”

“Oh?” Clume replied.  “Well, in my experience, I’ve found that nothing works up an appetite like some hearty research.  Have you made any progress?  I’ve been mulling over some ideas and I thought we could maybe compare notes.  For instance—oh, I see you’ve got a Q!”

“Yes, that’s right,” I said.  “Look, Mr. Clume.  I appreciate your gesture, but I really, really must insist that—.”

“Cut the shit,” said Clume.  He leaned in and whispered in my ear.  His hair smelled like a mixture of oil and powder.  “I need to talk to you.  Forget about the snack.  This is serious.  You’d better let me in and shut the door.”

He glared at me through his spectacles, over which his high pale forehead loomed.

“Okay,” I relented, ushering him into the compartment and latching the door behind us.

Clume sat gingerly on the cot and sniffled several times.  He peeled back the vinyl flap of window curtain and looked outside.  I remained standing where I was.

Clume took a deep breath.  “I admit that I was wrong before.” He nodded to himself.  “I was mistaken.”

“Mistaken about what?”

“When I told you that nothing was wrong with this train.”

I tried to recall his earlier aggravating comments, but it all seemed very long ago…had I ever asked Clume if anything was wrong with the train?  Hadn’t it been the conductor I’d asked?

“So what is it?” I said.

Clume sighed, as if he were trying to explain some simple but vital concept to a dull child.  “Do you know what the ‘Q-compartment’ really is?”

A flutter of fear rose in my chest.  Nonetheless, I said, “Of course I know what it is.  Naturally, it’s this.  If you’re asking me why this train has been delayed to such a ludicrous extent that I’ve been obliged to spend the night in this—.”

“That’s not what I’m asking you,” said Clume gravely.  “I’m asking if you know what the ‘Q-compartment’ is.”

I stood glaring at Clume, whose puckered mouth twitched at the corners, as if he were concealing a smirk.

He said, “It’s for Quarantine.”

“What’s for quarantine?”

“The Q-compartment,” said Clume.  “That’s what I meant when I said I was mistaken when I said nothing was wrong with the train.”

He crossed his legs, rustling the synthetic fabric of his jogging pants.

“Utter nonsense,” I said.

Clume threw his hands up.  “Okay,” he whined.  “I’m just here to tell you some information.  Apparently a rumor’s been circulating.  People on the train have been talking.”

“What people?”

“I don’t know,” said Clume.  “People.”

He started examining the tapered tips of his fingers.  I repressed a powerful urge to strangle his fleshy neck.  Then, collecting myself, I decided to humor him. 

“Why,” I asked, “would I be in quarantine?  I am not ill.  Are you in quarantine?  Are you ill?”

“Ha!” snorted Clume.

“What’s funny?” I demanded.

“Let me ask you a question,” he said.  “Why are you still on this train?  Didn’t you have somewhere to be?”

I felt my head fill up with blood.  I remembered the gravy-boat.  My family, and the plump pillow.

“The train,” I said, “was delayed.”

“By what?” asked Clume.

“By, I presume, an accident.”

“I already told you,” said Clume, “that accident has nothing to do with this train.”

“Which accident?”

“The accident you just referred to several times.” He squeezed and poked at the moist-looking cupcake.

“Look, Mr. Clume,” I said.  “If I’m in quarantine, then why am I free to roam this train as I please?”

“Fine,” said Clume.  “Roam the train.”

He tore off a bit of the cupcake and put it in his mouth.  He sat there chewing slowly and looking at me.

“Get out,” I said.

Clume raised his eyebrows.  “Me?”

“You’re like a bad dream,” I said.  “An infection.  You’re here and nowhere.  I want you out.”

“Who’s nowhere?” said Clume.

“Out!”

He hopped up and once again oozed past me as I stood there shaking with frustration.  I would have shoved him out the door had I not been so loathe to touch his cringing form.  When he was gone I snapped the door shut.

I leaned against the door with my head in my hands, furious that I was now forced to contemplate the variety of absurd propositions uttered by the demented Clume.  If only I could forget all of it, go to sleep, and wake up to find that the train had arrived at its proper destination.  As for Munktohnville and whatever holes still remained in the fragile texture my research, whatever loose ends still lay about from the flurry of productivity that had been my sabbatical—whether or not I would have to return there and compile additional evidence, or reconsider some of my earlier formulations—it would all have to wait until after the holiday, until after I’d had some peace and rest.

But while I stood there grappling with these problems, I began to hear noises—abrupt, muffled sounds—that seemed to be coming from the other side of the wall on the left side of my compartment.  I put my ear close to the wall and listened.  At first I heard nothing, but quickly the noise resumed: a monotonous, repetitive moaning noise—almost like an incantation or wailing—that would rise and subside, rise and subside…then suddenly whoever was making the noise stopped moaning and burst out in a brief fit of what sounded like violent, uncontrollable cursing.  Then silence.  And then the process would repeat itself: moaning, wailing, fit of cursing, silence…suddenly I realized from the tone of the voice that it was the fat, waistcoated man from the café car, who I’d earlier overheard conversing with the elderly conductor.  Like a club foot, he’d remarked.  It was unmistakable.  And as I listened closer, I heard another distinct voice—a vibrous, murmuring sound—that I recognized as belonging to the conductor himself.  It was as if he were trying to calm or assuage the larger man, who was obviously in some type of profound distress.

Rather involuntarily, I pressed the call-button.  It was nothing more than a flat plastic knob, and it seemed doubtful that it could actually summon anyone.  As if to confirm my suspicion, nothing happened.  But then the noises fell silent.  I waited.  There was a vague shuffling—something bumped against the wall—and then the sound of a latch.  After a few seconds, there came a knock at my door.  Hesitantly—as though I’d intruded upon or disrupted something, in some egregious but unaccountable way—I opened the door.

The conductor stood facing me.  His thinnish gray hair was slightly disheveled, and his large watery eyes looked sad and red.  He grinned up at me weakly.

“Is there, um, something we can do?” he said.

I felt I owed him some kind of explanation.  “I’m sorry,” I said.  “I was just wondering…because of the unusual delay…could you tell me, is this a ‘normal’ sleeping compartment?” I realized I had framed my question poorly.

“Oh, oh yes,” he said, “it’s quite normal.  It’s a normal one.  But, you know, with the upgrade.”

“The ‘Quality’?”

He seemed confused.  “Yes, it has full quality.”

“But it’s not…special in any way.”

The conductor worked his veiny hands nervously in front of his baggy uniform coat.  “Oh, well, we consider all of our passengers special guests.”

Whether or not it had something to do with the conductor’s speech or mannerisms—he appeared to be alone in the passageway—I felt a strong impression that somehow Clume, wherever he might have been, was overhearing our conversation.

“Let me ask you this,” I said.  “I don’t have to stay in this compartment for the duration of the night, do I?  Naturally, the rest of the train is open to the passengers?”

“The rest of the train?  Well, I suppose it is.  Did you, um, need something?  A pillow?”

I thought of the warm pillow I’d anticipated earlier in the day—a crisp, sunny morning that now seemed so long ago.  “No,” I said.  “But I might want to go stretch my legs a bit.”

“Oh,” said the conductor.  “Stretch your legs—hmm…”

After I apologized sheepishly (though unnecessarily) for bothering him, and after a bit of nodding and mumbled assurances, the conductor left me alone.

I listened to hear if he would re-enter the compartment adjacent to mine, but heard nothing.  Beneath me and around me the train hummed steadily, a great blind machine, proceeding continuously onward, along its invisible track, into the night.

*

Some time later—at this point, under my present “rustic” conditions, I have little hope of precisely reconstructing the chronology—and perhaps because of Clume’s inane suggestions, or the elderly conductor’s utter failure to address my concerns (and despite the fact that I myself may not have been able to accurately clarify those concerns), I decided to leave my compartment and venture out into other parts of the train.

Standing in the dimly lit passageway, I found no indication and had no memory of the direction in which the main section of the train might lie.  I went left.  When I came to the end of the car I pushed the rectangular plastic button which opened the doors to the interstice between cars, and continued through the second set of doors.  This car was the same as the last—a narrow, commercially-carpeted passageway, also dimly lit, with three or four doors (presumably to sleeping compartments such as mine) on either side, and a narrow metallic door to what I guessed was the lavatory.

I passed through two or three more sleeping cars just like the previous ones—and while I was relieved to find that I was indeed in perfect freedom to “roam” the train as I pleased, yet I wondered whether all the other passengers with whom I’d been seated earlier were in fact occupying these compartments.  I lingered a bit outside the doors, listening for sounds of human activity—snoring, perhaps, or conversation, or someone getting up to use the lavatory—but heard nothing.  Perhaps this was simply on account of the very late hour.

But alas, when I came through the next set of inter-car doors, I was struck with a horrible sinking feeling.  There, seated on a wooden stool in the middle of the passageway, was none other than the elderly conductor.

It was very strange, for as I came closer I saw that he appeared to be sleeping, yet his body was cocked at a peculiar angle, as if he were very gradually falling off the stool.  Carefully I approached his form.  The conductor’s cap sat askew on his head; his eyes were shut; his large hands rested in his lap, where the woolen coat was bunched up; and he appeared to be wheezing very, very softly.

All of this made a grim impression on me.  Had he been placed here as some kind of sentry?

I reached out and with one finger prodded him lightly on the shoulder.  He didn’t move.  The face was limp, expressionless, the loose skin webbed with blood-vessels.  Then instantly, his right eye popped open—but not fully, so that the lid revealed only part of the nacreous eye.  Gradually the eyelid closed again.

What was I to make of this?  I couldn’t ascertain whether he’d seen me; perhaps it was merely some sleep-tic, a myoclonic jerk in the midst of a dream.

I began to maneuver around the stool.  Since the conductor was blocking the middle of the passage, I had to suck in my abdomen in order to slip through the narrow space.

I’d very nearly got past him, when I felt a hand pawing at my chest, and cried out as if in great pain.  The conductor was pulling weakly at my shirt.

“No!” he whimpered, grasping at my arms.

“Please, stop that!” I shouted in a whisper.  “I am going past.”

I was disgusted to find myself caught up in a weird physical struggle with the elderly man, as if he were trying to pin me against the wall or tickle me.  His efforts continued, and I smelled the babyish custard smell as his breathing became labored. 

“Um, the café car’s at the other end,” he protested.  “Plus it’s closed now, or…or it may be open for night snacks….”

“I don’t want any snack!  Please, stop this behavior,” I insisted.

“Oh dear, um, if you need something you can press the call-button,” he murmured as he continued to grapple at me.  “In your Preferred Traveler’s Kit, you’ll find—.”

“Get.  Off!” I grunted, forcefully shoving him away from me.  Momentarily free of his gropings, I hurried toward the end of the car, looking back over my shoulder.

“Oh, oh dear,” he whimpered.  “It’s impossible….”

Moving quickly, since I couldn’t see whether or not he was attempting to pursue me, I slapped my hand against the rectangular button, and the doors to the next car flew open with a shudder.  The interstice rocked abruptly, and I gripped the doorway for balance.  The doors remained open as I passed through into the next car, and glancing back once more I saw the hunched silhouette of the conductor resting against the wall at the far end of the passageway.

Finally the doors shut behind me.

I lurched down the length of the car, smacked the button for the doors, rushed through the interstice into the next car, and the next one, and the one after that.  Every car I passed through was exactly the same as the one before: narrow passageway, dull carpeting, dim lights, compartment doors on either side.  On and on I hurried, ever more frantic, increasing my pace and determination, though I had no idea where I was going, or what I hoped to reach.  How many sleeping cars can there have been?  And where were all the passengers? What sort of accommodation had been made for those people I’d glimpsed in their seats, contorted in positions of doze or frozen half-sleep, covered by a patchwork of darkness and the tiny pools of reading light, collapsed or straight-backed or awkwardly hunched over their fold-out trays?  Should I have banged with my fists on the doors to those compartments, shouting aloud that there had been an accident, an emergency, that everyone should wake up at once and come out of their rooms, that this wasn’t even a sleeping train for god’s sake, why was anyone sleeping? Wake up! I should have cried, before it’s too late! But I did none of that, as if it were already far too late; or as if, on the other hand, I’d gone mute, paralyzed, as in a dream where one desperately needs to warn someone of some horrible impending disaster, but can’t.  And really, who was it that one had been trying to warn, and of what?

It seems unlikely that a train should have been so long.  Perhaps some illusion of perpetuity was created through the cunning use of a trick.  But at last I came to the end of the very last car, and found no door to go through.

There was only a small window, partially frosted over.  I went up close and peered through it. 

All I saw were the wooden ties, ribboning out behind the train, for a little ways, before disappearing in the darkness and snow.

4.

Wearily, I admitted I’d been fooled.  Yes, I had roamed “freely,” as it were; and had even got well beyond the point which the conductor had not wished for me to pass.  Yet I now saw that all of this told me nothing with regard to the question of the ‘Q-compartment,’ and my ostensible access to the train as a whole.  For couldn’t it have been possible that the entire expanse of cars I’d just traversed had all, in fact, been ‘Q’?  And that I alone had been set loose to wander these god-forsaken cars?  That, indeed, the conductor had planted himself at his stool-post as a kind of decoy (hence the feigned struggles), and the section of the train forbidden to me (perhaps the section where the other passengers had been relocated) had been in the opposite direction—that is, toward the front, rather than the rear of the train?

But all of these ruminations were, I’m sorry to say (just how sorry would soon become clear) trifling rubbish.  In a flash of indescribable horror, I realized that all of Clume’s insinuations had infected my thinking, had intoxicated and disabled my vigilance in precisely the manner he’d wished.

It was the briefcase.

I’d left it unattended—again! Oh, my Lord.  I thought of the Krupp-Nudenheim…the history, and all those who suffered…my months and months of effort….

Fine, his voice echoed in my memory, like a curse.  Roam the train.

In terror I spun round and set off at a full tilt.  As I ran anguished through the empty cars I fantasized about the throttling I’d give the conductor, elderly or no, when I came upon him, conscious or not, perched upon his stool.  But no!—there would be no time for a throttling—such measures would simply play further into Clume’s hand.  I absolutely had to get back to my compartment, and to the briefcase, as quickly as possible.

Each time I passed through a set of doors into the next car I expected to see the conductor on his stool, but I went further and further and found nothing.  I ran faster, and at one point stumbled over what might have been some soft object on the floor, though I was too distracted to stop and look.  The absence of the conductor only increased my panic and doubt (could I be going in the wrong direction?—but how could that be possible, since this was the way I’d come?) until at last I emerged through a set of doors and found not the conductor, but Clume.

I was back at my own compartment. 

Clume leant with his back against my door.

He was nothing but a cipher, a rag-doll, a chattering toy.  It occurred to me that almost all of my troubles had been caused by the mere fact of my having acknowledged him as an entity.  Angrily I shoved him aside (he giggled; I smelled wine) and entered the compartment.

The briefcase was there—lying beneath the wash basin where I’d left it.  A shower of giddy exultation washed over me.

As I knelt down to open it and check the safety of my materials, Clume spoke from behind me:

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

He had come into the room.

“Of course, I’m not you.  Ha!” (The sniffling laughter, the fondling of the sunken chin.)  “My cousin used to say ‘I am I and you are you,’ whenever we had a disagreement.  She was funny.  But anyway,” he continued, as I fumbled at the latch, “like I said, that type of research frequently has its hazards: there’s the fatigue, plus always the chance that the subject matter has already been ‘handled,’ so to speak, by others—.”

“Shut up!” I commanded.

“And those libraries—ugh!  All the dust!  One has to consider one’s health.”

Grabbing the briefcase by the handle, I stood up.  The blood rushed from my head, and my vision went gray with a snow of spots.

“I am getting off this train,” I said.  “Immediately.”

“How?” asked Clume.

“I don’t care.  I’ll notify the engineer of an emergency.  I’ll feign an illness.  I’ll jump out of a damned window if I have to.”

Clume stepped closer to me.  He’d been sipping something loathsome: the fetid wine-smell was nauseating.  “Well,” he said, “I’ll tell you a piece of information.  I happen to know that shortly there is going to be a stop.  An “unofficial” stop.  The only one before the final destination—which, as you might fathom, is still quite a ways off.”

“Hmm, that’s interesting,” I said.  “Does it have to do with the ‘quarantine’?”

Clume pretended offense at my condescending tone.

“Actually,” he said, “it has to do with maintenance.  No passengers allowed on or off.  I think it’s a place called Munktinburg, or Martinburg, or….”

Just then the train began to slow.  I could feel it palpably—wheels and levers grinding and groaning deep underneath the floor.

As if sensing the same thing, Clume grinned.

“Get out of my way!” I cried.  Briefcase in hand (forget the rest of my belongings) I pushed past Clume and made my way out into the passageway.  This time I knew what I wanted: I turned right, toward the front.  The train shuddered and I lost my balance as I came to the first set of doors.  Clume was close behind me.  As I hit the button, bells started ringing.

“We never finished discussing our research!” Clume called out.

The doors opened only a crack, but (holding the briefcase between my knees) I forced them several inches apart and squeezed through into the interstice between cars.

“You know,” Clume continued (he too was trying to pull apart the doors), “I have to say that I think I disagree—respectfully, of course—with some of your premises.”

A loud siren began to whoop and wail over the noise of the bells and the sounds of the train grinding to a halt.

“For instance, some of those ‘walking cases.’ Couldn’t it have been that they only thought they were sick—.”

Thank god—immediately to my right was an exit.  The doors were shut, but there was a red lever marked Emergency Use.

“And, could it be that they got in the ambulance, but somewhere along the way made a good-faith judgment that they were okay after all?”

I pressed on the lever and nothing happened.  I gave the lever a sharp toe-kick.  Clume had very nearly squeezed through the doors into the interstice, and was reaching out his arm, as if to grab me.

“Don’t you agree,” he continued, “that that would cast certain key events in a different light?”

“Aghh!” I grunted, and with all my strength yanked on the emergency door’s handles.  The train had come completely to a stop, and the bells and sirens had reached a deafening pitch, over which Clume shouted,

“Of course, it’s easy to become confused—.”

The doors sprung open—they were mounted on a sliding track—and a blast of cold wind rushed in.  Getting on my knees, I began to lower myself off the side of the train.

“Deficiencies in moral character are sometimes known to result….”

My feet, kicking in air, at last found purchase, and I let myself down onto the ground.  A little squeal of pain escaped from my throat—I’d set my briefcase down while I was struggling with the doors; but the doors were still open, so I lunged upward, reached inside and snatched it out.  At the same time, Clume wedged his elbow in the doors, as though he were trying to follow me out of the train.  I flung the briefcase behind me onto a bank of snow, and made a concerted effort to stuff Clume’s arm back inside.

“Ow!” he yelped, and retracted the arm part way.  I grabbed the handles on the outside of the sliding doors and tried to force them shut.  But they kept jouncing off Clume’s hand.  And although I understood that rationally it didn’t make sense for me to be slamming the doors over and over on Clume’s hand, smashing it repeatedly, that was what seemed to be happening.  In a kind of half-dream, I flung the doors together, so that they rebounded off the hand and then came together once more, mechanically, crushing the hand to a bloody pulp.  (“Don’t worry,” he seemed to remark, quite matter-of-fact, in the midst of this punishment—“we’ve both handled the clipping.”)  My face was bitten by the freezing wind and brittle flakes, and my leather shoes scrabbled on the snow and icy clumps as I threw all of my weight into the slamming of the doors.

“Uncanny behavior…” muttered Clume, who finally seemed to have pulled his pulverized hand all the way back inside the train. 

I staggered back and collapsed onto the snow bank next to my briefcase.  Out of breath, and nearly delirious, I watched as the train’s machinery rocked slowly into gear, and the train began to roll away.

And as I watched the cars slip slowly past, I thought I saw in the windows people looking out at me from softly lighted rooms: the elderly conductor and the sorrowful fat man in one window; in another, the sullen-faced woman with the pointed breasts, and the grave-mannered café car attendant; in yet another, the carefully coifed head of the man with a nub for a hand.

There were many other faces in many more windows, all peering out at me, all without expression, as they drifted past into the night.  The one face I didn’t see, thank heaven, was Clume’s.

*

I am no longer convinced that it is, in fact, the holiday season. Holiday is a time of cheerful and restful celebration with one's family—and this is decidedly not that. There is no turkey here, and no pillow. There is no gravy here, unless by gravy you mean howling wind. It has been a long, long night.

Where is here? I am not, as yet, in a position to investigate that. Shortly after the train left, I was overcome with symptoms. Motor coordination mainly. A continuous ringing of bells in my ears. Certain ocular difficulties that would require far too much energy to describe. I suddenly felt as though I'd been hit in the head by a train, so to speak, and forgotten to take my medicine. (Ha!—is that an old saying?)

In any case, I staggered over a hill and through a wood, not to grandmother's house, but to this structure in which I am currently—temporarily!—housed. I have no reason to doubt a prompt rescue and deliverance. Perhaps in the morning another train will pass through.

It now occurs to me that, in some sense (and despite the mess of papers scattered on the ground beside me), I believe I may have achieved the means to advance my research even further. True, I no longer have access to a library, and I may have to forego, for some time, the beneficence of a Krupp-Nudenheim. But I have attained a clarity of mind that only comes when most of the senses have gone. And, you know, I never expected the project to be easy. I like to think that today's scholar, plunging boldly into our collective dream of history, revivifying the dormant past, is the stolid pioneer of a new era: an era of knowledge.

There…I believe I have just felt a sensation in my toe. Perhaps my lifeless limbs, after a brief winter's nap, are starting to re-awaken to new life. Soon, indeed, the quickening will spread through me, as swiftly and surely as an infectious fever, all the way up to my brain! Then—if I can only muster the verve to grab a pen—I will retrace my steps, stare down the evidence with a colder eye, and think my way to a new, uncharted place.