Short Story

THE RED TRAIN

by

Tom Saunders
 

Herr and Frau Knecht left their apartment on the Stepanstrasse at day-break. They were dressed for the cold in hats and gloves and overcoats. They carried no luggage. It was very quiet out in the hallway and they stepped with care, as if the silence did not belong to them. In the dawn light, the rays from the landing window were soft and unresolved. Frau Knecht clutched at her collar and shivered in the grey of the shadows. Outside, a blackbird sang a few notes and then stopped, the stillness all the more profound. The couple did not look at one another or speak as Herr Knecht placed the key in an envelope then bent and slid the envelope underneath the Döhlmanns' door. When they reached the stairs, Herr Knecht stood aside to let his wife go first.

Frau Döhlmann found the key and the single sheet of paper enclosed with it on her way to start breakfast an hour later. She gave a cry and put her hand to her breast as she began to read what Herr Knecht had written. Her husband was in the bathroom shaving. She could hear him singing softly to himself and she wanted him to stop. She went to him and held out the note. When he took it, she sat on the edge of the bath. Together they called the police.

To the detective in charge, the Knechts' apartment was like a made up mind, nothing left in doubt or out of place. The carpets had been darkened by the movement of the vacuum cleaner head, the pile raised in swirls. The furniture was waxed and polished. There was a smell of lemons in the kitchen. One of the uniformed policemen would tell his wife it was as if the couple were expecting visitors.

Elsa, the Knechts' four-year-old daughter, was in the nearest of the two bedrooms. She was laid out on the bed, arranged formally, no longer a child in her passivity. She was wearing a new dress with lace petticoats and her best black shoes. Her hair, still shiny from the brush, was in plaits, tied with strips of cloth that matched her dress. Her hands, the nails recently cut, were clasped together on her chest. A yellow plastic rose and a pocket bible bound in white leather had been slipped under the steeple of her fingers.

Everything in the room was neat. No detail had been forgotten. A comb and brush lay side-by-side in strict alignment on the cabinet next to the bed. The child's soft toys were sitting in a line on the lid of the toy box beneath the window. Looking on and listening, the police photographer was to say as he framed them in the course of his job.

The young officer who had discovered Elsa stood back and watched as the detectives examined the scene. When one of them spoke to him, he blinked and seemed confused. He said nothing for a moment, and then when he did speak he stumbled over his words. He was twenty-six and soon to be married.

The police doctor observed some slight trauma to the child's face, areas where bruising would eventually occur. Her mouth was open and her tongue was visible. There was a blue tinge to the lips, something that could also be seen in the skin around her nostrils. The doctor touched the back of his fingers to the coolness of her cheek. The little ones were always the worst. There was a feeling that if only you were to pick them up and hold them close they would wake and everything would be fine again. He informed the detective in charge the probable cause of death was asphyxiation, possibly with a pillow. The detective nodded and said this confirmed what was in Herr Knecht's letter.

Next door, a female officer interviewed the Döhlmanns. A pot of coffee had been made. Segments of kaesekuchen were arranged in a fan on a plate. Herr Döhlmann said nothing. The right-hand side of his face was shady with whiskers and a dab of shaving-cream clung like icing to the lobe of one ear. Frau Döhlmann sat stiffly as if she were already in court. She gripped the flowered material of her housecoat in her fingers. The Knechts had always seemed a very nice couple, she said, friendly without being pushy. True, they did not mix much with the other residents . . . not at all, in fact. But that was up to them was it not? Not everyone wanted their neighbours living with their elbows on the kitchen table, did they? Trouble? Yes, things had not been going that well for them of late. Elsa, the poor little girl, had been left brain-damaged by a difficult birth and Albertina, Frau Knecht, that is, had not found it easy to cope. Friedrich, Herr Knecht, had stayed home from work and because of this he had lost his job. He had just found a new one, however, so it appeared better times might be about to bless them at last. Of course, you were never sure what was waiting around the corner, were you? Never sure of anything, really.

***

The waiting-room at the train station was overheated and airless. There was a fog of cigarette smoke and a smell of damp, oily clothes. Because of the early hour, labourers and factory workers occupied most of the spaces on the long wooden benches. Friedrich Knecht found a seat for Albertina, but she only perched for a second before getting up and marching toward the door. She did not speak or look back and Friedrich was left standing, arms outstretched, a stupefied look on his face. When he turned and hurried after her, the men either side of where she had been sitting glanced at each other and smiled.

They settled on a seat outside at the very end of the platform. It was quieter there, a promontory away from the bustle of the café and kiosks. They sat silently, hands folded in their laps, eyes fixed on the buildings beyond the tracks.

Friedrich had the tickets in his overcoat pocket. He had joined the queue in front of the booking office window without any idea where they would go. They could not stay, was all he knew. Could not be there. He was aware of his surroundings, the people, the trains, the voice on the public address system, but thinking of anything else was like pushing at a door in a dream, one that gave at the touch yet would not open. When his turn came, he was saved by a poster of a laughing man on the wall next to the glass booth. It was publicising a town in the mountains where he and Albertina had once had a holiday. He could remember the place, picture them in it, even though he could remember nothing of what he had felt at the time. Naming the town, he asked for two singles.

It was cold on the bench, but Albertina did not mind. The smell of coffee and hot food further down the platform had made her feel sick. She believed in the cold, wanted it to get colder still, so cold it would be impossible to think of anything else. She tried to concentrate on the pigeons at her feet. Their hard eyes and puffed out chests made her think of public officials. Two of them were squabbling, pecking at a piece of bread, determined not to share it. The pompous way their heads jerked back and forth made her angry.

"Elsa was such a sweet baby," she said, surprised to hear her voice out loud. "You remember how she would sleep so soundly. Never any trouble. She would look up at me when I was feeding her, and I could see so much tenderness in her eyes. At that moment it was as if everything in the world fitted together perfectly, mother and child, wife and husband, families, friends . . ."

Friedrich did not reply, or acknowledge that his wife had spoken. His was looking at his hands, thinking back, back to when he was a boy. But it was not easy to find a path home, to look past what had become of him. It seemed impossible to be who he was all that time ago, to not know what he now knew.

Then something was there. He lifted his head.

"When I was a boy," he said, "my father made me a train, a red train, a Christmas present. He made it in his workshop out of pine wood from the forest surrounding the village. It had six big wheels that squeaked when it went along. There was an engineer and a fireman in the cab. They wore blue uniforms. The paint was shiny. The blue deep; the red a happy red. I liked to wake up and see it in the corner of my room every morning. It was my favourite toy. There was a piece of string attached to the front and I would pull it behind me everywhere I went. I had it for years. Years. I recall still having it when we moved to the city. Then it must have got lost. Where and when I do not know. Perhaps it will come to me in a minute. I should remember . . . you would think I would remember something like that. Yes, where did it go . . . ?"

Albertina hunched her shoulders. "I am cold," she said.

"Where did it go?" repeated Friedrich.

They added nothing more. They remained as they were, side-by-side, not touching, staring straight ahead. When their train arrived they did not stir. They were only two figures on the platform when it pulled out, the sound of its wheels clattering off into the distance, fading into birdsong, into time moving on.

####

Tom Saunders lives in Oxfordshire, UK with his wife Jean, an environmental activist.

He began writing in his mid-thirties while taking an English degree at Kingston Polytechnic. Later, he went on to do an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia.

His stories have been published in UK print magazines Panurge, Acclaim, Inkshed and Voyage. In 1995 he was an award winner in the Ian St James international short story competition and his story The Philosopher Nabel at the Kaffeehaus Eleganz was published in the anthology Pleasure Vessels (still available at Amazon on both sides of the Atlantic!). Order through BOOKS WE LIKE

On the net, he’s been published in MindKites, In Posse Review and his story Brother, What Strange Place is This? was in Zoetrope All-Story Extra January 2000.

You can reach him at tomfoolery@tomfoolery.worldonline.co.uk.

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