As Trains Pass By Read online

  “Will you sprinkle some sugar on it, brown-eyes.”

  The brown-eyed one sprinkled some sugar with her bare fingers:

  “Aye, madam,” said the man, “she has known better days.”

  “What about a tip,” he bleated across the street, “for Tyrolese Ferdinand’s brown-eyed daughter?”

  The brown-eyed daughter automatically rattled a collection box she was holding out and looked as though she neither heard nor saw.

  “Sugar, brown-eyes.”

  Again the brown-eyed daughter’s fingers dipped into the sugar.

  They reached the market place. “It’s almost enough to deafen you,” said Katinka, putting her hands to her ears. Le Tort, the great professor of conjuring, stood on some high scaffolding, struggling with two trombones and competing with the music emitted by three merry-go-rounds. A white-painted Pierrot dragged a big bass drum up in front of the biggest arena in the world:

  “The biggest arena, ladies and gentlemen, the world-famous arena.”

  He made music by putting the hindmost part of his body down hard on his drum.

  “Miss Flora, Miss Flora, the high trapeze.”

  It was just in front of them. “Miss Flora, the Queen of the Air, gentlemen, ten øre.” The barker swung a great bell with his right arm.

  “The Queen of the Air, ten øre.”

  Professor Le Tort was determined. He proclaimed all sorts of wonders, his voice cracking, and he decided to make five hundred yards of silk ribbon for free. He started regurgitating up there on his scaffolding and pulling strips of tissue paper out of his throat, all the while turning so red faced that he looked as though he was about to have a fit.

  “The Queen of the Air, ten øre.”

  In the biggest arena in the world, Pierrot was standing on his head on a drum and beating it with the top of his head.

  The merry-go-rounds were going to the accompaniment of brass bands and barrel organs.

  “Ladies, the Queen of the Air. The Queen of the Air, ten øre.”

  The sun baked down on them, the air was filled with the scent of honey cake and there were milling crowds and a great din.

  “Isn’t it lovely,” said Katinka. She looked up at Huus and shook herself a little, like a kitten in scorching heat.

  “That’s his wife,” she said.

  “Who?” asked Huus.

  “The one that was doing the washing.”

  It was the Queen of the Air going up the steps with pink legs in laced boots and a broad, waggling backside.

  “Miss Flora, known as the Queen of the Air, ten øre.”

  The Queen of the Air was equipped with a fan which she handled like a fig leaf; she munched a few plums in preparation for going inside and up in the air.

  “Shall we go in?” said Katinka.

  “Tik,” shouted Bai. He wanted to see the Snake Lady. They pushed their way forward through the crush and passed a merry-go-round. Marie was riding a lion, half on the lap of a cavalryman.

  Katinka also wanted to have a ride. Bai said that on no account was he going to pay money to be made sick. Katinka found a horse on the inside alongside Huus. They started to move, slowly and then faster. She nodded to Bai and laughed at all the faces revolving around them.

  “What a crowd,” she said. She could see over all their heads.

  They had a second ride. “Hold tight,” said Katinka, leaning forward across Huus.

  “Be careful,” he said, putting his arm round her.

  Katinka smiled and leaned back. All the faces started to merge into one for her. They were simply a mass of black and white that kept on whirling around.

  She continued to smile as she closed her eyes.

  It was as though all the noise from the fair and the music and the voices and the blaring horns combined in one intense sound in her ears, while everything rocked gently.

  She opened her eyes a little: “I can’t see anything,” she said and closed them again.

  The bell rang and they started to move more slowly. “Let’s have another turn,” she said. Huus had leant in towards her. She did not realise that she was supporting herself on his shoulder. “Catch it,” she said. They flew past the ring, and she laughed in his face.

  She sat with half open eyes looking into the circle of people. It was as though all the faces had been threaded on a string.

  Though dizzy, she caught sight of Marie. She had come up again and was sitting in a carriage with her cavalryman.

  She was sitting on his knee.

  She looked almost as though she was about to swoon.

  And all the others: just see how they were leaning tight against the lads, as though they were half dead.

  Katinka suddenly straightened up; all her blood had rushed to her head. The merry-go-round stopped.

  “Come on,” she said and got down from the horse.

  Bai was standing by the ring pole. Katinka took his hand. “It makes you dizzy,” she said, stepping down onto the ground. She was quite pale from having driven around so much.

  “You look after Tik, Huus,” said Bai. “I’ll lead the way.” He pinched Marie’s arm as she descended from the merry-go-round with her cavalryman.

  Marie was embarrassed to see her employer and his family and disentangled herself from her blue-uniformed companion.

  “She’s getting on fine,” said Bai as he set off.

  “It’s just here,” said Katinka. Huus offered her his arm.

  The snake lady Miss Theodora was displaying her lethargic pets alongside the merry-go-round. They were fat, slimy creatures that she took out of a box containing blankets. Miss Theodora tickled them under their chins to liven them up a little.

  “They are digesting their lunch, miss,” said Bai in his club voice.

  “What did you say?” said Miss Theodora. “Don’t you think they are alive?” Miss Theodora took the reference to digesting their lunch as an insult.

  She took the snake by its neck and scratched its head so that it opened its jaws and managed to produce a hiss.

  Miss Theodora called it her little pet and held it to her breast. Miss Theodora was of impressive female girth and wore a pageboy suit.

  The snake quietly allowed its tail to hang between the lady’s knees. “Sweetie,” said Miss Theodora.

  “Let’s go,” said Katinka. “It’s horrible.” She had taken Huus’ arm in disgust.

  “Yes,” said the owner, flattered in her assumption that this was from fear and feeling duly flattered. “Difficult beasts, my dear. But she’s tamed lions as well.”

  Katinka was already outside.

  “I don’t know how people can do that sort of thing,” she said. She was trembling all over.

  “Aye,” said Bai, passing his hands over it like an expert. The owner had asked the “gentleman” to convince himself that the animals could really move “as well as on a bare body”.

  “Aye,” said Bai. “There’s meat on it all right.”

  The snake lady Theodora gave a conciliated smile as she put her “little dears” back into their box.

  “Aye,” said its owner, “she used to tame lions, sir.”

  “For eight years,” said Miss Theodora.

  Huus and Katinka were on the other side of the square. It was gradually starting to grow dark, and all the barkers were shouting in competition with each other, eagerly and desperately, on the stands.

  “Reduced price, reduced price for you, lady,” the professor shouted to Katinka. He wiped the sweat off with ‘the remarkable handkerchief’, “Twenty øre for you and your gentleman friend.”

  Katinka walked on so much faster that Bai could hardly keep up.

  People started to be merrier. Groups of unsteady lads ran singing towards the rows of girls, who screamed and scattered; and couples were gradually starting to flirt in the lanes formed by the tents.

  A great noise issued from the refreshment tents and from up where the brown-eyed daughter was pouring cognac on the waffles.

  The th
ree policemen hobbled around with their walking sticks. They were men who had been slightly wounded during the wars and who were keeping together to maintain order; here and there, in groups behind the tents, the grammar school boys suddenly started whistling through their fingers and piercing the air above all the din.

  It grew darker and darker as Katinka and Huus walked down along the rows of tents, buying this and that.

  Storm lanterns were already being lit in the tents, throwing a sparse light over buns and honey cakes. The ladies behind the high counters polished the honey cakes with the flat of their hands making them shine and handed them to Huus and Katinka on a long scoop.

  Bai turned up and bought some as well.

  Huus had bought Katinka a small Japanese tray as a present from the fair. She gave him a honey cake.

  “Hey,” said Bai. “Are you giving Huus honey cake? Give him one shaped like a heart.”

  “Miss,” he shouted, “can we have a heart here.”

  “A heart, sir, with a poem.”

  “Bai,” said Katinka.

  “There is going to be a shower,” said Huus behind them.

  “Blast.” Bai turned from the counter.

  The first spots fell. “It’ll soon be throwing it down,” said Bai.

  “We can shelter in the panorama,” said Huus.

  “Yes.” Katinka took Bai’s arm. “Come on.”

  Everyone ran to get indoors. Women and girls threw their skirts over their heads and ran off with handkerchiefs arranged in squares over their new hats.

  “Look there,” said Bai. “My God, petticoats are on show now.”

  The girls stood around in the doorways, revealing their blue stockings with tops hidden by their Icelandic petticoats.

  The tradesfolk dragged their wares under cover, cursing and swearing. The grammar school boys ran all over the place, making a din and getting drenched.

  “Here it is,” said Katinka.

  “All of Italy, ladies and gentlemen, for fifty øre.” The man was hoarse and wrapped in woollen scarves: “There we are.”

  “It’s pouring down,” said Katinka. She stood at the entrance to the tent and shook herself as she looked out.

  The water ran in torrents as though the sluice gates had been opened. Half the market place was already under water. The slightly wounded policemen were running around, limping as they went, under their umbrellas and raising the gutter coverings.

  All around, under the tents and in doorways, stood the women, soaked to the skin and looking less than perfect.

  Inside the panorama, all was empty and quite quiet. The heavy, monotonous drumming of the rain on the roof could be heard, and then it had become quite cool.

  It was as though Katinka caught her breath after all the din.

  “Oh, how nice it is here,” she said.

  “They are country scenes,” said Bai, who had started looking in the peepholes.

  “Blue water,” he said and went on. He preferred to go out into the entrance hall to see what might be revealed beneath the Icelandic skirts.

  Katinka remained seated. She felt as though reborn in here, alone with Huus in the silence beneath the falling rain.

  “They are not playing,” she said.

  “No, because of the rain.”

  They both listened to the falling rain.

  “What a din there was, though,” she said.

  Katinka would have preferred to stay there and sit listening to the rain. But nevertheless she rose: “Are they really of Italy?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  She looked through one of the peepholes. “Yes,” she said. “It’s Italy.”

  There was some artificial light in there directed on the pictures, which shone out in bright colours.

  “It is so beautiful.”

  “It’s the gulf,” said Huus, “near Naples.”

  The picture was not bad. Gulf and beach and city lay bathed in shimmering sunlight. Boats were skimming across the blue waters.

  “Naples,” breathed Katinka in a quiet voice.

  She continued to look in the peephole. Huus looked at the same picture in the peephole alongside hers.

  “Have you been there?”

  “Yes, I was there for two months.”

  “Sailing?”

  “Yes, to Sorrento.”

  “Sorrento,” Katinka lingered over the foreign name as she gently repeated it.

  “Yes,” she said. “Travel.”

  They went along the row of peepholes and looked at the pictures while standing beside each other. The rain was less intense as it fell on the roof, and finally it was no more than a few drops.

  They saw Rome and the Coliseum. Huus told her about them.

  “It is so grand,” said Katinka, “that it almost makes you afraid.”

  “I like Naples best.”

  Outside, the barrel organs started to play. The merry-go-round bell rang. Katinka had almost forgotten where she was.

  “I don’t think it’s raining any longer.”

  “No, it’s gone off now.”

  Katinka looked round her in the room. “Then Bai will be waiting,” she said.

  She went back and once more looked at the Bay of Naples with the hurrying boats.

  Bai came in and said that the street was open to regular traffic again.

  “So I suppose we can go out to the park?” he said.

  They went. The air was cool and fresh. Crowds of happy people were making their way towards the park.

  The trees and hawthorn hedges were perfumed after the rain.

  The sun was sinking, and over by the entrance to the park coloured lamps were being lit on the decorated arch. The lads were drifting along with their arms around the lasses’ waists. All the benches along the road were occupied by young people sitting close together, secretly courting.

  “Now we’re going to have a dance,” said Bai.

  Outside the dance floor crowds of adolescent boys and girls were watching over the railings. Inside, the dance floor resounded to the beat of a polka.

  “Come on, Tik,” said Bai. “We’ll open the dancing.”

  Bai danced ferociously and continued to weave his way in and out among the other couples.

  “Oh Bai, please,” said Katinka, quite breathless.

  “I can still manage to shuffle around,” said Bai. He was swinging his hips to a completely wrong rhythm.

  “Oh Bai, please.”

  “I can still get her going,” said Bai as they went over to Huus.

  “Now I’d better keep up the good work,” he said, clicking his heels as at the club balls, “and get the ladies moving.”

  Bai was making Katinka feel uncomfortable.

  “Bai is so frisky,” she said when he had left them.

  “Will you dance with me?” said Huus.

  “Yes. In a moment. Let’s just wait a moment.”

  They could see Bai waggling his hips together with a buxom farmer’s daughter in a velvet corsage.

  “Let’s walk a little,” said Katinka.

  They left the dance floor and walked a little way down the road, where the music was not so loud.

  Katinka sat down. “Sit down,” she said. “This makes one so tired.”

  It was quiet in the woods. Only a few odd sounds of music reached them now and then. They sat in silence. Huus fiddled with a stick on the ground.

  “Where is she now?” Katinka asked suddenly. She was sitting there looking down.

  “She?”

  “Yes, your fiancée.”

  “She is married, thank goodness.”

  “Thank goodness?”

  “Yes, one would always feel some responsibility if she were now simply left high and dry.”

  “But you couldn’t help that.”

  Katinka was silent for a time: “If she was fond of you.”

  “She was fond of me,” said Huus. “I know that now.”

  Katinka rose. “Has she any children?” she asked. They had a
lready moved a little further along the road.

  “Yes, a little boy.”

  They spoke no more until they reached the dance floor. “Shall we dance now?” said Katinka.

  The small lanterns had been lit all around and threw a sparse light down on the benches along the sides. The couples danced out into the light and then back again into the darkness; everything on the dance floor constituted a black, indeterminate, rather restless throng gliding in and out.

  Huus and Katinka started to dance. Huus danced calmly and led confidently, and for Katinka it was as though she was at rest in his arms.

  She heard it all, music and voices and tramping, as something quite far away and was only aware that he led her so confidently, in and out.

  Huus continued to dance in the same quiet way. Katinka felt her heart beating and knew that her cheeks were burning. But she did not ask him to stop and she said nothing.

  They continued to dance.

  “Can we see the sky?” said Katinka suddenly.

  “No,” said Huus. “The trees are hiding it.”

  “So the trees are hiding it,” whispered Katinka.

  They danced.

  “Huus,” she said, looking up at him and not knowing why her eyes were full of tears, “I’m tired.”

  Huus stopped and protected her with his arm as they made their way through the throng.

  “This is great fun,” said Bai. He whirled past them at the entrance.

  They went down the step and drifted out along a path.

  It was quite dark among the trees; it was as though it had grown hotter again after the rain, and they were met by the intense perfume of flowering hawthorn.

  All around beneath trees and in the undergrowth there was whispering and movement as tightly embracing couples hid on the benches in the darkness.

  “Huus, Bai must be waiting for us,” said Katinka. “We’d better go.”

  They turned back.

  “Aye,” said Bai, “let’s go and see what all the screeching is about over there. There are supposed to be some ‘chorus girls’ in the pavilion, and they’re said to be rather nice to look at. But first I’m going to have a last dance with that little country lass over there. You go and shake a leg with Katinka again, Huus, and make sure she doesn’t just sit there.”

  Huus put his arm round Katinka, and they danced again.

  Katinka was oblivious as to whether they had danced for a minute or an hour as they walked through the woods in the direction of the pavilion.