The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By Read online

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By

  ‘I love reading Simenon. He makes me think of Chekhov’

  – William Faulkner

  ‘A truly wonderful writer . . . marvellously readable – lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with the world he creates’

  – Muriel Spark

  ‘Few writers have ever conveyed with such a sure touch, the bleakness of human life’

  – A. N. Wilson

  ‘One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories’

  – Guardian

  ‘A novelist who entered his fictional world as if he were part of it’

  – Peter Ackroyd

  ‘The greatest of all, the most genuine novelist we have had in literature’

  – André Gide

  ‘Superb . . . The most addictive of writers . . . A unique teller of tales’

  – Observer

  ‘The mysteries of the human personality are revealed in all their disconcerting complexity’

  – Anita Brookner

  ‘A writer who, more than any other crime novelist, combined a high literary reputation with popular appeal’

  – P. D. James

  ‘A supreme writer . . . Unforgettable vividness’

  – Independent

  ‘Compelling, remorseless, brilliant’

  – John Gray

  ‘Extraordinary masterpieces of the twentieth century’

  – John Banville

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Georges Simenon was born on 12 February 1903 in Liège, Belgium, and died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life. The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By was first published in 1938, during the period when Simenon retired his famous Maigret series in order to focus on making a name for himself as a literary writer and not just a creator of genre fiction. In a stormy meeting with his publisher a few years earlier, Simenon had declared: ‘It’s over, I’m quitting . . . Let’s put Maigret on the shelf. I don’t need handrails anymore. I think I can write a real novel now.’

  The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By

  * * *

  Georges Simenon

  Translated by SIN REYNOLDS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  penguin.com

  First published in French as L’homme qui regardait passer les trains by Gallimard 1938

  This translation first published 2016

  Copyright © 1938 by Georges Simenon Limited

  Translation copyright © 2016 by Siȃn Reynolds

  GEORGES SIMENON ® Simenon.tm

  MAIGRET ® Georges Simenon Limited

  All rights reserved.

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  The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted.

  Ebook ISBN 9781524705367

  Cover photograph © Heinz Hajek-Halke / Collection Michael Ruetz / Agentur Focus.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise for Georges Simenon

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  1.

  In which Julius de Coster the Younger gets drunk in the Petit Saint-Georges and the impossible suddenly overflows the banks of everyday life

  As far as Kees Popinga was personally concerned, it must be admitted that at eight o’clock that evening, there was still time, since his destiny was not yet fixed. But time for what? And could he do anything other than what he was about to do, convinced as he was that his actions had no more importance that evening than during the thousands and thousands of days beforehand?

  He would have shrugged in disbelief if anyone had told him that his life was about to change suddenly, and that the photograph on the sideboard, showing him standing in the bosom of his family, one hand casually resting on a chair, would be reproduced across every newspaper in Europe.

  And finally, if he had searched his conscience, in all seriousness, for anything predisposing him to an eventful future, he would probably not have thought of a certain furtive, almost shameful emotion that disturbed him whenever he saw a train go by, a night train especially, its blinds drawn down on the mystery of its passengers.

  As for daring to tell him to his face that at that very instant his employer, Julius de Coster the Younger, was sitting at a table in the bar known as the Petit Saint-Georges and assiduously getting drunk, it would have had no effect, nor piqued his curiosity, for Kees Popinga had no taste for mystification, having his own fixed opinion of people and things.

  And yet, against all probability, Julius de Coster the Younger was indeed at the Petit Saint-Georges.

  Meanwhile in Amsterdam, in a suite at the Carlton Hotel, a certain Pamela was taking a bath, before leaving for the fashionable nightclub Tuchinski’s.

  What did any of that have to do with Popinga? Any more than the fact that in Paris, in a little restaurant in Rue Blanche, called Chez Mélie, a certain Jeanne Rozier, a redhead, was sitting at a table with a man named Louis, whom she was asking, as she helped herself to mustard:

  ‘You working tonight?’

  Or that in Juvisy, in the Paris suburbs, not far from the railway goods yard, on the road to Fontainebleau, a garage owner and his sister Rose . . .

  In fact, none of that existed yet! It was all in the future – the immediate future of Kees Popinga who, that Wednesday in December, at eight o’clock in the evening, had absolutely no notion of any of this, and was about to smoke a cigar.

  What he would never have admitted to anybody, since it might conceivably be taken for criticism of family life, was that after dinner, he had a very strong inclination to nod off to sleep. It was nothing to do with the food, since as in most Dutch families, their evening meal was a light one: tea, bread and butter, thin slices of ham and cheese, sometimes a dessert.

  No, the offender was rather the stove, an imposing stove, the very best of its kind, with green ceramic tiles and heavy chrome fittings, a stove that was not merely a stove but, by its heat and its warm breath, the regulator, you might say, of the life of the household.

  The cigar boxes were on the marble mantelpiece, and Popinga took his time to choose one, sniffing it, feeling the tobacco with his fingers, because that is essential in order to appreciate a cigar, and also because that’s how people have always done it.

  Just the same way, the moment the table had been cleared, Frida, Popinga’s daughter, fifteen years old with auburn hair, would spread out her schoolbooks under the lamplight and look at them for a long time with her big dark eyes, which were either unfathomable or empty.

  Things went on as usual. Carl, the younger child, thirteen years old, offered his forehead first to his mother, then to his father, kissed his sister goodnight, and went up to be
d.

  The stove was still roaring away and Kees asked out of habit:

  ‘What are you doing, Mama?’

  He called her ‘Mama’ in front of the children.

  ‘I must bring my album up to date.’

  She was forty years old and displayed the same gentleness and dignity as the whole household, people and objects. One could almost have added, as in the case of the stove, that she was the very best-quality Dutch housewife, and it was one of Kees’ obsessions that he always spoke of first-class quality.

  In fact, speaking of quality, the brand of chocolate which the family bought was the only thing that was second-best, and yet they still chose it, because every packet contained a picture, and these pictures took their place in a special album which, in a few years’ time, would contain full-colour reproductions of all the flowers in the world.

  Accordingly, Mrs Popinga settled down in front of her famous album and started sorting out her coloured pictures, while Kees turned the knobs on the wireless set, so that from the outside world all that could be heard was a soprano singing, and sometimes the rattle of crockery from the kitchen where their maidservant was washing the dishes.

  So heavy was the air that his cigar smoke did not even rise to the ceiling but hung like a cloud round Popinga’s face, and he sometimes waved it away with his hand, as one does spider’s webs.

  And hadn’t all this been the same for the last fifteen years, hadn’t they been fixed in the same attitudes?

  It so happened that, a little before eight thirty, when the soprano had fallen silent and a monotonous voice was listing the values on the Stock Exchange, Kees uncrossed his legs, looked at his cigar, and declared hesitantly:

  ‘I wonder whether everything is really in order aboard the Ocean III.’

  Silence, the crackling of the stove. Mrs Popinga had had time to stick two more pictures in her album and Frida to turn the page of her schoolbook.

  ‘Perhaps I’d better go to take a look.’

  And from that moment, the die was cast! Just long enough to smoke two or three millimetres of his cigar, to stretch, to hear the orchestra tuning up in the Hilversum radio auditorium – and Kees had been caught up in a spiral.

  From now on, every single second would weigh more heavily than all the seconds he had lived hitherto, and each of his actions would take on as much significance as those of statesmen whose slightest doings are noted in the press.

  The maidservant brought him his heavy grey overcoat, his fur gloves and his hat. She fitted his rubber galoshes over his shoes, as he docilely lifted first one foot, then the other.

  He kissed his wife and his daughter, noting again that he had no idea what Frida was thinking, if indeed she was thinking anything at all, then in the corridor he wondered whether to take his bicycle, a chrome-plated machine with several gears, one of the very best bicycles money could buy.

  He decided to go on foot, left the house, then looked back at it with satisfaction. It was in fact a villa: he had drawn up the plans, supervised its construction, and if it was not the largest in the neighbourhood, he firmly believed it to be one of the best-designed and most harmonious.

  The neighbourhood itself was a newly built one, a little out of town on the Delfzijl road, and surely the healthiest and most pleasant in Groningen.

  Until this point, Kees Popinga’s life had been entirely composed of this kind of satisfaction, a genuine satisfaction because, say what you will, nobody can claim that an object of the finest quality is anything other than the finest quality, that a well-built house is not a well-built house, or that Oosting’s pork-butcher is not the best in all Groningen.

  It was cold, but a dry and bracing kind of cold. His rubber soles crunched on the hard-packed snow. Hands in his pockets, cigar between his teeth, Kees headed for the port, sincerely wondering whether all was well aboard the Ocean III.

  It had not been a manufactured excuse. True, he was not unhappy to be walking in the cool night air, rather than dozing off in the stale warmth of the house. But he would not have allowed himself to think officially that any place in the world could be better than his home. That was precisely why his cheeks flushed when he heard a train go by, and he surprised a strange longing deep within himself, almost a kind of nostalgia.

  The Ocean III was indeed a real boat, and Popinga’s nocturnal visit was a professional obligation. At the firm of Julius de Coster en Zoon, his post was that of head clerk and authorized signatory. Julius de Coster en Zoon was the largest firm of ship’s chandlers, not only in Groningen but in all of Dutch Friesland, handling everything from rigging to fuel oil and coal, not to mention alcohol and provisions.

  And it was the case that the Ocean III, which was due to sail at midnight so as to go through the canal before the tide, had sent in a large order late that afternoon.

  Kees could see the boat far ahead of him, since it was a three-masted clipper. The banks of the Wilhelmine Canal were deserted, interrupted only by mooring cables, which he nimbly stepped across. Then, like a man used to such things, he climbed the pilot’s ladder and went unhesitatingly towards the captain’s cabin.

  This was, if you like, the last chance before Destiny struck. He could still have turned back, but he was unaware of that, and pushed open the door to find himself facing a furious giant, who proceeded to shower upon him every insult and oath in the book.

  What had happened was totally unexpected to anyone who knew the firm of Julius de Coster en Zoon. The tanker which was due to moor alongside the boat at seven o’clock that evening to deliver the fuel oil – and Kees Popinga had arranged that personally – had not arrived! Not only had it not come to the Ocean III, but there was no one on board, and the other provisions had not arrived either. Five minutes later, an apologetic Popinga was climbing back down to the quayside stuttering that there must be some misunderstanding, and promising that he would deal with it.

  His cigar had gone out. He regretted not having brought his bicycle and ran, yes ran, through the streets like a boy, so appalled was he by the thought that this boat, for want of its fuel, might miss the tide and possibly its voyage to Riga. Although Popinga was not himself a sea-going man, he had passed the examinations to qualify as a long-haul captain, and he felt ashamed on behalf of the firm, of himself, and of the entire merchant navy, for what had happened.

  Was Julius de Coster, by chance, as sometimes happened, still in the office? No, he was not, and Popinga, out of breath, did not hesitate to head for his employer’s private address, a calm and dignified house, but older and less practical than his own, like all the houses in the town centre. It was only as he stood on the threshold and rang the bell that he thought to throw away his extinguished cigar-butt and prepare a sentence . . .

  Steps approached from a distance; a peephole opened and the indifferent eyes of a maidservant observed him. No, Mr Julius de Coster was not at home. So Kees, taking a bold decision, asked to see Mrs de Coster, who was a woman of high social rank, the daughter of a provincial governor whom no one would have dared mix up in a commercial affair.

  The door finally opened. Popinga waited for a long time at the foot of three marble steps, alongside a palm tree in a pot, then he was invited to go upstairs and into a room lit by an orange glow, where he found himself face to face with a woman clad in a silk peignoir and smoking a cigarette in a long jade holder.

  ‘What was it you wanted? My husband went out early to deal with some urgent matter in the office. Why did you not try there?’

  He would never forget that peignoir, nor the dark hair coiled on her neck, nor the supreme indifference of this woman, to whom he stammered his apologies before backing out.

  • • •

  Half an hour later, there was no hope of getting the Ocean III away on time. Kees had first returned to the office, thinking that he might perhaps have just missed his employer en route. Then he had started making his way back once more, this time taking a busier street, where the shops were still open because of the Ch
ristmas season. Someone clasped his hand.

  ‘Popinga!’

  ‘Claes!’

  It was Dr Claes, a specialist in children’s diseases, and a fellow-member of the chess club.

  ‘Aren’t you coming to the tournament tonight? It looks as if the Pole is going to meet his match . . .’

  No, he would not be coming. In any case, his chess evening was Tuesday and this was Wednesday. From running through the cold night air, his cheeks were pink, and his breath hot.

  ‘By the way,’ Claes went on, ‘Arthur Merkemans came to see me today—’

  ‘Has he no shame?’

  ‘That’s what I said to him.’

  And Dr Claes went on his way towards the club, while Popinga felt weighed down by one more trouble. Why should anyone feel the need to mention his brother-in-law to him? Doesn’t every family have one member of whom they are in some sense ashamed?

  Merkemans had not actually committed any crime. The worst thing he could be reproached with was having had eight children, but back then he had held down quite a good job, in a saleroom. Then one day he had lost it. He had remained unemployed for a long while, at first because he was too particular, but eventually he had taken anything on offer, and things had gone from bad to worse.

  Now he was a familiar figure, because he went round touching people for money, telling them his hard-luck story and mentioning his eight children.

  It was embarrassing. Popinga felt a knot in his stomach and thought disapprovingly of this brother-in-law, who had let himself go and whose wife these days even went out shopping without a hat on.

  Well, too bad! He stopped off to buy another cigar, and decided to go home via the station, which was hardly any further than by the canal. He knew he wouldn’t be able to resist saying to his wife:

  ‘Your brother’s been to see Dr Claes. Again.’

  She would understand. She would sigh, without replying. That was how it always was.

  On his way, he passed St Christopher’s Church, turned left down a calm street where the snow was banked up along the pavements and where the doorways all had heavy ornamental porches. He had been going to think about Christmas, but it wasn’t worth it, since once he had passed the third gas lamp, he knew other thoughts would lie in wait for him.