The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By Read online

  Oh, nothing serious! Just a few seconds’ discomfort, every time he passed that spot on his way home from the chess club . . .

  Groningen is a strait-laced town where, unlike in cities such as Amsterdam, there is no risk of being propositioned by a woman in the street.

  And yet, a hundred metres from the station, there is a house, just one, looking very respectable from the outside, prosperous indeed, but whose door opens at the slightest push.

  Kees had never set foot inside. He had merely heard tell of it at his club. One way or another, he had always avoided being unfaithful to his wife.

  Nonetheless, whenever he went past at night, his imagination became active, and this time he was more aroused, since he had just seen Mrs de Coster in her peignoir. He had only ever caught sight of her from a distance before, and dressed in city clothes. He knew she was no more than thirty-five years old, whereas Julius Coster the Younger was sixty.

  He walked past the house . . . He paused only briefly as he saw two shadows moving behind the curtains on the first floor. He could already see ahead of him the railway station, from which the last train would depart at five past midnight. Before the station, on the right, he still had to pass a bar, the Petit Saint-Georges, which to him represented something similar to, if less exciting than, the house back up the street.

  In times gone by, in the days of stage coaches, there had been a large inn, the Grand Saint-Georges, alongside which a small alehouse had sprung up calling itself the Petit Saint-Georges.

  Now only the small bar was left, in a basement room, its windows level with the pavement, and it was in fact almost always empty, being frequented, when other places had closed, only by a few German or English sailors.

  Popinga always glanced inside, in spite of himself, although there was nothing remarkable to see: tables made of blackened oak timbers, benches, stools, and at the back of the room a counter, behind which stood a huge barman, whose goitre prevented him wearing a collar.

  Why did the Petit Saint-Georges give the impression of being a place of debauchery? Because it stayed open until two or three in the morning? Because the bottles of genever and whisky on the shelves were more numerous than elsewhere? Because it was below street level?

  This time, as he always did, Kees glanced in, and the next moment he was pressing his nose against the window: to see better, to be sure he was not mistaken, or perhaps to persuade himself that he was indeed mistaken.

  In Groningen, there are two categories of café: the verlof, where only soft drinks are served, and the vergüning, where alcohol is sold.

  And Kees would have thought it dishonourable to set foot in a vergüning café. Had he not given up skittles because the skittle alley was in the back room of such an establishment?

  The Petit Saint-Georges was one of the most vergüning of the vergünings. And yet, in that low-ceilinged room, a man sat drinking, a man who could be none other than Mr Julius de Coster the Younger in person!

  If, at that moment, Kees had rushed back to the chess club, and announced to Dr Claes or anyone else that he had seen Julius de Coster in the Petit Saint-Georges, they would have looked at him sorrowfully and advised him to have his head examined. There are some people about whom one can allow oneself to make jokes. But Julius de Coster . . .

  His goatee beard alone was the most chilling feature of Groningen. The way he walked! His dark clothes! And his famous headwear, a cross between a bowler and an opera hat!

  . . . No! And it simply wasn’t possible either that Julius de Coster had shaved off his beard! And inconceivable that he was wearing a brown suit too big for him!

  As for being there, at a table in the Petit Saint-Georges, in front of a thick-bottomed glass which could contain nothing but genever . . .

  But the man happened to look up towards the window, and then he too appeared surprised, as he leaned forward slightly, recognizing Popinga, whose nose was still pressed against the glass.

  Even more unheard of, he made a little beckoning gesture as if to say:

  ‘Come on in!’

  And Kees did go in, mesmerized, as animals are said to be by the gaze of snakes. He walked in and the giant barkeeper, polishing glasses behind the counter, called out:

  ‘Can’t you shut the door like everyone else?’

  • • •

  It was him, Julius de Coster. He gestured to a stool for his companion and murmured:

  ‘I’ll bet you went on board, didn’t you?’

  Then, without waiting for a reply, an expression he had never been heard to utter passed his lips:

  ‘Screaming blue murder, are they?’

  Then without pause:

  ‘Well, you must have been spying on me, weren’t you, to know I was here?’

  What was especially disconcerting was that he showed no sign of annoyance, his tone held no bitterness, and he was smiling slightly in amusement. He motioned to the barman to fill up their glasses, and at the last moment changed his mind, preferring to keep the bottle on the table.

  ‘Listen, Mr de Coster, tonight something . . .’

  ‘Drink up first, Mister Popinga!’

  He did normally address Kees as Mr Popinga, as was his practice for all the staff, even the lowliest storekeepers. But this time there was a calm irony behind it and he seemed to be enjoying his employee’s discomfiture.

  ‘If I’m telling you to drink up, and I warmly advise you to finish off the bottle if you can, it’s because alcohol will help you to digest what I have to say. I didn’t expect to have the pleasure of meeting you this evening. You will have noticed that I too have been drinking, which will give a delightful tone to our conversation . . .’

  He was drunk! Popinga would have sworn to that! But he gave the impression of being a man who was used to being drunk, and untroubled by it.

  ‘It’s inconvenient for the Ocean III, which is a good boat, and her contract says she should be in Riga seven days from now. But what is happening will be much more upsetting for other people, you for instance, Mister Popinga!’

  With these words, he helped himself to another drink, and Kees noticed a bulky packet alongside him on the bench.

  ‘All the more upsetting since you probably don’t have any savings, and you’re going to find yourself jobless and on the streets, like your brother-in-law.’

  So he too had mentioned Merkemans?

  ‘Go ahead, drink up, please. You are such a sensible fellow that I feel able to tell you everything . . . Imagine, Mister Popinga, that by tomorrow morning, the firm of Julius de Coster en Zoon will be facing charges of fraudulent bankruptcy and the police will be looking for me.’

  It was fortunate that Kees had swallowed two glasses of genever one after another! He could tell himself that the alcohol was distorting his vision, that it was not Julius de Coster who was displaying that devilishly cynical smile, and stroking his freshly shaved chin with satisfaction.

  ‘You won’t understand everything I am about to say, because you are a true Dutchman, but later on you will think about it, Mister Popinga . . .’

  Every time he repeated the words Mister Popinga, it was in a different tone of voice, as if he were relishing these syllables.

  ‘Let this be a lesson to you, first of all, that despite all your qualities and the excellent opinion you have of yourself, you are a pitifully poor head clerk of the firm, since you had noticed nothing. For the last eight years, Mister Popinga, I have been engaging in speculative ventures, of which the least one can say is that they were very risky.’

  The room was even warmer than Kees’s house, with the difference that here there was a brutal, aggressive kind of heat, belched out ruthlessly by a noxious cast-iron stove, like the ones you see in branch-line railway stations. The smell of genever hung in the air, the floor was strewn with sawdust, and there were wet rings on the surface of the table.

  ‘Go on, finish your glass, please, and tell yourself that you will always have that consolation. By the way, last time I saw your
brother-in-law, I had the feeling he had started to understand . . . So what happened, you went on board and—’

  ‘I went round to your house.’

  ‘Oh, so you saw the charming Mrs de Coster? Was Dr Claes there?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Don’t look so alarmed, Mister Popinga. For three years now, almost to the day, because it started one Christmas Eve, Dr Claes has been sleeping with my wife . . .’

  He was drinking, and smoking his cigar with small puffs, and to Kees’s eyes he was looking more and more like the Gothic devils that decorate the porches of some medieval churches, and from which one tries to distract children’s eyes.

  ‘I should say that for my own amusement, I’ve been going every week to Amsterdam to see Pamela . . . You remember Pamela, Mister Popinga?’

  It was hard to believe he was really drunk, so calm was his behaviour, while Kees, like an imbecile, blushed at the name of Pamela.

  Hadn’t Popinga lusted after her, like everyone else? Just as there is only one disreputable house in Groningen, there is only one nightclub where dancing goes on until one in the morning.

  He had never been inside it, but he had heard of Pamela, a bar-hostess, a buxom, lisping brunette, who had spent two years in Groningen and had paraded round the streets in extravagant outfits, while the local wives turned their heads away whenever they met her.

  ‘Well, I’m the man who has been keeping Pamela. I’ve got her into rooms at the Carlton Hotel in Amsterdam, and she introduces me to some of her charming young lady-friends. Is the light beginning to dawn now, Mister Popinga? Not yet too drunk to hear what I’m saying? Make the most of it, I urge you. Tomorrow, when you come to look back on this, you will become another man and perhaps even do something with your life.’

  And he was laughing! He carried on drinking. He refilled his glass and that of his companion, whose eyes were beginning to mist over.

  ‘I know it’s a lot to absorb all at once, but I shall not have the leisure to provide you with a second lesson! Take in as much of this as you can assimilate. Think about the poor little fool you have been. Look! You want me to prove it? I’ll give you an example in our professional field. You have your long-haul captain’s certificate, and you’re proud of it. The firm of Julius de Coster owns five clippers, and you have special responsibility for them. But you have not noticed that one of them never carries anything but contraband, and that another was sunk on my orders, for the sake of the insurance.’

  From that moment, something unforeseen happened. Kees, contrary to his expectation, became almost supernaturally calm. Was it perhaps the effect of the alcohol? At any rate, from then on, he showed no reaction and seemed to be listening passively to everything he was being told.

  And yet! Just the names of the five clippers belonging to the firm: Éléonore I . . . Éléonore II . . . Éléonore III . . . and so on up to five! Always having the given name of Mrs de Coster, the woman Kees had just seen in her peignoir, with a long cigarette-holder between her lips, the woman who, according to her husband, was sleeping with Dr Claes!

  And that was not the full extent of this sacrilege. At a higher level than Julius de Coster the Younger and his wife, there existed a being who seemed to have been placed forever above all ordinary matters, Julius de Coster the Elder, the father of the man in front of him, the founder of the firm who, for all that he was now eighty-three, still occupied a chair every day in his austere office.

  ‘I’m willing to bet’ – his son was now saying – ‘that you don’t know how that rascal of a father of mine made his fortune. It was during the South African war. He sent over there a whole lot of faulty munitions that he’d picked up cheap from Belgian and German factories . . . And now he’s completely gaga, you have to hold his hand to get him to sign anything. Another bottle, if you please, barman! Drink up, dear Mister Popinga. Tomorrow, if you like, you can repeat all this to our worthy fellow-citizens. Because officially, I shall be dead!’

  Kees must have been completely drunk by now, yet he missed not a word, nor a facial expression. It simply seemed to him that this scene was taking place in an unreal world he had chanced to wander into, and that once he went outside, he would be back in everyday life.

  ‘In the end, I have to say, it’s you I feel worst about. Of course, you yourself insisted on putting your savings into my business. I would have offended you if I had refused. And it was you who insisted on building yourself a house with a twenty-year bank loan, so now, if you fall behind with the annual payments . . .’

  He suddenly gave chilling evidence of his unclouded mind, as he asked:

  ‘Due at the end of December, if I’m not mistaken?’

  He appeared sincerely sorry.

  ‘I promise you I did everything I could. I was just unlucky, that’s all. It was speculation in sugar that sank me, and I’d rather go and make a fresh start somewhere else than have to face all those solemn idiots. I beg your pardon, I don’t mean you. You’re a good fellow, and if you had been brought up differently . . . Your good health, my dear old Popinga!’

  This time, he hadn’t said ‘Mister Popinga’.

  ‘Believe me! People aren’t worth all the trouble you go to to get them to think well of you. They’re stupid! They’re the ones who insist you put a virtuous face on things, but out there, it’s dog eat dog! I don’t want to upset you, but your daughter has suddenly come to mind – I saw her last week. Well, between ourselves, she looks so unlike you with her dark hair and her soulful eyes, that I wonder whether you are her father . . . But what does it matter? Or at any rate, it doesn’t matter if you play the cheating game yourself. Whereas if you insist on playing by the rules, and then get cheated . . .’

  He was not speaking for his companion’s sake now, but for himself, and he concluded:

  ‘It’s so much safer to be the first to cheat! What do you risk . . .? Tonight, I’m going to leave Julius de Coster’s clothes on the canal towpath . . . Tomorrow, everyone will believe I have committed suicide rather than bear the dishonour, and the fools will spend God knows how many florins dragging the canal. But by then the five-past-midnight train will have taken me far away. Look here . . .’

  Kees gave a start, as if emerging from a dream.

  ‘Try, if you’re not too drunk, to understand what I’m about to tell you . . . Above all, I want you to know that I’m not trying to buy you off. De Coster doesn’t do that to anybody, and if I’ve told you all this, it’s because I know you won’t be able to go and tell anyone else. That’s right, isn’t it? Now, I’ll put myself in your place. In reality, you don’t own a sou. And if I know anything about the people at the mortgage company, the first payment you miss, they’ll repossess your house. Your wife will be furious with you. Everyone will believe you must have been in league with me. You may find another post, you may not, in which case you’ll be reduced to the same sorry state as your brother-in-law, Merkemans. I’ve got a thousand florins in my pocket. If you stay here, I can’t do anything for you. You won’t get out of this pickle with a mere five hundred florins. But if by chance, you’ve got the message by tomorrow . . . Here you are, old chap!’

  And with an unexpected gesture, De Coster pushed half the bundle of notes across the table.

  ‘Take it! It’s not all I’ve got. I haven’t burned quite all my boats and, before long, I’ll be afloat again. Wait. There’s a newspaper I have read for the last thirty-five years, and that I intend to go on reading . . . It’s called the Morning Post. If you don’t stay here, and if ever you are in need, put an advertisement in that paper signed “Kees”. That’ll be enough. And now you’re going to give me a hand. I was feeling sorry for myself to be going off like this, all alone like a beggar . . . What do I owe you, barman?’

  He paid the bill, picked up his packet by the string, and checked that his companion could stand upright.

  ‘We won’t go through streets that are well lit . . . Think about it, Popinga. Tomorrow I’ll be dead, which is the best th
ing that can happen to a man.’

  They were walking past the famous ‘house of ill repute’, but Kees did not react, so preoccupied was he by his thoughts and by his concern to keep his balance. With a last reflex, he had tried to carry his employer’s parcel, but the other man pushed his arm aside, saying, ‘This way. It’s quieter here.’

  The streets were empty. Groningen was asleep, apart from the Petit Saint-Georges, the ‘house’ and the station.

  The rest was a dream. They arrived on the bank of the Wilhelmine Canal, not far from one of the Éléonores, the Éléonore IV, which was loading a cargo of cheeses bound for Denmark. The snow was as hard as ice. Automatically, Kees held on to his employer, who was likely to slip, as he put the clothes from the packet down on the ground. He glimpsed for a moment the famous hat, but had no desire to laugh.

  ‘Now, if you’re still awake, you can accompany me to the train. I’ve bought a third-class ticket.’

  It was a real night train, sleepy, sordid, standing abandoned at the end of a platform, while the stationmaster, in his orange cap, waited to blow the whistle before going to bed.

  Some Italians – where had they come from? – had spread themselves over one compartment, amid their shapeless bundles, while a young man in a plush overcoat, preceded by two porters, was climbing with dignity into a first-class carriage and taking off his gloves to feel for change in his pockets.

  ‘Not coming with me?’

  De Coster said that with a laugh, and yet Kees caught his breath. In spite of his drunken state, or perhaps because of it, he was understanding many things, and he would have liked to say . . .

  But no! It wasn’t the moment . . . And anyway he hadn’t worked it out yet. Julius de Coster would think he was boasting.

  ‘No hard feelings, my poor fellow. That’s life, I can promise you. Think about that notice in the Morning Post – but not too soon, I’ll need some time to . . .’