Rosemary Simpson
When I was about fifteen I traveled alone by train from Paris to Munich. I'd left Paris seated in a very ordinary second-class compartment whose French- and German-speaking occupants exchanged polite greetings and then left one another alone. But sometime during the night, there was a problem on the rails. A conductor came through the cars, hurrying us off at a tiny station whose name I never did learn. I'm not sure how it happened, but I ended up on another train in what can only be described as a converted boxcar. Hard wooden benches, slatted wooden sides, the cold night air whooshing into the car as it clattered along. When it stopped, I stayed where I was, waiting for someone to tell me what I should do next, where I was supposed to go, if I had to change trains again. The only other occupants of the car were an elderly couple who spoke neither English nor French, the two languages in which I was fluent. They were very upset that I remained where I was, but I couldn't understand a word they said. Finally, the man picked up my suitcase (there were no overhead luggage racks) and his wife pulled me into the aisle and hustled me along after him, nodding and smiling to reassure me. Almost as soon as we climbed down the metal steps to the platform, they disappeared into the station, leaving me alone again. The train rumbled off and the lights inside the station went out though I never saw a station agent or conductor who might have extinguished them. I sat there on that dark, empty platform until daylight and the next train to Munich. I know it wasn't a dream, but I've also wondered from time to time if what I experienced was a tiny slit in time. Where was I, and what might have happened to me had the mysterious couple not hustled me out of that boxcar?
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