BAGGAGE

Walter Cummins

first published in Florida Review

Howard caught a local from Paris to Lille to board the Lombardy Express to Rome there at five in the afternoon. With all his rushing to make connections he had not eaten anything all day but a breakfast croissant. Now he was hungry and annoyed with himself for bringing too much luggage for the trip: an overpacked black pullman case strapped onto a chrome pullcart, a matching one-suiter, and a carry-on shoulder bag weighted down with a camera, tape recorder, transistor radio, and voltage converter. All that paraphernalia for one solitary traveler. What a fool he was.      But he had expected to find a city where he could linger, slowly unpack his possessions into spacious drawers, stroll peacefully through empty streets, seek pictures that satisfied, record sounds that pleased. But each city disappointed. Crowds pushed him along sidewalks past hostile stares from the cafes. Every time he stopped to aim his camera, a blur of arm or head ruined the scene in the viewfinder. The oppression of strangers: bodies bumping against him, a din of harsh foreignness in his ears, a thousand shrugs in his face. Nowhere was there a smile for him alone. Under his load Howard stumbled down the corridor with the lurching of the train, squeezing past the people standing at the windows until he located the compartment with his seat number. His stomach tightened when he saw the young man settled between the armrests. He produced his reservation card, held it out in front of him. But as he was about to speak, the young man met his gaze with soft brown eyes, and Howard could feel the stares of the others just beyond the edge of his vision. He sensed that they liked the young man, were ready to side with him against Howard's scene of protest. But he would not give them the satisfaction. He just held his card and waited, refusing to look at anyone. The young man finally stood with muttered apologies, grabbed a small canvas bag, and hurried out the sliding door.      Howard found the compartment too crowded to disconnect the pullman case from its cart and fold the frame. So he hoisted it up over his head to the one empty spot on the luggage rack and forced his one-suiter atop it. The carry-on bag he kept on the floor under his seat.      He squirmed for comfort, felt a flush prickle his face, pretended to lose himself in the intricacies of resetting his watch because the others in the compartment were all studying him. Slowly, secretly, he looked back at them.      He sat in the middle across from a heavy old woman whose dress rode above her knees to expose rolled stocking tops. Closest to the door were two young girls, perhaps nineteen or twenty, one blonde and pink-cheeked with perfect white teeth, the other with piercing green eyes and thick auburn hair twisted into a severe knot. She was not as pretty as her friend. Both were as young as the daughters he had not seen in more than a year.      The other two people in the compartment, a man and a woman, took his attention. Sitting across from each other by the window, they looked so unlike. She was fair, plump, and freckled, her dress too tight, ovals of pale flesh showing where the buttonholes stretched across her middle. The man had a flowing black mustache and goatee that matched rich, wavy hair. He was dark and handsome, tightly muscled in expensive jeans and a black turtleneck. Howard watched for a time and saw that they did not acknowledge each other. She must have been alone.      But just as he considered smiling at her, the woman leaned forward, touched the man's knee, and whispered. The man responded with a burst of musical Italian, all eye rollings and hand gestures. She kissed her finger and reached it to his lips. Howard turned away to the landscape rushing past the window. His clenched fists trembled with anger. He would not speak, he would not utter a sound during the entire trip to Rome. No matter what they said to him, no matter how they said it, he would feign ignorance of all languages and stay absolutely apart.      By the time the train reached Valenciennes, Howard was no longer a disruption to the compartment, just one more object in the clutter, familiar enough to be ignored in such close quarters. He felt relief that no one addressed him until he could plan his incomprehension.      The old woman reached into her sack of a handbag to pull out a sandwich wrapped in white paper and a small bottle of red wine sealed with foil. She unfolded the paper in her lap and took a deep bite into the bread, tearing at meat and crust. Crumbs dropped onto the front of her dress and a spicy salami odor filled the compartment. The others did not pay attention to her, but Howard's stomach felt hollow with hunger and a weakness spread through his limbs. He tried to close his eyes.      When he opened them, he found the greeneyed girl looking right at him. Flustered, he made a gesture of cutting with a knife, brought an imaginary fork to his mouth, and pointed questioningly out at the corridor. He guessed the French for dining car would be wagon a manger or voiture a manger. But he tried neither, still resolved not to speak.      The girl glanced at her friend and shook her head. "Non," she said, "non." The others began to attempt explanations, the old woman with words that occasionally sounded French but had a guttural German pronunciation, the man in rapid Italian, finally the woman with him in crystal-clear British English: "I'm afraid there is no dining car on this train. There will be vendors at some of the stations in France. But other than those, you'll have to wait until we get to Italy in the morning and a food cart comes on board." Howard kept the understanding out of his eyes and screwed up his face at her.      "Perhaps he's Spanish," the pretty girl said in English to the woman, the z-like s's the only hint of her accent.      "He is not handsome enough," her friend said in a French simple enough for Howard to decipher.      The pretty girl giggled. "Le Scandinave?"      The greeneyed girl shrugged indifference.      The English woman said something in Italian to the man, touching his knees again. It was obvious that she liked to touch him. The old woman just chewed on her sandwich.      The pretty girl began a conversation with the English woman. "Do you speak French as well as you speak Italian?"      "I'm afraid not. I studied Italian at university. My French is rather poor."      "I have been learning English since I was ten."      "You're quite good."      The girl nodded thanks. "How long will you be visiting Italy?"      "We're going home. We live there. Outside Bologna. In Budrio."       "You and your husband?"      "He's not my husband." The man beamed a smile at the girl as she blushed. Her friend smirked.      Howard wanted to laugh, but he sat blankly, darting his eyes from face to face of the others in a show of confusion. Then he settled on the English woman, trying to decide if she were attractive.      She couldn't have been past her late twenties but dressed dowdily, with a grey sweater buttoned around her shoulder and squaretoed shoes. She was overweight, but her face was pleasant, the mouth a bit too wide, the lipstick too thick and too orange, the hair unflattering, not long enough for her round face.      She had several magazines wedged between her side and the compartment wall. Howard would like to have read them to fill the time but could not ask without exposing his English.      He stood, slung his carry-on bag over his shoulder, and stepped over the girls' feet to slide the door back and move out into the corridor. At the end of the car the young man who had been in his seat sat on the flap that folded out from the wall. He nodded as Howard passed him to enter the toilet, and it struck Howard that he must be a friend of the two girls, perhaps the lover of one, of the greeneyed girl.      A sign in four languages warned that the water was not suitable for drinking. Howard splashed it on his face but would not look in the mirror. Then he stepped on the flush pedal and watched the ground flash by under the hole until someone tapped on the door.      He opened it for the Italian and was surprised by how short the man was. Sitting he had looked tall. "Scusi," the man said. "Grazia."      When the Italian returned to the compartment and sat beside Howard, the English woman produced their food, fruit and cheese. Again Howard suffered hunger pangs and wanted them to offer him something, so badly he might have responded to English. But he could see that they had barely enough for themselves.      Later, when the train was pulling in to Metz, the Italian nudged him and pointed to the vendor's cart on the platform. Howard ran to the door of the car while the train eased to a stop with a creak of brakes. By the time they came to rest the cart was far back. He jumped down and hurried to stand in line; but, just as his turn came, the train began to move. The vendor shouted, a conductor called. Howard grabbed a bottle of beer and shoved a twenty franc note into the vendor's hand. Clutching the beer, feeling like a fool, he leaped back on the train without his change. He had to walk through seven cars to get back to his compartment. The Italian gave him an opener for the beer. Although she did not make a sound, he was sure the greeneyed girl was laughing at him.      The old woman was digging through her handbag again, groping until she pulled out a ragged packet of rubberbanded papers. A brown passport slipped out with it and fluttered to the floor behind her shoe, unseen. She unfolded several sheets, read them closely, and returned the packet, finally realizing her passport was gone. She clasped hands beneath her chin and let out an exclamation of woe. The two girls, immediately solicitous, turned to her and listened to her fragmented explanation, the greeneyed one trying to keep her on track with questions.      They had her empty the handbag item by item, spreading across the seat an assortment of plastic cases, combs, medicine vials, a balled cloth that might have been a nightgown. The couple moved to help also, the man poking a hand behind the seat cushion, the woman scanning the floor. The old woman still obscured the passport with her shoe.      Howard knew all he had to do was point, reach out an arm, extend a finger. But he did not want to call attention to himself; he did not want to become one of them. Then the pretty girl bent down on her knees and saw behind the woman's foot. She held the passport in the air like a trophy. The old woman made a gesture as if to embrace her. The others grinned and the girl blushed happily.      By the time they left the stop in Strasbourg, it was dark outside, the six passengers reflected in the compartment window. Howard took the tape recorder from his carry-on bag and, through the earplug, listened to a tape he had made from his radio in Paris: static, the blur of tuning, music, a babble of voices in French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, all cut off in midsentence as he had switched from station to station in search of something he could understand.      When the conductor came in to convert the compartment to couchette bunks, they had to step out into the corridor and take down their luggage from the racks. The Italian did most of the shifting, passing out the suitcases, the girls' nylon bags, and the old woman's cord-tied cardboard box to Howard and the conductor.      The conductor folded up the luggage racks, pulled a ladder from under the left seat, folded out the seatbacks to make the middle bunks, and swung down the top bunks from the wall. Howard would be in the middle. Before the conductor passed out sheet, pillows, and blankets, the Italian rearranged the luggage, stacked most of it in the space over the door on the ceiling of the corridor. The old woman's box and Howard's pullman had to stand in the middle of the floor. Howard brought has carry-on into his bunk.      The old woman would sleep across from him, the girls in the lower bunks, the English woman and the Italian man on top. Howard kept bumping into the old woman as they spread their sheets and blankets. The greeneyed girl looked up at him while he fumbled to make his bed. When the English woman climbed the ladder and swung her legs onto the bunk, Howard could see her white thighs above the tops of her stockings. She reached out to clasp the Italian's hand, and Howard was furious at his aloneness.      He could not sleep. The old woman fluted highpitched snoring. His stomach twisted with hunger spasms. The train wheels slapped endlessly at the metal rails. He tossed and squirmed, shut in, claustrophobic. Because the curtains in the compartment were pulled to block all light, he could not see his watch and kept sliding the door open an inch or two to check the time.      At five-thirty, with the first glow of dawn, he contorted into his shoes and got up to use the toilet. Then he stood at the window in the corridor to look out at the Italian-Swiss Alps. Snow peaks and shadowed crags, a few cars far below on the highway, the lights of distant houses, and every now and then a village, unmoving and immaculately clean. The cleanliness of Switzerland made him feel scummy. His head itched; he had not brushed his teeth. He tugged down the window to let cold air blast his face.      Later, when the others were all up, the old woman and the girls standing in line for the toilet, the Italian restored the compartment from couchettes to riding seats. He replaced the luggage on the racks, stood on his toes to slide the old woman's box over the door. Only Howard's pullman would not fit easily into the new arrangement. The Italian left it on the floor and shrugged at him. But when the girls and the woman returned, there was not enough room for everyone's feet.      Howard pretended not to notice. But the greeneyed girl kicked his foot. He glared at her and quickly shoved his case onto the rack above the old woman while she looked up apprehensively. He wished she were not on the train, with her rolled stockings and her salami and her passport and her cardboard box. If she were gone, there would be enough room for the rest of them; he would not feel so crushed in with strangers.      They were in Italy now, stopping for a long time in Chaisso where Howard tripped against the greeneyed girl in his rush to get at the food cart being pushed down the corridor. He overpaid for a banana, a cup of lukewarm coffee, and a piece of stale raisin cake that still did not satisfy his hunger.      When the train passed Como and moved onto the open countryside of Lombardy, the French girls began to read paperbacks and the English woman and Italian man made eyes at each other, knowing--Howard was sure--that they were only a few hours from a bed.      The trip seemed bumpier now, Howard pitching from side to side in his seat, feeling vibrations through his shoes. He looked up to see his pullman case sliding loose from the rack above the old woman, rattling inch by inch across the dark crossbars, the wheels of the pullcart scraping against the ceiling. Two more inches and it would fall.      He knew he should shout to her to look out. But the sound lodged in his throat like an enormous mass. He tried to lift his hands, but they lay paralyzed in his lap.      The Italian saw and lunged forward with a cry. But he was too late. The case tumbled down, bounced off the old woman's knees, and struck her across the ankles with the chrome bar of the frame.      She let out a long wail of pain. The pretty girl burst into tears; her greeneyed friend pushed Howard's case off the woman, opening the doors and forcing it out into the corridor as if it were a vicious animal. The English woman embraced the old woman, the Italian kneeling at her feet. Howard rubbed a hand at his throat, clutching against the sensation that he would choke on swallowed words.      The old woman's stockings were shredded, blood streaming from a deep ugly gash in her right instep. She moaned and wept and muttered a lament of pain. Both ankles swelled immediately, great purple bruises appearing through the holes in her stockings. The Italian unfolded a handkerchief and tied it around the gash.      The greeneyed girl disappeared into the corridor and came back with the young man who had been in Howard's seat. "L'etudiant en medicine," she announced. He pulled a first aid kit from his canvas bag, removed the handkerchief, cut away the stocking, cleaned the wound, and bandaged it. His work was quick and neat. He spoke soothingly to the old woman, who nodded and attempted to swallow her pain.      When the conductor finally came, the young man made a lengthy explanation, pointing to Howard, the rack, the pullman case in the corridor, while the conductor filled out a form.      "What will happen?" the English woman asked the greeneyed girl.      "We'll get off at Milan with her. The conductor is sending a radio message for an ambulance."      "Is her leg broken?"      "Jean doesn't think so. But it must be X-rayed."      At the central station in Milan the medical student and the Italian carried the woman off the train. The pretty girl took her suitcase and the greeneyed girl the cardboard box.      When they were all gone, Howard retrieved his pullman case from the corridor and placed it on the empty seat beside the English woman. He expected blood on the frame, but there was none. The four black wheels of the cart bounced on the cushion.      He thought of all his possessions inside, pictured them one by one in his head as he watched the bouncing. When he glanced up, he saw the English woman holding the handle with the identification tag that noted his American name and address.      She met his eyes and, barely moving her lips, spoke so softly Howard could not hear her curse.

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