Next Train to Warsaw?

the world is a war and you're on one side or the other--unless you're clever enough to play it both ways

Twice my sleep had been interrupted by men in uniform. When they flashed on the lights and shook my body awake, it took me a minute to understand what was going on. An instant before, it seemed that I had contacted the kingdom of the dead and was speaking with both rage and tenderness to my father. My father said he was released only when someone dreamed of him. I tried to engage him in a discussion, but nothing was important to him. Nothing but walking among people and talking with them, feeling their nearness, even if they were only other waves of consciousness colored with memory. My eyes smarting from the light, I couldn't understand how I could no longer be with my father but, instead, in a metal room with a dumpy, balding man in a khaki uniform with maroon epaulets, grumbling in a strange language. For a second I thought it might be just another dream and all I'd have to do was wait for the next development. Then I understood. The crumpled newspaper on the floor, the suitcases in the racks, the stubble on his face. It was real. As I was dreaming of my father, we had arrived at the border and now I had to present passports for myself, my wife and my son.

The second time was just as strange as the first. I was dreaming again. But it was hard to remember exactly what. Bubbling dreams, the kind that froth away when you awake. Again lights, again men in uniform, again passports.

The next time was natural enough. I opened my eyes and I was in our compartment filled with the bright, energetic light of early morning. I glanced out the window from my berth. Peasants were already in the damp meadows. The animals were already grazing. I watched a man at a station waiting for the train to pass so he could cross the tracks. Though he wasn't moving yet, I could feel the readiness to move in the way he stood. I turned my head and watched him begin to trot across the tracks.

The main road swelled into sight. In wooden wagons rigged up with automobile tires, peasants were bringing fruits and vegetables to market. They did not look like peasants in books of national costume. They all wore old suit jackets, shirts buttoned to the top; they all had cigarettes stuck in their mouths and they looked like nothing could ever surprise them.

My son was confused and could not understand why pictures of the world were racing by the window. Then he was completely awake.

"Almost there," I said.

"Where?" he asked, yawning his question.

"Warsaw," I said.

He didn't say anything but just put out his arms for me to take him. I held his warm body and smelled the freshness of his hair and yesterday's jam congealed on one cheek.

"Look at the tracks," he said, pointing out the window. "Sometimes they come real near and then they jump away again."

We stood huddled together, watching the rails whip, glisten and diminish. Though he is only six, he is infected with my mania for travel. For us, maps and travel posters and the names of cities are prurient. They arouse desire, dim reason and create a strange mood, half exhilaration, half dissatisfaction. We were both born under the sign of Sagittarius. The newspaper column I read every day says that we are fond of travel and philosophy, enjoy sports and animals, speak bluntly and are generally cheerful. When he began asking his questions again, I hushed him, telling him to keep his voice down because his mother was still sleeping.

Sleeping, although she doesn't particularly like sleeping on trains. Especially this one, which is taking her someplace she most definitely does not want to go. For her, the train is a moving prison where she is held captive by my travel mania. "It's a wrong move, we can't afford it," she told me many times. I never agreed with her, arguing that I wanted to see the country where my father was born, of which he had spoken so little and so guardedly. Perhaps, I conceded, it wasn't entirely practical as far as the money was concerned, but money, after all, wasn't everything. Life was more than bookkeeping. But secretly I was troubled. She is both more practical and more oracular than I, and there was a disturbing prophetic resonance in her voice every time she said, "It's a wrong move." But I am very pigheaded and when my mind is made up, only a guaranteed catastrophe can make me reconsider. So, in the end, I put it very bluntly:

"Listen, I'm going anyway. You can stay in California if you want to, but I'm going."

So we went. But I didn't want to wake her yet. There was no need to bring her back to something she'd never wanted any part of. And besides, for her, sleeping and dreaming are something very special, something both mysterious and ordinary, like gardening. All kinds of strange and exotic hybrid dreams that live only half a minute and scatter but a single seed blossom in her sleep. Others are perennial and return in accordance with their own seasons. Perhaps that is why she is so sensible when she is awake; at least that's what she claims.

We started to feel the approach of the city, even though we were still about 20 miles away. Strong cities radiate into the space around them like strong personalities. My son felt it, too. For him it was like entering a city he already knew, because the houses had chimneys and smoke came from the chimneys, just as it always did in his drawings. There was a sky and birds. Cars drove on black streets. I'd better get my wife up, I thought. It's bad enough without rushing.

But we ended up rushing. The train slowed down and sleepy-eyed people began bumping around in the corridors with their suitcases. Suddenly, we realized that nothing was properly packed yet. A suitcase opened and things fell out. A plastic bottle rolled under the lower berth and vanished. My wife was trying to put on her make-up and comb her hair in front of a small triangular mirror and had to keep tilting her head from side to side like a bird. My son was taking six minutes to pull on one sock.

The train stopped and everybody got off. Everybody but us. We were still jamming things into suitcases, although yesterday everything had fitted in quite easily. I could feel the tension starting to jump along our nerves. We kept finding things and having to reopen the suitcases while barking at our son to get on his other sock.

Then, after some harsh words, panic and weak smiles, we were descending the steep set of steps that led from the sleeping car to the ground. Men in some sort of faded blue uniforms with BAGAz written on the bands around their caps stood around, looking daggers at anyone who might have been foolish enough to ask them to carry his baggage. The look worked. Everyone carried his own.

"Let's carry our own," I said, and we moved off, crippled by suitcases, toward the distant terminal. My son asked why we had left Prague on track seven and our train was now on track three. I thought of all the words it would take to even begin to explain it to him and told him to wait till later.

There was an enormous line for taxis. The people already in line stood without talking or moving. I could see they were used to it and preferred to blank out rather than try to make the best of it. The sky above the city was overcast and as grim as a hangover from cheap vodka. All the buildings seemed to be made from that sort of poured concrete that looks weather-beaten in a month. It was the kind of city, I decided, that looks best at night or from an aerial view. I could feel its heaviness justifying every inch of my wife's pessimism. It wasn't the Virgin Islands, but I knew that before we left and had told her so. I started on an inner monolog of (continued on page 148)Next Train To Warsaw?(continued from page 130) rationalization and reproach and, touching my chest in a gesture of mute sincerity, remembered the camera that had been hanging there since Frankfurt.

"Haven't you got the camera?" I asked her.

"No, don't you?"

"No, goddamn it, it must have gotten left on the train. You two stay here. Get in line. I'll run back and get it. Shouldn't take more than a minute. I remember the car."

I trotted back through the crowded station out to the now-empty yard, glad that my son had asked his question about the tracks, since it helped me remember which train we'd been on. But, looking at the long gray-green train, I realized that I was no longer sure which car it was, except that it was somewhere near the end. The only human being in sight, a Bagaz man, gave me a long reptilian stare as I puffed by.

I took the suggestion of the first open door and jumped on. I ran through smokers and first-class cars, through sleepers and second-class cars, but now they all seemed equally familiar and equally unfamiliar. When they had been filled with people, it had been easy enough to tell which was which. The army officer in the pea-green uniform meant I was near the car where the beer was sold. The man reading the German newspaper meant I was just two cars away from ours, and the three sullen old women dressed in black meant our compartment was three doors down. But now there was nobody at all, not even an abandoned Frankfurter Allgemeine to help me get my bearings. "Wrong move." I remembered her words. And the worst thing about a wrong move, I thought, is that it can lead to a second and a third and a fourth.

Then I felt something tug and shudder under my feet. It felt like the mild earthquakes I had gotten used to in California. But it wasn't. It was the train beginning to move. I was furious and panicky all at once. My fury blamed my father for having been born in this miserable country and for never having satisfied my stupid, bottomless, childish curiosity about it, answering my questions of what it was like there with such words as: "Dirty," "Awful," "Bad." Why couldn't he have described his house and his street and the school he went to and not left my imagination forever unsatisfied? Then I wouldn't have become so dreamy, wouldn't have wasted so many hours staring out the window at school, wouldn't be blowing the little savings I had on a fool's errand. The panic made me break into a sweat and run, still unable to decide whether to glance into the empty compartments for the camera or not. The train was picking up speed. The station and my wife and son were rushing farther and farther away and, since I was running in the same direction as the train, I, too, was moving, at my own rate, away from them.

Then I saw a little old peasant woman sweeping the corridor with a broom made of sticks and twigs. I had never seen a broom like that before.

"Have you seen a camera?" I asked her.

"Of course I have, sir. I may be just an old peasant woman, but I have seen many things in my time. Cameras, televisions, even the Blessed Mother of God once appeared to me."

"No, no, I mean have you seen a camera on this train, today?"

"No, sir, today I saw no camera, but as I was waking up this morning, I heard the voice of the Blessed Mother of God saying to me, 'Zofia, wake up now, there are only nine days left.' And you know what that means, sir. Well, I'm not afraid. Looking forward to it, to tell the truth. I'm old now and tired out. It will be a great relief to see my parents again and hear them tell me stories of when I was a girl."

The train was going at least 15 miles an hour. But I couldn't bring myself to interrupt her. After all, I myself had experienced similar feelings that very night, and life is not just a matter of getting on and off trains. So I let her finish and then, after a pause that could be considered one of minimal decency, asked her once more:

"A small black camera with silver fittings in one of the first-class sleeping compartments?"

"No, sir, I didn't see it, but I did find a little silver chain. It must have been left by accident. No one would leave such a beautiful silver chain on purpose. I'm sure of that. And you know what I'm going to do with it? I'm going to put my medals on it and on the ninth day, I'm going to put it around my neck and then put clean linen on the bed and then just lie down and wait to be taken. I am looking forward to it, sir, yes I am."

She smiled. Her creased face smiled and her eyes smiled right into mine, as if we had always known each other, had traveled together down the long road of life, and now the time had come for us to say farewell. Her eyes were the eyes of everyone I had ever known. I leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

"Can you tell me just one more thing?" I asked.

"Yes, sir, glad if I can."

"Is this train going somewhere or are they just going to back into the station on another track?"

"Oh, no, sir, no backing in with this train. We're going somewhere."

"Where?"

"A fine little town. My cousin Anya lives there with her husband. A very nice little town."

"How far is it from Warsaw?"

"Oh, not so very far."

"I mean, how many kilometers?"

"Oh, sir, that would be hard to say, now, but I would guess about forty."

"Thank you. Look, I've got to get going now."

"Then God be with you, sir. You'll need His help in this land, that's for sure."

I ran. When I got to the first door, I saw that it was already too late. A jump might have been possible if the tracks were not now separated by a low row of concrete poles that would have brained me if I were foolhardy enough to jump.

For a moment I thought I would go crazy. I thought of my wife and son standing in line for a taxi in Warsaw without a word of Polish, wondering what was keeping me so long. And yet as hard as I tried to focus their images in my mind, I could not obtain a clear picture of them. The old woman, the train had become reality for me and I could not think my way out of it. I felt my blood racing through me, a red-hot stick waving designs in the dark, and its power filled so much that anything else became less vivid, less important. There was nothing I could do. I had only two choices--be brained by a concrete pole or take the ride. Where had these choices come from all of a sudden? Just because you forget your camera, does that mean you have to either be brained or take a 40-kilometer ride? I couldn't understand such a choice. I, an American, raised on choice. Choosing candidates, channels, laxatives, drowning in choices, suddenly faced with two such idiotic selections.

And then a terrible thing happened. Before I could get my moral bearings, I realized I was enjoying it, that it was giving me some secret pleasure, that it was all somehow right. It was shameful to be laughing on a train rushing to a town whose name I didn't even know, it was shameful to be enjoying every minute of it, but it was too late, they were stranded and the train was racing and I was laughing and enjoying it and there was nothing, nothing anyone could do about it.

• • •

The train slowed down. With a hoot and a hiss of its air brakes, it came to a stop. All the great steam locomotives of the past have not rusted in scrap piles or been turned into toasters. Many of them are in fine shape, doing their job behind the Iron Curtain. I was no longer hysterical and quite rationally decided that losing a minute or two inspecting the engine could not make very much difference in the end. Haste is of the Devil, as one of my favorite expressions goes.

Coal-black sweat poured down the engine's enormous side that resembled the chest of an old-time wrestler. The seven wheels were stopped in the act of motion, from which point they would begin again when they were summoned. Steaming water was pouring onto the tracks like elephant urine. But I remembered that I had other, more pressing matters to deal with and so reluctantly took a last look at the engine that so much reminded me of the train set I had as a boy and would watch for hours with my head resting on the floor, until my ear would fall asleep.

It was a nice little town. All the houses were made of wood and had decorated shutters, window boxes and dark picket fences.

I estimated that the ride from Warsaw had taken some 20 minutes. If I could catch a train back within an hour or so, I could be back in Warsaw with the whole misadventure consuming no more than two hours. So the first order of business was to find someone who knew something about train schedules and get myself a ticket and, if there were time, some breakfast, since I had worked up quite an appetite from all that running around.

Right next to the small, apparently deserted station I saw a small kiosk. It looked the kind of place where you could buy tickets, or at least get some information. The kiosk was dark and gave off the odor of an animal's cage that hadn't been cleaned out for some time. Inside, an almost dwarfish man, barely visible in the shadows, was watching his own hand jitterbug across a stack of papers, stamping each one several times with violet circles. It looked as if he were unable to control his hand and had become fascinated by its autonomous movements. This impression was confirmed when I noticed that some of the sheets of paper were beginning to be ripped and torn by the violent stamping. My heart sank a little when I realized that without looking at me or speaking or making a single gesture, he had already let me know that he was fully aware of my presence and that he was patiently waiting to hear my request, but that his patience wouldn't last forever.

"I need a ticket back to Warsaw."

"What is your nationality?"

"I'm an American."

"How is it that you speak Polish?"

"My father spoke Polish."

"How is that your father spoke Polish?"

"He was born here."

"He must have been an intelligent man."

"Why?"

"He left."

"But about the ticket."

"Yes, the ticket. If you are an American, you must pay for your ticket in dollars, unless you have officially stamped receipts from government exchange centers. Which?"

"Dollars."

"Dollars. Now, let me see, in dollars that would be.... I better use a pencil. As you can see, I'm not a very intelligent man."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I'm still here, aren't I? Now, in dollars, two, five, carry the one, divide by seven, square root of nine and it comes to...sixty dollars."

"Sixty dollars! You must have made a mistake. That's completely ridiculous."

"Let me check it. Let's see; ah, yes, I'm terribly sorry, the exact fare is... fifty-three dollars and ninety-eight cents."

"Fifty-three dollars and ninety-eight cents! You've got to be kidding!"

"Why should I joke about such a thing?"

"Look, you see that train over there?"

"Yes, I see it."

"You know where that train is from?"

"Yes, from Warsaw."

"I was on that train."

"Hold it a minute; you were on that train?"

"Yes."

"But there was no conductor on that train. Who did you pay?"

"I didn't pay anyone. I was on the train by mistake."

"We must pay for our mistakes in this world, my friend. Now, the fare for that ride is going to be four dollars and eleven cents. Plus the fine for riding the state railways without a ticket, two dollars, and another three for illegally boarding a train, and you must pay a deposit of fifty dollars until we can determine that you have not engaged in any acts of hooliganism on the train, slashing seats, stuffing toilets, that sort of nasty thing. In total, if you give me, let me see, one hundred and thirteen dollars and nine cents, I can give you a ticket to Warsaw."

"Now, hold on just a minute. Let's get a few things straightened out here first. I want to know why it costs four dollars and eleven cents to get from Warsaw to here and fifty-three dollars and ninety-eight cents to get from here to Warsaw."

"Aha, so you don't know. Well, Warsaw to here is one thing, but here to Warsaw, that's something else again. You see, a place can be different, depending on whether you're coming or leaving."

"But why? Why? I don't understand."

"Well, you see, you are now on the going-away side of Warsaw. All trains leaving Warsaw go away on one side and all trains arriving come from the other side. And so if you want to go back to Warsaw, you must travel until you find yourself on the going-back side. I hope that is enough to explain the difference in price."

I saw that his honor as a railway man had been somewhat offended. Perhaps he thought I was accusing him of wanting a bribe and, although it is one of my rules never to offend the dignity of a man whose favor is essential to me, I couldn't help barking out angrily:

"That's the screwiest system I ever heard of."

"It has certain disadvantages, sir, and certain advantages."

"Give me an example," I hissed ironically.

"Number one--you know whether you're coming or going, which is more than you can say for your madhouse capitalist system. Number two--it stimulates travel. People see our beautiful countryside, they use our hotels and restaurants, peasants broaden themselves, the nation's level of culture and intelligence begins to rise, people realize their common purpose and behave as they should, and so the state gradually begins to wither away."

"All right, all right, I can see there are certain advantages. Just give me a ticket. Here's the money."

"Fine, sir. Now, where can we send the fifty-dollar deposit after we've determined there was no damage done to the train?"

"Send it to the American Embassy."

"Please just fill out this brief form. Every question must be answered and answered correctly, or else the form will be considered invalid."

"For Chrissake, how am I supposed to know my exact weight in kilograms when boarding and leaving the train?"

"Undoubtedly, sir, there are philosophical differences between us, but still I believe that we can discuss this matter as two moderately intelligent men. Here we believe in dialectical materialism, which teaches us that the universe is material and dynamic. So a man is his body first and foremost. Take away a man's body and what's left, sir? Not even a hole in the air. This I know from experience. During the war against the Germans, I was in the front lines. My friend Maciek was hit by a shell. I saw the explosion and the dirt fly. When I ran over, he wasn't there anymore. Of course, at that time I wasn't a party member, and so I didn't have any idea what had happened to him. Anyway, just estimate your weight. But you can see how, from our point of view, a man who doesn't even know his own weight must be looked at with some suspicion, at the very least."

"All right, a kilogram is about two point two pounds, so that would be about seventy-five kilograms."

"Very good. Now, don't forget to check something in the section marked 'Religious and/or Philosophical Preference."

The choices read: (A) Communist, (B) Catholic, (C) Both of the above.

"But I don't consider myself either a Communist or a Catholic."

"Now, that presents a problem. Perhaps it would help if you explained to me why you think you don't fit into any of our categories."

"Because I have not decided the important questions for myself yet."

"Oh, a freethinker, are you? Risky business."

"Call it whatever you want. I'm just trying to figure out the world for myself, thank you."

"Just you take it from a man who's seen quite a bit of the world, that's not the way it goes. The world is a war and you're on one side or the other, and that's all there is to it. Unless you're clever enough to play it both ways, which is why we have choice C. There's just no place for a man who believes in figuring things out for himself."

"And why not?"

"I mean, what good is he? Suppose he does figure it all out, what good does that do all the rest of mankind? So he'll write a book about how he figured it all out, and who'll read that books? Just a bunch of guys who'll say, 'Terrific, he figured it out, but what the hell do I care? I want to figure it out for myself, too.' So that's what it all comes down to, a waste of state resources in the form of paper. And, of course, these smart-alecks demand to be fed just the same as a coal miner or a railroad man."

"Speaking of being fed, is there any place around here where I can get a bite to eat?"

"Yes, sir, there's a little buffet in the station. But as far as all this philosophy business goes, let me add just one thing. I think all this freethinking is a result of all the decadence in the West and all the choices you have in your economy. Girls dancing around without anything on from the waist up, thousands of kinds of tooth paste, more kinds of tooth paste than men have teeth. It's no wonder you get all that nonsense into your head. I've even heard that there are certain night clubs where you go in and select a tube of tooth paste and give it to the waiter and then go to your table. Pretty soon out comes some half-naked girl with your tooth paste on her nipples and she comes right over to you and brushes your teeth. I hate to say it, but it must be marvelous. Would you mind me asking if you've ever been to such a night club?"

"No, I haven't. And as far as I know, there are no such places."

"They're probably only for big shots, that's why you don't know about them. And you call your press free."

"Look, for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to check Catholic."

"And why's that? You're no Catholic."

"I lean toward a belief in immortality. Not that I'm sure or anything."

"Well, if that's the way you lean, then it's Catholic you should check."

"All right, now give me my ticket."

"Just one moment."

His hand had a fit again. Purple blotches appeared all over tickets and sundry scraps of paper like an epidemic of measles. Finally, he was done and handed me an enormous stack of papers.

"Don't you lose a single one of them, sir, or else you'll find yourself in a pretty pickle."

"I won't. Now, tell me when the next train's due."

"Next train for Warsaw, about an hour, sir."

"And how long will the trip take?"

"Let me check on that. Let's see, here; oh, yes, well, taking into account the inevitable delays, and so forth, I'd say about six days."

"Six days! Why, in the name of God, six days?"

"Seems like you don't have any feel for the geography of these parts. Let me just show you a little map here. The train you must take goes south to Kraków, then cuts down through Czechoslovakia, then through the north of Hungary, back up through Czechoslovakia, and then across East Germany to Poland. Of course, for this trip you'll need a Polish exit visa, a Czech entry-and-exit visa, a Hungarian entry-and-exit visa, another Czech entry-and-exit visa and the same for East Germany--and I understand they're not so easy to get these days--and, of course, another Polish entry visa."

"Can you give me those visas?"

"Do I look like an ambassador or a consul? Hardly, sir, though I thank you for the compliment. No, such visas must be obtained directly from the consuls. And for each one, you will need six pictures of yourself."

"And where are these consuls located?"

"Why, in Warsaw, sir. Where else?"

The corners of his little mustache, which I hadn't noticed before in the shadows of the kiosk, now began to twitch. I didn't need a handbook to know that he wasn't laughing at me personally but at the laughable hopelessness of my position and the artistry with which it had been constructed. Probably he was something of a connoisseur in such matters and had watched many a fate sewn up by tracks and regulations.

"I know, I know," he said in such a sympathetic voice that my rage quieted. "It's hard at first, it takes time. After all that tooth paste and nipples, God save us, it must be quite a shock. So what I suggest you do is take this form and go on over to the buffet. Have yourself a little breakfast, fill out the form, and then I'll return your money to you. And, in the meantime, maybe we can figure out some other way of getting you back to Warsaw."

"All right, then, give me the form."

"I'm glad to help you, sir, because, you see, I've taken pity on you."

"Pity on me? Why?"

"Well, I can see how hard it is for a man like yourself."

"What do you mean--a man like myself?"

"I didn't want to come right out and say it, but what I mean is a man of no great intelligence."

"And how can you tell that I'm a man of no great intelligence?"

"Because you're here, sir, because you're here."