macabre Scheherazade. She amused everyone with
her drunken antics as she accepted all that was
dropped into her offering cloth, including coins. The
Dutch vacationers were kind, thoughtJoel they took
care of someone less fortunate than themselves
someone who would be banred from another class
of car on another train. The woman approached
him, her canvas bag now held in front of her so as
to accept alms from both sides. Converse reached
into his pocket for a few Builders, letting them slip
from his hand into the bag.
“Goedemorgen, ” said the old woman, weaving.
“Dank u wel, haste man, erg vriendelijk van u!”
Joel nodded, resuming to his map, but the bag
lady remained.
“Uw hoold! Ach, heb je een ongeluk Chad, jongen?”
Again Converse nodded, reaching again into his
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 451
and giving the inebriated old hag more money. He
pointed to his map and waved her away, as yet
another raucous chorus erupted.
“Spreekt u Engels?” shouted the bag lady, leaning
over unsteadily.
Joel shrugged, sinking back into the seat, his eyes
riveted on the map.
“I think you do. ” The old woman spoke hoarsely,
clearly soberly, her right hand no longer on the edge
of the seat but instead in the canvas bag. “We’ve been
looking for you every day, on every train. Don t
move! The gun is equipped with a silencer. With all
this noise, if I pull the trigger no one would know the
difference, including the man beside you who wants
only to join the party and the big-breasted women. I
think we shall let him. We have you, Meneer
Converse!”
There was no summer camp, after all. Only death
minutes away from Amsterdam.
26
“Mag ik u even lastig fallen?” shouted the old
woman, once more weaving unsteadily as she spoke
to the passenger beside Converse. The man took his
eyes off the raucous festivities in the aisle and
glanced up at the harridan. She shouted again, her
right hand still in the bag, her mass of disheveled
grey hair springing back and forth as she nodded to
her right, toward the front of the car. ‘ Zou ik op uw
plants molten zitten?”
“Mid loest!” The man got up grinning, as Joel
instinctively moved his legs to let him pass. “Dank u
wel, ” the man added heading for a single empty seat
beyond a couple dancing in the aisle.
“Move over!” commanded the old woman harshly,
swaying with the rhythm of the racing train.
If it was going to happen, thought Converse, it
was going to happen now. He started to rise, his eyes
straight ahead, his right elbow on the armrest inches
from the bulging bag. Suddenly he plunged his hand
into the open canvas bag and
452 ROBERT LUDIUM
gripped the fat wrist of the woman’s hand that held
the unseen gun. Straining, pressing farther down,
clutching flesh and metal, he swung violently to his
left and yanked the old woman through the narrow
space, twisting her, crashing her down into the seat
next to the window. There was a sharp spit as the
gun exploded, burning a hole in the heavy cloth,
smoke billowing, the bullet embedding itself
somewhere below. The hag’s strength was maniacal,
unlike anything he might have imagined. She fought
viciously, clawing at his face until he pulled her arm
above her head, twisting it, clamping it behind her,
their two hands still struggling below in the bag. She
would not let go of the weapon and he could not
pry it loose; he could only hold it downward, his
grip immobilising her fingers, force against force,
her contorted face telling him she would not
surrender.
The midmorning revels of the railroad car
reached a crescendo; a cacophony of voices raised
in jumbled song competed with the swelling echoes
of laughter. And no one paid the slightest attention
to the savage struggle that was taking place in the
narrow seat. Suddenly, within the panic of that
struggle, within the violent impasse, Joel was aware
that the train was slowing don n, if only
imperceptibly. Once again his pilot’s instincts told
him a descent was imminent. He jammed his elbow
into the old woman’s right breast to jolt her into
freeing the gun. Still she held on, bracing herself
against the seat, her arm pinned, her fat legs
stretched below, angled like thick pylons anchored
beneath the forward seat, her obese body twisted,
locking his own arm in place so he could not
dislodge the weapon from her grip.
“Let go!” he whispered hoarsely. ‘I won’t hurt
you I won’t kill you. Whatever you’re being paid,
I’ll pay you more!”
“Bee! I would be found at the bottom of a canal!
You can’t escape, Menheer! They wait for you in
Amsterdam, they wait for the train!” Grimacing, the
old woman kicked out, briefly freeing her left arm.
She swung her hand around, clawing his face, her
nails sliding down his beard until he grabbed her
wrist, pulling her arm across the seat and cracking
it into her own knee, twisting her hand clockwise,
forcing her to be still. It made no difference. Her
right hand had the strength of an aging lioness
protecting its pride; she would not release the gun
below.
‘You’re Iying!” cried Converse. “No one knows
I’m on this trains You just got on twenty minutes
ago!”
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 453
“Wrong, A mer~knan ! I’ve been on since
Arnhem I start in the front, walk back. I found you
out at Utrecht and a teiephone call was made.”
‘Liar!”
“You will see.”
“Who hired you?”
“Men.”
“Who?”
“You will see.”
“Goddamn you, you’re not part of them! You can’t
bel”
“They pay. Up and down the railroad they pay.
On the piers, in the airports. They say you speak
nothing but English.”
‘What else do they say?”
“Why should I tell you? You’re caught. It is you
who should let me go. It could be easier for you.”
“How? A quick bullet in the head instead of a
Hanoi rack?”
“Whatever it is, the bullet could be better. You
are too young to know, Meneer. You were never
under occupation.”
“And you’re too old to be so goddamned strong,
I’ll give you that.”
‘ha, I learn that, too.”
“Let go!”
The train was braking and the drunken crowd in
the car roared its approval as men grabbed suitcases
from the upper racks. The passenger who had been
sitting next to Joel hastily yanked his from above the
seat, his stomach pressing into Converse’s shoulder.
Joel tried to appear as though he were in deep
conversation with his grimacing half-prisoner; the
man fell back, suitcase in hand, laughing.
The old woman lurched forward, sinking her
mouth into Converse’s upper arm, millimeters from
his wound. She bit him viciously, her yellow teeth
penetrating his flesh, blood bursting out of his skin,
trickling down the woman’s grey chin.
He pulled back in pain. She freed her hand from
his grip in the canvas bag; the gun was hers! She
fired; the muted spit was followed by a shattering of
a section of the floor in the aisle, missingJoel’s feet
by inches. He grabbed the unseen barrel, twisted it,
pulled it, trying with all his strength to wrench it
away. She fired again.
Her eyes grew wide as she arched back into the
seat. They remained open as she slumped into the
window, blood
454 ROBERT LUDIUM
spreading quickly through the thin fabric of her
dress in the upper section of her stomach. She was
dead, and Joel felt ill nauseated he had to swallow
air to keep from vomiting. Trembling, he wondered
who this old woman was, why she was what she
had lived through that made her become what she
was. You were too young to know…. You were never
under occupation.
No time to think about all this! She had wanted
to kill him, that was all he had to know, and men
were waiting for him only minutes away. He had to
think, move!
Twisting the gun from her rigid fingers inside
the canvas bag, he quickly lifted it up and shoved it
under his coarse jacket, inserting it under his belt,
feeling the weight of the other weapon in his
pocket. He reached over and bunched the woman’s
dress in folds, then layered her shawl over the
bloodstains and pushed her mass of disheveled hair
over her right cheek, concealing the wide dead eyes.
Experience in the camps told him not to try to close
the eyes; too often they would not respond. fhe
action might only call attention to him to her. The
last thing he did was to pull a can of beer out of the
bag, open it, and place it on her lap; the liquid
spilled out, drenching’ her lap.
“Amsterdam! Df volgende halls is Amsterdam-Cen-
traal.~”
A roar went up from the vacationing crowd as
the line began to form toward the door. Oh, Christ!