Tours of the Black Clock

143

THE TRIP TO WYNDEAUX takes two nights, and except for the fact I must constantly care for the old man, it remains uneventful. No one on the way asks about identification or papers. We arrive at the Wyndeaux train station the morning of the next day. Wyndeaux is a medieval city as blue as the one we left sinking in the Italian lagoon. In a beach cafe that glows like a lantern, I hunt up the captain who’s going to sail us to Mexico. He’s no more moved by our arrival than the German in Nice was by our departure, but he already understands the situation and has arranged things. We sail in forty-eight hours; until then, we’re on our own. But we have no place to stay, I tell him; that’s your problem, he answers. So we wander around the village streets half the day until I see the captain coming up the road toward us, to tell us we can stay with him. As with everyone else, there’s no accounting for whatever’s changed his mind. The morning we’re to disembark, the old man and I are sitting on the docks waiting to board the ship when we’re accosted by some soldiers who ask us what we’re doing and who we are and whether we have papers. They start interrogating the captain, who makes it clear he’d be just as happy to leave us right there on the docks. This goes on a few minutes until a German officer of some rank shows up; as with the lieutenant on the train from Milan to Nice, he interjects himself. What’s this all about, he demands of his soldiers. These old men don’t have any papers, one of the soldiers exclaims, pointing to us. They don’t have any papers! the ranking officer cries in mock alarm. But this can’t be, he says, why, I’m certain Germany cannot survive such a thing. He’s ridiculing the soldiers, who are baffled and flustered; he’s hardly given me a glance. Let’s say we not worry so much about old men without papers, the officer says. Let’s say we find more significant ways to serve Germany and the Leader. The soldiers look at me and at each other, and salute the officer and leave. Only when they’ve walked away does the officer peer over his shoulder in my direction, and then at the ship’s captain. The captain furiously gestures at us to get on his boat. We sail before the sun has crossed our heads.