“Utah,” the woman said, finding her bearings, relaxing a little but still hesitant about talking.
“It could be the moon.” Except that the moon was cold and this red land, even as it pushed its way through the snow, shimmered with heat.
The woman smiled and the fine wrinkles round her eyes deepened. Honourable wrinkles, Sylvia thought, not the lines of bitterness. “Is this your first trip to the coast?” Her voice was friendly, eager.
Sylvia said, “I’ve been to San Francisco, but we travelled by air.”
“Are you going all the way?”
“Yes.” All the way...
“I’ve been travelling from Buffalo—that’s where I live. I come west every summer. This year, I had to leave early, though. I’m going to Sacramento.”
Sylvia nodded. She looked out of the window.
The woman watched her curiously, then she glanced down at the newspapers in her lap. “Care to read them?” she asked. I’m sure I don’t want to talk if she doesn’t, she reminded herself. “I got them when I stepped out for a breath of air at Denver this morning.”
“No, thanks,” Sylvia said quickly. “Would you like the magazines?” She held them out.
“No, thanks,” the woman said, a little stiffly. She became engrossed in the child, who had escaped from his mother and was now swaying down the aisle, in drunken generosity, offering everyone within reach a taste of the lollipop held in his tight grasp. Sylvia smiled, too, watching the hiccupping walk, the swaying balance that almost ended in disaster and was suddenly controlled with a violent jerk. The child laughed in triumph and then sat down with a thud. The mother gathered him up and dusted him off and trapped him once more on her knee.
Sylvia glanced at the newspapers on the other woman’s lap. Why should she look at them? She had refused to buy any in Chicago as she waited for this train.
You’re afraid, she told herself.
You won’t even face that problem, she told herself.
She said suddenly, “I’ve changed my mind. May I see the papers?”
“Certainly.” The woman passed them over quickly to her.
“Would you?” Sylvia held out the magazines in fair exchange.
The woman nodded and smiled.
Sylvia had to pretend to study the headlines first before she could turn inside and search for the gossip section. But Washington gossip didn’t travel so far, after all. She took a deep breath of thankfulness and then, as she began to glance over the columns of news in a more leisurely fashion, she began to smile at herself. Had she really imagined that a gossip paragraph about Jan and herself was of such importance that any newspaper outside of her own circle would print it? Then in a corner of the second page, her amused eyes saw a small paragraph about Washington, and her smile died away.
The date-line was Sunday.
There has been considerable speculation in diplomatic circles this week-end over recent rumours of a leak in diplomatic information dealing with international trade. It is reported that the country involved is Czechoslovakia. The rumours have so far not been denied.
She reread the paragraph. Why should I worry about it? she wondered. And yet she was troubled and couldn’t dismiss the lines of newsprint. Payton would be angered: he always resented any reflections on the State Department and no doubt its critics were already adding this piece of information to their store of ammunition. She read the report for the third time. Then she let the paper lie on her lap, and she stared out of the window.
“It doesn’t seem natural, does it?” the woman beside her asked, following her glance. “Look at that ridge over there, all carved out. Reminds me of Anna and the King of Siam. Did you see it? This woman goes out to—”
“Yes, I saw the movie,” Sylvia said quickly.
“Funny, they always make me think of Siam.” She pointed to the pinnacles and turrets, carved by wind and erosion out of the soft cliff of limestone.
Sylvia nodded.
“Never knew there could be so many shades of red.”
“No,” Sylvia agreed.
“And all that snow melting... How did they ever do it?”
Sylvia looked at her in surprise.
“The people who first came out here,” she explained. “Every time I make this journey, I think of them, poor souls. Some of them came on foot. Did you know that?”
Sylvia shook her head.
“All the way from Illinois. On foot. Three thousand of them. Pushing and pulling handcarts holding their few pots and pans and the youngest. And”—she lowered her voice appropriately—“women gave birth on the way. Imagine. This is the route they travelled. No road for them, either.” She watched a car speeding along the highway that stayed close by the railway line and kept it company. She shook her head. “Pushing and pulling.”
“On foot?” Sylvia thought of the distance she had come. The woman’s got her history all wrong, she decided, as she looked at the uneven ground, with its thin hard grass and low stubborn bushes.
But the woman was saying, “Yes. They were some of the Mormons, the ones who hadn’t enough money for a horse or a wagon.” She shook her head again as she stared out of the window. “Well, I suppose if you have to do it, you do it,” she said reflectively. “But still—” She shook her head again. “Wait until you see Salt Lake City tonight, its lights stretching for miles. We’ll get there just after ten o’clock.” She looked at her wrist watch. “It’s six, now. I think I’ll have something to eat. Is it too early for you?”
“No,” said Sylvia. Let me keep my thoughts on Siam, and shades of red, and Mormons who walked, and anything except Czechoslovakia.
“Just drop the papers under the seat. Nothing but scandal in them, anyway. Corruption and Communists. I’d take some of those mink coats and gangsters and make them walk all the way to Salt Lake City, just to learn them how this country was built.” Her lips snapped shut. “Thanks for the magazines,” she said, handing them back. She began to smile. “A hundred and fifty dollars for a dress? Who’s crazy enough to pay that? A month’s wages. For one dress?” She rose, stretching her back, pulling down her light-green jacket. She tried to brush out the wrinkles on her skirt. “Two nights on a train and one more to go. Well, who am I to complain?” And she nodded to the rough red land that folded away to the jagged line of a wind-hewn, snow-edged horizon. “At least we can eat, without worrying about losing our scalps.” She wrinkled her brow. “Now is Utah a dry state? Or can we have a cocktail before supper?”
* * *
They came down through the mountains, under a wide canopy of night sky. For more than an hour the lights of the distant city and its clustering suburbs had been a glittering background to the dark shapes of hills and trees through which they travelled.
“It’s coming no nearer,” Sylvia said, looking at the garland of lights that marked Salt Lake City.
“It will come all right,” the woman remarked with a smile for the lights. “Cheery, isn’t it? It’s good to see houses again.”
The train seemed to feel that, too, for it rushed towards the lights as if it was fleeing from the blackness of the mountains, from the miles of snowbound loneliness through which it had come. In the coach, most of the lights had been dimmed and the chairs were angled back for those who stretched out to sleep. The child had cried with exhaustion, but he too was now asleep.
“You must rest more tonight,” the woman said gravely, watching Sylvia sitting so tensely as she looked out at the darkness. “Is this your third night on a train, too? Then you ought to try and sleep.”
Sylvia nodded. She didn’t know whether she should smile or grit her teeth. Her companion had decided she needed to be looked after.
At dinner, she had coaxed Sylvia to eat. This train journey was a holiday, wasn’t it? They might as well relax and enjoy themselves. And after she had decided what was best for them to eat, she had set out to keep Sylvia from brooding in the simplest way possible: she talked about herself.
She was a wido
w, her husband had been a bus driver, her eldest boy was a doctor, her daughter a schoolteacher, her youngest son had a job in Sacramento. She spent the winters in Buffalo, cold as it was, because her friends were there and a good steady job on the catering staff of a school. Summers, she went out to another steady job as a waitress in a hotel on the rim of the Grand Canyon.
Usually, that was. This year, she had left Buffalo early. For a special visit to Sacramento, where she was needed right now. The school had given her leave of absence—she had worked there twenty-two years, after all—and so she could make this trip to Sacramento, go on to Canyon in June, and still depend on her job in Buffalo in the fall.
In June then, with luck and all going well, she’d be looking right over the rim of the Canyon again. It was quite a view. Funny thing about her—or was it a funny thing about the place?—she had tried other National Parks, and she had worked one summer in Santa Fe too, but she kept going back to the Grand Canyon. There, she now had her own group of friends who also came to work through each summer, that was what she liked. Variety in scenery and in friends.
It was a good life. Difficult at times, of course. There was the cost of living. There was the income tax she had just paid. (“I didn’t know if I could plan on this trip until I had that all figured out,” she said with a laugh.) But then, there were so many people needing help in Europe, in other parts of the world too. No wonder the taxes were high, nowadays.
She couldn’t help wondering, though, when she read what foreigners sometimes said about America, if the people in those other countries knew it was mostly people like her who were sending over a bit of their work, just to help everyone along? For money was work. And there were more workers like her in America than there were people who didn’t notice the dollars slipping away. Yes, sometimes she couldn’t help wondering...
But now, she was going to forget taxes and swollen ankles and vats of stew and troughs of rice pudding and heavy trays heaped with dirty dishes. Now she was going to visit Sacramento for a few weeks; there was another baby expected, and with two children already aged three and two, someone had to take charge and her daughter-in-law’s mother had broken her thigh and so here she was.
Sylvia listened and marvelled: I know almost everything about her except her name. But perhaps people talked frankly, confined so closely as this on trains, because they felt that all their information was still their own private business as long as they didn’t give their names.
Now the woman had fallen silent. She was studying her face in a small mirror and adding a dab of powder, a stroke of lipstick, an extra pat to the tight curls and rigid lines of a permanent wave that had to last through the summer. “I’ll look better tomorrow,” she said determinedly. “A hot shower and a change of clothes and we’ll all feel like human beings again.”
Now the train was slowing up.
“We’ll be here for half an hour,” she told Sylvia. “I’m going to get some fresh air, stretch my legs. You’ll sleep tonight if you do that, too.”
“I’ll sleep anyway, I think,” Sylvia said. I’m exhausted with kindness, she thought.
But she rose when she saw the wide, open platform, and beyond it the large brightly lit station buildings. I’ll get a newspaper there, she told herself. She followed the compact little body in its tight green suit along the aisle, between the rows of quiet figures twisted into the strange curves and angles of sleep. Why should I worry about a newspaper? she asked herself.
She halted her steps and waited while two other passengers stepped out of their seats, cutting her off from her friend in green. When she reached the platform, the green suit was already walking slowly away. Sylvia let it go, while she stood taking her first deep breaths of the cool crisp air. She had a touch of guilt, wondering if the woman had sensed that Sylvia wanted to be free for this half hour at least. Free? Her worries were already surging back. Quickly she walked towards the brightly lit waiting-room, taking the loneliest path. The long train that had carried her here waited patiently. Men were working on the wheels. Water was syphoned in. Food supplies were piled on. Mail trucks waited, stacked with sacks, with mountains of boxes. A train had come in, a train was being readied to pull out.
In the huge hall, she was dazzled by the lights and the voices. Travellers relaxing, eating, drinking at the long counters, travellers buying candy and cigarettes and postal cards and magazines.
She bought three newspapers; and then to disguise her anxiety she added a pack of cigarettes. A picture postcard caught her eye. She bought it, too. She half smiled as she looked at it, a smile for own ignorance, and she slipped it into her pocket. Her friend in green would like it. Then she looked round for a place to study the papers, but she shrank from the bright lights and the friendly eyes. She went out, on to the platform again, with the cool wind to clear her thoughts. The waiting train, a long line of silver gleaming in the night, was far enough away across the breadth of tracks to make her feel alone.
Alone. She looked round, almost wildly, then. Perhaps it was the dark shadows beyond the station, the strange hard lights far above the platform that flooded it so coldly, the strangers working on the jobs they knew so well, the silent shapes of trucks and crates around her, but suddenly the moment became unreal, fantastic. What am I doing here? she almost cried aloud. The farther I travel away from Jan, the more I need him.
She calmed herself and sat down on a wooden crate, sheltered behind a loaded truck, and examined the newspapers. The front page headlines dealt with the Senate Crime Committee investigations in New York and the Rosenberg spy trial. In Korea, U.N. tanks and infantry had crossed the 38 th parallel and were driving north. She opened the papers and began to search through them. For what? She wouldn’t even let herself say it. She scanned the columns of print quickly, persuading herself she was searching in vain. One of the papers carried nothing at all. “I told you,” she said aloud in her relief.
The second paper carried the same text as the Denver report with its Sunday date-line. So did the third.
Her unexplained worry returned. And then, as she closed the papers, folding them neatly to tuck in between two crates, she saw a paragraph boxed into the front page of the second paper, overshadowed by the proceedings of the Kefauver Committee so that she had missed it. The box was headed No Comment? Its date-line was Washington, March 26.
It is reliably reported that certain classified information, dealing with the renewal of a trade treaty with Czechoslovakia, has been made known prematurely through unauthorised channels. The report has so far not been denied by our Government. A highly placed official stated today in Washington that the reported leak of information was most regrettable, but that the information itself was of little importance since it dealt with matters on which the final policy decision had not yet been reached. The Government spokesman refused to comment on recent rumours which connected the name of a minor Czech envoy to this country with the wife of a Washington lawyer who has been acting as one of our expert advisers on international trade.
The woman in the green suit came out of the waiting-room. She hesitated for a moment, but perhaps she hadn’t seen Sylvia after all, for she walked on towards the train. The other passengers streamed back, too. A man in station uniform came up and said, “Aren’t you going to get on that train, lady? It leaves in fifty seconds.”
Sylvia moved away.
“You’ve left your papers,” he called after her but she didn’t even look round.
She climbed the steep steps of the coach, her legs weak and tired, her body heavy and old. The woman in the green suit was already preparing to make herself comfortable for the night. She was taking a dressing-gown and slippers out of her suitcase, and then, clutching a small striped silk bag which she called her “beauty-kit” with a self-deprecatory smile, she left for the washroom. When she returned, Sylvia seemed already asleep.
She’ll feel awful in the morning, the woman thought, shaking her head over such ignorance in the rudiments of travel.
Carefully, she folded her skirt and jacket over the rail in front of her. Her shoes, she laid neatly beside the foot rest. Quietly, she adjusted the lever at the side of her chair to tilt it backwards. Then she stretched out, pillowed her head comfortably on the white linen mat, drew her warm dressing-gown around her and closed her eyes.
Sylvia listened to the steady breathing beside her. She listened to the wheels of the train, gathering speed. She listened to its lonely whistle cutting through the darkness.
Every mile took her farther away, farther away from Jan. And it was now she needed him, to reassure her, to quieten her fears. Escape is all that is left, she thought, an escape together, an escape away from the shame that is bitter because it is unearned. But together we can face it. For even if everyone else believes those rumours and reports we know we aren’t guilty— not of treason.
She was cold, so cold that she reached for her coat on the rack overhead and drew it around her like a blanket, her eyes sometimes searching the darkness with its vague unknown shapes, sometimes closed tightly against the loneliness outside the window.
There was a moment when the panic of fear almost won. Desperately, she thought of Jan. Soon, she told herself, soon. That was what Jan had said. Soon. Together. For always.
And repeating these words, she could remember the touch of his hands, the confidence of his lips. She could remember the strength of his love. And her fears receded. She looked out into the dark shadows of the long night, seeing now Jan’s face, hearing his voice, feeling him beside her. Together was everything; the rest, nothing.
The dawn came, turning the black sky green. In the darkness the land had changed to lakes of flat white sand, giant dunes, ridges of black rock. The green sky faded to grey, then brightened to yellows and pinks and blues, stretching limitless over the surrealist expanse of desert nakedness, terrifying, remote, unreal in its reality. She pulled the window shade to blot it all out. Its strange emptiness was something she couldn’t face. It seemed too symbolic of her life without Jan.