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happened. The final disposition of the workman’s body beyond Diddy’s control. The body might have fallen between the rails and escaped being pulverized or dismembered by the wheels.
    Is the train fleeing the body left behind? Is that why we’re picking up so much speed?
    â€œThat’s better!” Which one of us has spoken, groaning with relief? Could have been anyone—though least likely to be the girl. The train has broken out of the tunnel, is careening through the countryside. Crimson birds fly alongside the window, the air has a purplish neon glow, a great blue silo rises from a distant hill, strange groupings of trees throw animal shadows to the ground. Telephone wires swoop and sag like roller-coaster tracks, signs and billboards are undecipherable. A fantastic landscape? Or is Diddy hallucinated, already poisoned by remorse? The stone, the stone. Diddy is choking. He puts his face into his hands again, afraid to look. The train is going very fast (now). Diddy wonders if the iron-black wheels are bright with blood. If they are, some farm boy idling on the slope beside the track, watching trains go by, will sound the alarm.
    When Diddy looks up again, the stamp dealer is jotting something down in a small notebook; the priest is mumbling over his breviary; the aunt, a brown pear in her hand, has fallen asleep propped against her niece. The girl looking straight ahead. It might be at Diddy, he doesn’t know.
    Diddy must talk to someone. It can only be this girl with the inhuman, leaden vision. But he doesn’t want to be overheard. Leaning forward, he covers her stockinged knee with his hand. “What is it?” she whispers. Already a conspiratorial tone.
    â€œI have something to tell you,” Diddy says hoarsely. “Will you come outside?”
    The priest glanced up, then sank back in his breviary. Diddy beckons to the girl, as if she could see. The girl gently eases her shoulder away from her aunt’s heavy head; the gray-haired woman, her eyes closed, stirs about until she finds the adjustable headrest, grimaces, is still again. The girl stands up, removes her washable suède gloves, and lays them on the seat. She’s almost as tall as Diddy. Who takes her warm hand and guides her over the feet of the priest and the stamp dealer, past the stamp dealer’s briefcase and the aunt’s shopping bags. Having pulled back the compartment door and then shut it behind them, now what? Diddy stares at the girl in perplexity, releases her hand. Though no one else is standing in the corridor, he still feels unsafe, exposed.
    â€œCome to the end of the car.” She hesitates. “Come!”
    The girl again extends her hand for Diddy to lead her. His eyes smart with gratitude for that gesture of trust. Of course, when one is blind one is compelled to trust everyone. Or no one. Diddy wished he had fewer alternatives, like the blind girl.
    They stand next to the lavatory at the near end of the car, round a corner and out of sight of anyone who might come out into the corridor. Swaying with the movement of the train.
    â€œTell me,” the girl says.
    â€œSomething … has happened.”
    â€œIs it the train? I was frightened before.”
    â€œNo, no,” says Diddy. “It happened off the train. It’s me. I’ve done something terrible.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œAfter I left the compartment.”
    â€œYou mean just now?”
    â€œNo, before.”
    â€œWhen did you leave the compartment before?”
    â€œWhen? How can you say that?” Diddy shouts softly. “I know you can’t … didn’t see me. But you must have heard me say I was going. To see why we were stalled, remember? I was … I was frightened, too.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou must have heard me get up and leave!”
    â€œI didn’t hear you leave.”
    â€œBut you weren’t asleep,” pleads Diddy, more and more