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suddenly deeper and tinged with emotion. Abruptly she feels a new warmth, an affection and trust unlike anything she’s felt for a man. At that moment what was only a vague feeling becomes a decision. She’s never held his hand so long, with such earnestness andgratitude. He too senses the changed mood, feels hot at the temples, gets flustered, breathes deeply, and struggles to find the right thing to say. But the locomotive is already snorting like an angry black beast, with air eddying off both sides and almost blowing the paper out of her hand. There’s only a moment left. Christine boards hurriedly. Through the window she sees only a fluttering white handkerchief, quickly vanishing in the steam and distance. Then she’s alone, for the first time in many years.
     
    For the entire overcast evening she huddles exhausted in the corner of the wood-paneled car. The countryside is dimly visible through the window, now wet with rain. At first small villages flit past indistinctly in the twilight, like startled animals running away; then everything fades into opaque and featureless fog. There’s no one else in her third-class compartment, so she stretches out on the wooden bench, feeling for the first time how tired she is. She tries to think, but the monotonous stuttering of the wheels breaks the flow of her thoughts, and the narcotic cowl of sleep tightens over her throbbing forehead—that muffled and yet overpowering railroad-sleep in which one lies rapt and benumbed as though in a shuddering black coal sack made of metal. Beneath her body the rackety wheels speed on like driven slaves; above her thrown-back head time goes by silently, without form or dimension. So completely does she sink into this surging black tide that she’s startled awake the next morning when the door bangs open and a man, broad-shouldered and mustachioed, severely confronts her. It takes a moment for her to collect herself and realize that this uniformed man means her no harm, isn’t going to arrest her and take her away, but only wants to inspect her passport, which she brings out of her handbag with cold-stiffened fingers. The official scrutinizes the photo for a moment and compares it with hernervous face. She’s trembling violently (with an unreasonable and yet immutable fear, dinned into her by the war, of somehow violating one of the thousand-and-one regulations: back then everyone was always breaking some law). But the gendarme amiably returns her passport, gives his cap a casual tug, and closes the door more gently than he opened it. Christine could lie down again if she wanted to, but the shock has banished sleep. She goes to the window, curious to look out, and her senses awaken. It was only a moment ago (for sleep knows no time) that the flat horizon was a loamy gray swell merging into the fog behind the icy glass. But now rocky, powerful mountains are massing out of the ground (where have they come from?), a vast, strange, overwhelming sight. This is her first glimpse of the unimaginable majesty of the Alps, and she sways with surprise. Just now a first ray of sun through the pass to the east is shattering into a million reflections on the ice field covering the highest peak. The white purity of this unfiltered light is so dazzling and sharp that she has to close her eyes for a moment , but now she’s wide awake. One push and the window bangs down, to bring this marvel closer, and fresh air—ice-cold, glass-sharp, and with a bracing dash of snow—streams through her lips, parted in astonishment, and into her lungs, the deepest , purest breath of her life. She spreads her arms to take in this first reckless gulp, and immediately, her chest expanding, feels a luxurious warmth rise through her veins—marvelous, marvelous. Inflamed with cold, she takes in the scene to the left and the right; her eyes (thawed out now) follow each of the granite slopes up to the icy epaulet at the top, discovering, with growing excitement, new