Matala by Craig Holden Page A

understand?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAt all costs you stay with that girl. Whatever happens.”
    â€œJustine—”
    â€œFrom now on if you see me, you’re blank. Like you’ve never seen me before. Her, too. She has to act that way. Both of you. You explain it to her. And don’t lose each other. And keep the packs in sight of at least one of you at all times. This is not a safe train. That’s not too complicated for you, is it?”
    â€œNo. But why?”
    â€œJust listen to me. Please. I’ll be around,” she said. “You may see me, but you don’t know me. You can’t—until I say. It’s very important.”
    Masses of people flowed around us, backpackers and business travelers and couples. I said, “All right.”
    â€œIf you get a window seat, there’ll be a space between the seat and the outside wall. It’ll be tight, but you can jam that bottle down in it, so if you get searched, it’s not on you. If someone finds it, you know nothing about it. It was already there.”
    â€œBy the seat.”
    â€œYes. Then just make sure you don’t change seats.”
    â€œJustine, I’m sorry. I don’t know what you think is going on or whatever. I know you’re mad.”
    â€œThat’s not what we’re talking about. That’s for later. Right now you have to listen to what I’m telling you and follow it exactly. If this gets fucked up, we’re done—and I don’t just mean with each other.”
    She put a fingertip to her mouth, kissed it, and reached up and touched my lips. Then she lifted her pack, slid it on, and walked toward the platform where our train waited.

    T HEN THERE WAS NO PLACE, only movement. The train would not arrive in Athens until Tuesday, a forty-hour ride, and other than small, smelly toilets, it had nothing in the way of amenities. There were just people—people jammed into the traveling compartments and along the hallways and even in the vestibules between the cars. Darcy called it a third world refugee train, and I knew it was certainly the closest thing to one she’d ever experienced. But she laughed when she said it, and I could see the rush in her eyes. I wondered if she was aware of how much Justine would have hated that. I didn’t have a clue anymore what Darcy was aware of. She was a cipher, that’s all. But I could almost hear Justine hissing, “No one has a right to be thrilled by something this utterly shitty.”
    The compartment held eight seats, four facing four. I had one on the window, and Darcy sat beside me, her feet on the edge of the seat, pressed against the back of her thighs, her arms around her knees, chin resting on top of them. She watched. I don’t think she moved from that position until we hit the last stop in Italy, at the edge of the Yugoslav border.
    Then someone said, “Regardez!”
    Darcy leaned toward me and said, “Watch out,” and at that moment, as if her saying it had somehow announced that the siege was allowed to begin, the door to our compartment slammed open and people from the hallway pressed in—refugee people, as Darcy called them. One slid open the window, and Western goods began to fly into the compartment from the platform outside. It was as if some magical capitalist lateral storm had begun to blow: designer jeans, bottles of Champagne and Italian wines, plastic-encased toys from Mattel and Hasbro, wallets, running shoes, dress shoes, women’s leather boots, raincoats, winter coats, leather jackets, tins of cookies, tins of dried fruits, boxes of teas, packages of underwear. All of these flowed into the compartment and were flowing into all the compartments along the whole train. It was the big smuggle. Accomplices bought the stuff in the West and transported it to the East, bypassing the censors and taxmen and culture ministries. In this way the proletariat had its fun and the free