Matala by Craig Holden Page B

market worked, and there was nothing to be done about it.
    Darcy screamed, “My God! It’s fabulous.”
    The goods piled around our ankles. She picked up a bottle of wine to examine it, but someone snarled and snatched it away.
    â€œYou better be careful,” I said.
    â€œThis is so wild.”
    â€œDo they always do this?”
    She shouted in French across to the man who had warned us. He said something and nodded.
    And then it ended as it had begun—suddenly. The window snapped closed, the goods vanished as though they’d never existed, the compartment emptied of all but the eight of us seated there, and the train—as if its sole reason for pausing on the Italian side was to allow this taking on of merchandise, this polluting of the East—started again and crept forward to the border.

    S OMETIME AFTER MIDNIGHT, WHEN WE had all finally managed to begin to sleep, the door to the compartment opened, and someone reached in and switched on the overhead light. I snapped awake, squinting, and started to say, “Hey!” Then I saw that it was a man in a snuff-brown wool uniform. He looked at me.
    â€œAmerican?” the man said. “Canada? Brit?”
    I shielded my eyes against the light and tried to make out the man’s face. He was a guard or an officer of some kind. The others were waking up now.
    â€œAmerican, Canada, Brit?” the man said.
    Darcy raised her hand like a good schoolgirl and said, “American.”
    â€œCome.”
    â€œMe, too,” I said, although I had considered saying nothing in hope that the man would leave. I felt what was coming in my stomach.
    The man nodded and crooked his finger.
    The others in the car watched us. No one else said anything. I looked back at our bags and then at the others in the car, silently imploring them to let no one touch them, Justine’s admonition playing in my head. As we left, another guard reached inside and shut off the light.
    We were directed toward the far vestibule where most of the other passengers who had gathered wore the official over-heated-refugee-train American student travel outfit of T-shirt and Adidases or Nikes. The refugees who had jammed the hallways and vestibules were gone. We were filed off into the night, from which I could see other guards through the windows. We were pointed across an adjacent track toward a small lighted building, a kind of shed or garage.
    â€œWhat is it?” Darcy asked.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    We were fairly far north and somewhat above sea level. My breath, the breath of all of us, curdled into dense clouds.
    â€œThey should have told us to get coats or something,” Darcy said.
    â€œI doubt they know any English,” said a woman waiting behind us, “besides ‘American, Canada, Brit.’”
    â€œDo you know what this is about?”
    The woman shook her head.
    â€œPass-a-port,” one of the guards shouted. “Pass-a-port!”
    â€œSo I was wrong,” the woman said.
    The guards were circulating now, yelling out, “Pass-a-port!” and collecting them.
    â€œThey can’t do that,” the woman said. “They’re not allowed to confiscate an American passport. It’s like in the Geneva convention or something.”
    â€œWell,” I said, “are you going to tell them no?”
    â€œJudas priest,” the woman said.
    One of the guards took our passports and left us there in the dark and the cold. Up ahead we could see that the first group was inside the shed now, standing at some sort of counter.
    â€œThis is really crazy,” the woman said.
    â€œIt’s like here we are,” Darcy said, “behind the Iron Curtain. No passport, no coat, no luggage, no nothing in the middle of the night. If they wanted to totally screw us, they could do it.”
    â€œThat’s right,” the woman said. “Who’s to stop them?”
    â€œIt’s not exactly the Iron