Antisemitism -- Fiction; Jews -- Austria -- Fiction; Middle class -- Fiction; Vienna (Austria) -- Fiction
They then walked up and down on the platform. George was in a very
good temper, and he was glad that in her English dress, narrow-brimmed
travelling hat and blue veil Anna looked like an interesting foreigner.
They went the length of the entire train until they came to the
engine, which stood outside the station and was sending violent puffs
of light-grey steam up to the dark sky. Outside green and red lamps
glowed on the track with a faint light. Nervous whistles came from
somewhere out of the distance and a train slowly struggled out of the
darkness into the station. A red light waved magically to and fro over
the ground, seemed to be miles away, stopped and was suddenly quite
near. And outside, shining and losing themselves in the invisible, the
lines went their way to near and far, into night and morning, into the
morrow, into the inscrutable.
Anna climbed into the compartment. George remained standing outside
for a while and derived amusement from watching the other travellers,
those who were in an excited rush, those who preserved a dignified
calm, and those who posed as being calm--and all the various types of
people who were seeing their friends off: the depressed, the jolly, the
indifferent.
Anna was leaning out of the window. George chatted with her, behaved
as though he had not the slightest idea of leaving and then jumped in
at the last minute. The train went away. People were standing on the
platform, incomprehensible people who were remaining behind in Vienna,
and who on their side seemed to find all the others who were now really
leaving Vienna equally incomprehensible. A few pocket-handkerchiefs
fluttered. The station-master stood there impressively and gazed
sternly after the train. A porter in a blue-and-white striped linen
blouse held a yellow bag high up and looked inquisitively into every
window. Strange, thought George casually, there are people who
are going away and yet leave their yellow bags behind in Vienna.
Everything vanished, handkerchiefs, bags, station-master, station. The
brightly-lighted signal-box, the Gloriette, the twinkling lights of
the town, the little bare gardens along the embankment; and the train
whizzed on through the night. George turned away from the window. Anna
sat in the corner. She had taken off her hat and veil. Gentle little
tears were running down her cheeks.
"Come," said George, as he embraced her and kissed her on the eyes and
mouth. "Come, Anna," he repeated even more tenderly, and kissed her
again. "What are you crying for, dear? It will be so nice."
"It's easy enough for you," she said, and the tears streamed on down
her smiling face.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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