The Stranger
by Martin Binnington
© May 2013
We sat back and watched the sun rising over the sea. Her head was nestling between my shoulder and neck, her naked flesh covered by a black and red woollen tartan blanket. I was using last night’s clothes to shield my bare back from the stark cold of the concrete wall behind us. It was one of those moments where you feel that everything is just how it should be, and yet in the back of my mind there was a hint of disappointment that this couldn’t last. The sun would rise, the night would be over, and neither of us knew what would happen next.
I should probably go back a while and explain how we met.
I was on holiday, taking time away from the mess and stress that was my working life. I had decided to fulfil a dream I'd had since I was in school, learning French with a beautiful exchange student during my final year. I had never wanted to visit big cities; they seemed too impersonal, the citizens were rude, it was a struggle to get anywhere because of the local workforce clogging up the roads and train services. But I love visiting little towns and villages. When you arrive in such places, you immediately get the sense that there has been a village on this spot since forever...
Anyway, back to the story!
I had been travelling since 8pm the night before. Actually, getting to the train station in London took an extra couple of hours, but the start of a holiday is only really measured from the time you board the transportation which takes you out of the country… I had caught the last Eurostar from London to Paris, which arrived at around 10pm. There was a connecting sleeper train departing from Gare d’Austerlitz at 10.45, which left less than an hour to traverse the infamous streets of Paris. Even with a maniacal local taxi driver, who swerved wildly between lanes, squeezed through gaps so tightly that I found I was holding my breath, and gesticulated and swore at anyone who cut across his path, I still had to run the last hundred and fifty yards to the right platform, and jumped aboard the train just before the doors slid shut.
I found my reserved seat in the first-class carriage. I hadn’t booked first class, but if this was a mistake then it wasn’t mine. I stowed my small suitcase and backpack in the overhead bin and slumped back in the luxurious adjustable armchair. I lowered the backrest to an almost horizontal position and shut my eyes
I dreamed that I was travelling on a train. It looked very similar to the train I had just boarded except for the lack of other passengers. We seemed to be on a track high in the air, and there was nothing but clouds beneath the tracks. The gentle rocking of the carriage and the click-click of the wheels made me very drowsy…
I dreamed within a dream. I was on the same train as before, travelling alone on the same bridge in the sky, only this time there was no sound. The silence suppressed everything; even the movement of the train seemed dampened. Suddenly, the sound rushes back, and I can hear the tearing of metal as the carriage jerks to the side and then pitches forward. The carriage drops for an eternity, I am pinned to the seat by the sheer speed at which I am falling. I see land below, then a river, then nothing.
The pseudo-dream over, I am still in the original dream, traversing the skybridge. Once more, there was the agonising screeching of the emergency brake, the lurch of the carriage to the side and then forward, and the long drop to the surface below…
I awoke in a panic, breathing heavily. I looked around, relieved to see people, but when I looked out of the window, we were travelling over a bridge and there was nothing but clouds below us. “Oh, shit,” I muttered. Surely the dreams weren’t a premonition. I rubbed my eyes, thinking the white clouds were just a remnant of the dreams. I looked out the window again, in time to see through a gap in the cloud. We were over a gorge, a river flowing some distance beneath us. An announcer came over the speaker system… “Le train va être arrêter à St. Gervais en 15 minutes. Il y aura un temps de repos courts, alors que nous avons en stock la barre de petit déjeuner, et nous quitterons à 09:20.Ceux qui quittent le train, assurez-vous d'avoir tous vos bagages et effets personnels avec vous quand vous descendez. Merci.”
Ok, arrêter means stop… repos is a break… la barre is obvious… quittent le train?.. effets personnels… quand vous descendez? What does she mean, when we descend? Is the announcer saying we’re going to crash? I looked anxiously out of the window, waiting to see the other side of the gorge or await whatever fate had befallen me. The end of the bridge came first.
Ten minutes later, the train began to slow down. “Nous approchons maintenant de Saint-Gervais-les-Bains Le Fayet,” the next announcement reported. I was relieved when the train stopped and I stepped down from the train (Ah, that’s what “descendez” meant!) and waked into the station, stretching my legs and back while I pushed my luggage on a small cart.
There were trains every hour to Chamonix, but on the map it looked less than ten miles between the two towns; I could probably walk along the main road in a few hours and save the cost of another train ticket. It actually took four hours, and took me through a couple of villages, so I arrived in Chamonix at around 2pm. I had some lunch at a bistro, and spent a few hours wandering the main streets looking for hotels with vacancies. There were none. At 5pm I gave up and hopped on a coach which visited some ski resorts. This is how I found myself in the little village of Servoz at dusk.
The first hotel I came across was gorgeous to look at. You know the old log cabins you see in films? This was the same, but built on a grander scale, and of course the backdrop of snow-covered mountains was the icing on the cake. I entered, found the reception, and rang the bell. A moment later, an old woman peeked around the corner. Her face looked like a pug's, all wrinkles and folds. Her eyes were definitely there, somewhere! And to top it off, she had a half-smoked roll-up glued to one side of her mouth.
My French lessons went out the window. I stuttered, "Bon Joor! Havez-vous un room pour la nuit?"
She stared at me with the most penetrating look I've received when I couldn't see the eyes. She slowly took a draw of the cigarette, removed the cylinder from her mouth, and exhaled. "Non," was the only thing she said.
I figured I'd got it wrong, so like tourists everywhere I fell back on my phrasebook. Removing it, and flicking through the pages, I could feel my face burning with embarrassment. I cleared my throat and tried again.
"Bonjour! Avez-vous une chambre pour la nuit?"
Once again, I received the laser beam stare, the slow crackling of the tobacco burning as it was consumed, and the exhaled "Non!"
If I wasn't so embarrassed, or if it was someone else asking, I would have struggled to hold in my laughter. The scene was comical.
I gave up. Rifling through the pages again, looking for the right phrase... "Tu sais où il ya un autre hôtel?"
For the third time I was subjected to the routine... The stare, the cigarette, the exhale... I ventured, "Non?"
"Non!"
I backed off. "Merci!" And with that I withdrew.
Searching the square for another likely-looking building, I spotted someone sitting by a fountain. The sun was close to the horizon, and only the tip of the fountain was bathed in light. The water looked like a shaft of white trying to reach the heaven, then lost the energy and dropped back down into the darkness of the pool. As I got closer, I knew it was a woman. Her hair, dark and long in the twilight, obscured her neck and shoulders. She was sitting on the lip of the pool, one hand resting on her lap, the other was tracing shapes in the water, creating small ripples which radiated out until they were swallowed by the waterfall. She looked up and saw me approaching and smiled.
I was immediately disarmed. Compared to the old crone, this young woman was warm, welcoming, and wasn't surrounded by a halo of smoke.
I got my book out again. The smile had made me forget my lines.
"Bonjour! il ya un hôtel?" I ventured.
She looked at me. "Are you English?"
My mouth shaped to ask how she knew, but it must have been the way I pronounced the words or something.
"Yeah," I replied, "I just got here today."
Her accent sounded American, so I asked.
"Canadian, actually! But you were close." And then the smile again.
"Do you know if there's another hotel? The one back there doesn't seem to have room," I asked.
She nodded, "There's one near where I'm staying. I can walk you there. I was waiting for my friends but they could be a while."
She led the way, skirting the pool, not caring that the breeze was showering her with a cloud of vapour. She turned up a side street, where the swirling wind tugged at her coat and sent her hair whipping around her head. I tightened my scarf and followed, five steps behind.
The hotel she took me to had one room available, a double with en-suite bathroom. I took it immediately, not caring that it was severely overpriced for the end of the skiing season; I was just happy to find a room! The woman, who had introduced herself as Aliyah on the short uphill walk to the hotel, had made her excuses and left to meet up with her friends, leaving me in the hotel restaurant, alone but surrounded by tourists and locals alike. After the day I had been having, I was happy to know where I was, at least for the night. I ordered dinner, a medium-rare T-bone steak with roasted vegetables. While it was being prepared, I had also chosen a 2005 Damoy Chambertin red wine. A little expensive but since it was the first official night of my vacation I was treating myself. It’s not often that you can purchase a vintage Burgundy wine!
The main course arrived, and was delicious. The texture and subtle aromas from the wine were a perfect accompaniment to the earthy, slightly bloody taste of the beef and the tangy sauce. I had just finished, and was setting down my knife and fork and contemplating dessert, when the maître d’ came over and whispered “Ze young mademoiselle you came with earlier is in ze foyer. She says it is urgent that she speaks with you.” I frowned. I had only known Aliyah for three hours. What could be so urgent that she needed a stranger like me? I stood up, finished the last drop of wine in the glass, put it on the table and followed the maître d’ to the reception desk.
Aliyah took me to the side. “I’m sorry, it’s not really urgent, but I didn’t know how else to get your attention. I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. I’m only here for another day, then we’re all heading to Paris for a few days before going to London for a week.” She looked straight at me. “I know how crazy this must sound, but it feels like we were meant to meet. So here is my friend’s phone number here, and these are the addresses we’ll be staying at in Paris and London.”
She leaned in and kissed me. I was completely stunned by her forwardness, but I can’t deny that I hadn’t wanted to do the same when she left to meet her friends earlier. Her lips broke away from mine, and the confidence seemed to fade. She looked into my eyes again, then turned her gaze to the side and down. “Please, think about it,” she said, “it would be such a shame to not find out where this could go.” She smiled, and was gone. The revolving door, the card in the palm of my hand, and the sweet lingering taste on my lips were like the ghost of a potential future. Dazed, I went back to my table in the restaurant. I forgot about dessert, and finished the bottle of expensive wine with her offer still planted in the front of my mind.
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