Free Legion of the Damned by Sven Hassel Page B

two hours I went out and asked if the train from Munich was delayed. I was told that it had arrived an hour before mine. The man was polite and friendly, but quite uninterested in my important problem, of which I told him nothing, but which was certainly there for all to read on my face.
    Feeling empty with irresolution, I walked about haphazard. What the hell had I come to Vienna for? I returned to my seat in the restaurant and sat there staring, trying to think, loving, weeping inwardly, hating, building up theories, making ingenious plans for finding her, inventing plausible improbabilities that might have happened, while round about me voices buzzed, crockery clattered, two cash registers whirred and their tills opened and shut. Everybody else was busy either serving or eating or smoking, talking, laughing--but living. I was the only one no one knew, and therefore I could not live, but must just sit, growing more and more haggard, while my inner life assumed more and more fantastic forms. I do not believe there is a more abnormal being than the person who is sitting waiting for his beloved. It was now three hours past the time; she was not coming. Mine was a very painful madness, one that perhaps would never be cured if she did not come.
    But she came, as soft and graceful and rounded as a little flame. My fingers crushed the cigarette they held and the glowing end fell into my palm, but my brain did not hear the palm's call that it had burned itself, my eyes drowned the sound of it as they looked and looked--looked at the gray suit, the confident shoes, the fleeting smile, the little brown suitcase with the silver letters US and the hand that held it, just made to fit at the back of a man's neck.
    "I came on the wrong train. I am so sorry."
    She protested, but nonetheless I kissed her hand and shoved the table forward so that she could sit beside me.
    "Darling."
    "Now, my lad, first you must order your darling some food-- no, no, be good now, order something nice and a bottle of wine. Then I'll tell you what we are going to do."
    I ordered paprika chicken with rice and pointed to some number on the wine list. I was still shaken and non compos, but I retained sufficient presence of mind to confine my utterances for the next quarter of an hour to the one word "darling." It was an honest admission of not being quite right in the head, and thus an admission that could only please her and be accepted.
    We were going to Hochfilzen. In an hour.
    "I like the place so much, and when you telegraphed that you had got leave and wanted to come, that you had five days, I thought that that was where we would go. You're mad about mountains yourself, aren't you?"
    "Darling."
    "You're quite impossible. You must drink lots of wine. We must get you normal again. I don't want to travel with an imbecile. Not that I'm quite right in the head myself. What have I let myself in for?"
    I emptied my glass and then refilled hers and mine. The food on my plate remained untouched, but she shoveled in chicken and paprika sauce and rice and bread, and chattered away and displayed great, comforting activity. I was slightly disappointed that she did not tell me I ought to eat. She always used to say that. She always used to say that I was too thin, that I ought to eat well. She did not say it now. Something about her had changed, and I was not sure that she was not just as nervous as I, that we were not sitting there groping round the outside of each other, away from each other.
    "You've let yourself in for a honeymoon," I replied thoughtfully. "Our honeymoon."
    She laughed; then having sat for a while looking ahead of her with wrinkled brow she suddenly grasped my hand and pressed it to her cheek. We sat thus looking out across the restaurant.
    "I don't know about that," she said. "I don't know about that. But because you have only five days, and because you will perhaps never... you shall have your wish, you shall. Are you happy?"
    That took me