Our journey from Paris to Normandy began with a whimper. We allotted plenty of time to walk from our digs at the Garden Hotel to the Metro station at Grand St. Lazare (which was the subject of a series of Monet paintings.) At the station we validated our tickets, waited like patient tourists until the information on our train popped up on the overhead board, and climbed onto our train with twenty minutes to spare. I thought it odd that only a handful of passengers were boarding, but wrote it off to our thoughtful preparation. Strangely, the second-class coach remained empty. I opened my newspaper and began to read. An announcement sounded in our compartment, which Craig later translated as “This train…(something-something) is going (somewhere).” Obviously. We were on board, weren’t we? A few minutes later the announcement was repeated, in beautiful French that I wished I understood. A yellow light began to flash dimly in the recesses of my mind, and I noticed Craig was a bit pensive too, going to the window to see if anything was up. A few people walked by, but nothing major. I went back to my paper. Craig fidgeted, then sat down.
A minute later, the train made that familiar bump that signals action. Craig checked his watch and said “This is not good.” We weren’t scheduled for departure for another fifteen minutes. The train gave another bump and lurched from the station. “This is not good at all,” said Craig, “I think we’re the only ones on this train.” We eased away from the station, bound for who-knows-where? We realized that the train must have been taken out of service, and everyone got the message but us. I tried to open the window, to no avail. I stuck my head out of our compartment and looked down the empty passageway. “I’m going forward,” I called and started moving, door by door, compartment by compartment, to the front. I passed through five or six cars, all of them empty. We were riding a ghost train. When I reached the most forward car I found a train phone, with five or six colored lights on the control panel and instructions for usage…in French. I pushed buttons, including the dreaded red button, and called out in my best French voice: “Allo? Allo?,” to no avail.
The train rolled onward, not gaining much speed, just bumping along. We seemed to be off the main tracks, into some kind of train yard. “Not good at all,” I thought. I returned to our lonely little compartment and shared the news. We laughed and wondered and worried how we would get out of this fix and get back to our journey. As we stood gazing out the windows at the graffiti and rusting scenery, we passed through a “train wash,” in which a nozzle sprayed soapy water at us. Then, sure enough, a big rotary brush began to scrub us down.
Once clear of the train wash, we stopped. Stopped. I opened the outside door of the coach and looked up and down the track. Nothing. “Now what?” I pointed to a small, dark looking station which stood across six or seven sets of tracks and suggested we jump ship with our bags and see if we could find anyone there. Before we could seriously consider anything the train bumped again and we were off again, moving futher from civilization. Another kilometer down the track we stopped again, on a siding next to another empty train that looked just like ours. I wondered if it contained the bones of forgotten travelers. Before we decided on a course of action, a railroad worker, wearing a neon yellow safety vest and carrying some sort of contraption that looked like a radio walked up the line from the rear of the train. I opened the door and called out to him. In English. He did a double take and looked us over, puzzled, and perhaps a bit amused. He made a call on his walkie-talkie and motioned for us to follow. He led us to a second worker, a kindly looking man with a jaunty mustache. This man also spoke no English, but gave us a kindly roll of the eyes. He made another call and waited for something to happen. We were soon joined by the engineer. Young, handsome, of North African descent, he climbed down from the locomotive and looked us over, and greeted us. I told him the whole story, which wasn’t very long because he didn’t speak English, showed him my ticket, and waited to see what would happen next. He talked the situation over with his co-worker. The line worker crawled beneath the train, pulled a couple of levers which resulted in the familiar hiss of compressed gas as he unyoked the engine from the passenger cars. The engineer smiled, and motioned for us to follow. As if remembering his manners, he pulled up short, turned to us and carried one of our bags.
We walked alongside the locomotive, and stopped when we got to the ladder. The engineer motioned for us to ascend this object of every boys’ dream. Once aloft we threaded the narrow walkway around the massive diesel to the engineer’s compartment. Our new friend motioned for Craig sit in the fold down jump seat while he took his own place at the controls. He looked tired; perhaps he had worked through the night. I thought of signaling our willingness to walk off this worksite and hail a taxi, but I didn’t know where we were or how to say all that in sign language, so I kept my mouth shut and wondered how this episode was going to end. The engineer looked at his watch, consulted a schedule book, looked again at our tickets, shook his head, and made a call on his cell phone. He was trying to figure out a way to get us back to the station.
Within a few minutes the engineer fired up that big engine and after a waiting for the proper sequence of train track traffic lights (two reds mean “Go?”), he touched the controls and we began to move. He eased the beast from line to line, working with unseen co-workers to cross tracks. He gave no heed to a train that sped past us from the opposite direction, five feet to our right. Within minutes the station came back into sight, and we slid into our berth. “OK,” he said, and motioned for us to disembark. We thanked him profusely, expressed our regrets for causing him trouble and were on our way.
You hear so much about rude Parisians who hate Americans and sneer at those who don’t speak their language. Here we caused any number of headaches to any number of rail workers who had plenty of work to do before we came on the scene, and yet we received only gracious, unfailingly polite indulgence. It was as if their main concern was getting us to our appointed destination. If you had been with us, I’ll bet you would love Paris as we do. It’s enough to cause me to eat “Freedom Fries” again. I may even go all out and someday sample socialized medicine.
