I told myself that this was a farewell meal, and ordered a half bottle of white burgundy, salad, and bouillabaisse marseillaise—a big bowl of fish, mussels, large crabs, small toy-like crabs, and prawns in a saffron-tinted broth, with croutons and rémoulade. The waiters were friendly and went about their business with eficiency and politeness and good humor.
Noticing my bag, one said, "Taking a trip?"
"Going to Istanbul. On the train." And I thought: Also Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and onward...
"Nice trip."
"To Budapest tonight, then tomorrow night to Romania. I have a question." I tapped the newspaper. "What is the meaning of licenciement?"
"It means losing your job."
"That's what the manifestation is about?"
"Exactly."
He explained: The prime minister proposed changing the law to make it easier to fire workers who, in France, had jobs for life, since firing them was almost impossible. But the young people had risen up against the change—as did the unions, the communists, and workers generally, because job security was considered sacred. If French jobs were not protected (it was argued), they would be taken by immigrant Poles and Al-banians, leaving the social order in tatters and cultural life under siege by foreigners.
I finished my meal, talked with the waiters, and made a few notes. From these few hours in France I could conclude that French waiters are friendly and informative, French food is delicious, French taxi drivers have a sense of humor, and Paris is rainy. In other words, generalize on the basis of one afternoon's experience. This is what travel writers do: reach conclusions on the basis of slender evidence. But I was only passing through; I saw very little. I was just changing trains en route to Asia.
I continued on my way, walking to the Gare de l'Est, found a steep old staircase that was cut into the slope of the narrow road. A stenciled sign in French on the pavement said, The greatest danger is passivity.
Inside the station, at the far end of this road, a milling crowd with upturned faces searched the departure board for platform assignments. I saw my train listed—to Vienna. This information was confirmed by a voice on the loudspeaker: "Platform nine, for the Orient Express to Mulhouse, Strasbourg, and Vienna"
My train was called the Orient Express? I was surprised to hear that. All I had was a set of inexpensive tickets: Paris-Budapest-Bucharest-Istanbul, necessitating my changing trains in each city, three nights on sleeping cars. There are two ways by train to Istanbul—my rattly roundabout way, on three separate trains, and the luxurious way. It so happened that the luxury train was at an adjacent platform, its sleeping cars lettered Compagnie Internationale des Wagon-Lits, a grand sendoff, with an old-fashioned limo parked on the platform lettered Pullman Orient Express—pour aller au bout de vos rêves (to take you to the limit of your dreams).
This waiting train, which was not my train, was the sumptuous, blue and gold Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, which had run from Paris to Istanbul from 1883 until 1977. It was a ghost of its former self (one sleeping car, no dining car, grouchy conductor) when I took it in 1973, and it was canceled altogether four years later. Its rusted and faded carriages were offered at auction in Monte Carlo, and all of them, all its rolling stock, bought by an American businessman. He plowed $16 million into restoring the coaches and bringing back the luster. He bought a version of the name, too, and restarted this luxury train in 1982. It has been a success with the nostalgic rich.
It was not my train because, one, it was too expensive: it would have cost me around $9,000, one way, from Paris to Istanbul. Reason two: luxury is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing. Luxury spoils and infantilizes you and prevents you from knowing the world. That is its purpose, the reason why luxury cruises and great hotels are full of fatheads who, when they express an opinion, seem as though they are from another planet. It was also my experience that one of the worst aspects of traveling with wealthy people, apart from the fact that the rich never listen, is that they constantly groused about the high cost of living—indeed, the rich usually complained of being poor.
I was on the other Orient Express, traveling through eastern Europe to Turkey. The total was about $400 for the three days and three nights, not luxurious (from the looks of the train at the Gare de l'Est) but pleasant and efficient.
"You will take this seat," the conductor said, indicating a place in a six-seat compartment. "You will change at Strasbourg for the sleeping car."
Only one other passenger so far, an elderly woman. I sat down and drowsed until I was woken by a few toots on the train whistle, and off we went, this other Orient Express, pulling out of the Gare de l'Est without ceremony. After a mile or so of the glorious city, we were rushing through a suburb and then along the banks of the River Marne, heading into the hinterland of eastern France in the lowering dusk.
Traveling into the darkness of a late-winter evening, knowing that I would be waking up in Vienna only to change trains, I felt that my trip had actually begun, that everything that had happened until now was merely a prelude. What intensified this feeling was the sight of the sodden, deep green meadows, the shadowy river, the bare trees, a chilly feeling of foreignness, and the sense that I had no clear idea where I was but only the knowledge that late tonight we would be passing through Strasbourg on the German border and tomorrow morning we'd be in Austria, and around noon in Budapest, where I'd catch another train. The rhythm of these clanging rails and the routine of changing trains would lead me into central Asia, since it was just a sequence of railway journeys from here to Tashkent in Uzbekistan.
A lovely feeling warmed me, the true laziness of the long-distance traveler. There was no other place I wished to be than right here in the corner seat, slightly tipsy from the wine and full of bouillabaisse, the rain lashing the window.
I did not know it then, of course, but I would be traveling through rain and wind all the way through Turkey, on the Black Sea coast, through Georgia, and as far as Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea, and would not be warm—would be wearing a woolly sweater and a thick jacket—until I was in the middle of Turkmenistan, among praying Turkmen, mortifying themselves and performing the dusty ritual of waterless ablutions, called tayammum, also on a train, but a dirty and loudly clattering one, in the Karakum Desert, where it never rained.
The little old lady caught my eye, and perhaps noticing that the book I had in my lap was in English, said, "It's snowing in Vienna."
With the pleasant thought that I would be in Istanbul in a few days, I said, "That's all right with me. Where are we now?"
"Château-Thierry. Épernay."
French place names always seemed to call up names of battlefields or names on wine labels. The next station was Châlons en Champagne, a bright platform in the drizzle, and the tidy houses in the town looking like a suburb in Connecticut seen through the prism of the driving rain. Then, in the darkness, Nancy, the rain glittering as it spattered from the eaves of the platform, and a few miles farther down the line, clusters of houses so low and mute they were like the grave markers of people buried here.
Somewhere a woman and two men had joined the old woman and me in the compartment. These three people talked continuously and incomprehensibly, one man doing most of the yakking and the others chipping in.
"What language are they speaking?" the old woman asked me.
"Hungarian, I think."
She said she had no idea, and asked why I was so sure.