know the exact measurement. As the trains passed sometimes when I was visiting the Memorial Room, and the train after a long night’s journey had moved into morning on the Côte d’Azur and many passengers had already disembarked and others were sitting upright waiting for the end of the journey, I could see into the couchette compartment where the rugs and the pillows were strewn on the narrow beds, and the length of leather strap used to steady the passenger when the train swayed on its fast journey was dangling unused, and the narrow aluminium ladders by which one climbed up to the couchette (if one had the top couchette one’s body was very close to the ceiling of the coach) hung, also unused, on the hooks by the door and window. I could see that the train which began its journey away in the north with the Wagons-Lits and the couchettes made up with clean rugs and pillows and the litterbins empty and the toilets clean, had overnight been used and had come to the end of its use. The sunlight shone through one side window of the carriages and out the other, revealing the dust-beams travelling with the train and lighting up the emptiness of the compartments. The sun was always a morning sun, approaching a midday sun, and its beams were hot against the windows. You could see where some of the passengers, waking into morning, had pulled down the blinds to shield them from the light. In summer the trains would be hot and the windows would warm up quickly and the compartment seats would be burning.
At night the motion and sound of the train entered my bedroom and my heart beat faster, hearing them, and waiting for them to pass with their sleeping passengers who did not know that I was listening to the trains and who had never heard my name and would not know if I met them on the station that I had listened to them travelling when they were fast asleep.
So I spent my days, writing in my new apartment and sometimes going to the Memorial Room where someone had left a typewriter with Elite type (my new typewriter provided by the Fosters was Elite type suitable for manuscripts). To get to the Memorial Room I now had to walk along the promenade past the old town with its pale blue and green and pink shutters, and its mass solid with not a sight of trees or streets between, the only growth visible being the row of cypress trees forming the boundary of the cemetery on the hill. Looking up I could see the rows of tombstones. I said to myself that one day I would walk to the cemetery and inspect the graves and the gravestones.
Each day I did almost the same thing. I woke. I opened the dark green shutters of my bedroom window. I washed and dressed. I went to the restaurant, which was always crowded with workers having petit déjeuner , for the newspaper, Nice-Matin . I walked home and read the newspaper, choosing what to read from the headlines. I read the local news and advertisements of Nice, Monaco, Menton and the small mountain villages and the seaside places between these larger towns. I read the births and the names of the newly born and their parents. I read the deaths and took note of the ages of those who had died. I read the page of foreign news, the page of traffic accidents, robberies, holdups, murders, the weather with the temperature in France and Europe and beyond, the television programmes although I did not have a television, and the radio programmes, taking note of the classical and modern music and what time it was to be played, although I never listened to it. I read the answers to queries about the rights of tenant and landlord and the problems of those with widow’s and old-age pensions. I read the list of blood-donors who had been awarded a medal or congratulations for releasing a certain amount of blood. Then in the classified advertisements I read the offers of employment for Gens de Maison ; villas for sale; offers and demand for furnished accommodation; the legal notices; miscellaneous advertisements;
At night the motion and sound of the train entered my bedroom and my heart beat faster, hearing them, and waiting for them to pass with their sleeping passengers who did not know that I was listening to the trains and who had never heard my name and would not know if I met them on the station that I had listened to them travelling when they were fast asleep.
So I spent my days, writing in my new apartment and sometimes going to the Memorial Room where someone had left a typewriter with Elite type (my new typewriter provided by the Fosters was Elite type suitable for manuscripts). To get to the Memorial Room I now had to walk along the promenade past the old town with its pale blue and green and pink shutters, and its mass solid with not a sight of trees or streets between, the only growth visible being the row of cypress trees forming the boundary of the cemetery on the hill. Looking up I could see the rows of tombstones. I said to myself that one day I would walk to the cemetery and inspect the graves and the gravestones.
Each day I did almost the same thing. I woke. I opened the dark green shutters of my bedroom window. I washed and dressed. I went to the restaurant, which was always crowded with workers having petit déjeuner , for the newspaper, Nice-Matin . I walked home and read the newspaper, choosing what to read from the headlines. I read the local news and advertisements of Nice, Monaco, Menton and the small mountain villages and the seaside places between these larger towns. I read the births and the names of the newly born and their parents. I read the deaths and took note of the ages of those who had died. I read the page of foreign news, the page of traffic accidents, robberies, holdups, murders, the weather with the temperature in France and Europe and beyond, the television programmes although I did not have a television, and the radio programmes, taking note of the classical and modern music and what time it was to be played, although I never listened to it. I read the answers to queries about the rights of tenant and landlord and the problems of those with widow’s and old-age pensions. I read the list of blood-donors who had been awarded a medal or congratulations for releasing a certain amount of blood. Then in the classified advertisements I read the offers of employment for Gens de Maison ; villas for sale; offers and demand for furnished accommodation; the legal notices; miscellaneous advertisements;
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