“Does what make sense? I’m sorry.”
“Crossing here, instead of the smaller station near Stülingen. We’d stand out more among the locals.”
Jane speaks up. “Henry and I went for a walk earlier. There’s a terrible amount of foreigners crowding up here at the moment. Because of the emergency, I guess.”
“The emergency?”
“Austria’s declared war, Violet,” says Lionel. His fingers drum against the wooden tabletop. “I expect Russia’s mobilizing already.”
“Good God. What does that mean?”
“It means we’ve got to move like lightning. We’ve already wasted enough time.” Lionel rises from the table, without waiting for Violet’s agreement. Not that it matters to her where they cross the border; not that she can possibly have an opinion on that point.
Outside, the bright clear air makes Violet blink. The streets are busy, full of hurry and a simmering sense of panic, quite out of place in the idyllic Alpine setting. A train whistle sounds shrilly, making her jump.
Lionel’s hand touches hers. “Nothing to worry about.”
Jane’s arm loops through her other elbow. “What a grand coincidence, isn’t it, Sylvie? Our meeting up here in Germany like this. What a story we’ll have for them, back home.”
“Yes, of course.”
Jane keeps up her chatter all the way through the thickening crowds. They reach the border queue on the outskirts of town. It snakes down the road and around the corner of a squat red-tiled guardhouse. Henry sets down his two valises and dashes out to buy a newspaper from a busy vendor.
“They’re disembarking everyone from the train and sending them through the crossing,” he says, when he returns. “That’s why the queue is so long.”
“I see,” says Lionel.
“What a nuisance to have our holiday spoiled,” says Jane. “And these Europeans claim to be so civilized. Is Italy going to be a part of all this? Maybe we can run down to Monte and stay there.”
“Monte Carlo is in Monaco, not Italy,” says Violet.
“Oh, that’s right. But don’t they speak Italian?”
“French.”
Jane tosses her white chiffon scarf over her shoulder. “Well, well! Imagine that. I always thought it was Italian. I never can keep these lingos straight. I wonder if anyone knows anything.” She taps the shoulder of the man before her. He turns, starts at the sight of her, and whips off his hat. She smiles with understanding. “Excuse me, do you speak English?”
To his obvious regret, he does not.
The queue edges forward. Henry finishes the newspaper and hands it to Lionel. “Not much new, sir,” he says.
Violet peers between the restless bodies around her and spies the border guards. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. They’re strapping fellows, of course; she would expect nothing less. They wear uniforms of dull field gray, stern and official as they examine papers in the dusty road. The one nearest has a pink and bulbous nose. His jowls dangle doubtfully over the papers in his large paw.
“Nothing to worry about,” says Lionel in her ear, and she swallows her anxiety into her belly.
“The heat is terrible, isn’t it?” Jane fans herself. “I do wish they would hurry along.”
Lionel’s hand finds the small of Violet’s back. “How do you feel, darling? Are you all right in this heat?”
“Yes.” She wants to turn into him, to cling to him and hold him here, to take him away from this ominous long queue and the guard with the bulbous nose. She wants to find their bicycles and pedal backward, back to the barn of last night, the riverbed of yesterday, the Hotel Adlon of two days ago with its indigo twilight and crisp linen sheets. If I’ve only got one day of you left, I’ll take it, she said yesterday, but yesterday she didn’t know what that meant. She didn’t know that tomorrow would actually arrive. She had thought, somehow, that the clock would stop for her, and she would not actually be standing here before the border to Switzerland listening to the final minutes rattle past.
An automobile rushes by, raising clouds of bitter dust. A pair of uniformed men leap out and approach the guard with the bulbous nose. He looks up and scans the crowd before him. His mouth is working. What are they saying to each other? Violet gathers the alert tension in Lionel’s hand at her back, in his body inches away, watching the exchange as intently as she does.
The guard bursts into unexpected laughter. The other men laugh, too, and head into the guardhouse.
“Well! I thought there was a war on,” says Jane.