Grey Moon
Chapter five
Long Day
[Service notice — Deutsche Bahn, in coordination with the Federal Network Agency. Day 154. Posted to stations and the booking application.]
From Friday, the published long-distance timetable is suspended. This is not a strike notice.
Services will operate where crewed. Departure boards remain accurate as to intention; passengers are advised that a service shown as delayed may no longer have a driver, and that the difference cannot always be displayed.
Regional services continue at the discretion of the regions. International connections cannot be guaranteed beyond the border station.
Tickets remain valid on any train that runs. Refunds are suspended; the refund office asks for patience.
We thank the employees who continue to report. We ask passengers not to ask the remaining staff when normal service will resume. They do not know, and they are asked too often.
Notebook. Day 155.
Stefan came yesterday evening, around eight. He asked for the car from the doorway, coat still on. He had it worked out: the trains’ notice had come in the afternoon, the flights were finished weeks ago, so he would drive to London and bring the two of them back, and return the car or the cost of it. He’d already made a list — water, his camping stove, batteries, the tools from the allotment shed.
Then he asked whether Lena was managing, and I told him about the Messe. He was quiet. He said he’d come at a bad time and that the car could wait. It couldn’t, and we both stood there knowing it. He had London at under a thousand kilometres. It is 880. I’d checked it on Day 125 and hadn’t written down why. I said I would drive.
Before he went up he played me a message from Ana, on his phone since Day 145. I asked for it twice and copied it out; it belongs with the record.
This morning he was at the car by half six. The jar is wedged behind the passenger seat, out of the sun. I’m keeping the record in lines from here: times, the odometer, what the tank does and I’m writing in a moving car, and since the Messe I haven’t wanted to write more than that.
[Voice message — Ana, London, to Stefan’s phone. Sent Day 145; copied into the record Day 155.]
“Papa, it’s me, on Granny’s phone, mine is for emergencies. Mama ate the soup but she sleeps in the day again. Granny says it’s still the travel, which I don’t think is right, because we came ages ago. We get eggs because Granny knows the man at the shop. The queue is all slow people now. Not the young ones, but the old ones are. When are you coming? Granny’s phone says eleven percent. Bye. Tell Marko: the soft part, not the skin.”
[Loose sheet folded into the notebook — a route plan in Marko’s hand. Day 155.]
London. Two routes.
A. Strasbourg — Reims — Calais. 880 km.
B. Karlsruhe — Saarbrücken — Luxembourg — Brussels — Calais. 940 km.
B is 60 km longer and goes through Luxembourg. Cheapest fuel in Europe; the whole border is petrol stations, storage built for three countries’ commuters. Best odds of a working pump on any route. Decision: B.
Tank: half. ~340 km.
Stations en route: unknown. Plan as if closed.
Jerrycan: none.
Borders: Schengen — open, on paper.
Crossing to England: tunnel unknown, ferries unknown. Decide at Calais.
Water, bread, stove (S.), cash in three pockets. Beetle: instructions taped to the jar.
Notebook. Day 155 — kept in the car.
07:10 — out. Odometer 84,112. Tank ½. Stefan said „Wir sind nicht aus Zucker“ at the ramp and I gave it back. The rule of the phrase.
08:55 — Karlsruhe. Nineteen trucks parked on the shoulder since Offenburg. Counted.
09:30 — Rasthof: lit, locked. KEIN PERSONAL, handwritten.
10:05 — next services dead, pumps without power. Off the autobahn at the following exit. Reasoning: a chain station needs staff, payment systems, deliveries. A one-man station needs the man.
11:05 — village station short of Zweibrücken. Owner on a chair by the pump. Cash, no limit, tank filled. He asked where to; Stefan told him. He looked at the car and said nothing.
12:30 — A8 again, Saarbrücken bypassed.
13:35 — end of a queue, 2 km before the Moselle. Both lanes. Engines off. The crossing is at Schengen.
They walked up the line to see. At the bridge there was a barrier and two light armoured vehicles with Luxembourg plates, and behind the barrier six or seven soldiers, young. There was no sign. Nothing had been pushed to anyone’s phone. There was just the barrier.
A man in a suit jacket stood at the front asking the nearest soldier for the legal basis, his phone held up to record the answer. The soldier said it was closed. Since when? Since Tuesday. Until when? The soldier didn’t answer that one; by the look of him he had stopped answering it hours ago.
Stefan tried French. Transit only, he said. Family in England, a daughter of eight. The soldier heard him out, which was more than the man with the phone had got, and then said it the same way: closed, monsieur. No exception named, no reason offered. Behind him, across the river, the canopy of a filling station stood over empty pumps with its price board lit.
They walked back to the car. Stefan named the Rhine bridges from his cycling years — Gambsheim, Marckolsheim, Breisach — and said to try the smallest first: if they were guarding Schengen, they would be guarding Strasbourg. The smallest was Breisach. Neither of them said how far south that was.
In the queue behind them, no one else had turned around yet.
Notebook. Day 155, evening.
15:05 — turned where the median opens for service vehicles. Most of the queue stayed.
17:20 — Kehl turnoff. The approach to the Europabrücke backed up out of sight. Stefan had said it would be. Kept south on the B-road, Rhine on the right.
19:20 — Breisach. The small bridge. One gendarmerie van on the French side, engine running, lights off. The gendarme looked at the plate and waved us across without leaving the van.
19:25 — France. From the bridge you can see the Kaiserstuhl. The flat is twenty-five minutes east of here.
19:50 — stopped on a farm track past Neuf-Brisach, before moonrise.
Odometer 84,754. Driven today: 642 km. London this morning: 880. London tonight: 810.