The Somber Side of a Scientific Mind. Christian Tyoder
morning. Be sure to make a connection in Basel. It might be with some delay due to the snowstorm.” Hans thanked the man and then directed his regard toward the opened end of the train station.
Paris was plunged into a dreary day of late December, but the fall of snowflakes had ceased. Now that he was stuck for the rest of the night in an unknown ward of Paris, Hans had to figure out what he would have to do to kill time until the next morning. He remembered having seen a few minutes earlier the sign “Café de la Gare” about half block away from the metro entrance. Hans decided to go there, get a cup of cappuccino, read the remaining business section in the Le Monde newspaper he picked up earlier, and then return to the SNCF building. He stopped under the café’s canopy and wiped the foggy glass-paneled door with his winter coat’s sleeve. There was light inside.
After pulling up the door’s rusty lashing handle, Hans shook off a few snowflakes from his coat, opened the door, and entered the store. Hans was facing a short-statured middle-age man standing behind the counter who looked at him. “Please come in. We are still open.”
Those words in English were spoken almost without the typical French accent. Hans thought it was very likely the bartender had a good number of foreign customers. A second man, in the midsixties, bearded, with gray skin, sunken dark eyes, and sunken bony cheeks, sitting at the counter, slowly turned his head toward Hans. “Hello there. Don’t bring us any more snow.”
Hans approached the counter, sat down two seats away from the man, took his coat off, and then ordered his cappuccino and a cognac. The man continued, “What are you doing here at this time of the day and in this city ward?”
The man’s English had a faint Arabic accent to Hans’s ears. As his hand reached the tiny cup of condensed coffee, Hans gazed at the man. “My plane had to be diverted to Orly. I presumed this unusually heavy snowstorm wouldn’t end for another day or two, so I have decided to get to my destination quicker by train.”
“Where is your final destination?”
“Liechtenstein.”
“Several years ago, my two older boys and I took a vacation trip to Austria. We stopped in Liechtenstein. We stayed at a B&B in Moëliholz bei Vaduz for a few days before heading for Salzburg. I vaguely remember those quaint little towns in that minuscule country.”
“And you? Since you ask me what brings me here, can I ask you the same question?”
“You would be surprised when I tell you that I came to Paris by car. I got lost several times while driving through snowy suburbs. So, I decided to wait until the storm is over, then to hang around in this gem city for a few days before resuming my long and tedious journey.”
“Where will be your final destination?”
“Let me offer you another cognac, and then I will talk about it, okay?” The man extended his right arm to Hans while ordering two cognacs. With his gnarled hand, he gave Hans a tight shake. “My name is Abdulai Rasulov. They call me ‘Abd’ for short. And yours?”
“Hans Reinberg. The Americans call me Hansi.”
The new acquaintances continued their conversation for a while longer. In the meantime, the café owner Louis was cleaning up the place, ready to be closed for the day. “Do you want any more drinks?” Abd handed the owner a ten-frank bill after looking at Hans, who shook his head, saying, “No, thank you. Please keep the change.”
“Thank you. I am about to close the shop earlier today. But from what I overheard, you seem to have no place to go for the night. Have you noted that the heavy snowfall has resumed? If you don’t mind, I will go upstairs and leave you two down here. You are welcome to stay as long as you like. I’ll see you tomorrow if you will still be here by then. But one thing I want to be sure of…no more customers for the day. If you decide to leave, just pull the door tight and make sure it is locked. You may move to the parlor and make yourselves comfortable.” He turned the outside front lights off from the under-the-bar-counter switch and walked toward the back of the room. “Good night, gentlemen.”
“Thank you for letting us stay here for the night. See you tomorrow,” gratefully replied Hans.
Abd reached over to the seat where he was sitting, grabbed his old-looking black beret with his left hand, stood up from the creaking barstool, and trudged over the worn, creased green carpet, bending slightly forward, in the direction of the parlor. “Hans, would you be willing to keep my company until the snowstorm shows some letup? We might well finish the almost empty bottle of cognac Louis purposely left on the counter for us.”
Glancing at Abd’s stiff gait then directing his regard to the streets covered with deep snow, Hans audibly sighed. “Precisely, we both are café house-bound for the moment until at least tomorrow. We are better off staying put for now.”
“It seems that we are reading each other’s mind,” said Abd.
Each man plunged into brown upholstered large chairs, separated by a round glass-topped table on which stood a tall ceramic vase with silk flowers. Hans looked tired and somewhat depressed even though he had taken a few catnaps here and there since he boarded the plane in Boston. Abd, on the other hand, still quite awake, remained fairly talkative. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out his smoking pipe, filled its bowl with sweet, aromatic tobacco shreds, packed them down with his index finger, and then looked at Hans. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“By all means, please go ahead. I don’t smoke, but I can stand the tobacco smoke a short time until I start to cough.”
“Thank you. It’s a bad habit, but I need to smoke my pipe every night before I doze off.”
Hans was in a half-sleep state. He had no desire to carry on further the conversation; he wanted to be polite to a stranger being about the same age as his father. “You had not finished telling me from where you drove to Paris.”
“I left my home in Tarbes, Midi-Pyrenees region, a week ago. I drove to Toulouse, my favorite university town, then from there to Pays de la Loire, where I stayed overnight with my friends’ family in Nantes. From there I continued my route to Paris through Le Mans, Chartres, and Versailles. I stopped at Chartres to spend a few hours at the cathedral. I had planned to spend a few days leisurely sightseeing Paris, perhaps for the last time. I will be heading for my first destination, which is Vienna, then eventually my second and final stop in Bamyan, Afghanistan, where I was born.”
Hans was somewhat surprised, trying to reconcile the two notions, i.e., a man’s Arabic background and his Christian faith. He found this quite interesting. He promised himself to learn more about this unusual combination. Furthermore, he noted that Abd had not mentioned anything about his wife, even though there was a wedding ring on his left fourth finger, but Hans wanted to remain politely discreet. He refrained from being regarded as a nosy individual; therefore, he listened to Abd with a great deal of interest but without asking questions. “Why two destinations?”
After a dry cough, then what appeared to be a gasp for air or a shortness of breath, Abd proceeded to say, “I don’t know whether I will make it to Afghanistan, but hopefully to Vienna, where one of my brothers lives in exile.”
Hans realized that Abd was definitely not well. He quickly developed a deep sympathy for the old man. Annoyed by the flickering floor lamp, Abd got up from his comfortable stretching position on the chair. He ran his fingers along the electric cord from the lamp socket all the way to the wall. He then firmly pushed the cord’s two prongs into the outlet. The flickering stopped. In the poorly lit parlor, but with the light shining directly over the middle section of Abd’s body, Hans saw bruises with various discolorations from dark red to light green colors on both forearms. For a moment, the thought of being in the company of a drug addict came to his mind, but he acted as if he had not seen these skin marks pending further observation. Abd continued with the story of his last week’s trip by car. His lively description of all what he had seen along the way kept Hans awake. Hans listened attentively to Abd, but he still refrained from asking for details, especially about his new acquaintance’s personal matters even after the latter had spontaneously, and