To the Ends of the Earth

At nine thirty-five we stopped at the Italian station of Domodossola, where a man poured cups of coffee from a jug and sold food from a heavily laden pushcart. He had fruit, loaves of bread and rolls, various kinds of salami, and lunch bags that, he said, contained, “tante belle cose.” He also had a stock of wine. An Englishman, introducing himself as Molesworth, bought a Bardolino and (“just in case”) three bottles of Chianti; I bought an Orvieto and a Chianti; and Duffill had his hand on a bottle of claret.

Molesworth said, “I’ll take these back to my compartment. Get me a lunch bag, will you?”

I bought two lunch bags and some apples.

Duffill said, “English money, I only have English money.”

The Italian snatched a pound from the old man and gave him change in lire.

Molesworth came back and said, “Those apples want washing. There’s cholera here.” He looked again at the pushcart and said, “I think two lunch bags, just to be safe.”

While Molesworth bought more food and another bottle of Bardolino, Duffill said, “I took this train in 1929.”

“It was worth taking then,” said Molesworth. “Yes, she used to be quite a train.”

“How long are we staying here?” I asked.

No one knew. Molesworth called out to the train guard, “I say, George, how long are we stopping for?”

The guard shrugged, and as he did so the train began to back up.

“Do you think we should board?” I asked.

“It’s going backward,” said Molesworth. “I expect they’re shunting.”

The train guard said, “Andiamo.”

“The Italians love wearing uniforms,” said Molesworth. “Look at him, will you? And the uniforms are always so wretched. They really are like overgrown schoolboys. Are you talking to us, George?”

“I think he wants us to board,” I said. The train stopped going backward. I hopped aboard and looked down. Moles worth and Duffill were at the bottom of the stairs.

“You’ve got parcels,” said Duffill. “You go first.”

“I’m quite all right,” said Molesworth. “Up you go.”

“But you’ve got parcels,” said Duffill. He produced a pipe from his coat and began sucking on the stem. “Carry on.” He moved back and gave Molesworth room.

Molesworth said, “Are you sure?”

Duffill said, “I didn’t go all the way, then, in 1929. I didn’t do that until after the second war.” He put his pipe in his mouth and smiled.

Molesworth stepped aboard and climbed up—slowly, because he was carrying a bottle of wine and his second lunch bag. Duffill grasped the rails beside the door and as he did so the train began to move and he let go. He dropped his arms. Two train guards rushed behind him and held his arms and hustled him along the platform to the moving stairs of Car 99. Duffill, feeling the Italians’ hands, resisted the embrace, went feeble, and stepped back; he made a half-turn to smile wanly at the fugitive door. He looked a hundred years old. The train was moving swiftly past his face.

I never saw Mr. Duffill again. When we were buying more food on the platform at Milan, Molesworth said, “We’d better get aboard. I don’t want to be duffilled.” I left his suitcase and his paper bags at Venice with a note, and I wondered whether he caught up with them and continued to Istanbul.

One of the few things Mr. Duffill had told me was that he lived in Barrow-on-Humber, in Lincolnshire.

It was a tiny place—a church, a narrow High Street, a manor house, and a few shops. It had an air of rural monotony that was like the drone of a bee as it bumbled slowly from flower to flower. No one ever came here; people just went away from it and never returned.

I walked down the street and saw a man.

“Excuse me, do you know a Mr. Duffill?”

He nodded. “The corner shop.”

The corner shop had a small sign that said DUFFILL’S HARDWARE. But it was locked. A square of cardboard in the window was lettered GONE ON HOLIDAY. I said out loud, “Goddamn it.”

A lady was passing. She saw that I was exasperated. She wondered if I needed directions. I said I was looking for Mr. Duffill.

“He won’t be back for another week,” she said.

“Where has he gone this time?” I asked. “Not Istanbul, I hope.”

She said, “Are you looking for Richard Duffill?”

“Yes,” I said.

Her hand went to her face, and I knew before she spoke that he was dead.

“HIS NAME WAS RICHARD CUTHBERT DUFFILL. HE WAS A most unusual man,” said his sister-in-law, Mrs. Jack Duffill. She lived at Glyndbourne, a bungalow just beyond the churchyard. She did not ask who I was. It seemed only natural to her that someone should be inquiring about the life of this strange man, who had died two years before, at the age of seventy-nine. He had been as old as the century—seventy-three the year he had stepped off the Orient Express at Domodossola. Mrs. Jack said, “Do you know about his adventurous life?”

I said, “I don’t know anything about him.” All I knew was his name and his village.