The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By

On the difficulty of getting rid of old newspapers and the usefulness of a fountain-pen and a wristwatch

Real name Zulma. Gave her 20 francs and she didn’t dare object. Sighed while I got dressed: I’m sure you prefer fatter girls. If you’d said, I’d have brought my friend along.

Dirty feet.

He also noted that he needed to buy a watch, since while he could look at clocks on buildings or in cafés when he was outside, it was awkward not to know the time first thing in the morning.

He was surprised now, for example, to find himself out on the street at eight in the morning, his ears having been deceived by the bustle of an early-rising neighbourhood.

As Zulma walked away in her green coat, too broad-shouldered for her slight figure, Popinga approached a newspaper stall and had something of a shock.

All the papers were finally talking about him, across two or three columns on the front page! They had not printed his photograph, lacking any that differed from the one published already, but they displayed pictures of Jeanne Rozier and of her bedroom.

He had to restrain himself from buying every one of them and hurrying into a café to read them.

It was difficult to remain cool, when there were columns and columns devoted to him, carrying many opinions about him, no doubt of various kinds. Around him, passers-by were coming up to the news stand, buying a paper, just one, before hastening down into the Métro.

He chose three dailies, the most important ones, and went to sit in a bar on Place de la Bastille. Nobody would have suspected the turmoil going on inside him as he drank his café-crème and read and re-read the articles, sometimes with delight, sometimes with disgust, but always at fever pitch.

How was he going to manage in practical terms? He had decided to keep these articles, but on the other hand, he couldn’t walk about with dozens of newspapers in his pockets.

He reflected for a while, then went downstairs to the washroom where, with his penknife, he cut out all the passages concerning him. Then he had to get rid of the mutilated pages, and concluded that the only way was to throw them into the lavatory, which took him about half an hour, since the wodges of paper were hard to destroy. He had to keep pulling the flush, wait every time for the cistern to fill up again, so that when he went back upstairs to the bar, they thought he must be unwell.

A change of tactics was called for, he resolved, with respect to the twenty or so other newspapers which he bought in the course of the day, always in threes, so as not to attract too much attention.

He read the first three in a bistro on the corner of Boulevard Henri-IV and the Seine embankment, then he threw the unwanted pages into the river.

For the next set, he found another café, on the Austerlitz embankment this time, then proceeded along the Seine, in several stops, until he reached Quai de Bercy.

Since there was no comfortable place to sit in that district, he returned for the afternoon to the neighbourhood around Gare de Lyon, where he found the kind of brasserie he liked, and at two o’clock, having taken a seat sheltered by the stove, he set to work, after buying a fountain-pen, as he had left his behind in Groningen.

If he had made this outlay – eighty francs for the watch, thirty-two for the pen – it was because he had a serious task in front of him, and experience had shown him that it was no good trying to write with the pens provided in cafés.

He simply asked for some paper, then he began in small regular handwriting: he knew this would take a long time and he didn’t want to weary his wrist:

This letter was addressed to the editor in chief of the principal Parisian daily, the one that had devoted almost three entire columns to him, and had also sent a correspondent to Holland for two days. If Kees chose this newspaper, it was not simply because of its wide circulation, but because it was the only one to have printed an intelligent headline:

Pamela’s killer taunts the police, and alerts them to a fresh crime that had gone undetected

He had plenty of time. He could take trouble over his sentences. The stove was roaring like the one in Groningen, and the tables were filled by quiet customers waiting to catch their trains.

Dear Sir,

First of all, I would ask you to forgive my poor French, but I have had little opportunity to practise it, these recent years in Holland.

Now imagine that in every newspaper, people who do not know you at all rush into print to tell the world that you are ‘like this’, or ‘like that’, when it is not true, and you are completely different. I am sure you would dislike it, and would wish to make the truth known.

Your correspondent went to Groningen and questioned people there, but either those people could not have known the truth, or they were telling deliberate lies, or in some cases gave him false information inadvertently.

I wish to set the record straight, and will begin at the beginning, since I hope that you will publish this document, in which every word is the unvarnished truth, and which will demonstrate how a man can be the victim of what other people say.

In the first place, your article refers to my family. It does so through the testimony of my wife, who declared to your correspondent:

‘I cannot understand what has happened, and there was no sign of this before. Kees came from an excellent family: he received a very good higher education. When we were married, he was a calm and thoughtful young man, who wanted only to set up home. Since then, and for sixteen years, he has been a good husband, a good father. His health has always been perfect, though I should say that last month, when there was ice on the ground, he slipped and hit his head. And perhaps that is what has precipitated this trouble in his mind, and some kind of amnesia. Certainly he cannot have been aware of what he was doing, and cannot be held responsible for his actions . . .’

Kees ordered another coffee and was on the point of asking for a cigar, when he remembered his decision and, with a sigh, packed a pipe, re-read these few lines and set about refuting them.

Now, my dear sir, this is what I have to say on the subject:

1. I do not come from an excellent family, but you will understand that my wife, whose father was a burgomaster, prefers to say so to journalists. My mother was a midwife and my father was an architect. Only it was my mother who provided the family income. My father, if he went to see clients, spent his time chatting and drinking with them, because he was too jovial and sociable by nature. After that, he would forget to draw up an estimate, or he would overlook some detail in the work needed for the project, so he was always in financial trouble.

He didn’t give up hope. He would sigh:

‘I’ve been too kind!’

But my mother saw it very differently, and not a day went by, as I recall, without a scene at home: they became violent quarrels when my father had had too much to drink, and my mother would scream to my sister and me:

‘Take a look at this man and try never to be like him! He’ll drive me to my grave!’

2. Now you see, my dear sir, that my wife was not telling the truth. Not even about the good education: although I did attend the College of Navigation, I had no money to spend, and could never go out with my friends, so I ended up bitter and resentful.

In short, our family fell upon hard times, though we took care to conceal this from anyone else. For instance, even on days when all we had to eat was bread, my mother would always have a couple of saucepans sitting on the stove, in case anyone called. So that they would believe she was preparing a splendid meal!

I met my wife just after I finished my studies. She claims now, because it sounds better, that we married for love.

That isn’t true. My wife lived in a little village, where her father was burgomaster, and she wanted to live in a big town like Groningen.

I was flattered to be marrying the daughter of a wealthy and respected man, and one, moreover, who had been in boarding school until she was eighteen.

If it had not been for her, I would have gone to sea. But she declared:

‘I’ll never marry a sailor, because they drink and chase women.’

He took the article out of his pocket to read it again, although he knew it almost by heart.

3. According to Mme Popinga again, I was a good husband and father for sixteen years. That is no more true than the rest. If I never cheated on my wife, that was simply because in Groningen it is quite impossible to do so without it being known, and then Mme Popinga would have made my life a misery.

She would not have screamed like my mother. She would have done the same as she did whenever I happened to buy something she didn’t like, or smoked too many cigars. She would say:

‘A fine thing, to be sure!’

Then she would refuse to speak to me for two or three days, drifting round the house looking the most mournful of women. If the children wondered why, she would sigh:

‘It’s your father’s fault. He doesn’t understand me.’

Since I’m a man of equable nature, I preferred to avoid scenes, and managed to do so for sixteen years, on condition I could escape for one evening a week to play chess, and occasionally billiards.

When I lived with my mother, I dreamed of having money like other people, so that I could go out on the town with my friends. I dreamed of having good clothes instead of wearing my father’s hand-me-downs.

When I was living in our home, that is with my wife, for sixteen years I felt envious of people who could just leave the house of an evening without saying where they were going, people you might see arm in arm with a pretty girl, people who took trains and went somewhere else . . .

As for being a good father, no I don’t believe I was. I never detested my children. When they were born, I said they were beautiful, to keep Mama happy, but in fact I thought they looked ugly, and I haven’t changed my mind much since. My daughter is thought intelligent because she never says anything, but I know that’s because she has nothing to say. And she’s pretentious, very proud of showing her little friends that she lives in a fine house.

I overheard a conversation once:

‘What does your papa do?’

‘He’s a director of De Coster and Co.’

Quite false. You see what I mean? As for the boy, he has none of the faults of his age, which makes me think he’ll never amount to much in his life.

If it is because I made up games for them that I’m considered a good father, well, that’s wrong too, because I make up games for my own benefit when I’m bored in the evenings. I’ve always been bored. I built us a villa, not because I wanted to live in a villa, but because in my youth I envied friends who did.

I bought the same heating stove that I’d seen in the home of my wealthiest friend. And then a desk I’d seen elsewhere . . .

But this is straying from the point. In short, I was never someone from a good family, nor well brought up, nor a good husband, nor a good father, and if my wife is claiming that I was, that is simply because she needs to think that she’s been a good wife and a good mother, and all that nonsense.

It was only three o’clock. He had time to think, which he did, peering casually through the warm atmosphere of the café which thickened as the daylight declined.

And I also read in your article that Basinger, my accountant at De Coster’s, had declared:

‘Monsieur Popinga was so attached to the firm, which he considered a little as his own, that the news of the bankruptcy may have given him a terrible shock and disturbed his mind.’

I can assure you, my dear sir, that this kind of thing is painful to read. Imagine that someone told you that for the rest of your life you would have to eat nothing but black bread and sausage. Would you not try to convince yourself that black bread and sausage were excellent foods?

I convinced myself for sixteen years that the firm of Julius de Coster was the most solid and respectable in Holland.

Then one evening, at the Petit Saint-Georges café (you won’t understand its significance, but that is of no matter) I learned that Julius de Coster was a crook, and many other truths of that kind.

Well, perhaps I was wrong to write ‘crook’. In fact, Julius de Coster had always, without telling people, done what I would have liked to do. He had a mistress, the same Pamela who . . .

Now we’re getting there. Just take note of this, that for the first time in my life, I looked at myself in the mirror and asked myself:

What reason in the world is there to carry on living like this?

Yes, indeed, what reason?

And perhaps you will ask yourself the same question, as will no doubt many of your readers. What reason? None at all. That is what I discovered when I simply thought, coolly and dispassionately, about things one always looks at from the wrong viewpoint.

In fact, there I was, senior signatory at the firm out of habit, husband of my wife out of habit, father of my children out of habit, because somebody or other had decided that’s how things were and that they couldn’t be any different.

But what if I did want to do something different?

You can’t imagine how easy it all gets, once you have taken a decision like that. You have no need to worry about what So-and-so thinks, about what is legitimate or forbidden, respectable or not, right or wrong.

Normally, even if I was just going on a trip to another town, I had to pack my bags, and telephone ahead to book a hotel room.

But I just went calmly to the station and bought a ticket for Amsterdam, a ticket taking me away for good!

Then, since Julius de Coster had mentioned Pamela, and since for two years I had thought her the most desirable woman on earth, I went to pay her a visit.

It was quite simple. She asked me what I wanted. And I told her, straightforwardly just as I’m writing to you, without beating about the bush, and instead of finding that completely natural, she burst out laughing in a silly and insulting way.

Now I ask you, what difference could it make to her, since it was her trade! For me, the moment I decided to have Pamela, I just had to have her. I learned next day that I had tied the towel rather too tightly. I wonder, in fact, whether Pamela did not have a heart condition, since she gave up on life with disconcerting ease.

Well, there again, your reporter was wrong all along the line. What did he write? That I had fled from Groningen, acting like a madman. That my fellow-travellers had noticed that I was agitated. That the steward on the ferry had thought I was not looking normal.

But what nobody seems to understand is that it was ‘before’ all this that I was not in my normal state. ‘Before’, when I was thirsty, I didn’t dare say so, or go into a café. If I happened to be hungry in someone else’s house, and they offered me food, I would murmur politely:

‘No thank you.’

If I was sitting in a train, I thought I should pretend to read or look out of the window and I kept my gloves on, because it seemed more respectable, although they were too tight.

Your reporter also writes:

‘Here, the criminal made a mistake, which would lead to all the others. In his panic, he left his briefcase in the victim’s bedroom.’

No, that is not true. It was not a mistake. I was not panicking. I’d brought the briefcase with me out of habit and I didn’t need it any more. So I might as well leave it there as anywhere. When I learned that Pamela had actually died, I would in any case have written to the police to tell them that I had caused her death.

If you don’t believe me, let me tell you that only yesterday, it was I who wrote to Chief Inspector Lucas by pneumatic express a letter informing him that I had attacked another woman, Jeanne Rozier.

The headline you printed is indeed flattering. You think I wanted to taunt the French police, but that isn’t right either. I don’t want to taunt anyone. Nor am I a maniac, and it wasn’t out of perversity that I attacked Jeanne Rozier.

It’s difficult to explain to you what happened, although it is rather similar to the affair with Pamela. For two days previously, I had had Jeanne Rozier available to me, but I wasn’t tempted. Then when I was alone, I thought of her and I realized that she interested me. I went to her apartment to tell her so. And it was she who then refused me, without any reason.

Why did she do that? And why shouldn’t I have used some force? I did so, but taking precautions, because Mademoiselle Rozier is a charming person and I wouldn’t have wanted any harm to come to her. Any more than to Pamela. Pamela was an accident. It was my first time!

Are you now beginning to see why I am outraged at the articles that have been published about me today? I do not propose to write to all the papers, it would be too much trouble, but I wanted to make this statement public.

So, I am not mad, nor am I a sex maniac. Simply, at the age of forty, I have decided to live as I please, not worrying about conventions, or laws, because I have found out, rather late in the day, that nobody observes them and that, until now, I have been duped.

I have no idea what I will do next, or whether there will be any other incident which the police may take an interest in. It will depend on my desires.

In spite of what you may think, I’m an easy-going man. If tomorrow I were to meet a woman who was worth it, I would marry her and no more would be heard of me.

But if, on the other hand, I am driven into a corner and it pleases me to fight to the death, I think nothing would stop me.

I have spent forty years being bored. For forty years, I looked at life like some street urchin with his nose pressed up against the window of a cake shop, watching other people eating pastries.

Now I know that the pastries go to the people who take the trouble to grab them.

Carry on printing that I’m insane, if you like. By so doing, my dear sir, you will be proving that it is you who are insane – as I was before that evening in the Petit Saint-Georges.

I am not claiming any ‘right of reply’ as a reason for publishing this letter, since that would no doubt raise a smile. And yet anyone who smiled would be very foolish. For who, except a man whose life is at risk, could legitimately claim the right to correct errors which have been made about him?

So I will sign off, hoping to read my words in your columns, by saying that I remain your devoted (wrong word but it’s the custom!)

Kees Popinga

His wrist felt tired, but it was a long time since he had enjoyed himself so much. To the point that he couldn’t bring himself to stop writing. The lamps had been lit. The station clock opposite was showing half past four. And the waiter seemed to think it was quite normal to see a customer whiling away time dealing with his correspondence.

Your columnist no doubt thinks he is being extremely witty, and must be more accustomed to writing advertising slogans than serious newspaper articles.

In the first place, I cannot see what being Dutch has to do with this story, since I have read far more horrific stories in the newspapers where the perpetrators were a hundred per cent French nationals.

Secondly, it is all too easy to describe as maniacs people whom one cannot understand.

If this is the way you inform your readers, I am afraid I cannot congratulate you on your reporting.

Kees Popinga

For a moment he thought of returning to Boulevard Saint-Michel where he was sure to find someone to play chess with. But he had decided yesterday not to appear twice in the same place, and he wanted to keep to his resolution. And now a newspaper vendor was going round from table to table with the evening editions, so he bought them and began to read:

The arrest of Kees Popinga, the Amsterdam sex killer, can only be a matter of hours, it is confidently expected. It will indeed be impossible for him to slip through the net which the energetic Chief Inspector Lucas has cast around him.

Our readers must forgive us for not giving more details, but they will understand our scruples, since it would be of assistance to the offender if we were to reveal the measures that have been taken.

We can say only this: that according to Mlle Jeanne Rozier, whose condition is now as satisfactory as can be expected, the Dutchman possesses only enough money to survive for a short while.

We can also say that he is easily recognizable by certain habits which he cannot discard – and that is the extent of what we are permitted to print.

Only one thing is to be feared: that Popinga, knowing he is a wanted man, might proceed to launch another attack. Precautions have been taken.

As Chief Inspector Lucas told us, in his habitually unruffled manner, we are faced with a case which is fortunately rare in the annals of crime, but for which there are – notably in Germany and England – a certain number of precedents.

Maniacs of this kind, usually mentally defective, are lucid within their own deluded state, and may display a cold-blooded demeanour which can deceive, but which leads them to commit fatally imprudent errors.

We can suggest that if it is not hours, it is certainly only a matter of days. Several leads are currently being followed up. This morning at Gare de l’Est, following information received from a lady traveller, a person was arrested who corresponded to the description of Popinga, but following identity checks by the special forces posted at the station, he turned out to be a respectable commercial traveller from the Strasbourg region.

There is one point which is complicating the investigation: Kees Popinga speaks several languages fluently, which allows him to pass for an Englishman or a German as well as a Dutchman.

On the other hand, the testimony of Jeanne Rozier, who had not at first wished to press charges, has enabled the police to compose a valuable detailed description.

The public should therefore feel reassured to hear that Kees Popinga will not get far.

Curiously, this article made him feel optimistic on the whole, and he went down to the washroom, simply to look at himself in the mirror.

He had not lost weight. He felt quite fit. For a moment, he had wondered whether to dye his hair and let his beard grow, then told himself that they would be less likely to be looking for him with his normal appearance than wearing some kind of disguise.

The same was true of his grey suit, which was also as inconspicuous as possible.

And he paid his bill, posted his letters at the station, and made his way towards a gentlemen’s outfitters which he had noticed that morning near Bastille.

As he was saying this to a salesman on the first floor of this large store, he became aware of another danger, a new habit he had developed. He had got into the way of looking at people ironically. It was as if he were asking them:

‘And what do you think, eh? Haven’t you read the papers? Don’t you realize you’re serving the famous Popinga, the Dutch Madman?’

He tried on several coats, which were almost all too small or too tight. He finally found one that more or less fitted, though it was of very poor quality.

Because details like this were the dangerous ones. Even walking in a new overcoat while carrying a parcel through the street! Fortunately, it was dark by now, the Seine was not far off, and he was able to get rid of the awkward package.

In spite of the idiotic things they had been writing about him, the journalists were useful in one way, since they gave him some clues about the way Chief Inspector Lucas’s mind was working.

Unless . . . Unless, of course, Lucas had got them to print information with the sole aim of deceiving him!

It was amusing. They had never met, Kees and the chief inspector. They had never set eyes on each other. And they were like two players in a game of chess, each moving their pieces on the board without being able to see the other man’s tactics.

What measures had they reported in the paper? Why did they seem to think he might attack someone else?

For heaven’s sake! They thought he would react to any suggestion! They took him if not for a fool, then for someone whose mind was disturbed. They were driving him towards committing another crime, so that he would give himself away.

That he was wearing grey, well, everyone knew that. That he smoked cigars. That he had no more than three thousand francs on him? And that he had not shaved.

So he was not anxious, not at all! But it was a little unnerving not to know what Chief Inspector Lucas was thinking. What instructions had he given his men? Where would they be looking? And how?

Perhaps Lucas had an idea that Popinga would want to witness the arrest of the gang of car thieves, and would be hanging about within sight of the garage at Juvisy?

Did he think Popinga would try to escape, and was therefore having the railway stations watched?

In spite of himself, Popinga began to turn round every now and then, and especially to stop in front of shop windows, to check that he was not being followed. Standing in front of a map by the Métro station, he wondered which neighbourhood he would choose for the night. Yes, which one, that was the question.

In at least one district of Paris, and possibly in two or three, the police would be checking up on cheap hotels and asking for the papers of all the guests.

But which district would Lucas choose? And why not avoid going to bed at all, since he was not sleepy? After all, he had noticed, the previous day on one of the major boulevards, a cinema which had films showing uninterruptedly until six in the morning.

But come what may, he must take care about one thing: he must not look into people’s faces, women’s especially, with an ironic expression, and that air of saying:

Because he was somehow searching for occasions to do so. As was proved by his having gone once more, without meaning to, into a restaurant where there were only waitresses serving.

‘Take care about the way you look at people,’ he noted in his book, stopping under a gas lamp.

One sentence was troubling him from the last article he had read. The one insisting that he would give himself away somehow.

How could they have guessed that there was a sort of dizziness inside him, that he found it hard to resign himself to being a face in the crowd, that he was dying to blurt out, especially if he met someone on a dark and lonely street:

But now that he was forewarned, there was no risk. He would make sure to look at people naturally, as if he was just a nobody, not the man all the papers were talking about.

And come to think of it, what was Julius de Coster making of all this? For he would surely have heard of it. There were articles in the English papers as well as the French ones.

Well, that gentleman, for one, would have to admit that he had been entirely mistaken about his employee. He must feel humiliated about the tone he had used when taking him into his confidence in the Petit Saint-Georges, talking to him as if he were an imbecile incapable of understanding anything.

And now the employee had gone one better than his boss, Popinga was more notorious than Julius. Who could deny it? Julius, whether in London, Hamburg or Berlin, was trying to create a business by the book, going through all the correct channels. While he, Popinga, was telling the world, crudely, exactly what he thought of it!

One of these days, just to see how De Coster would react, he would put an announcement in the Morning Post, as they had agreed. But how would he receive the reply?

Popinga was still walking. This had become half his life, wandering through the streets, across the light cast by shop windows, mingling with the crowd which jostled him without knowing who he was. And his hands, in the pockets of his overcoat, automatically caressed the toothbrush, shaving brush and razor.

He found the solution. He was always sure of finding solutions, just as he did at chess. He simply had to stay two nights in the same hotel, and write himself two letters in a made-up name. That would provide him with two envelopes addressed to himself, which would be enough to be able to withdraw mail from a poste restante.

And why not start tonight? He went once more into a brasserie. He didn’t like traditional Paris cafés, the ones with small round-topped tables where customers had to sit too close to each other. He was used to bars in Holland, where there was less risk of being shoulder to shoulder with one’s neighbours.

He opened it at random, and chanced on Rue Brey, a street he did not know, where he chose a hotel, the Beauséjour.

After which he wrote a letter to himself, or rather put a blank sheet inside an envelope and addressed it to:

Why not kill two birds with one stone and do both envelopes now? He disguised his handwriting. Now he had a second envelope.

Why not take advantage of it to the utmost, and ask for money from De Coster, who must be on tenterhooks, in case Kees might reveal his story?

Kees to Julius. Send five thousand, Smitson, poste restante, Bureau 42, Paris.

These small tasks kept him busy until eleven o’clock, since he was in no hurry, taking his time and enjoying writing in his careful readable hand.

Then he went down to the telephone cabin, called the Hôtel Beauséjour, and began speaking at first in English, then switching to French with a strong English accent.

‘Hello. This is Mr Smitson . . . I’ll be arriving to take a room tomorrow morning. I’m expecting some mail, so can you please keep it for me?’

Had he outwitted Chief Inspector Lucas? Would he have been able to imagine Kees Popinga to be such a cool customer?

In spite of which, he could not help feeling a pang, simply because the voice at the other end was that of a woman. He must avoid that at all costs. The evening paper had made it very clear: they were expecting him to make another attack on a woman, which would provide the police with more information.

But I won’t attack anyone! he decided. And to prove it, I’m going calmly to the cinema. Tomorrow at six in the morning, I shall turn up at the Hôtel Beauséjour, as if I’ve just got off the night train.

Proving that he had thought of everything, in another café he asked for the railway timetable, and found that there was a train due in from Strasbourg at 5.32.

He could go to the cinema, and was all the more relieved to find that there were no usherettes, only some lanky youths in uniform showing patrons to their seats.

So what might Lucas do now? Or Louis, who would surely be back from Marseille? Or Goin? Or Rose, whom he detested without knowing why?

8.