The Train by Georges Simenon

been feeding the hens without knowing that it was the last time.
    I was touched by the memory of my hens, and themental picture of Nestor, his comb all crimson, struggling fiercely when old Monsieur Reverse tried to grab him.
    I imagined the scene between the two low, whitewashed walls, the beating of the wings, the white feathers flying, the vicious pecks, and perhaps Monsieur Matray, if he had been prevented from leaving, climbing onto his crate to look over the wall and give advice as he usually did.
    That didn’t prevent me from thinking at the same time about this woman who had just shown sympathy for me when I had done nothing but give her an empty bottle picked up from the track.
    While she was doing her hair with her fingers moistened with saliva, I tried to decide to what category she belonged. I couldn’t make up my mind. I told myself that it didn’t really matter and eventually the idea occurred to me of handing her the comb I had in my pocket, while my neighbor whom I was disturbing gave me a meaningful look.
    He was mistaken. I wasn’t doing it for that.
    We were moving fairly slowly and out in the open country when we began to hear a steady buzz which we didn’t manage to place immediately, and which was just a vibration of the air to begin with.
    “There they are!” exclaimed the man with the pipe, his legs still dangling in the air.
    For somebody who never felt giddy, he had the best place in the car.
    I discovered later on that he was a constructional ironworker.
    Bending down, I saw them too, for I wasn’t far from the door. The man was counting:
    “Nine … ten … eleven … twelve … there are twelve of them … probably what they call a squadron. If it was theright time of the year and they weren’t making any noise, I’d swear they were storks.…”
    I counted eleven of them, high up in the sky. Because of a trick of the light, they appeared white and luminous, and they were flying in a V-shaped formation.
    “What’s that fellow up to?”
    Pressed against one another, we were looking up at the sky when I felt the woman’s hand on my shoulder where she might easily have put it inadvertently.
    The last plane in one leg of the V had just broken away from the others and seemed to be diving toward the ground, so that our first impression was that it was falling. It grew larger at incredible speed, spiraling down, while the others, instead of continuing on their way toward the horizon, started forming a huge circle.
    The rest happened so quickly that we didn’t have time to be really frightened. The plane which was doing the nose dive had disappeared from our sight, but we could hear its menacing roar.
    It flew over the train, along its whole length, from back to front, so low that we instinctively ducked.
    Then it disappeared only to repeat its maneuver, with the difference that this time we heard the rattle of the machine gun above us, and other sounds, like that of wood splintering.
    There were shouts, inside our car and elsewhere. The train went a little farther, then, like a wounded animal, stopped after a few jolts.
    For a while there was complete silence, the silence of fear, which I was facing for the first time, and I was probably not breathing any more than my companions.
    All the same, I went on looking at the scene in the sky,the plane soaring upwards again, its two swastikas clearly visible, the head of the pilot giving us a final glance, and the others, up there, circling around until he took up his position again.
    “Swine!”
    I don’t know from whose breast the word exploded. It relieved us all and roused us from our immobility.
    A little girl was crying. A woman pushed forward, repeating as if she didn’t know what she was saying:
    “Let me pass … Let me pass.”
    “Are you hurt?”
    “My husband …”
    “Where is he?”
    Everybody looked instinctively for a body stretched out on the floor.
    “In the next car.… The one that’s been hit … I