Are we nearly there?’
she asked Carol, and looked out of the window. ‘Yeah. About half an hour, I
think.’ ‘Why are you getting off at Bela Palanka?’ I asked. ‘What are you going
to do there?’ Melanie smiled. ‘Find a cheap hotel, meet people, take a look at
the town… you know.’ ‘Just for a day or two,’ Carol said. ‘But there’s nothing
there!’ ‘Oh well, you never know,’ Melanie laughed. ‘See you in Sofia, right?
On Saturday night.’ ‘The Hotel Marmara, OK? Eight o’clock,’ Carol said. ‘Don’t
forget now!’ ‘OK. Great,’ I said. ‘See you there.’ The train came into Bela
Palanka and stopped. The two girls got off and stood on the platform. They smiled
at me through the window. ‘Saturday. Eight o’clock,’ Melanie shouted. ‘OK,’ I
called. They couldn’t hear me because of the noise in the station. They smiled
again, picked up their bags and walked away. Nice girls. I’m going to have a
great time in Sofia, I thought.
The train left Yugoslavia and crossed into Bulgaria at two o’clock in
the morning. Then the train stopped at some village – I don’t remember the
name. I ate an apple and looked out of the window.
Suddenly there were a lot of
policeman on the train. Everybody in the carriage sat up and began to talk.
‘What’s happening? I said in Italian to the man next to me. ‘I don’t know,’ he said in bad italian.
‘Perhaps they’re looking for somebody. Look. The police are taking some people
off the train.’ Then two policemen came into our carriage, a tall thin one and
a short fat one. They looked at everybody carefully… and then they looked at me
again.
