We ate breakfast early, sharing a plate of salted cucumber and cheese and an egg that Andras boiled while I packed my bag. He asked me to read his favorite Graham Greene novel, and I promised, and he asked me to return, and I promised to try.
But you may be in Israel by then, Andras.
Then you will go there.
He carried my bag to the trolley stop and kissed me twice before I boarded.
All day, I traveled west: through rainstorms in Austria; through Germany, where the sky was filled with clouds towering and shifting and not quite real. Into France’s pastureland. The trains all running late, close connections in the huge open halls of railway platforms. It was dark again by the time I walked up out of the Gare de l’Est and into the heat.