The Museum of Literary Souls

CHAPTER FIVE

In the days that followed, Mr. Berger subsisted largely on newspapers and magazines of an improving nature. He had almost convinced himself that what he had seen on the tracks employed by the locomotives of the London and South Western Railway was a psychological anomaly, some form of delayed reaction to the grief he had experienced at his mother’s death. He noticed that he was the object of peculiar looks, both poorly concealed and unashamedly open, as he went about his business in the town, but that was to be expected. He did hope that the town’s memory of the unproductive police search might fade eventually. He had no desire to be elevated to the role of local eccentric.

But as time wore on, something odd happened. It is usually in the manner of experiences such as Mr. Berger’s that, as distance grows from the event in question, so too the memory of it becomes foggier. Mr. Berger should, if the ordinary rules of behavior were being obeyed, have become ever more certain of the psychologically troubling nature of his encounter with the young woman reminiscent of Anna Karenina. But Mr. Berger found himself believing with greater and greater conviction that the opposite was true. He had seen the woman, and she was real, admittedly allowing for a certain latitude in one’s definition of reality.

He began reading again, tentatively at first, but soon with his previous immersion. He also returned to walking the path that wound down to the railway line and sitting on his stile to watch the trains go by. Each evening, with the approach of the train from Exeter to Plymouth, he would set aside his book and watch the rougher trail to the south. It was darker now, and the trail was harder to see, but Mr. Berger’s eyes were still keen, and through habit he grew practiced at picking out the difference in the density of the bushes.

But the trail remained undisturbed until February came, and the woman returned.