WEEK
45
The Trials of Job: Travel Edition

Gird up now thy loins like a man; For I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.
—Job 38:3

The scene at the train station reminded me of stories of the eve of the Occupation, when panicked Parisians packed rail stations and streets, desperate to escape ahead of the approaching Nazis. On this night, however, those of us who jammed the Gare Saint-Lazare were merely trying to get out of town before the transit workers went on strike.

When I think about that night, coming after a long day of travel from Morocco, I see a scene, in black and white, of women in long skirts, heels, and nylons, carrying chic suitcases, scurrying toward their huge, steam-belching locomotives as the clock ticks down to the strike deadline. I see men in fedoras and pin-striped suits kissing their wives good-bye, not sure when or if they’ll ever see them again. And I see—and this is the only even remotely accurate part—I see an exhausted, sick American, sitting on the platform, slumped against a wall, nibbling on a piece of crust, quietly taking in the scene, waiting for his levain, the rest of his clothes, and his train.

I hadn’t even planned to be at the station until the following morning, but just before leaving Morocco, I’d finally been able to check my e-mail and couldn’t believe what I read: Karen, the friend to whom I’d entrusted my levain, was warning me that the French transit workers had announced a strike beginning Thursday—the day I was to take the train from Paris to Normandy. Karen suggested I try to get a train Wednesday evening instead of spending the night in Paris as planned. She would meet me at the station with my starter and the rest of my clothes.

Sounded like a good plan, if—and this was a big if—the trains were still running, which we wouldn’t know until we met at the station. In keeping with true Gallic tradition, the Thursday strike was in fact rumored to be starting on Wednesday night, as early as 7:00 p.m. As my flight from Morocco wasn’t scheduled to arrive in Paris until 6:30, and the train to Normandy didn’t leave until 9:20, I could very well be stranded, not just in Paris, but at the airport, fighting hundreds of other stranded passengers for a taxi! I could not believe my bad luck. I felt like Humphrey Bogart, lamenting from the soundstage that passed for Morocco, “Of all the days and all the trains . . .”

Even if I were able to catch a train to Normandy late Wednesday, I couldn’t very well come knocking on the abbey’s doors at midnight. So just before leaving Morocco, I had frantically and luckily secured, at an outrageous price, what must have been the last available hotel room in Yvetot, the train stop closest to the abbey. Because of the late hour of my arrival, however, I’d first have to walk from the station to their sister hotel in town, pick up the key, and then find my hotel. Mon dieu! Couldn’t someone from the hotel meet me at the station?

“Non, monsieur,” the Frenchwoman chirped cheerfully.

Well, then, could they arrange for a taxi to meet me?

“Non, monsieur,” she said again in that same incongruously chipper, singsong voice, the tone that said yes while the words said no.* The hotel, Madame insisted, was an easy walk from the train station. And the second hotel was an easy walk from that one. I gave her my credit card number and hoped for the best.

The flight from Tangier to Paris arrived, thank goodness, on time. As I left the baggage claim, I looked at my watch: 6:45. Fifteen minutes before the earlier of the rumored strike times. I raced to the commuter train, relieved to find that it was still running. Eventually I made my way to the Gare Saint-Lazare, where I sat on the cold floor, facing thirty train tracks, the station fading from frenetic to eerily quiet as the last trains pulled out—or not. Up and down the platform, the departure times on each gate changed to CANCELED . . . CANCELED . . . CANCELED . . . I stared at the sign at gate 29, willing it to remain at 9:20.

I couldn’t help wondering if I was being tested. It did in fact seem as if I had to prove my worth, my dedication to this mission, before being allowed into the sacred abbey. Injury, sickness, theft, strikes—I was experiencing the Trials of Job: Travel Edition.

This was a little tricky because, well, I didn’t believe in God, probably not in any kind of God, but certainly not the kind who’d want to become involved in the daily petty struggles of us mere mortals down here on earth. Yet I felt comfortable with my assertion that I was indeed being tested, comfortable with being able to hold the simultaneous beliefs that (a) God didn’t exist, and (b) He was testing me. After all, the theory fit the facts so well.

Whether my ordeal was due to divine intervention or a bad run with the dice, I couldn’t help laughing out loud as I realized that what I would normally view as a nightmare to be avoided at all costs—wandering around a strange foreign city at midnight with my luggage, searching for not one but two hotels—was the circumstance that I now fervently, desperately hoped for. This was, remarkably, my best-case scenario.

To realize it, however, I would need to be on virtually the last train out of Paris. The station grew nearly deserted. Another sign switched to CANCELED, and another. Clutching my levain, I went back to staring willfully at the sign above gate 29, a beacon of hope, still improbably glowing 9:20.