Sentence The Fourhundredandthirtysecond

Now, as it happened, when Gertie opened her eyes and found herself sitting in a compartment of a train travelling through open country, she felt quite confused, but managed to hide it well; the other passengers seemed not to have noticed her arrival, or maybe she had been here all along – dreaming, for in her mind was a jumble of half-memories and imaginings, and she had no clear recollection of boarding the train, or of where she was heading, maybe simply a result of stress or distress, anxiety,

confusion, or exhaustion, a sinecure of synonyms or poecilonyms (she didn't really care which) or even a combination of all of them, so she glanced at her watch but, as she looked, she saw that the hands were all wrong: they seemed to be moving backwards, indeed the second hand was fairly spinning anti-clockwise, with the minute hand lumbering behind it, and crikey! the numbers on the dial were also placed on the wrong sides, and in the wrong order, although each figure was the correct image, so it wasn't like looking in a mirror, but was sufficiently weird to make her feel slightly nauseous, so she closed her eyes for some moments, but that made her feel even more dizzy, and believing that she needed to be able to see the horizon, as if below deck on a ship, she opened her eyes and sought to find her equilibrium by fixing on a distant tree or cow as it passed across the screen of the window – now, while steadfastly ignoring her wristwatch, Gertie was, however, fortunately possessed of an innate awareness of time, a kind of zeitgeber, which told her from the height of the sun, ascertaiined by the length of the shadows cast by that tree and cow, that it was still morning, perhaps about 10.18, and in that same summertime she had most recently been aware of, being a dedicated heliolatrist herself, and happily staying out of doors as much as she could – and she pondered her situation: the train was not British, not in the 21^st century, for sure, and heading East, but there were insufficient clues for her to gauge the precise location; and then suddenly the young woman in the corner seat next to her spoke quietly: “Gertie, my sweet, are you still a little behind the

times after your sleep – you were so tired and I wanted to let you recover naturally,” and Gertie smiled back, knowing at once that she was with a friend but lacking any clear knowledge of who this friend might be; “I think I must have had too much to drink last night and my head is still befuddled, dear . . . . .” and her hesitation was clearly understood, for the young woman quickly said: “I am Palestrina, Pantagruel's sister, he said that you might be a tad out of sorts, but that will quickly pass,” and she saw relief on Gertie's face and Gertie said, “oh, Palestrina, I missed Pan, and wondered if he would be here,” but Palestrina shook her head: “sadly, no, he was called away, so we are travelling alone, I do hope that is all right with you,” and Gertie nodded – not too much, though, for her head was still sore and she did truly seem to have the remains of a hangover; then Palestrina said: “Clement is, I believe, following on a later train, and we should be able to meet up with him this evening, but I am pleased that you have come on this train – I know that we will get on well; I seem to recall Clem or Pan telling me that you have fluent German, yes?” and this time Gertie nodded more convincingly, and explained that she had studied German History and Politics as well as the language itself and Palestrina was obviously pleased, explaining that her own knowledge in those areas was sketchy, her studies having been focussed on Arabia, like Pan's, and that reminded Gertie that Palestrina was almost impossibly young-looking to be Pan's sister, although it was possible, but more probable, or make that very probable, that their father must have remarried after his first wife's death, which had most likely occurred before she, Gertie, had even been born, and it was almost as though Palestrina had been reading her mind, because she placed a hand gently on Gertie's wrist and said that she would explain everything once they had reached Berlin and found their hotel – so now she knew their destination and, deciding that the unexpected often brings it's own rewards, was happy to watch the countryside panorama flowing past the carriage windows and wait drowsily and perhaps even drift off for a while, until Palestrina should feel herself able to tell her just what the fuck was

going on! which is almost exactly what she did next: “in your sleep, my sweet Gertie, we have crossed the Border and while it behoves me to be ever so slightly economical with the truth, for the nonce, my dear, I really feel obliged to advise you that there is a monster at large in Germany called Adolf Hitler, aka Der Fuhrer – and this nephalist took an inchoate angry nationalism, identified an easy target, turned his own contumacy into a crusade, made martyrs out of thugs and coined the sniglet, Nazi, that will evermore be applied to all manner of evil corruption and despicable brutality, anti-Semitism, xenophobia and ethnic cleansing where- and whenever Little Hitlers rear their ugly heads – but I intend to stop him dead in his tracks!”