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...due to hunger, despair, sleeplessness, hallucination or those accidental-on-purpose misreadings of train timetables and airline schedules that produce margins of empty time, one is lost. One is at the mercy of events. That is why I like to be a foreigner; I only travel for the insecurity.
--Angela Carter, “Flesh and the Mirror”
[Phileas Fogg] lived alone, and, so to speak, outside of every social relation; and as he knew that in this world account must be taken of friction, and that friction retards, he never rubbed against anybody.
--Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days
Phileas Fogg was reading a day-old copy of The Morning Post in his train compartment when he felt everything around him shudder.
He glanced up. The shuddering stopped.
Not for the first time, Fogg wondered where his valet was.
There were no screams from the passage outside his compartment door, no whistles, no shouted commands in Russian. Whatever had happened had not occasioned any kind of alarm.
Outside, the hills and trees that ran alongside the tracks were an indistinguishable blur.
“Hmm,” Fogg said.
Then he returned to The Morning Post.
Thirty minutes later, Jean Passepartout appeared by flinging open the door and throwing himself exuberantly into the compartment.
“Monsieur!” his valet said, dropping onto the seat across from Fogg. His hair was disordered, his face was flushed, and there was a half-empty bottle sticking out from one of his coat pockets. “I have just accomplished the most amazing triumph!”
“Indeed?” Fogg said, still intently reading the paper.
“I have talked to the train’s driver again, and this time, I have, uh, persuaded him to accelerate the train’s speed! We are going much faster now!”
“I see,” Fogg said, turning a page of newsprint. “How was this persuasion accomplished?”
“Partly through spirits,” Passepartout said, cheerfully pulling out the vodka bottle from his pocket. “And partly through seduction.”
For the first time, Fogg looked up from his paper. “What?”
“Not of the driver, of course,” Passepartout said, gesturing with the hand holding the bottle, so that the liquid within swirled in frantic agitation. “The seduction of a young Russian woman aboard the train.”
Fogg stared at him.
“The imagined seduction,” Passepartout further clarified.
Fogg continued to stare at him.
“You see, the driver believed I was a threat to her virtue, and so he felt that he must speed us to our destination as fast as possible in order to preserve her innocence.” He laughed, obviously delighted and obviously a little drunk.
“Passepartout,” Fogg said slowly. “For the rest of the train ride, perhaps it would be best if you generally stayed in this compartment. Close at hand. And out of trouble.”
“As you wish, monsieur. Do you need anything ironed? Polished?”
“No,” Fogg said, frowning as he once again picked up the pages of the newspaper. “I only want for...silence.”
“Eh, bien,” Passepartout said, too serenely intoxicated to take offense.
Several minutes passed and the only sound was the rustle of Fogg’s newspaper. But Fogg found it newly hard to concentrate on the narrow columns of small print, and at last he looked up again.
Passepartout had turned his head to watch the window, even though the train was now moving too fast to make out any detail from the world outside. He nearly had his nose pressed against the window glass, and his blue eyes were intently focused. His hair was a riotous mass of dark curls. The edge of his coat’s collar was rumpled and flipped up, as though he had just come through a hard storm.
He looked like a man who might become fast friends with a hard-drinking train driver. He looked like a man who might cheerfully seduce an apple-cheeked Russian maiden.
Fogg felt something in his throat, something like annoyance.
After a moment, Passepartout glanced over to meet Fogg’s frowning gaze. “Yes, monsieur?”
“Nothing,” Fogg said, returning to his paper. “Nothing, Passepartout.”
In Pyongyang, Passepartout returned to the hotel weighed down by twin defeats: he had not been able to find an English newspaper anywhere in the city, and he had not been able to secure a departure for the next day.
“The best I could find is a boat that leaves in two days,” he said, wringing out water from his scarf. His hair was soaked and plastered against his scalp.
Above them, rain hammered against the roof of the hotel.
“Never mind,” Fogg murmured. “It’s of no importance.”
Passepartout grimaced. “I am very sorry about the paper, monsieur.”
Fogg, seated at a small table, continued to stare blankly into space. “Nothing to be done about it.”
“I could ask the clerk at the front desk if he could loan us a deck of playing cards.”
Fogg’s eyes slowly drifted over to meet Passepartout’s gaze. “To what purpose?”
“To...to play cards? To pass the time. You have mentioned that you enjoyed playing cards at your club in London.”
“Mmm,” Fogg said. “Whist. We always played whist. But you need four players for whist.”
“There are other card games,” Passepartout continued recklessly. “There is écarté. A two-player game!”
Fogg stared at him.
“You...you do know écarté, don’t you?” Passepartout said, faltering slightly.
“Yes,” Fogg said at last. “Yes, écarté will do. Go ask the clerk if he has a deck or two for us to use.”
And it was not until ten minutes later -- as Passepartout was carefully miming out what he wanted from the confused Korean clerk standing in the lobby -- that Passepartout realized that Fogg had hesitated not at the idea of écarté but at the idea of playing a card game with his valet.
Passepartout’s enthusiastic miming faltered, and his gesticulating hands fluttered to his side -- but it was too late, the clerk had belatedly realized what Passepartout wanted and had cheerfully fished around in a desk drawer until he found a deck of French playing cards.
Passepartout accepted the deck sadly -- to the clerk’s bewilderment -- and had crept back up the stairs as he braced himself for an icy and disapproving reception from Fogg.
But instead, when he opened the door, Fogg looked up with an expression that was almost happy.
“You found a deck? Excellent. Pull up a chair.”
In an airship over the Pacific Ocean, Fogg and Passepartout played endless hands of écarté.
Fogg usually won.
“You have a truly dizzying assortment of tells,” Fogg told him at one point. “Increasingly the challenge is to avoid knowing when you have a good hand.”
Passepartout made a face.
“But I believe you are improving as a player,” Fogg said. “By the time we get back to London, you may be quite passable.”
“Much good it will do me there,” Passepartout said as he squinted at the cards in his hand. “I will have no one to play with.”
There was a long silence in response, and belatedly Passepartout looked up and said, “Well, of course, excepting you, monsieur. But I know you like to keep a strict schedule in London. Like clockwork, you are. Breakfast, and then the Reform Club, and then bed. I’ve seen your daily agenda.”
“My agenda,” Fogg repeated tonelessly.
“Yes,” Passepartout said absently. “Your former valet left it pasted up on the wall of my room. It looked quite detailed. A perfectly ordered day for a perfectly ordered life.”
“Mmm,” Fogg said, his cards fanned in front of his mouth.
“Every second accounted for,” Passepartout said. “No time for écarté with your valet.”
“No,” Fogg said. “Of course not.”
“I propose…” Passepartout said, hesitating, “I propose...three cards, discarded.”
Fogg silently dealt him three fresh cards from the deck, and when Passepartout examined them in his hand, an expression of unmistakable regret settled across his features.
He was not looking at Fogg in that moment, or he might have seen a shadow of the same expression flicker across his master’s face.
“We’ve made astounding time, monsieur,” Passepartout said, enthusiastically slicing into the sausage that ringed his breakfast of rice and fried egg. From a nearby open window, the gentle morning breezes of Honolulu wafted past them.
On the other side of the table, hidden behind a week-old copy of The Times, Fogg made a noncommittal noise.
“Yes, truly astounding,” Passepartout persisted.
On the other side of the table, The Times rustled slightly as one of its pages was turned.
“To think that we’ve reached the halfway point so soon,” Passepartout tried again. “Incredible! To think that we have fifty more days to meet your wager!”
From behind The Times: “Technically, fifty one.”
Passepartout paused in scooping up a forkful of yolk-stained rice. “Pardon, monsieur?”
“We have crossed the International Date Line. Ergo, we have gained a day.”
Passepartout dropped his fork. “How wonderful! We will be back in London with time to spare!”
Silence as another page of The Times was turned.
Passepartout stared at the insurmountable wall of newsprint across from him. In truth, he had not expected Fogg to agree with him, to acknowledge that their speed so far was at least partly due to Passepartout’s efforts, to praise Passepartout for his ingenuity and hard work.
Passepartout had not expected that -- but, perhaps, he had hoped, even so.
“Soon we will be back in London,” he attempted again valiantly. “Soon, everything will be back to just as it was before.”
“Just as it was before,” Fogg repeated without lowering the paper. “Quite.”
He said nothing further, and Passepartout ate the rest of his breakfast in silence.
For one reason or another, they ended up missing most of their trains in the United States.
In Salt Lake City, Fogg was so unusually fastidious about his morning toilet -- insisting on shaving himself and paying particular care to shaping his moustache -- that they arrived at the station ten minutes after the train departed.
“Oh, well,” Fogg said as Passepartout scanned the station timetable for the next train. “We shall simply return to the hotel and try again tomorrow.”
In Cheyenne, Fogg somehow misread the departure time to Omaha on their tickets and they arrived a full hour after the train left.
Undeterred, Passepartout talked to the station manager and returned victoriously to Fogg on the station’s platform. “There’s a second train later today! It is headed to Dallas!”
If Passepartout had expected any flicker of excitement from his master, he was disappointed. Fogg looked up from his week-old copy of The Pall Mall and said, “South? We should be headed east.”
“It is southeast,” Passepartout said breezily, even though he had no idea where Dallas was in relation to them. “And the manager said that we can reach New Orleans from there and reconnect with the southern rail lines.”
Fogg stared at a point to the left of Passepartout’s head for a moment, and then he said, “Very well,” and returned to his paper.
In New Orleans, Fogg simply overslept -- which would have been catastrophic to their plans of departing for Atlanta at eight o’clock, which was the time that Passepartout had casually told Fogg when the valet returned to the hotel after buying tickets the previous night.
But, in truth, the train did not depart until ten, as they discovered when Passepartout insisted that they still go to the station to inquire about catching a later departure.
“What a mistake,” Passepartout said blandly as he ushered his master aboard. “I can’t imagine how I made that kind of error. But how fortunate for us!”
Fogg must have been still disoriented from his unusually extended slumber, since he seemed to wilt as soon as they arrived at the station. He remained silent and gloomy in their compartment throughout most of the morning, until Passepartout finally finangled some hot water from the dining car and brewed him a restorative pot of Darjeeling.
If their efforts to board American trains in a timely manner were continually frustrated by unexpected delays, their experiences once safely aboard had the steady regularity of a metronome.
They played écarté.
At first, Passepartout was grateful for a pastime that could distract his master, since Fogg’s only passions in life appeared to be French playing cards and English newspapers, and Passepartout could not always locate a fresh copy of The Morning Standard. In contrast, a card game offered a ready distraction. It was a respite for both of them.
They played more écarté.
Then Passepartout entered a period of minor despair and low-burning resentment. It was not that he had anything against écarté. He liked écarté! He had once spent a childhood summer playing regular games with his sainted grand-mère; he had only fond associations with the game itself.
And yet those childhood games had not prepared him for the sheer crushing monotony of playing never-ending rounds with Fogg, an eternity of discarded queens and missed tricks and Fogg pursing his lips and saying, I win, I believe. Another game?
“Perhaps,” Passepartout ventured once, “there are other passengers aboard who might make up a foursome for whist?”
Fogg paused, and his eyes flickered up from his cards. “I have never been too impressed by the American capacity for whist.”
“Then perhaps...simply for a change...there is a two-person version of whist, I believe? Perhaps we could play that?”
Fogg gave him a withering look. “Two-player whist is a sad corruption of a great game, fit only for children and imbeciles.”
Passepartout sighed.
They played even more écarté.
Finally, Passepartout began to take his pleasures where he could. He enjoyed the smooth surface of the playing cards under his fingers. He enjoyed watching the cards grow weathered and imperfect with use -- white lines radiating across the corner of the Queen of the Spades, a slight crease marring the Ace of Hearts -- until at last they became unique and distinguishable from the back, their anonymity compromised, their masks cracked.
Then, of course, it was time to discard the deck, go beg a new one from a member of the train’s crew, and begin the process of ruination all over again.
After a while, Passepartout consciously decided to enjoy the peculiar mental state of card-playing: a fugue of numbers and colors, a trance in which you were forever seeking to bundle a card with its proper mate, a strangely pleasurable state in which you needed to pay close attention to what your partner had done in this game and yet immediately forget everything he had done in the prior game.
But most of all, as he passed through endless afternoons of écarté, Passepartout enjoyed watching Phileas Fogg.
Perhaps he was merely admiring his own handiwork. The neat line of the jacket lapel lying over Fogg’s chest? Passepartout’s iron. The vibrant depth of color in Fogg’s tie? Passepartout’s careful laundering. The perfect line between Fogg’s mustache and his pale cheek? Passepartout’s razor -- at least on those occasions when Fogg permitted his valet to shave him, those occasions when Fogg lifted his face and closed his eyes, and Passepartout tenderly brushed the pale shaving paste on his master’s jaw, those occasions when the master was blind and trusting and the master’s man was nearly overwhelmed by the delicate line of his neck and the whorl of his ear, on those occasions when--
“Do you propose?” Fogg asked, and Passepartout blinked and said, “No, no, monsieur,” and Fogg said, a little impatiently, “Then lead.”
Or perhaps Passepartout was merely scanning Fogg for some hint of his “tells.” The way Fogg’s mouth sometimes curved up on one side to create a tiny, near-invisible dimple? Maybe that was a tell. (Fogg had won the trick that time.) The way his eyelids sometimes half-lowered so that he might have resembled a man on the verge of sleep, if not for the intensity with which his half-visible pupils glittered at his card-playing opponent? Maybe that was a tell. (Fogg had won the trick that time too.) The way he sometimes fidgeted and pulled at his collar, wrecking the careful knot of his tie and revealing the faintest shadow of his clavicle? Maybe...a tell…
Fogg took that trick too.
Between games, Passepartout began excusing himself to walk the length of the train. He paced, back and forth, his mind empty and his pulse strangely restless.
It’s something about the train, he thought, confusedly. It’s something about the motion...the regularity…
When, at last, he felt his nerves settle, he would return to their compartment and his eternally waiting master.
They were flying over Morocco when Passepartout burst into the cabin. “Pirates! They’ve sighted pirates!”
Fogg did not look up from his ledger. “Ah. That explains the sudden increase in speed.”
Passepartout was wringing his hands. “But, monsieur, they’ve diverted from their course to chase those pirates. We’re headed away from Lisbon. We’re going east now.”
For a moment, Fogg said nothing, and Passepartout closed his eyes in anticipatory horror as he braced for Fogg’s next statement. Would he send Passepartout to argue with the captain? Would he demand that Passepartout organize a mutiny? (Mon Dieu, please, not another attempted mutiny.) Would he command Passepartout to see if the pirates would take them to London?
Instead, he heard Fogg say, “Very well. Let me know where, exactly, they decide to disembark us.”
Passepartout opened his eyes again. Fogg remained impassive as he made a small note in his ledger. Perhaps, just maybe there was a near-imperceptible dimple, the slightest curve on the edge of that severe mouth -- but no, no, it was probably just a trick of the light.
A long moment of silence stretched on, and finally Fogg looked up at his valet. “Was there something else, Passepartout?”
“No,” Passepartout said, “no, monsieur. I’ll go and see if they are planning to stop somewhere to refuel.”
“Very good,” Fogg said, returning to his ledger.
Several hours later, when they were finally deposited at the port of Ponta Delgada, Passepartout was nearly despondent -- but Fogg, in contrast, seemed remarkably untroubled.
If anything, he seemed nearly cheerful.
“We will find an outgoing berth on something tomorrow,” he said as Passepartout slouched miserably beside him. “In the meantime, we’ll arrange lodgings and dinner. And then perhaps a hand or two of écarté?”
It took almost all their remaining money to cross the rest of the Atlantic and to reach Lisbon, and they used their final pounds to procure a small hotel room in a dowdy quarter of the city.
Then they went to pay a visit to the bank.
The bank’s manager ushered them into his office. “Senhores, how can I help you? How much money do you need wired from London?”
“Five hundred,” Passepartout interjected, and the bank manager nodded helpfully.
“Yes, yes, that can be done today, no prob--”
“Two thousand, actually, I should think,” Fogg said.
Both Passepartout and the bank manager stared at him.
“Monsieur!”
“I’m afraid that sum will be more difficult to arrange,” the manager said, his face pale.
“Monsieur, we do not need two thousand pounds, surely!”
“It will take a day or two to arrange,” the manager said, apologetically.
“That will be fine,” Fogg said, ignoring Passepartout. “I will return in two days to collect the money. Thank you, sir. We can see ourselves out. Come, Passepartout.”
Outside the bank, Fogg adjusted his hat and said, “You disapprove, Passepartout.” It was not a question.
“I--” Passepartout passed a hand through his hair. “I do not understand. We have a week left to complete your wager. We need not waste multiple days here to collect a sum of money we do not need.”
Fogg’s gaze was level. “Five hundred pounds may not get us the rest of the way to London. Better to have an excess of resources to deal with any last minute obstacles that arise. We still have time.”
Passepartout frowned. “But--”
“Come, Passepartout,” Fogg said, and this time his voice was calm, and his hand, which was suddenly on Passepartout’s shoulder, was warm -- Passepartout felt the warmth even through the layers of his own shirt and coat. “The wager can still be won. In the meantime, we will simply spend a few extra days in Lisbon. There are worse fates.”
Naturally, there was only a single bed in the dowdy Lisbon hotel room that they had spent the last of their money to reserve.
Naturally, they shared it.
Three months ago, Fogg would have been flustered at the very thought. After all, he had not shared a bedroom with anyone since he had left his childhood nursery. He had never had to worry about the mass of another person’s body on the mattress, the position of their elbow, the smell of their hair.
And, conversely, he never had to worry about what his own unconscious body did in slumber. Did he snore? There was no way to know. Did he talk in his sleep? No one was listening. Did he still enact his embarrassing boyhood habit of sleepwalking? The thought of his own ungoverned self was unbearable, but as long as there was no one to see, it did not matter. It might as well have not existed in the first place.
Three months ago, Fogg would have refused to share a bed with anyone -- much less his valet. Three months ago, forced into such a position, Fogg would have remained miserably awake the whole night.
But two and half months on the road alongside Passepartout had rubbed away these prickly compunctions so thoroughly that Fogg sometimes had a hard time remembering them. After all, he had spent so much time with his valet on this voyage that nothing about Passepartout seemed alien or out of place. To lie next to Passepartout was no stranger than lying next to one’s own limbs.
So for two nights in Lisbon, in a bed next to his snoring valet -- for Passepartout, alas, did snore -- Fogg slept easily and well.
But on each morning, when he awoke, there was a split-second moment of disorientation in which he thought that he was waking up in London, that the voyage was over, that there was no one beside him, that all the clocks in his house were ticking in perfect synchronicity with one another.
And even after the sensation faded, even after Fogg became aware of the strange ceiling overhead and the familiar weight of Passepartout pressed against his shoulder and the fact that they had not yet finished their travels -- even then he remained unsettled and discomfited.
For two mornings in Lisbon, Fogg began the day by staring at the ceiling and listening to the sleeping Passepartout breathe.
On the seventy-fifth day, they collected Fogg’s money from the bank.
“Now we must charter passage on the airship that flies from here to London,” Passepartout said, nearly dancing out of the bank. “It leaves daily. We shall have your wager won in 24 hours.”
Fogg said nothing.
On the seventy-sixth day, Passepartout discovered that Fogg had gone out early to arrange passage for them -- on a fishing vessel that was headed to Calais.
“Monsieur!”
“It is quite an economical route,” Fogg said, not meeting his eyes.
“It will take forever.”
“A day and a half, I should think.”
“But...the direct route to London…”
“A chancy thing, an air route,” Fogg said. “We have not had the best luck with airships, after all. But going by sea? Much more reliable.”
It was not until the seventy-eighth day, as Passepartout sat on a low stone wall and watched Fogg negotiate passage on a mail coach pulled by the oldest horse Passepartout had ever seen -- it was only then that Passepartout began to suspect the possibility of sabotage.
“Passepartout?” Fogg was walking back to where the valet was sitting. “The driver says he can take us most of the way to London.”
“Most of the way,” Passepartout repeated.
Fogg paused for a moment. “Yes. Most of the way.”
Passepartout took another look at the horse, who appeared to be mere hours away from death, and said, “I didn’t think that there were mail coaches in England any longer. I thought they had been replaced by trains.”
“The Post Office contracts out for road service,” Fogg said. “Rural areas and such. The coaches collect the mail from train stations.”
Passepartout dragged his eyes away from the tottering mail horse and stared at Fogg. “So there is a train station near here?”
“Of course,” Fogg said, not meeting his eyes. “We’re near Dover, after all.”
Passepartout pressed his mouth together for a moment. “Then we should take the train, monsieur.”
“But...the reliability of the post…”
Passepartout glanced once again at the mail horse, who was visibly swaying from side to side, and then looked back at Fogg. “A valuable point, monsieur. And yet, the train! Clearly, there is only one way to settle this.” He leaned to one side and began to rifle through the carpet-bag that lay on the grass beside the low wall.
“Settle what?” Fogg said suspiciously.
“Our mode of transport for the last leg of our journey,” Passepartout said, righting himself. He held a deck of cards. “We shall use écarté, naturally.” He gestured for Fogg to take a seat opposite him on the broad wall.
Fogg regarded him grimly. “No.”
“Suit yourself, monsieur,” Passepartout said as he began to deal out the cards. “I’m sure you will have no trouble engaging a new valet in London. I’m sure he will pay very close attention to the niceties of your daily schedule.”
Had Passepartout looked up at his master in this moment, he would have seen an unfamiliar expression -- half anger, half something else -- flicker across Fogg’s normally impervious face.
But Passepartout did not look up, and after a second, Fogg stiffly sat down on the wall beside him.
Passepartout finished dealing and then flipped over another card. “Trump’s hearts. What discards do you propose?”
Fogg grudgingly picked up his dealt cards and examined them. “I propose...three cards.”
“I agree,” Passepartout said, and he dealt him three fresh cards from the deck. He also discarded a card from his own hand and took a new card from the deck.
“Another proposal, monsieur?”
Fogg looked past Passepartout’s shoulder. “The mail coach is leaving.”
Passepartout craned his head back to look at the slowly departing coach. “I shouldn’t worry. If needed, we’ll just walk until we catch up with it. Proposal? Or non?”
Fogg glowered at him. “One card.”
Passepartout dealt him another card from the deck, and then dealt himself a new card as well. “And now?”
“This is bordering on insolence, Passepartout.”
Passepartout trembled for a moment, and when he spoke, his voice was a low whisper. “Insolence?”
“Yes. And disloyal to boot,” Fogg said. “Two cards.”
Passepartout was silent as he dealt both Fogg and himself two new cards, and then he said, “I am nothing if not loyal, monsieur. And dedicated. And unflagging. There could be no more loyal gentleman’s gentleman than myself. And it is because I am so loyal, so dedicated, that I absolutely will see you in London in time to win your wager.”
Fogg stared down at his cards.
“And that is why,” Passepartout said, “I cannot understand why you are dragging your feet and deliberately delaying your arrival in London. I cannot understand why you are trying to lose.”
For a long moment, there was silence.
And then, in a hollow, cracked little voice, Fogg said, “One card.”
Passepartout dealt him a new card.
“I’m not trying to lose,” Fogg said. His fingers were pressed so tightly against the backs of the cards in his hand that the tips were white. “We will get to London on the eightieth day. There is no reason to get there any earlier.”
“Pirates,” Passepartout said immediately. “Engine trouble. Mutiny. Cholera. Highwaymen. Revolution.”
Fogg gave him a dangerous look. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that there are many possible unpredictable delays that could lurk ahead,” Passepartout said. “Why risk it? Why not arrive in London in plenty of time, in no danger of missing your deadline?”
“And then?”
“What?”
“And then, what happens?” Fogg said dully. “I know what will happen. You know what will happen. It’s all pasted up in that agenda you saw. I wake, I go to the Reform Club, I read my papers, I play some whist, I return home, I go to bed. Every day, just like the day before.”
Passepartout stared at him.
“But meanwhile…” Fogg said in a voice barely above a whisper. “As long as we are traveling... Just so long as our voyage lasts. Just so long as London remains always on the horizon.”
Passepartout started to laugh.
A furious red flush crept up Fogg’s neck. “Now, see here--”
Passepartout continued laughing. He laughed so long and so hard that he ended up toppling off the wall and falling onto the soft surface of the carpet bag on the ground. As he fell, he accidentally swept off all the cards that had been placed on the top of the wall between the two card-players.
The faces of paper-thin queens and kings spun around in the wind and scattered on the grass in all directions.
Giggling, Passepartout pushed himself up to a sitting position on the ground.
Fogg, still seated on the wall and still holding his cards close to his chest, peered down at his valet.
“Monsieur, you are absurd,” Passepartout declared. “If you don’t like your London schedule, then make another. And if you wish to keep traveling, then there is no reason to stop. Merely stop at your little club long enough to win your wager, and then immediately leave again. Think of all the places we never visited on this journey! But of course we must see them! We must make a second journey! Et cetera.” He climbed to his feet and began brushing the grass off his pants.
“It is not that simple,” Fogg said. “There are rules...expectations…standards...”
Passepartout straightened, and now he was the one who peered down at his master seated on the wall. “These are minor things. They are not truly important. And I think they weigh on you too heavily. The important thing is what you want. What do you want, Phileas?”
“What do I want?” Fogg repeated. He looked away, and as he did, he dropped the cards that had been clutched in his hands. A jumble of hearts and spades fell to the ground. “I simply want...this, I suppose. To go on with you, Jean. Wherever that may be.”
Passepartout smiled. “Moi aussi.”
Fogg looked up at him, and then he flushed and closed his eyes, but he kept his face turned up, wearing the same expression he wore whenever he permitted Passepartout to shave him -- blind and trusting, silent and helpless, waiting and wanting.
Passepartout bent down and kissed him.
Fogg’s mustache rubbed thickly against Passepartout’s cheek, and Fogg’s mouth opened against Passepartout’s mouth, and Fogg made an indistinct noise, deep in his throat, as Passepartout tenderly touched the side of Fogg’s neck.
Around them, the fallen playing cards tumbled and twisted in the wind, and they grew ever more scattered as time passed.
The two men on the low stone wall paid them no attention.
Finally, Passepartout pulled back and said, breathing heavily, “This is all very well, monsieur. But we do have a train to catch!”
“Yes, Passepartout,” Fogg said obediently.