“Within seconds, the time it takes to cross a small backyard (French customs), one has left this outpost, the last witness to this indisputably dour and extraordinarily interesting people and one is facing the apple faced Swiss. Their quarters are impeccable, as are their uniforms. The Swiss do not smoke their cigarettes but leave them quietly burning in one of their millions of ashtrays. Their uniforms are ironed every morning and laundered every night; and the man within the uniform would find himself in something worse than purgatory if he were not laundered and ironed too. He examines everything very carefully, passport, luggage, voyager; causes one to think of the dirty socks and shorts in one’s baggage, one’s filthy armpits and abruptly active intestines; is unspeakably polite. As patient as a ferret, as distrustful as a thief; and when one has escaped the Swiss correctness, one feels that one is being pursued-they are hoping to delude you into leading them to your accomplice.”
James Baldwin, “Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone”, 1968.
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