The 1918 influenza pandemic appears here not as a survey of the disease but as a sudden death within a remembered journey. A Swiss woman, once among the narrator’s friends, is already dead when an immigration officer arrives to ask for her passport; the practical business of entry ends at the fact of her loss.

The Journey and the Friendship

The memory moves across a train and a steamship: the narrator sits on a wooden bench as the train rattles through midnight, then climbs from steerage for a breath of Atlantic air. The Swiss woman and her husband are recalled as friends made along the way, not as anonymous travelers. Her slightly prominent eyes, gruff exclamation of Zut alors, and small smile—a fish offered to a sea lion—remain vivid against the journey’s darkness.

Death at the Immigration Encounter

The immigration officer comes for the woman’s passport, but the expected inspection cannot proceed. The narrator gives the reason in the blunt words la grippe espagnole: she is dead. The passage does not describe her illness or explain when she died; instead, it makes the news arrive in the space where officials would ordinarily establish a traveler’s identity and admit her to Ellis Island.

Narrative Effect

The scene’s force lies in the collision between movement and cessation. The train and ship carry people onward, while the passport encounter fixes the woman’s journey at its end. The earlier details of her voice and smile make the final disclosure personal: influenza is registered through the disappearance of someone remembered, rather than through statistics or medical description.