Their outstretched hands indicate some unknown goal, an aim surely distant; their inclined bodies lean to the distance, to a stunning, misty land far away; and their eyes, glazed by wild alarm and enchantment, are lost in boundless space.

So they stand and are silent; no muscle will twitch, no eyelid will fall. So they stand and are silent….

Because through them has passed a most strange breath, because they have been touched by a great awakening, because they are already…insane….

Suddenly strong and familiar sounds were heard, wrapped in the security of familiarity—strokes as firm as a heart when it beats against a healthy chest—steady sounds of habit, for years proclaiming the same thing.

‘Ding-dong’—and a pause—‘ding-dong…ding-dong….’ The signals were operating….

 

THE MOTION DEMON

 

 

 

THE EXPRESS CONTINENTAL from Paris to Madrid rushed with all the force its pistons could muster. The hour was already late, the middle of the night; the weather was wet, showery. The beating rain lashed the brightly lit windows and was scattered on the glass in teary beads. Bathed in the downpour, the coaches glittered under roadside lamp-posts like wet armour, spewing sprightly water from their mouldings. A hollow groan issued forth into space from their black bodies, a confused chatter of wheels, jostling buffers, mercilessly trampled rails. Frenzied in its run, the chain of coaches awakened sleeping echoes in the quiet night, enticed dead voices along the woods, revived slumbering ponds. Some type of heavy, drowsy eyelids were raised, some large eyes opened in consternation, and so they remained in momentary fright. And the train sped on in a strong wind, in a dance of autumn leaves, pulling after it an extended swirling funnel of startled air, while smoke and soot clung lazily to its rear; the train rushed breathlessly on, hurling behind it the blood-red memory of sparks and coal refuse….

In one of the first-class compartments, squeezed in the corner between the wall and an upholstered backrest, dozed a man in his forties of strong, Herculean build. The subdued lamplight that filtered with difficulty through the drawn shade lit up his long, carefully shaved face and revealed his firmly set, thin lips.

He was alone; no one interrupted his sleepy reveries. The quiet of the closed interior was disturbed only by the knocking of wheels under the floor or the flickering of gas in the gas-bracket. The red colour of the plush cushions imbued a stuffy, sultry tone about the area that acted soporifically like a narcotic. The soft, yielding material muffled sounds, deadened the rattle of the rails, and surrendered in a submissive wave to the pressure of any weight. The compartment appeared to be plunged into deep sleep: the curtains drawn on ringlets lay dormant, the green net spread under the ceiling swung lethargically. Rocked by the car’s steady motion, the traveller leaned his weary head on a headrest and slept. The book that had been in his hands slipped from his knees and fell to the floor. On a binding of delicate, dark-saffron skin the title was visible: Crooked Lines; near that, impressed with a stamp, the name of the book’s owner: Tadeusz Szygon.

At some moment the sleeper stirred; he opened his eyes and swept them about his surroundings. For a second an expression of amazement was reflected on his face, and an effort at orientation. It seemed as if the traveller could not understand where he was and why he found himself there. But almost immediately a wry smile of forbearing resignation came to his lips. He raised his large, powerful hand in a gesture of surrender, and then an expression of dejection and contemptuous disdain passed over his face. He fell back into a half-sleepy state….

Steps were heard in the corridor; the door was pulled back and a conductor entered the compartment.

‘Ticket, please.’

Szygon did not move a muscle; he showed no sign of life.