In the opinion of some people, one had to look for its source in an atavistic element inherent in the nature of this eccentric; in Szygon’s veins there apparently flowed gypsy blood. It seemed he had inherited from his perpetually roaming ancestors a craving for constant roving, a hungry appetite for those sensations sought by these kings of the road. One example given as proof of this ‘nomadism’ was the fact that Szygon could never reside long in any one place: he was continually changing his living quarters, moving from one section of town to the other.

Whatever impulses prompted his aimless romantic travels, he did not glory in them after his return. He would come back—likewise unexpectedly—angry, exhausted, and sullen. For the next few days he would lock himself in his home, clearly avoiding people, before whom he felt shame and embarrassment.

Most interesting of all was surely Szygon’s state during these ‘flights’—a state almost completely dominated by subconscious elements.

Some dark force tore him from his home, propelled him to the railway station, pushed him into a carriage—some overpowering command impelled him, frequently in the middle of night, to leave his cozy bed, leading him like a condemned man through the labyrinth of streets, removing from his way a thousand obstacles, to place him in a compartment and send him out into the wide world. Then came a blindfolded, random journey, changing trains without any destination in mind, and a stop at some city or an out-of-theway town or village, in some country, under some sky, not knowing why precisely there and not some other place—and finally a terrible awakening in unfamiliar, completely strange surroundings.

Szygon never arrived at the same place twice: the train always put him off at a different destination. During his ride he never ‘woke up’, never became aware of the aimlessness of what he was doing—his full psychic faculties returned only after a conclusive departure from the train, and this frequently only after a deep, fortifying sleep in a hotel or a roadside shed or inn….

At the present moment he was in an almost trance-like state. The train now carrying him had departed yesterday morning from Paris. Whether he got on at the French capital or at some station along the road, he did not know. He had departed from somewhere and was now heading somewhere else—that was all he could say….

He adjusted himself on the cushions, stretched out his legs, and lit a cigar. He felt a sensation of distaste, almost repugnance. He always experienced similar feelings at the sight of a conductor or, for that matter, any railwayman. These people were a symbol of certain deficiencies or of an underdevelopment, and personified the imperfection that he saw in the railway system. Szygon understood that he made his unusual journeys under the influence of cosmic and elemental forces, and that train travel was a childish compromise caused by the circumstances of the terrain and his earthly environment. He realized only too well that if it were not for the sad fact that he was chained to the Earth and its laws, his travels, casting off the usual pattern and method, would take on an exceedingly more active and beautiful form.

It was precisely a train, the railway, and its employees that embodied for him that rigid formula, that vicious circle out of which he, a man, a poor son of the Earth, tried vainly to break.

That is why he despised these people; sometimes, he even hated them. This aversion to ‘servants of a charter for leisurely rambling’, as he contemptuously called them, increased in direct proportion to his fantastic ‘flights’, of which he was ashamed, not so much for their aimlessness but rather because they were conceived on such a pitiful scale.

This feeling of detestation was agitated by the little incidents and quarrels with the train authorities that were inevitable due to his unnatural state. On certain lines the employees already seemed to know him well, and during his journeys he would frequently detect the cruel smile of a porter, conductor, or railway official.

The conductor attending the coach he was now riding seemed to be particularly familiar. That lean, pitted face—lit up with a jeering little smile at the sight of him—had passed before his dreamy, faraway eyes not just once. At least, that is what he thought.

But most of all, Szygon was irritated by railway ads, publicity, and uniforms. How funny was the pathos of those travel allegories hanging about waiting rooms, how pretentious the sweeping gestures of those little geniuses of speed! Yet the most comical impression was created by those winged circles on the caps and lapels of the officials.