. . .’

‘You’re lying!’ Szygon roared, throwing himself towards the speaker. ‘You’re lying like a dog.’

The ‘stationmaster’ curled up, diminished in size, and vanished through the keyhole. Almost at the same moment the compartment door opened, and the disappearing intruder merged into the figure of the conductor, who was at the threshold. The conductor measured the perturbed passenger with a mocking glance and began to hand him a ticket.

‘Your ticket is ready; the price, including the fine, is 200 francs.’

But his smile was his ruin. Before he got a chance to figure out what was happening, some hand, strong like destiny, grabbed him by the chest and pulled him inside. A desperate cry for help was heard, then the cracking of bones. A dull silence followed.

After a moment, a large shadow moved along the windows of an empty corridor and towards the exit. Somebody opened the coach door and pulled the alarm signal. The train began to brake abruptly….

The dark figure hurried down a couple of steps, leaned in the direction of the motion of the train, and with one leap jumped between roadside thickets glowing in dawn’s light….

The train halted. The uneasy crew searched long for the person who had pulled the alarm; it was not known from which coach the signal had originated. Finally the conductors noticed the absence of one of their colleagues. ‘Coach No. 532!’ They rushed into the corridor and began to search through the cubicles. They found them empty, until in the last one, a first-class compartment at the end, they found the body of the unfortunate man. Some type of titanic force had twisted his head in such a hellish manner that his eyes had popped out of their sockets and were gazing at his own chest. Over the plucked whites, the morning sun played a cruel smile.

 

 

 

THE SLOVEN

 

 

AFTER MAKING THE ROUNDS of the coaches charged to his care, the old conductor, Blazek Boron, returned to the nook given over exclusively to his disposition, the so-called ‘place designated for the conductor’.

Wearied by an entire day of tramping through the coaches, hoarse from calling out stations in the fog-swelled autumn season, he intended to rest a while on his narrow oilcloth-upholstered little chair; a well-earned siesta smiled worthily on him. Today’s trip was actually over; the train had already made all its evenly distributed and short distance stops and was heading to the last station at a fast clip. Until the end of the trip Boron would not need to jump up from the bench and run through the coaches for several minutes to announce to the world, with a worn-out voice, that such and such station is here, that the train will stop for five minutes, ten minutes, or an entire lengthy quarter hour, or that the time has come to change trains.

He put out the lantern fastened to his chest and placed it high above his head on a shelf; he took off his greatcoat and hung it on a peg.

Twenty-four hours of continuous service had filled his time so tightly that he had eaten almost nothing. His body demanded its rights. Boron took out victuals from a bag and began to nourish himself. The conductor’s grey, faded eyes settled on the coach window and he looked at the world beyond. The glass, rattling with the coach’s tossing, was constantly smooth and black—he saw nothing.