Traffic officials, conspicuous in their red caps, appeared everywhere— giving orders, clearing the absent-minded from the tracks, and passing a swift, vigilant eye on the trains at their moment of departure. Conductors were in a constant rush, walking with speedy steps through the lengthy coaches. Master signalmen, the pilots of the station, executed concise and efficient instructions—commands for departure. Everything went along at a brisk tempo, marked off to the minute, to the second—everyone’s eyes were involuntarily checking the time on the white double-dial clock above.

Yet a quiet spectator standing to the side would, after a brief observation, have received impressions incompatible with the ostensible order of things.

Something had slipped into the standard regulations and traditional course of activities; some type of undefined, though weighty, obstacle opposed the sacred smoothness of rail travel.

One could tell this from the nervous, exaggerated gestures of the railwaymen and their restless glances and anticipating faces. Something had broken down in the previously exemplary system. Some unhealthy, terrible current circulated along its hundredfold-branched arteries, and it permeated the surface in half-conscious flashes.

The zeal of the railwaymen reflected their obvious willingness to overcome whatever had stealthily wormed its way into a perfect structure. Everyone was in two or three places at once to suppress forcefully this irritating nightmare, to subordinate it to the regular demands of work, to the wearisome but safe equilibrium of routine chores.

This was, after all, their area, their ‘region’, exercised through many years of diligent application, a terrain, it seemed, that they knew through and through. They were, after all, exponents of that work ethic, that sphere of practical activity, where to them, the initiated, nothing should be unclear, where they, the representatives and sole interpreters of the entire complicated train system, could not, and should not, be caught unawares by any type of enigma. Why, for a long time everything had been calculated, weighed, measured—everything, though complex, had not passed human understanding—and everywhere there was a precise moderation without surprises, a regularity of repeated occurrences foreseen from the start!

They felt, then, a collective responsibility towards the dense mass of the travelling public to whom was owed complete peace and safety.

Meanwhile their inner perplexity, flowing in vexatious waves over the passengers, was sensed by the public.

If the problem had concerned a so-called ‘accident’, which, admittedly, one could not foresee but for which an explanation could be provided afterwards, then they, the professionals, were vulnerable but certainly not desperate. But something totally different was at issue here.

Something incalculable like a chimera, capricious like madness had arrived, and it shattered with one blow the traditional arrangement of things.

Therefore, they were ashamed of themselves and humiliated before the public.

At present it was most important that the problem should not spread, that ‘the general public’ should not find out anything about it. It was appropriate to conceal any counter-measures, so that this strange affair would not come to light in the newspapers and create a public uproar.

Thus far the matter had been miraculously confined to the circle of railwaymen connected with it. A truly amazing solidarity united these people: they were silent. They communicated with each other by telling glances, specific gestures, and a play on well-chosen words. Thus far the public did not know anything about any problem.

Yet the restlessness of the railway employees and the nervousness of the officials had been gradually transmitted, creating a receptive soil for the sowing of secret conspiracies.

And ‘the problem’ was indeed strange and puzzling.

For a certain time there had appeared on the nation’s railways a train not included in any generally known register, not entered in the count of circulating locomotives—in a word, an intruder without patent or sanction. One could not even state what category it belonged to or from what factory it had originated, as the momentary brief space of time it allowed itself to be seen made any determination in this respect impossible. In any event, judging by the incredible speed with which it moved before the dumbfounded eyes of onlookers, it had to occupy a very high standing among trains: at the very least it was an express.