The Motion Demon (7 page)

‘A herd!’ he spit out between his teeth. ‘As if the world depends on some Mr B. or some Mrs W. arriving “in time” from F to Z.’

Meantime, reality stood in striking contrast with Boron’s views. People still got on and off at stations, still pushed with the same fierceness, and always for those same practical reasons. But the conductor also retaliated against this at every opportunity.

In his area, which took in three to four cars, it was never crowded, that horrible infliction of the mob that destroyed the will to live in his colleagues and was a dark stain on the horizon of a conductor’s grey fate. What measures he used, what paths he took to reach this ideal, unrealized by others in his profession, no one knew. The fact remained that even in times of the greatest attendance, during the holidays, the interior of Boron’s cars betrayed a normal look; the passageways were clear and in the lobbies one breathed in fairly good air. Supernumerary seating and ‘standing room only’ spots the conductor did not accept. Severe with himself, fastidious in his job, he knew also how to be unyielding to travellers. Regulations he observed to the letter, at times with Draconian excess. Quibbling didn’t help, ruses, swindles, or the deft slipping into the hand of a bribe—Boron could not be bought. He even took legal action against several people who tried this; one individual he slapped around for the insult, managing to get off lightly before the railway authorities when the matter was brought up before them. Sometimes it would happen that in the middle of the ride, somewhere on some squalid stop, on some miserable little station, in an open field, he politely but firmly showed the door to a hoodwinking ‘guest’.

Only twice in the course of his long career did he come upon ‘worthy’ passengers who fulfilled his ideal of travellers to some extent.

One of these rare specimens was some nameless vagabond who, without a penny to his name, had occupied a first-class compartment. When Boron demanded his ticket, the ragamuffin explained that he didn’t need one because he was riding with no specific aim, just for the hell of it, from an innate necessity to move. The conductor not only acknowledged the reason, but also gave the compartment over to his exclusive use and took solicitous care of his guest’s comfort for the entire journey. He even treated him to half of his provisions and lit a pipe with him amidst a friendly chat on the subject of travel as change.

The second similar passenger he met several years ago between Vienna and Trieste. He was an individual named Szygon, apparently a landowner from the Kingdom of Poland. This sympathetic person, besides being certainly rich, had also sat down in a first class compartment. Asked where he was going, he answered that in point of fact he himself didn’t know where he got on, where he was bound for, and why.

‘In that case,’ Boron remarked, ‘perhaps it would be best if you got off at the nearest station.’

‘Eh, no,’ countered the unique passenger, ‘I can’t, upon my word, I can’t. I have to go forward; something is driving me on. Draw up a ticket to wherever it pleases you.’

The answer had charmed him to such a degree that he allowed the man to ride to the last station for free and didn’t bother him any more. This Szygon apparently had the reputation of being a lunatic, but, according to Boron, if he was mad at all, then it was a madness with panache.

Yes, yes—there still existed in this wide world splendid travellers, but what were these rare pearls in an ocean of riff-raff? At times he would return with longing to these two wonderful incidents in his life, caressing his soul with the memory of exceptional moments….

He inclined his head backwards and followed the movements of the blue-grey layers of pipe smoke hanging in the corridor. Above the rhythmic clatter of the rails was drawn out slowly the rapids of hot steam, driven through the pipes. He heard the gurgle of the water in the tank, he felt the warmth of its pressure along the edges of his utensils: the objects were warming up, for the evening was chilly.

The lamps at the top momentarily blinked their lighted eyelashes and died out. But not for long, for in the next moment the zealous regulator automatically injected a new dose of gas that fed the weakening burners. The conductor became aware of a specific, heavy scent, slightly reminiscent of fennel.

The conductor already knew what this meant; this was not the first time he had heard these steps in a train. He tilted his head and glanced into the dark car. There, at the end, where the wall broke off and retreated to the first-class compartments, he saw for a second his typically naked back—for a second that back flashed, taut as a bow and drenched in eyelash sweat.

Boron shuddered: The Sloven once again had turned up on a train.

He had noticed him the first time twenty years ago. It had been exactly an hour before the terrible catastrophe between Znicz and the Dukedom of Gaja, in which over forty people perished, not counting a great number of injured. The conductor was thirty-years old then and still strong-nerved. He remembered the details exactly, even the number of the unfortunate train. At the time he was conducting in the last cars and perhaps that is why he survived. Proud of his newly acquired promotion, he was taking home in one of the compartments his fiancée, his poor Kasienka, one of the victims of the disaster. In the middle of a conversation with her, he suddenly felt a strange unease: something was strongly drawing him out into the corridor. Unable to resist, he went out. At that moment he saw, at the exit of the car’s vestibule, the vanishing figure of the naked giant; his body, grimed with soot, drenched in a sweat dirty from coal, gave off a stifling odour: there was in it the smell of fennel, the stench of burning smoke, and the scent of grease.

Boron threw himself after this figure, wanting to intercept him, but the vision vanished before his eyes. He merely heard for some time the thud of naked feet on the floor—thud, thud, thud—thud, thud, thud….

Within an hour the train crashed into an express from the Dukedom of Gaja.

Since that time the Sloven had appeared before him two more times, each time as an announcement of a disaster. He saw him the second time several minutes before the derailment near Rawa. The Sloven was running on the car roofs and giving him signs with a stoker’s cap that he had snatched off a sleepy head. He looked less threatening than on that first occasion. And somehow there had been no loss of life, merely a few minor injuries.

Five years later, riding the passenger train to Bazek, Boron saw him between two cars of a freight train heading in the opposite direction and bound for Wierszyniec. The Sloven was squatting on a buffer and playing with the chains. His colleagues laughed at him when he drew their attention to what he had seen, calling him crazy. But the near future proved him correct: that very night the freight train, going over a bridge, tumbled into a chasm.

The Sloven’s omen was infallible: whenever he showed up, disaster was certain. These three experiences strengthened this conviction in Boron and shaped a deep belief connected with the Sloven’s portentous appearance. The conductor felt a professional, idolatrous veneration towards him, and feared him as a deity of evil and menace. He surrounded this vision with a special cult; he formed an original view of this being.

The Sloven resided in the organism of a train, filling its multi-segmented frame, pounding unseen in the pistons, sweating in the locomotive boiler, tramping along the cars. Boron sensed his proximity—a presence permanent, continuous, albeit not visible. The Sloven lurked in the soul of a train; he was its mysterious potency during times of danger: at the moment of a bad presentment, he disengaged from it, thickened, and assumed corporeal form.

The conductor considered it needless, even laughable, to oppose him; any potential endeavours to ward off a disaster he foretold would be futile, obviously in vain. The Sloven was like fate….

The renewed appearance of this oddity in the train, and right before the train’s final destination, put Boron in a state of great excitement. At any moment one could expect an accident.

He got up and began walking nervously along the corridor. From one of the compartments came the hubbub of voices, the laughter of women. He came closer and looked inside for a few seconds. He dampened the gaiety.

Something in the intonation of the answer struck the questioner. His eyes paused for a long moment on the conductor. Boron smiled mysteriously and passed on. The head disappeared back inside.

Another man exited from a second-class compartment and, unlocking the corridor window, looked through it at the space beyond. His confused movements betrayed a certain unease. He raised the window and withdrew to the opposite side, to the end of the lobby. Here he dragged on a cigarette several times and, throwing glances at the butt, went out to the platform. Boron saw his silhouette leaning against the safety bar in the direction of travel.

‘He’s examining the area,’ he muttered, smiling maliciously. ‘Nothing will help. Accidents will happen.’

Meanwhile the nervous passenger returned to the car. Spotting the conductor, he asked with forced calm: ‘Has our train already crossed with the express from Gron?’

‘Not yet. We’re expecting it at any moment. It’s possible that we’ll cross it at our final stop: it might be delayed. The express you’re referring to is coming from an adjacent line.’

At the moment, a loud rumble resounded from the right side. Beyond the window, a giant contour whisked by, belching flying sparks; after it, a chain of black boxes lit up with cutout quadrangles flashed by. Boron pointed in the direction of the already disappearing train.

It was already 9:45—in fifteen minutes they were scheduled to stop at Gron, the end of their ride. Along the way there was no bridge that could cave in; the only train coming from the opposite direction that they could have crashed into had been successfully passed. One should then expect a derailment or an accident at the station itself.

In any case, the Sloven’s prognosis had to come true—he was bound to it, he, Boron, the old conductor.

This didn’t concern the passengers, nor the train, nor his entire little self, but the infallibility of the barefooted oddity. Boron depended immensely on maintaining the Sloven’s dignity against sceptical conductors, on preserving the Sloven’s prestige in the eyes of unbelievers. The acquaintances to whom he had several times related the mysterious visits took the affair from a humouristic point of view, explaining the entire story as a hallucination, or, what was worse, the ramblings of someone who had drunk too much. This last conjecture hurt him especially, as he never imbibed in alcohol. Several railwaymen considered Boron a superstitious eccentric and not quite right in the head. Also called into play to a certain extent was his honour and healthy human reason. He would have preferred wringing his own neck than living through the Sloven’s failure….

In ten minutes it would be ten o’clock. He finished his pipe and went up some stairs to the top of the car, to a windowed cupola. From here, from the height of a crow’s nest, the surrounding area lay during the day like the palm of one’s hand. Now the world was plunged in dense darkness. Stains of light fell from the car windows, whose yellow eyes skimmed the embankment slopes. In front of him, at a distance of five cars, the engine sowed blood-red cascades of sparks, the chimney breathed out white-rose smoke. The black, twenty-jointed serpent glittered along its scaly sides, belched fire through its mouth, lit up the road with encompassing eyes. In the distance, the glow of a station was already visible.

As if sensing the nearness of the yearned-for stop, the train summoned all its strength and doubled its speed. Already the distance signal flashed phantom-like, set for clear passage, already semaphores were extending friendly arms in welcome. The rails started to duplicate, crossing in a hundred lines, angles, iron interweavings. As if in greeting, switch-signal lanterns to the right and left descended from the night shadows, station water-cranes, wells, heavy levers extended their necks.

Suddenly, several feet before the riotous locomotive, a red signal appeared. The engine threw out an abrupt whistle from its bronze throat, the brakes screeched, and the train, checked by the frenzied exertion of counter-steam, stopped right before the second switch signal.

Boron ran down and joined the flock of railwaymen who had got off to check the cause of the interruption in movement. The signal operator who had given the danger signal explained the situation. The first track, on which they were to ride, was temporarily occupied by a freight train. The switch had to be shifted and the train set onto the second track. Usually this manoeuvre is carried out at the signal-tower with the help of a lever. Meanwhile, however, the underground connection between it and the tracks had experienced some trouble, so the operator had to carry out the shifting outside with the aid of a key to get to the control switch.