The Raven Post

From the railway station at Brzan came the following dispatch to the stationmaster of Podwyz: ‘Be on the alert for express number ten! The engine driver is either drunk or insane.’

The stationmaster, a tall, bony blond with sandy sideburns, read the roll once, twice; he cut off the thin white ribbon that had spun out from the block and, coiling it in a ring around his finger, slipped it into his pocket. A quick glance thrown at the station clock informed him that there was still enough time for the train in question. So he yawned in boredom, nonchalantly lit up a cigarette, and went over to the adjoining room of the cashier, the fair-haired, squat Miss Feli, a casual ideal in moments of boredom and in anticipation of a better morsel.

While the stationmaster was so suitably preparing himself for the reception of the announced locomotive, the suspect train had already travelled a considerable distance beyond the Brzan station.

The hour was most wonderful. The hot June sun had past its zenith and was sowing golden rays throughout the earth. Villages and hamlets with flowery apple and cherry trees flashed by, meadows and haystacks were flung backward in green sheets. The train sped along at full steam: here it was snatched up by the arms of rustling pine and spruce forests, there, emerging from the embrace of trees, it was greeted by bowing grain fields. Far in the horizon, a misty blue line indicated a range of mountains….

Leaning against the flank of the engine, Grot set a steady glance through the little oval window at the space unreeling in a lengthy, grey course framed by the dark rails. The train crept along these rails lightly, predatorily, straddling them with an iron system of wheels and eagerly sweeping them underneath.

The engine driver felt an almost physical pleasure from this continual conquest, which, never satiated, lets go of the already fallen prey with disregard and speeds on to new conquests. Grot loved to vanquish space!

Looking intently at the line of track, he would frequently become thoughtful, contemplative, forgetful of the world, until his stoker had to tug at his arm and give notice that the pressure was too great for the station already close at hand. Yet Grot was a first-class engine driver.

He loved his occupation above all and would not have changed it for anything in the world. He had entered railway service relatively late, when he was thirty, but, despite this, he immediately displayed such a sure hand at running a locomotive that he quickly surpassed his more experienced comrades.

What he had been before, no one knew. When questioned, he would reluctantly answer this and that, or else remain stubbornly silent.

His colleagues and the railway authorities held him in evident respect, singling him out from others. In his brief words, parsimoniously distributed among people, he revealed an uncommon intelligence, a compelling sense of honour.

There were various, frequently contradictory rumours afloat about him and his past. Yet everyone held the unanimous opinion that Christopher Grot was a so-called stray individual, something of a fallen star, one of those who should have gone along a higher path, but, thanks to the fatalism of life, became stranded on the rocks.

He seemed unaware of this situation, however, and did not feel sorry for himself. He performed his duties willingly and never asked for vacations. Whether he had forgotten about what had once occurred, whether he did not feel called upon to attain higher aims—no one knew.

Two facts had been established from Grot’s past: the first, that he had served in the army during the Franco-Prussian campaign; the second, that he had lost his beloved brother at that time.

Despite all sorts of endeavours by the curious, no one was able to draw out any further details. Finally, people simply gave up, content with the meagre biographical bouquet of ‘Engineer Grot’. So they eventually called, for no specific reason, their taciturn fellow railwayman. This nickname— given him, incidentally, without any malicious intent—somehow blended so well with the person of the engine driver that even the authorities tolerated it in orders and decrees. In this manner people made note of his distinct character.

The machine worked hard, breathing out every moment puffs of fluffy, ruffled smoke. The steam, constantly fanned by the zealous hand of the stoker, was overflowing the blowpipes along the skeleton of the iron colossus, pushing valves, struggling with pistons, driving wheels. Rails rattled, gears creaked, frantic cranks and plates roared….

Momentarily, Grot woke up from his reveries and glanced at the pressure gauge. The needle, marking the arch, was nearing the fatal number thirteen.

“Release steam!’

The stoker stretched out his hand and pulled on the valve; a prolonged, piercing whistle resounded, while at the same time a tiny milk-white funnel bloomed from the side of the machine.

Grot folded his arms across his chest and once again sank into reveries.

‘“Engineer Grot” — ha, ha! A most accurate nickname! People don’t even suspect how accurate!’

Suddenly, the engine driver saw in the distant, hazy vista of years goneby a quiet, modest little house in a suburb of the capital. In the bright centre room stands a large table covered with piles of diagrams, strange drawings, technical sketches. Leaning over one of these is the flaxen head of Olek, his younger brother. Beside him stands he, Christopher, running his finger along a sapphire line circling elliptically over some mathematical plane. Olek nods, corrects something, explains….

This is their workshop—this is their secret interior from which was hatched the bold idea of an airplane that, flying freely about space, would have conquered the atmosphere and broadened man’s mind, lifting it to the beyond, to infinity. Not much more time was needed to finish off the work: a month, two months—three, at most. All of a sudden the war came, then recruitment, the march, a battle, and…death. Olek’s bright-haired head dropped to his blood-stained chest, his blue eyes closed forever….

Grot remembered that one moment, that horrible moment of scaling to the top of the enemy fort. Olek had dashed forward heroically and was seen from a distance at the front of the detachment. His drawn sabre was shaving with its blade cuttings of colourful proportion, his manly hand was seizing his flag-staff in a victorious grasp. Suddenly a flash came from the ramparts, a swirl of smoke jetted from the fort’s stronghold, a hellish explosion rocked the battlements. Olek reeled, wavered under the glimmering rainbow of the released sword, and tumbled down—on the threshold of battle plans, at the very moment of soldierly realizations, at the moment of reaching the goal….

His death affected Christopher badly. For many months Christopher Grot was laid up with malignant fever in a field hospital. Afterwards, he retumed to civilian life a broken man. He abandoned his old ideas, his revolutionary concepts, his plans of conquest: he became an engine driver. He sensed the compromise, he understood the travesty, but he had no more strength left; he was content to deal in miniature. Soon the substitute ideal completely replaced the original one, covering with its narrow, dull framework the previously wide horizon: he now conquered space on a new, smaller scale. But he had entreated the railway authorities for only express rides—he never drove ordinary trains. In this manner, gaining in this terrain, he at least came closer to the original concept. He was intoxicated with a wild ride on far-spanning lines, dazed by the conquest of considerable distances within a short period of time.

But he could not stand return journeys; he detested the so-called tourretour trips. Grot only liked speeding on to what was ahead of him—he loathed any repetitions. That is why he preferred to return to the inevitable point of departure by roundabout routes, by a line circular or elliptical, anything but the same one. He understood perfectly the deficiency of curves that revert back to themselves, he felt the unethicalness of these continually inbred roads, but was saved by the appearance of progressive motion; he had the illusion, at least, that he was going forward.

For Grot’s ideal was a frenzied ride in a straight line, without deviations, without circulations, a breathless, insane ride without stops, the whirling rush of the engine into the distant bluish mist, a winged run into infinity.

Grot could not bear any type of goal. Since the time of his brother’s tragic death a particular psychic complex had developed within him: dread before any aim, before any type of end, any limit. With all his might he fell in love with the perpetuality of constantly going forward, the toil of reaching ahead. He detested the realization of goals; he trembled before the moment of their fulfilment in fear that, in that last crucial moment, a disappointment would overtake him, a cord would break, that he would tumble down into the abyss—as had Olek years ago.

Because of this, the engine driver felt a natural dread of stations and pauses. Admittedly, he had few of them along his way, but they were always there, and one had to stop the train from time to time.

Eventually a station became for him a symbol of a detested end, a formative materialization of planned goals, that cursed aim before which he was seized with repugnance and fear.

The ideal line of track was broken down into a series of segments, each segment a closed unit from the point of departure to the point of arrival. A disappointing limitation arose, tight, banal in the fullest sense of the word: here—there. On the taut, wonderful projection into boundlessness there were dull junctions and stubborn kinks that spoiled momentum, tainted fury.

For the time being he saw no help anywhere: from the nature of things a train had to halt once in a while at some loathsome stops.

And when the contours of a station’s buildings appeared on the horizon, he fell into an indescribable dread and disgust; the hand raised over the crank would draw back involuntarily, and he would have to use the entire strength of his will not to pass the station.

Finally, when his inner opposition grew to an unprecedented pitch, he came upon a happy idea: he decided to introduce a certain freedom to the range of the goal by moving its boundary points. Thanks to this, the concept of a station, losing a lot of its exactness, became something general, something lightly sketched and most elastic. This shifting of the boundaries granted a certain freedom of movement, it did not completely muzzle the brake. The stopping points, acquiring the character of fluidity, transformed the name of the station into a vague, cavalier, almost fictional term with which one did not have to reckon as much; in a word, a station given such a wide understanding, submitting to the engine driver’s interpretation, was now less threatening, though still abhorrent.

It therefore became a question, above all, of never stopping the train at the place marked by regulations, but always to lean out beyond or before it.

Grot initially proceeded with utmost caution, so as not to awaken the suspicions of officials; the deviations were at first so slight that no one paid any attention. Wanting, however, to strengthen within himself a feeling of freedom, the engine driver introduced a certain diversity: one time he would stop too early, the other time too late—these shifts vacillated from one side to the other.

But eventually this caution began to irritate him; his freedom seemed a sham, an illusion, something in the manner of a self-deception; the calm spread over the faces of stationmasters, not befuddled by surprise, annoyed him, awakening the spirit of contrariness and rebellion. Grot became audacious. The variations became stronger with each day; the range grew and intensified.

Already yesterday the stationmaster at Smaglowa, a grizzly fellow with constant half-open eyes like an old fox, had been squinting suspiciously at the train that had stopped a good distance from the station. Grot even thought that the stationmaster had muttered something, while motioning in his direction. But somehow he got away scot free.

The engine driver had rubbed his hands and rejoiced: ‘They’ve noticed!’

Leaving Wrotycz at daybreak, he decided to double the stakes.

‘I wonder in what proportion will these gentlemen’s irritation rise?’ he thought, releasing the spigot into motion. ‘I would suppose to the nth degree.’

Somehow his conjecture did not fall short of expectation. This day’s entire trip would be one uninterrupted series of disturbances.

It began in Zaszum, the first major stop on the line, which he had intended to pass. Smiling maliciously under his moustache, he stopped the train a kilometre before the station. Leaning against the engine’s sill, Grot lit his pipe, and, puffing on it leisurely, he observed with interest the amazed faces of the conductors and the chief supervisor, who could not explain the behaviour of the engine driver. Several passengers tilted out their startled heads and glanced to the right and to the left, undoubtedly thinking some obstacle had hindered the train’s movement. Finally the stationmaster ran up and asked what was happening.

‘Why didn’t you come up to the platform? No obstruction was signalled; everything is in order.’

Grot slowly let out a large, dense puff of smoke, and not removing the pipe from his lips, he eased out coolly through his teeth:

‘Hmm… is that so? It seemed to me that the switch was badly set. It doesn’t pay to drive up this short distance: my old lady is a little out of breath.’ He tenderly tapped the barrel of the furnace. ‘Besides, the passengers are getting off by themselves—see for yourself—ah, there’s one, two; there goes an entire family.’

Indeed. Tired of waiting, the passengers were beginning to abandon the cars, and stooping from the weight of bundles and luggage, they were making their way to the station. With an ironical glance Grot followed their movement, not giving a thought to changing his tactic.

The stationmaster frowned slightly and, giving up on the situation, reprimanded Grot upon parting.

‘In the future try straining your eyes better!’

The engine driver dismissed the rebuke with contemptuous silence. A couple of minutes later, ignoring the station, the train was gliding along on its journey.

At Brzan, the next station stop, almost the identical story repeated itself, the only difference being that this time Grot fancied stopping the train a kilometre beyond the station. Here he did as he pleased and did not go back to the platform. He noticed, however, before he moved on, the supervisor of the train whispering something intently to the stationmaster. Grot realized from their glances and gestures that he was the subject of the conversation, but pretended not to notice. He was amused, though, by the characteristic ‘he’s crazy’ circle drawn on the forehead by the finger of the red-capped official. Shortly thereafter, he was speeding along at full steam, unaware that the telegraph in Brzan was warning the station authorities at Podwyz.

And he was not far from that city. The late-afternoon sky was already lined by the golden crosses of churches, coils of smoke were passing over a sea of roofs, factory spires were cracking sharply. Already one could see in the distance the track system intersecting, a forest of switches darkening the area, the distance marker.

Grot grasped the crank vigorously, set the lever, turned the brake; the engine let out a plaintive complaint, part moan, part whistle; it spit out through its ribs a mighty waterfall of steam and settled down in place: the train stood a good one and a half kilometres before the station.

Grot withdrew his hand from the taps and studied the effect. He did not have to wait long. The already-biased stationmaster sent out a junior-ranking comrade in the role of a parliamentarian.

The young man had a stern, almost compressed expression. He straightened himself up, stiffly pulled on his service jacket, and ceremoniously ascended to the engine platform.

‘Drive up to the station!’

Grot silently grasped the crank, set the pistons in motion: the train moved.

The assistant, proud of his triumphant accomplishment, crossed his arms Napoleonically and, turning scomnfully away from the engine driver, lit a cigarette.

But his success was illusory. For the train, ignoring the platform, roared on, and instead of stopping at the station, it travelled a considerable distance beyond it, only to halt there for a rest, puffing out all its steam.

At first the official was unaware of what had occurred; only when he noticed the station building behind his left side did he advance threateningly towards the engine driver.

‘Have you gone crazy? Stopping a train in an open field! Either you’re mad or you’ve been drinking too much today! Go back instantly!’

Grot did not budge, he did not move from his place. The official shoved him roughly away from the furnace, and taking his post, he let go of the counter steam; after a moment the train drew back puffingly to the platform.

Grot did not interfere. Some particular apathy overpowered his movements, fettered his hands. He looked blankly at the faces of the rail service, functionaries and clerks who had flocked around his engine; he passively allowed himself to be pulled down from the platform—like an automaton he followed a summoning official.

After a couple of minutes he found himself in the station office, in front of a large, green wool-covered table where apparatuses were incessantly snapping in nervous jolts, long ribbons were spinning out from blocks, little bells were fluttering.

The stationmaster would interrogate him. The clerk sitting by his side dipped his pen in ink and waited anxiously for the questions that would fall from his supervisor’s lips.

Somehow they fell.

‘Name?’

‘Christopher Grot.’

‘Age?’

‘Thirty-two.’

‘At what time did you depart Wrotycz?’

“This morning at 4:54.’

‘Did you inspect the engine before taking over the train?’

‘I inspected it.’

‘Do you remember its serial and number?’

Across Grot’s face flashed a strange smile:

‘I remember. Serial: zero; number: infinity.’

The stationmaster glanced knowingly at his transcribing colleague. ‘Please write down the numbers you’ve just given me on this piece of paper.’

The stationmaster slipped him a sheet of paper and a pencil.

Grot shrugged his shoulders.

‘Certainly.’

And he drew two separate signs:

0∞

The stationmaster glanced at the numbers, shook his head, and continued with the questioning:

‘The number of the trailer?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘That’s bad, very bad—an engine driver should know such things,’ he opined sententiously.

‘What is your stoker’s name?’ he asked after a brief pause.

‘Blazej Midget.’

‘The forename is correct, but the surname is wrong.’

‘I’ve told the truth.’

“You’re mistaken; his name is Blazej Sad.’

Grot waved his hand indifferently.

“That could be. To me, his name is Midget.’

Once again the stationmaster exchanged a meaningful glance with his companion.

“The conductor’s name?’

‘Stanislaw Ant.’

The examiner held back with difficulty an outburst of laughter.

‘Ant, you say? Ant? Ah, that’s good one! That’s fabulous— Ant?!’

“Yes. Stanislaw Ant.’

‘No, Mr Grot. The name of the conductor of your train is Stanislaw Zywiecki. Again you are mistaken.’

The recording clerk leaned his pomaded head towards his chief and whispered in his ear.

‘Stationmaster, this person is either drunk or a bit touched.’

‘It seems the latter,’ answered the official, clearing his throat; after which, he turned back to the culprit with a new question.

‘Are you married?’

‘No.’

‘Did you have anything to drink before your departure?’

‘I detest alcohol.’

‘How many hours have you been at work?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘You don’t feel tired?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Why did you not stop your train four consecutive times at the designated place before a station?’

Grot was silent. He could not, he did not want to reveal this for anything in the world.

‘I’m waiting for an answer.’

The engine driver hung his head in gloom.

The stationmaster raised himself solemnly from the desk and pronounced judgment.

‘Now you’ll go and get some sleep. A colleague will replace you. I’m suspending you for the time being; it’s possible that you’ll be asked back sometime in the future. Meanwhile, I would advise you to seek a doctor’s care as soon as possible. You’re seriously ill.’

Grot turned white, he staggered. The affair took on a tragic character. From the stationmaster’s facial expression, the tone and content of his words, he realized that he was considered a madman. He understood that he had lost his position, that he had stopped being an engine driver.

‘Stationmaster, I am completely healthy,’ he moaned out, wringing his hands. ‘I can drive on.’

‘That’s out of the question, Mr Grot. I cannot entrust the fate of several hundred people to you. Do you know that you almost were the cause of a collision today? You rode up too far, reaching a point where a crossing would have occurred with the Czerniaw passenger train. If your assistant hadn’t moved back your train, a collision would surely have resulted. The already signalled-forward train arrived two minutes late. You are not fit for duty, Mr Grot. You first have to undergo treatment. Besides, we are finished. Please leave the premises.’

With a heavy, leaden step Grot exited the room; he tramped the platform, halting and reeling like a drunkard, and dragged himself along railway warehouses.

His skull was bursting with a dull pain, his heart sobbed despair. He had lost his post.

It did not matter about the paltry several dozen pieces of coin, a job or a position—what mattered was the engine, without which he did not know how to live. It concerned the invaluable, solely available means with which he could grapple with space, with which he could speed to obscure distances. With the loss of his post the ground was removed from under him, and the black, fathomless abyss of a purposeless life opened up.

Attacked by a choking pain in his larynx, he passed the warehouses; he passed the bridge, the tunnel, and mechanically went onto the tracks.

He was already far from the station. Stumbling at every step against the timbered groundwork that crossed the rails, bumping into switches, Grot wandered among the coldly glittering iron.

Suddenly he heard behind him a heavy groan, he felt the trembling of the earth under his feet. He turned around and slowly became aware of a gliding, detached engine.

He took it in with the eye of an expert, ascertained the abundance of the trailer, and joyfully noticed the absence of the stoker.

A decision as quick as a flash, as a flicker of an eyelid, throbbed in his troubled brain and ripened immediately.

With a careful, predatory step, a stalking step like a panther’s, he went to the side of the iron monster and in one spring jumped to the platform.

The movement was so sudden and unexpected that it stupefied the driver of the engine. Before the driver could orient himself to the situation created by his new guest, Grot gagged his mouth with a kerchief, fettered his hands crosswise, and, laying him on the engine’s floor, pushed him from the running-board towards the earth.

Dealing with this in the course of several minutes, Grot then took over his predecessor’s place by the furnace.

A titanic joy was bursting in his heart—a cry of triumph erupted from his chest. He was once again at the controls!

He pressed the spigots, tugged on the steam, turned the whining crank. The engine, as if sensing the hand of a master, quivered at being employed; it coughed with a robust, parting whistle, and moved forth into the wide world. Grot went insane from intoxication. Emerging from the labyrinth of rails, he entered the main track that sped along straight ahead like an arrow and swooped forward into space!

A gale-like speed commenced, unhampered by anything, uninterrupted by stops or monotonous halts. Grot passed indistinct stations like lightning, he flashed by indistinct towns like a demon, flew through indistinct halting places like a hurricane. Without pause he scooped coals with a shovel, threw them into the furnace; he fed the fire, compressed the steam. Like a man possessed, he ran from trailer to furnace, from furnace to trailer; he checked the water level on the meter, he inspected the steam pressure.

He saw nothing, he thought nothing—he only drank in speed, he only lived for rushing motion, he plunged himself into the gigantism of momentum. He lost count of time, what part of day it was, what hour. He did not know how long the hellish ride had lasted so far—a day, two days, or a week….

The engine ran riot. The wheels, frenzied with speed, carried out unattainable, fantastically swift revolutions; the over-strained pistons retracted, then eagerly pushed forward again; the possessed, breathless copper bins rattled. The needle on the pressure gauge went continually up— the red-hot furnace belched out fire, scorched the skin, burned the palms. That’s nothing! More! Further on! Faster! Full speed ahead! Full speed ahead!

A new heap of coal vanished into the abyss of the furnace and spattered a bunch of blood-like sparks—a new jet of steam shot blazing heat into melting pipes….

Grot fixed his feverish eyes on the ruby mouth of the furnace and drank in its swelter, sucked in its blood….

Suddenly—something surged, something hooted with a devilish whine —an explosion resounded, as if from a thousand cannons, thunder roared, as if from a hundred lightning bolts…. A fiery, entangled cloud burst forth, a confused column of fragments, iron hulls, bent sheet metal. Under the sky sputtered a rocket of bits and pieces, ripped-apart spans, blown-up bells….

The pall of night was rent asunder by Grot’s crimson end.

 

Originally published 1919