The Raven Post

The express continental from Paris to Madrid rushed with all the force its pistons could muster. The hour was already late, the middle of the night; the weather was wet, showery. The beating rain lashed the brightly lit windows and was scattered on the glass in teary beads. Bathed in the downpour, the coaches glittered under roadside lamp-posts like wet armour, spewing sprightly water from their mouldings. A hollow groan issued forth into space from their black bodies, a confused chatter of wheels, jostling buffers, mercilessly trampled rails. Frenzied in its run, the chain of coaches awakened sleeping echoes in the quiet night, enticed dead voices along the woods, revived slumbering ponds. Some type of heavy, drowsy eyelids were raised, some large eyes opened in consternation, and so they remained in momentary fright. And the train sped on in a strong wind, in a dance of autumn leaves, pulling after it an extended swirling funnel of startled air, while smoke and soot clung lazily to its rear; the train rushed breathlessly on, hurling behind it the blood-red memory of sparks and coal refuse….

In one of the first-class compartments, squeezed in the corner between the wall and an upholstered backrest, dozed a man in his forties of strong, Herculean build. The subdued lamplight that filtered with difficulty through the drawn shade lit up his long, carefully shaved face and revealed his firmly set, thin lips.

He was alone; no one interrupted his sleepy reveries. The quiet of the closed interior was disturbed only by the knocking of wheels under the floor or the flickering of gas in the gas-bracket. The red colour of the plush cushions imbued a stuffy, sultry tone about the area that acted soporifically like a narcotic. The soft, yielding material muffled sounds, deadened the rattle of the rails, and surrendered in a submissive wave to the pressure of any weight. The compartment appeared to be plunged into deep sleep: the curtains drawn on ringlets lay dormant, the green net spread under the ceiling swung lethargically. Rocked by the car’s steady motion, the traveller leaned his weary head on a headrest and slept. The book that had been in his hands slipped from his knees and fell to the floor. On a binding of delicate, dark-saffron skin the title was visible: Crooked Lines; near that, impressed with a stamp, the name of the book’s owner: Tadeusz Szygon.

At some moment the sleeper stirred; he opened his eyes and swept them about his surroundings. For a second an expression of amazement was reflected on his face, and an effort at orientation. It seemed as if the traveller could not understand where he was and why he found himself there. But almost immediately a wry smile of forbearing resignation came to his lips. He raised his large, powerful hand in a gesture of surrender, and then an expression of dejection and contemptuous disdain passed over his face. He fell back into a half-sleepy state…

Steps were heard in the corridor; the door was pulled back and a conductor entered the compartment.

“Ticket, please.’

Szygon did not move a muscle; he showed no sign of life. Assuming he was asleep, the conductor came up and grasped him by the shoulder.

‘Pardon me, sir; ticket, please.’

With a faraway look in his eyes, the traveller glanced at the intruder.

‘Ticket?’ he yawned out casually. ‘I don’t have one yet.’

‘Why didn’t you buy it at the station?’

‘I don’t know.’

“You’re going to have to pay a fine.’

‘F-fine? Yes,’ he added, ‘T’ll pay it.’

“Where did you get on? Paris?’

‘I don’t know.’

The conductor became indignant.

‘What do you mean you don’t know? You’re making fun of me, my dear sir. Who should know?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Let’s assume that I got on at Paris.’

‘And to what destination should I make the ticket out for?’

‘As far as possible.’

The conductor looked carefully at the passenger.

‘I can only give you a ticket as far as Madrid; from there you can transfer to any train you like.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ replied Szygon with a disregardful wave of his hand. ‘As long as I just keep on riding.’

‘I will have to give you your ticket later. I must first draw it up and estimate the fine with the price.’

‘As you wish.’

Szygon’s attention suddenly became riveted by the railway insignias on the conductor’s collar: several jagged littke wings woven in a circle. As the sardonically smiling conductor was preparing to leave, Szygon sensed that he had already seen that face, twisted in a similar grimace, a few times before. Some fury tore him from his place, and he threw out a warning.

‘Mr Wings, watch out for the draught!’

‘Please be quiet; I’m closing the door.’

‘Watch out for the draught,’ Szygon repeated stubbornly. ‘One can sometimes break one’s neck.’

The conductor was already in the corridor.

‘He’s either crazy or drunk,’ he remarked under his breath, passing into the next car.

Szygon remained alone.

He was in one of his famous ‘flight’ phases. On any given day, this strange person found himself, quite unexpectedly, several hundred miles from his native Warsaw and somewhere at the other end of Europe—in Paris, in London, or in some third-rate little town in Italy. He would wake up, to his extreme surprise, in an unknown hotel that he looked at for the first time in his life. How he came to be in such strange surroundings, he was never able to explain. The hotel staff, when questioned, generally measured the tall gentleman with a curious, sometimes sarcastic glance and informed him of the obvious state of things—that he had arrived the day before on the evening or morning train, had eaten supper, and ordered a room. One time some wit asked him if he also needed to be reminded under what name he had arrived. The malicious question was, after all, completely legitimate: a person who could forget what had occurred the previous day could also forget his own name. In any event, there was in Tadeusz Szygon’s improvised rides a certain mysterious and unexplained feature: their aimlessness, which entailed a strange amnesia towards everything that had occurred from the moment of departure to the moment of arrival at an unknown location. This emphatically attested to the phenomenon being, at the very least, puzzling.

After his return from these adventurous excursions, life would go on as before. As before, he would ardently frequent the casino, lose his money at bridge, and make his renowned bets at horse races. Everything went along as it always had—normal, routine, and ordinary. Then, on a certain morning, Szygon would disappear once again, vanishing without a trace.

The reason for these flights was never made clear. 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 g*psy 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 My isiy%

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. What nerve! What fantasy! At the sight of these markings, Szygon frequently had the urge to tear them off and replace them with a likeness of a dog chasing its own tail….

His cigar glowed peacefully, filling the compartment with small clouds of bluish smoke. Little by little the fingers holding the cigar loosened lazily and the fragrant Trabuco rolled under the seat, spattering a rocket of tiny sparks. Szygon fell asleep….

A fresh release of steam in the pipes lisped quietly under his feet, spreading a pleasant, cozy warmth about the compartment. A mosquito, unusual for the season, hummed a faint song, made a few nervous circles, and hid itself in a dark recess among plush protuberances. And once again there was only the gentle flicker of the gas-burner and the rhythmic clatter of wheels….

At some time during the night Szygon awoke. He rubbed his forehead, changed his sleeping position, and glanced about the compartment. To his surprise and displeasure he noticed that he was not alone: he had a travelling companion. Opposite him, spread out comfortably on the cushions, sat a railway official puffing on a cigarette and impertinently exhaling the smoke in his direction. Beneath this person’s neglectfully unbuttoned jacket Szygon could see a velvet vest, and he was reminded of a certain stationmaster with whom he once had a fiery row. The railway official had, however, a familiar blood-red kerchief wrapped around his neck, just under a stiff collar with three stars and several winged circles, and this reminded Szygon of the insolent conductor who had irritated him earlier with his little smile.

‘What the devil?!’ he thought, carefully looking at the intruder’s physiognomy. ‘Why, quite clearly it’s the loathsome face of that conductor! The same emaciated, sunken cheeks, the same smallpox marks. But how did he get that rank and uniform?’

Meanwhile the ‘intruder’ apparently noticed the interest of his fellow traveller. He let out a cone of smoke and, after lightly brushing ashes from his sleeve, put his hand to the peak of his cap and greeted him with a very sweet smile.

‘Good evening!’

‘Good evening,’ Szygon answered dryly.

‘Have you been travelling far?’

‘At the moment I’m not in a social mood. I generally like to travel in silence. That’s why I usually choose a solitary compartment and pay a hefty gratuity for the pleasure.’

Undeterred by the blunt retort, the railwayman smiled delightfully and continued with great composure:

‘It doesn’t matter. You’ll slowly acquire the verve for speaking. It’s just a question of practice and habit. Solitude is, as is known, a bad companion. Man is a social animal—zoon politikon—isn’t that true?’

‘If you want to consider yourself an animal, I personally have nothing against it. 1 am just a man.’

‘Excellent!’ the official pronounced. ‘See how your tongue has loosened. It’s not as bad as it seems. On the contrary, you possess a great talent for conversation, particularly in the direction of parrying questions. We’ll slowly improve. Yes, yes,’ he added patronizingly, ‘somehow we’|l make a go of it; somehow.’

Szygon squinted his eyes suspiciously and studied the intruder.

After a moment of silence, the persistent railwayman continued: ‘Unless I’m mistaken we are old acquaintances. We’ve seen each other several times in the past.’

Szygon’s resistance slowly melted. The insolence of this person who insulted him with impunity, and for no apparent reason, disarmed him. He became interested in knowing more about this ‘stationmaster’.

‘It’s possible,’ he said, after clearing his throat. ‘Only it seems to me that until recently you wore some other uniform.’

At that moment a curious metamorphosis transformed the railwayman. The shirt with the glittering gold tinsel stars instantly disappeared, the red railway cap vanished, and now, instead of the kindly smiling stationmaster, the stooping, dishevelled, and sneering conductor, with his shabby jacket, and the ever-present bouquet of small lanterns attached to his person, sat opposite Szygon.

Szygon rubbed his eyes, involuntarily making a repelling gesture.

‘A transformation? Poof! Magic or what?!’

But already leaning towards him was the kindly ‘stationmaster’, equipped with all the insignias of his office, while the conductor had hidden himself inside the uniform of a superior.

‘Ah, yes,’ he replied casually, as if the process were nothing, ‘I’ve been promoted.’

‘I congratulate you,’ muttered Szygon, staring with amazement at the quick-change artist.

“Yes, yes,’ the other chatted away, ‘there “above” they know how to value energy and efficiency. They recognize a good person: I’ve become a stationmaster. The railway, my dear sir, is a great thing. It is worthwhile to spend one’s life in its service. A civilizing element! A swift go-between of nations, an exchange of cultures! Speed, my dear sir, speed and motion!’

Szygon disdainfully pursed his lips.

‘Mr Stationmaster,’ he underlined scoffingly, ‘you’re surely joking. What kind of motion? Under today’s conditions, with improved technology, that excellent locomotive, the so-called “Pacific Express” in America, runs at 200 kilometres an hour; if we grant in due time a further increase to 250 kilometres, even 300 kilometres—what of it? We are looking at an end result; despite everything, we haven’t gone out even a millimetre beyond the Earth’s sphere.’

The stationmaster smiled, unconvinced. ‘What more do you want, sir? A wonderful velocity! 200 kilometres an hour! Long live the railway!’

‘Have you gone crazy?’ asked Szygon, already furious.

‘Not at all. I gave a cheer to the honour of our winged patron. How can you be against that?’

‘Even if you were able to attain a record 400 kilometres—what is that in the face of absolute motion?’

‘What?’ said the intruder, pricking up his ears. ‘I didn’t quite get that— absolute motion?’

“What are all your rides, even with the greatest speed imaginable, even on the farthest extended lines, in comparison to absolute motion and the fact that, in the end, despite everything, you remain on the ground? Even if you could invent a devilish train that would circumvent the entire globe in one hour, eventually you’d return to the same point you started from: you are chained to the ground.’

‘Ha, ha!’ scoffed the railwayman. ‘You are certainly a poet, my dear sir. You can’t be serious?’

‘What kind of influence can even the most terrific, fabulous speed of an earthly train have on absolute motion and its effect?’

‘Ha, ha, ha!’ bellowed the amused stationmaster.

‘None!’ shouted Szygon. ‘It won’t change its absolute path by even an inch; it won’t change its cosmic route even by a millimetre. We are riding on a globe turning in space.’

‘Like a fly on a rubber ball. Ha, ha, ha. What thoughts, what concepts! You are not only a first-class conversationalist, but a splendid humorist as well.’

“Your pathetic train, your ant-like, frail train with its best, boldest “speed”, as you like to term it, relies—notice, I’m clearly underlining this—relies simultaneously on twenty relative motions, of which every one on its own is by far stronger and unquestionably more powerful than your miniature momentum.’

‘Hmm…interesting, most fascinating!’ derided the unyielding opponent. ‘Twenty relative motions—a substantial number.’

‘I’ve omitted the incidental ones which for certain no railwayman has even dreamed of, and will mention the principal, pivotal ones known to every schoolboy. A train rushing with the greatest fury from A to B has simultaneously to make a complete rotation with the Earth round its axis in a twenty-four hour period….’

‘Ha, ha, ha! That’s novel, absolutely novel.’

‘At the same time it whirls with the entire globe around the sun….’

‘Like a moth around a lamp.’

‘Spare me your jokes! They’re not interesting. But that’s not all. Together with the earth and the sun, the train goes along an elliptical line, relative to the constellation Centaurus, towards some unknown point in space to be found in the direction of the constellation Hercules.’

‘Philology at the service of astronomy. Parbleu! How profound!’

“You’re an idiot, my dear sir! Let’s move over to the incidental motions. Have you ever heard anything about the Earth’s processional motion?’

‘Maybe I’ve heard about it. But what does all this concern us? Long live the motion of a train!’

Szygon fell into a rage. He raised his mallet-like hand and let it drop forcefully on the scoffer’s head. But his arm cut only through air: the intruder had vanished somewhere; the space opposite was suddenly vacant.

‘Ha, ha, ha!’ chortled someone from the other corner of the compartment.

Szygon turned around and spotted the ‘stationmaster’ squatting between the headrest and the net; somehow he had contracted himself to a small size, and now looked like an imp.

‘Ha, ha, ha! Well? Will we be civil in the future? If you want to talk further with me, then behave properly. Otherwise, I won’t come down. A fist, my dear sir, is too ordinary an argument.’

‘For thick-headed opponents it’s the only one; nothing else can be as persuasive.’

‘I’ve been listening,’ the other drawled, returning to his old place, ‘I’ve been listening patiently for a quarter of an hour to your utopian arguments. Now listen a little to me.’

‘Utopian?!’ growled Szygon. “The motions I’ve mentioned are therefore fictitious?’

‘I don’t deny their existence. But of what concern are they to me? I’m only interested in the speed of my train. The only conclusive thing to me is the motion of engines. Why should I be concerned about how much forward I’ve moved in relation to interstellar space? One has to practical; I am a positivist, my dear sir.’

‘An argument worthy of a table leg. You must sleep well, Mr Stationmaster?’

‘Thank you, yes. I sleep like a baby.’

‘Of course. That’s easy to figure out. People like you are not tormented by the Motion Demon.’

‘Ha, ha, ha! The Motion Demon! You’ve fallen onto the gist of the matter! You’ve hit upon my profitable idea—actually, to tell the truth, not mine, but merely commissioned by me for a certain painter at our station.’

‘A profitable idea? Commissioned?’

‘Oh, yes. It concerns a prospectus for a couple of new railway branches —the so-called Veranuqunosbahnlinien. Consider this—a type of publicity or poster that would encourage the public to use these new lines of communication. And so some vignette, some picture was needed, something like an allegory, or symbol.’

‘Of motion?!’ Szygon paled.

‘Exactly. The aforementioned gentleman painted a mythical figure—a magnificent symbol that in no time swept through the waiting rooms of every Station, not only in my country, but beyond its borders. And because I endeavoured to get a patent and stipulated a copyright in the beginning, I haven’t done badly.’

Szygon raised himself from the cushions, straightening up to his full imposing height.

‘And what figure did your symbol assume, if it’s possible to know?’ he hissed in a choked, strange voice.

‘Ha, ha, ha! The figure of a genius of motion. A huge, swarthy young man balanced on extended raven wings, surrounded by a swirling, frenzied dance of planets—a demon of interplanetary gales, interstellar moon blizzards, wonderful, maddeningly hurling comets and more comets…’

“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.

 

Originally published 1919