The Raven Post

A small, nervous man in a threadbare coat, travelling suitcase in hand, forced his way through the crowds filling the station hall at Snowa. He seemed in a great hurry, elbowing roughly the peasant herds and throwing himself like a diver into the whirl of human bodies, as, from time to time, he fixed an uneasy glance at the clock reigning over the sea of heads.

It was already a quarter to four in the afternoon; in ten minutes the train for K. would be leaving. High time to buy a ticket and find a seat.

Finally, after superhuman exertions, Mr Agapit Kluczka forced his way through to the cashier area to stand in line and patiently wait his turn. But the slow movement forward, a step per minute, made him most restless, and soon those around him noticed a distressing tendency on his part to rush the travellers. Eventually, breathless, red like a beet, with drops of sweat covering his face, Kluczka reached the desired window. At this point, however, something unusual occurred. Instead of ordering a ticket, Kluczka opened his wallet, explored its interior, muttered something under his nose, and departed through the exit passage from the cashier.

One of the travellers, whose toe Kluczka had stepped on quite heavily during his trip to the window, noticed with no small indignation the whole puzzling manoeuvre and did not fail to berate him as he was leaving:

“You’re crowding and pushing forward like a madman. One would think, God knows, that you’re in a great hurry—and yet you leave the cashier without a ticket! Pooh! Crazy, crazy! Perhaps you left your house without taking any money?’

But Kluczka’s mind was elsewhere. Having symbolically ‘acquired’ a ticket, he rushed with a nervous step through the waiting room to the platform. Here, a throng of passengers was already awaiting the arrival of the train. Kluczka walked impatiently back and forth along the platform a couple of times, and then, offering an open cigarette case to a porter, asked:

‘Is the train late?’

‘Only by a quarter of an hour,’ the railwayman informed him, taking out with a smile a cigarette from the row offered him. ‘It should arrive in two minutes. So, sir, are you finally going to take your train ride to Kostrzan?’ he asked, winking his eye playfully.

Kluczka became somewhat confused; his face reddened, and, turning on his heel, he trotted lightly beyond the second track. The porter, who knew him well, shook his head indulgently, waved his hand, and, taking his spot by the entrance to the waiting room, began to drag at his cigarette with pleasure.

Meanwhile, the train arrived. The wave of travellers swayed with unanimous rhythm, hurrying to the cars. So began a typical bousculade, the tripping over packages, the squeezing through the throngs—a crush, a hubbub, a tumult.

With the wild energy of an experienced player, Kluczka threw himself into the midst of the first line of attackers; along the way he knocked down a grey-haired old woman making her way to a compartment with two huge bundles; he toppled a nanny with an infant, and gave a black eye to some elegantly dressed gentleman. Unperturbed by the downpour of curses that fell upon him from the direction of his victims, Kluczka triumphantly entered onto the steps leading to a second-class car, and in one sprightly spring found himself in a long, narrow corridor. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, smiled victoriously, and glanced maliciously at the surging flocks of passengers below. But after five minutes of delight at being in an ‘occupied’ space, he heard the whistle for departure and on his face a sudden transformation occurred: Kluczka became alarmed. And before the final response from a bugle, signalling departure, he grabbed his suitcase from the net, flashed like lightning by the backs of the amazed travellers, and got out through the back door facing the warehouses opposite the station.

At that moment, the train moved. Above Mr Kluczka’s head the windows and the dark-green and black torsos of the cars began to pass by at an ever greater tempo; from one of the compartments the malicious head of some rascal leaned out, who, sighting the helpless standing man below, thumbed his nose derisively at him. Finally, the last car went by, and closing off the chain of its comrades with its wide, black back, it quickly slid out into the world. Kluczka looked for a moment with a plaintive glance at the disappearing train and lowered his suitcase sluggishly, in an intense image of resignation and grief. Then, under the crossfire of the ironical glances of the railroad functionaries, he dragged himself back to the waiting room.

Here the rows of waiting customers were dissipated; the main contingent had flowed out with train; the remaining passengers were waiting for a locomotive that ran on a side line, going south, in the direction of the mountains. There was plenty of time left: the next train was leaving after six in the evening.

Kluczka took a comfortable seat in the corner of the hall, blocked himself in with his suitcase, which he placed on the table opposite him, and taking out of his pocket a small packet, he started to partake of his modest afternoon snack. He felt comfortable in this snug nook, hidden in the darkness that was beginning to reach feebly into the hall here and there. He lazily straightened out his legs, leaned against the arm of the plush settee, and with complete pleasure gave himself over to absorbing the atmosphere of the waiting room and the station.

Mr Agapit Kluczka, by profession a judiciary clerk, was a passionate devotee of the railroad and travel. The environment of the railroad acted like a narcotic upon him, thrilling his entire being. The smell of smoke, locomotives, the sour scent of gas light, the specific stuffiness of the smoke and soot spilling out to the station corridors turned his head deliciously, dazed his consciousness and the clarity of his thinking. Had it not been for the wretched state of his health, he would have become a conductor so that he could ride continually from one end of the country to the other. He was immensely jealous of the constant vigour of railroad functionaries, that neverending jumping from the train to the ground, from the ground to the train, riding and riding without a break until the day a wooden coffin would come. Unfortunately fate had rooted him to a little green table, tied him with a cord of boredom to piles of dust-covered deeds and papers. A law clerk….

He glanced once again in the depths of his wallet and with a bitter smile slipped it back to his pocket.

‘Thirty zlotys,’ he whispered out with a sigh, ‘and today is just the 5th. If it weren’t for this cursed money situation, I could have been at Kostrzan before the night arrived, together with all those lucky ones.’

The thought of such an occurrence transferred him in one leap to the noisy environment of the Kostrzan station, plunging him into the tumult of voices, the chaos of signals, and the shiver of bells. From under his closed eyelids rolled out slowly two large silent tears that fell onto his short reddish moustache… .

Suddenly he came to. He rubbed his eyes quickly, twirled up his moustache, and straightening himself in the settee, he looked about the waiting room. He was met by the usual boredom of stations yawning with the contemplative grey monotony of repeated occurrences. The quiet of the hall was maybe broken from time to time by the dry cough of a consumptive, the heavy, traversing gait of a bored passenger, or the murmur of well-behaved children by the window asking something of their parents. The figures of the functionaries moved at times beyond the windows of the waiting room, or the red stain of a railway official’s cap flitted by. Somewhere from a distance came the hysterical whistle of a soaring engine….

Kluczka focused his glance on the closest neighbour to his left, an old Jew—dozing in his gabardine for an hour in the same position.

‘Going far?’ he started the conversation.

The Jew, excavated from his sleepy meditations, looked at him reluctantly, drowsily.

“To Rajbrod,’ he yawned out, stroking his long ginger beard.

‘So you’re going south, towards the mountains. I’m also going in that direction. Beautiful scenery! Just ravines, forests, foothills. But one has to be very vigilant during the ride,’ he added, changing from an enthusiastic to a cautionary tone.

‘And why is that?’ asked the perturbed Jew.

‘That region is a bit dangerous; you see, sir, there are always these forests, mountains, ravines. Apparently, from time to time, robbers turn up.’

‘Aj, aj,’ groaned out the Orthodox Jew.

‘Well—not frequently—but caution can never hurt,’ calmed Kluczka. ‘It’s best to ride in one of the middle cars and not inside a compartment but in the corridor.’

‘Why, sir?’

‘It’s easier to get out if something happens; a quicker means of escape. Through the window—hop!—into the fields, and you’re gone!’

Kluczka brightened up considerably and, eyes sparkling with gusto, he started to unfold before his fellow passenger images of the potential dangers that could threaten travellers in that area. Kluczka was passing through a ‘warning phase’, or, as he liked to call it, ‘a position as a danger signal’. It was the first interlude, as it were, which was always played out in the waiting room, to which he returned after carrying out the first symbolic ride to K. Usually the victim of this ominous constellation of Kluczka’s soul was the closest fellow traveller, male or female, who chanced to be in his proximity. Kluczka exerted himself into thinking of a thousand possible and impossible dangers, which he painted most artistically with the irresistible strength of his suggestion. And not just once would he get an unusual result; several times after such a conversation some terrified Honourable Lady would cancel her trip, delaying it until ‘more peaceful times’, or, if the ride was unavoidably necessary, with a devout sigh she would slip an envelope containing an offering inside the railway moneybox that bore the sign: ‘For a Safe Journey’….

The impulses that directed Kluczka in his warning phase were of a nature quite complex and unclear. Unquestionably, a certain role was played here by a desire of vengeance against the ‘lucky ones’, as he called those travellers who were riding ‘in truth’—a desire deeply latent in his heart, one to which he would reluctantly have admitted; at the same time, other feelings were called into play, giving the entire tangle a special atmosphere. In spreading out before his victims’ eyes the potential dangers of a train trip, Kluczka experienced together with them these intense experiences, attaining in this manner a surrogate perception of riding. Thus this warning phase was mixed in with his longings and impressions of travel, and train travel was his primary concern….

The station clock tolled the sixth hour. In the hall movement started. Sleepy passengers leaned out from corners and, shaking off their drowsiness, they nervously grabbed their luggage, making their way to the glass doors leading to the platform.

Kluczka broke off in the middle of his sentence, adjusted his coat, straightened up, and with a bouncy step neared the departure gate. The porter retreated under the onrush of impatient customers, withdrawing to the depths of the platform. The crowds poured outside, carrying with them the already irritated Kluczka. Shoving his way through the doors, Kluczka was met by the ironic glance of a functionary, but he pretended to be too distracted to notice.

‘Damn it!’ he thought, overtaking some gentleman. The train had already ridden up with bravado before the station, throwing lengthy white funnels of steam off to the sides.

Since the crush was less this time, Kluczka easily occupied an excellent first-class seat and settled comfortably in the red plush cushions. Because the train he was on crossed with the express from F., it stopped for a longer than usual length of time at Snowa, and Kluczka could surrender to the illusion of a symbolic ride in the direction of the mountains for a good half hour. But when the anticipated express flew by and disappeared in the distance in the midst of clouds of smoke, Kluczka imperceptibly took down his suitcase from the net and furtively slipped to the steps leading to the outside. When a minute later the departing wail of a bugle sounded, he ran unnoticed by anyone down the steps and found himself again in the waiting room. Along the way he once more paid off with a cigarette the porter, Wawrzyszyn, who was looking into his eyes a little insolently. In general, the poor wretch had from time to time to pay off the railroad service, so that it would look through its fingers at his caprices. He was well-known at the station under the nickname ‘the perpetual passenger’ and also another, less flattering one, ‘the harmless madman’.

Meanwhile the train departed and the second interval began. The waiting room had become deserted. The next passenger train in the direction of D. was due at ten at night; people weren’t in a rush to get to the station.

The station was filled with late-afternoon boredom and reveries: grey spider threads began to spread along empty benches and yawn in recesses and corners. Under the ceiling of the hall roamed a few flies, buzzing monotonously, and with a strange stubbornness circling about a large, hanging chandelier. Outside the windows the first lights of switch signals flashed and bright streams from electric glass balls invaded the interior. In the dimness of the closed waiting room the solitary silhouette of the law clerk could be seen, somewhat hunched, bent, laid low to the ground….

By the light from the platform, Kluczka studied a frayed old timetable; he searched out fictional train connections. Finally, his face flushed, he marked out most precisely the route that he promised to himself to carry out ‘in truth’ around Easter when he would obtain a two-week vacation and a holiday supplement from his pension.

Finished with his calculations, he was looking one more time at his tiny, precise notations when the hall suddenly brightened up; from under the ceiling five electric bowls shot out their beams, from the walls jetted several light-yellow projections: the waiting room took on an evening atmosphere. The door handles of the nearby door moved to the inside and into the hall came several travellers. The previous mood was blown away irrevocably. Everything became bright as if in broad daylight.

Kluczka took his usual place of observation in the shadows of a heater; close by sat a woman of undetermined age. She seemed nervous, the corners of her mouth twitching and her movements fidgety. Kluczka felt very sorry for her all of a sudden and decided to calm his uneasy neighbour.

‘Madam,’ he said, leaning to the lady and assuming an expression of near seraphic sweetness, ‘you must be completely surrendering to a traveller’s mood?’

The woman, caught off guard, looked at him a little strangely.

‘Madam,’ explained Kluczka in a silken voice, ‘you are simply suffering from the so-called “railroad fever”. I am familiar with this, my dear lady, very familiar. Even though I am used to the railroad environment, I cannot master myself over it to this day. It constantly affects me with the same strength.’

The woman looked at him kindly.

‘To tell the truth, I do feel a little agitated; maybe not so much by the ride that awaits me, but by the uncertainty of how I’ll manage after I arrive at my destination. I’m not familiar at all with the town I have to go to, I don’t know to whom to turn, where to spend the night. I’m concerned about those first, exceedingly anxious moments immediately after one arrives.’

Kluczka rubbed his hand in satisfaction: the lady simplified most wonderfully his passing over to the ‘information-clarification phase’, which, in the progression of events, now appeared on the evening horizon. He drew out from a side pocket of his coat an impressive bundle of papers and notes, and spreading them out on the table, he turned with a friendly smile to his neighbour.

‘Luckily I can be of service to you in the information you seek. Is it possible to know where madam is heading?’

“To Wyznia Retreat.’

‘Excellent. In a moment we’ll know more about it. We’ll take a look at the index in back of this station directory…. Wyznia Retreat…. Here it is! Line S-D, page 30. Splendid!… Time of train departures: Passenger train at 4:30 at night, 11:20 before noon, and 10:03 in the evening. Cost of a secondclass ticket, about 10.40. Let’s go to the particulars of the locale. Wyznia Retreat— 210 metres above sea level—a city of third-class size—20,000 inhabitants; under district law; a starosta, an elementary school, a secondary school . . .’

The lady interrupted his reading with an impatient motion of her hand.

‘Hotels, my dear sir, are there any hotels?’

‘Just one moment…one moment and we’Il find out…. Yes! Two inns, one eating house under the sign of “The Cap of Invisibility” and the hotel “Imperial”—here near the station to the right, two minutes away—sunny, large rooms starting from three kopeks up—excellent service, heating according to one’s request, electricity, an elevator, steam bath below—a three minute leisurely, quiet walk away—dinner, supper, excellent home cooking. Mein Liebchen, was….’

Kluczka bit his tongue, knowing that in the ardour of presenting this information, he had gone too far.

The lady beamed.

“Thank you, sir, thank you very much. Are you hired by this station as its information person?’ she guessed, taking out a purse from her bag.

Kluczka became confused.

‘Why, no, my dear lady. Please don’t consider me an agent of the information bureau. I only do this as an amateur, from purely idealistic motives.’

Once again the woman was seized by embarrassment.

‘Excuse me, and once again a sincere thanks.’

She gave him her hand, which he kissed chivalrously.

‘Agapit Kluczka, judicial clerk,’ he presented himself, tipping his hat.

He was in a rosy mood. The information phase today had surpassed all his expectations so that when, around ten, the porter threw out in the hall with a stentorian voice the cry for departure, the perpetual passenger carried out all his symbolic actions with the redoubled energy of a young man in his twenties. And though after his repeated return to the waiting room, the third intermezzo did not seem tempting, his high enthusiasm did not fall, and Kluczka’s spirit was bolstered with the memory of the successful information phase.

Despite this, today’s ‘journey’ was not fated to end happily. For when two hours later—that is, after midnight—Kluczka tried to force his way with his suitcase through the unprecedented crowds to a third-class compartment, he suddenly felt someone pluck him strongly by the collar and take him down roughly from the steps of the train. Looking around in fury, he saw by the light of a centre-track lantern the irate face of the conductor, and he heard in the tumult of voices the following apostrophe apparently meant for him:

‘Get the hell out of here! There’s a crush here so great that one can’t even move a pin, and despite this, this lunatic is pushing through the steps like a madman and shoving people aside, only to jump out later on the other side at the moment of departure. I know you, my bird, and not just from today; I’ve been watching you for a long time! Well, get the hell out of here or I’ll call the military police! There is no time today for indulging the halfwitted whims of crazy people!’

Stupefied, frightened to the bone, Kluczka found himself unexpectedly beyond the tight crowds of the passengers, and, as if drunk, he staggered somewhere among the columns of the platform.

“You deserved that,’ he murmured through tightened teeth. “Why did you have to push your way to the third-class compartment instead of the second? Inferior compartments, inferior service. I always told you that. One can tell a gentleman by his knee-boots.’

Calmed a bit by this reasoning, he straightened his crumpled coat and went stealthily from the platform to the waiting room, from there to the entrance hall, and then to the street. He had had enough ‘travelling’ for today —the last occurrence had disheartened him from finishing his journey, cutting it short by one hour.

It was already after midnight. The city slept. The lights of roadside inns had died out, beerhouses and restaurants had become silent. Here and there a consumptive street lamp at a comer in the far distance brightened the darkness of the street; here and there, the faint gleam from some underground den slid along the sidewalk. Now and then, the quick step of a late passer-by, or the distant baying of dogs let down from a chain, interrupted the quiet of sleep….

With his suitcase in hand, the perpetual passenger dragged on slowly along a narrow winding street that crept somewhere among secluded lanes by the river. His head weighed like lead, his legs trod stiffly, wooden like crutch stilts. He was returning home for a few hours of sleep before daybreak, for tomorrow morning a desk was waiting for him, and after three o’clock, as today, as yesterday, as for many forgotten years, a symbolic journey.

 

Originally published c. 1919