The Motion Demon (3 page)

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 scornfully 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.

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

‘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.