Piotr began thinking of his superior as his equal. Judging by his facial expression, the stationmaster was indeed on much the same level as Piotr Niewiadomski today. His eyes showed that look of consternation and sheer helplessness marking out those who vainly struggle to cope with life’s cruel realities. Today, the stationmaster revealed his most human trait—his weakness. His rustic origins, which had been carefully concealed beneath his official tunic, were exposed too. In life, there occur moments that thwart people’s efforts over the years to pull the wool over their own eyes and those of others, their perpetual efforts to emulate gestures they have observed. At such times, you might think, breeding somehow raises its head, drawn out by some chemical process. We are given away by a single involuntary movement of the hand, a single wry facial expression or a particular intonation. Something unusual must have happened that night for the stationmaster to be so changed. Perhaps he had suffered some loss in the family; perhaps he had been disciplined for something or other. Or had he been given to understand, by the officialdom whose ladder of hierarchy he aspired to ascend, that he was considered a simpleton?
No, no misfortune had befallen his family, no one had reported him for exceeding his authority and no one had reproached him for being the son of a cartwright in Rohatyn province. Quite different events had occurred that night… That night the timetable, which from time immemorial had been the ten commandments of the Lwów–Czerniowce–Ickany railway line, had collapsed. It had crashed in a single moment, never to recover from this ignominy. At that moment those secret instructions applying “in case of war” which the stationmaster, who had taken an oath on assuming his appointment, kept sealed in an iron box in the most secure place in the ticket office, had come into force. They were not issued by his civilian employers, who took their orders from the Mount Sinai of the railways at the Ministry of Transport, but by the Chief of Staff. That is how the strict Law that had been faithfully observed in blind obedience on the railways for so many years collapsed. Public transport was suspended.
The stationmaster cast a helpless, almost imploring gaze in Piotr’s direction. He handed him two tightly rolled large sheets of white paper containing closely printed text.
“Niewiadomski,” he said in a strangely soft voice, “war has broken out!”
It was a long time before Piotr took in the significance of these words. The word “war” crashed down on his head like a heavy clod. It penetrated his skull, penetrated the membrane and entered his brain. Piotr’s brain was immediately inundated with images. In an instant, Piotr could see manoeuvres he had witnessed in these parts two years before. Vast numbers of soldiers were simulating a firefight. They fired from both sides, lying on either side of the embankment along the track, fighting for possession of this railway line, but none of them was killed because on hearing the sound of the bugle they all stood up and lit cigarettes, laughing and marching off towards the great forest to the sound of music. Piotr knew that in real wars people were killed. He had seen bodies of Serbs and Bulgarians in a colour illustration from the battle of Çatalca in some magazine a newsagent had shown him in Śniatyn. He also remembered illustrations from the Russo-Japanese war. And suddenly the word “war” performed a somersault in his brain; it fell into his aorta, which it would have burst had it not been carried by the bloodstream into his heart. From there it forced its way into his abdomen, finishing up there as a sharp pain, like a stab from an iron instrument. For a moment, Piotr was overcome by a fear of death. But the heavy blood, exhausted by this sudden unexpected rush, gradually flowed back to his brain, bearing the drowned remains of the dead word “war”. Piotr regained his equilibrium. He realized that it was only soldiers who died in a war, and he was not in the army. He could now attend calmly to the stationmaster’s next words.
“Take these posters and display them in the waiting-room, under the clock. Not too high up, and not too low down! Got it, Niewiadomski?”
As he was issuing the order, the stationmaster realized who he was talking to and attempted to inject a semblance of the former severity into his now timid voice.
“Take care not to tear them, and put them up straight!”
Piotr left, carefully shutting behind him the door bearing the prominent notice: “Unauthorized entry strictly forbidden”. He stood in the dingy corridor, holding the war in his hands. It was not yet unfurled, coiled up like the leaves of buds in spring.
He did not unfurl it until he reached the waiting-room.
After Piotr had left, the stationmaster glanced at the great clock on the wall. He looked anxiously up at the clock every five minutes. Beneath the clock there ceremoniously hung a large tear-off calendar. The stationmaster’s first duty each morning was to tear off a leaf from the calendar. Today the stationmaster had already been sitting for an hour in the office, but the calendar still displayed the date of the 27th of July. In this office, yesterday still persisted instead of today; it was intact. Why had the Topory-Czernielica stationmaster not cancelled the previous day? Could he be trying to hang on to the time when his timetable was in force, that of the railways, and not theirs? Could he be trying to hold on to the time when yesterday’s world order was in force? Could it also simply be the case that, in the spate of work that had engulfed him that night, his usual daily routine had been forgotten? It was already 5.30. Six o’clock passed, but the stationmaster did not remove yesterday’s leaf from the calendar.
At 6.25 there came a knock at the door. The stationmaster gave a start. His feet were entangled in snake-like coils of white paper covered in Morse code. Like a comic dancer at a ball, the ladies’ favourite caught up among paper streamers, the stationmaster disengaged himself from the war around his feet, and he was free.
“Come in!” he called.
It was the trainee who was supposed to relieve him at seven o’clock. On seeing his deputy, the stationmaster came to terms with reality. He quickly approached the calendar and tore off the 27th of July. He crushed it in his hand and threw it into the overflowing waste-paper basket as though the latter was a communal grave for fallen soldiers. It meant that Topory-Czernielica station had bidden farewell to the last day of peacetime.
The waiting-room was still deserted. The window where the stationmaster issued tickets to the public was still closed. Twice a day people had the right to hurry to this window so as to catch the train in time. Today they no longer need to hurry. Nobody knows when it will open, or if indeed it will open at all. It is closed like the lips of a corpse. It will no longer accept any money and it will not issue any tickets. Perhaps it will be opened by the same power that abolished the Law last night.
To the left of the window, above the wooden benches, hung an enormous, majestic, yellow sheet of squared paper, with black lines separating main routes from branch lines. This was the wall timetable of the Imperial and Royal State Railways of the East Galician territory. Those able to read had always confidently used it to check the sacred hours and minutes of departures and arrivals, but today they were checking only dead memories. The official timetable hung there superfluous, unimportant, like an old funeral announcement at a house from which the deceased had long since been carried away.