Very gradually the darkness faded to a greyish dimness, and a snow-covered world became faintly perceptible through the window. I felt dreadfully cold in my thin raincoat. The faces of my travelling companions became visible as if layers of webs and dust were slowly brushed away. The woman next to me had a thermos flask of coffee and she handled it with a kind of maternal love. I felt sticky all over and excruciatingly unshaven. I think that if my bristly cheek had come into contact with satin, I should have fainted. There was a flesh-coloured cloud among the drab ones, and a dull pink flushed the patches of thawing snow in the tragic loneliness of barren fields. A road drew out and glided for a minute along the train, and just before it turned away a man on a bicycle wobbled among snow and slush and puddles. Where was he going? Who was he? Nobody will ever know.
I think I must have dozed for an hour or so – or at least I managed to keep my inner vision dark. My companions were talking and eating when I opened my eyes and I suddenly felt so sick that I scrambled out and sat on a strapontin for the rest of the journey, my mind as blank as the wretched morning. The train, I learnt, was very late, owing to the night blizzard or something, so it was only at a quarter to four in the afternoon that we reached Paris. My teeth chattered as I walked down the platform and for an instant I had a foolish impulse to spend the two or three francs jingling in my pocket on some strong liquor. But I went to the telephone instead. I thumbed the soft greasy book, looking for Dr Starov's number and trying not to think that presently I should know whether Sebastian was still alive. Starkaus, cuirs, peaux; Starley, jongleur, humoriste; Starov… ah, there it was: Jasmin 61-93. I performed some dreadful manipulations and forgot the number in the middle, and struggled again with the book, and redialled, and listened for a while to an ominous buzzing. I sat for a minute quite stilclass="underline" somebody threw the door open and with an angry muttering retreated. Again the dial turned and clicked back, five, six, seven times, and again there was that nasal drone: donne, donne, donne…. Why was I so unlucky? 'Have you finished?' asked the same person – a cross old man with a bulldog face. My nerves were on edge and I quarrelled with that nasty old fellow. Fortunately a neighbouring booth was free by now; he slammed himself in. I went on trying. At last I succeeded. A woman's voice replied that the doctor was out, but could be reached at half past five – she gave me the number. When I got to my office I could not help noticing that my arrival provoked a certain surprise. I showed the telegram I had got to my chief and he was less sympathetic than one might have reasonably expected. He asked me some awkward questions about the business in Marseilles. Finally I got the money I wanted and paid the taxi which I had left at the door. It was twenty minutes to five by then so that I had almost an hour before me.
I went to have a shave and then ate a hurried breakfast. At twenty past five I rang up the number I had been given, and was told that the doctor had gone home and would be back in a quarter of an hour. I was too impatient to wait and dialled his home number. The female voice I already knew answered that he had just left. I leant against the wall (the booth was in a cafй this time) and knocked at it with my pencil. Would I never get to Sebastian? Who were those idle idiots who wrote on the wall 'Death to the Jews' or 'Vive le front populaire', or left obscene drawings? Some anonymous artist had begun blacking squares – a chess board, ein Schachbrett, un damier…. There was a flash in my brain and the word settled on my tongue: St Damier! I rushed out and hailed a passing taxicab. Would he take me to St Damier, wherever the place was? He leisurely unfolded a map and studied it for some time. Then he replied that it would take two hours at least to get there – seeing the condition of the road. I asked him whether he thought I had better go by train. He did not know.
'Well, try and go fast,' I said, and knocked my hat off as I plunged into the car.
We were a long time getting out of Paris. Every kind of known obstacle was put in our way, and I think I have never hated anything so much as I did a certain policeman's arm at one of the crossroads. At last we wriggled out of the traffic jam into a long dark avenue. But still we did not go fast enough. I pushed the glass open and implored the chauffeur to increase his speed. He answered that the road was far too slippery – as it was we badly skidded once or twice. After an hour's drive he stopped and asked his way of a policeman on a bicycle. They both pored at length over the policeman's map, and then the chauffeur drew his own out, and they compared both. We had taken a wrong turning somewhere and now had to go back for at least a couple of miles. I tapped again on the pane: the taxi was positively crawling. He shook his head without as much as turning round. I looked at my watch, it was nearing seven o'clock. We stopped at a filling-station and the driver had a confidential talk with the garage man. I could not guess where we were, but as the road now ran along a vast expanse of fields, I hoped that we were getting nearer my goal. Rain swept and swished against the window-panes and when I pleaded once more with the driver for a little acceleration, he lost his temper and was volubly rude. I felt helpless and numb as I sank back in my seat. Lighted windows blurredly passed by. Would I ever get to Sebastian? Would I find him alive if I did ever reach St Damier? Once or twice we were overtaken by other cars and I drew my driver's attention to their speed. He did not answer, but suddenly stopped and with a violent gesture unfolded his ridiculous map. I inquired whether he had lost his way again. He kept silent but the expression of his fat neck was vicious. We drove on. I noticed with satisfaction that he was going much faster now. We passed under a railway bridge and drew up at a station. As I was wondering whether it was St Damier at last, the driver got out of his seat and wrenched open the door. 'Well,' I asked, 'what's the matter now?'
'You shall go by train after all,' said the driver, 'I'm not willing to smash my car for your sake. This is the St Damier line, and you're lucky to have been brought here.'
I was even luckier than he thought for there was a train in a few minutes. The station guard swore I would be at St Damier by nine. That last phase of my journey was the darkest. I was alone in the carriage and a queer torpor had seized me: in spite of my impatience, I was terribly afraid lest I might fall asleep and miss the station. The train stopped often and it was every time a sickening task to find and decipher the station's name. At one stage I experienced the hideous feeling that I had just been jerked awake after dozing heavily for an unknown length of time – and when I looked at my watch it was a quarter past nine. Had I missed it? I was half inclined to use the alarm signal, but then I felt the train was slowing down, and as I leant out of the window, I espied a lighted sign floating past and stopping: St Damier.
A quarter of an hour's stumble through dark lanes and what seemed by its sough to be a pine wood, brought me to the St Damier hospital. I heard a shuffling and wheezing behind the door and a fat old man clad in a thick grey sweater instead of a coat and in worn felt slippers let me in. I entered a kind of office dimly lit by a weak bare electric lamp, which seemed coated with dust on one side. The man looked at me blinking, his bloated face glistening with the slime of sleep, and for some odd reason I spoke at first in a whisper.
'I have come,' I said, 'to see Monsieur Sebastian Knight, K, n, i, g, h, t. Knight. Night.'