all eventualities are contained in this schedule, they are all here—the train’s engineer has only to consult it, I’ll give you an example, I know you’re going to Paris and so you are going to change in Frankfurt to take the 8:00 A.M. Intercity, in the meantime you’ll have eaten Brötchen and a sausage in the train station, then when you arrive you’ll certainly go to your home on 27, rue Eugène-Carrière in the 18 th arrondissement of Paris where you’ll arrive tired at 3:23 in the afternoon, you’ll set down your bags take a quick shower and two options will then occur to you, go to the office immediately or wait till the next morning, each possibility will have its advantages and its disadvantages, if you go to the Boulevard Mortier you won’t be home when someone rings your doorbell at 5:48 P.M. , but if you stay, the intervention of this young person and the news she brings will make you forget one part of the information to be included in that secret file, that list of dead people you’ve been gathering for some time now by using more or less illegally the means that Foreign Security puts at your disposal, you see everything is written here, pages twenty-six, 109 et passim , in either case, whether you’re there or not, the next connection will be on page 261 in the timetable, the Venice-Budapest express, where you’ll get drunk and sing “Three Drummer Boys,” then on page 263 you’ll get into a freight car headed for the Jasenovac extermination camp on the Sava river, then on page 338 into a Benghazi-Tripoli train, you see, the Tangier-Casablanca express is on page 361, all that will bring you to page 480 and the loss of a kid you won’t know, and so on, your whole life is there, many connections will bring you quietly, almost without your knowing it, to a final Pendolino train diretto Milano-Roma that will carry you to the end of the world, expected at the Termini station at 9:12 P.M. , I listen attentively to the little man’s train litany, he is right, this catalogue is a magnificent tool, the train professionals are lucky, I think, the man puts the book down and takes out another sandwich, he eats it with great appetite as he looks me in the eye, all of a sudden I’m hungry—the Czech smiles at me, offers to share his meal with me, I have the sensation of imminent danger, deformed by the obsequious smile his face is suddenly horrible, he insists, holds out half of his sandwich to me and I understand that he wants to poison me, that this guy who looks like an accountant is dangerous, Death is a German-speaking Czech with a railroad timetable, the end of the line always comes by surprise I’m going to die I’m afraid, I’m afraid and I wake up with a start my heart is pounding absurd dream I must have given a violent jump maybe even shouted out loud for my neighbor is staring at me, the Czech accountant who looks like the madman in the Milan train station, I realize it now, horrible nightmare, bad omen, I could have had a nice little erotic dream with some unknown woman, but no, I had to have a dream of the railway grim reaper, in Prague I did in fact buy this little star carved from a block of crystal, it came from the Theresienstadt camp, Jewish children locked up in that ghetto had polished it for days, in one of the Nazi workshops, the antique dealer who sold it to me had a deceitful face, he said imagine the little hands of the poor kids who made it, I don’t know why but I believed him—night has definitely fallen now you can only make out a few lights in the distance, in one of the dreams in Johnny Got His Gun who is driving the train, it’s Christ I think portrayed by Donald Sutherland, who knows who is at the controls of this train, what demiurge is calmly driving me to Rome, according to the Great Timetable of the Parcae, I’d like to go have a drink at the bar, I’m thirsty, it’s too early, at this rate if I begin drinking now I’ll arrive in Rome dead drunk, my body is
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