again. Of course, I would obtain the address from Doctor Starov. Ring him up from the station as soon as I arrived. Somebody’s heavily-booted dream tried to get in between my shins and then was slowly withdrawn. What had Sebastian meant by ‘the usual hotel’? I could not recall any special place in Paris where he had stayed. Yes, Starov would know where he was. Mar… Man… Mat…. Would I get there in time? My neighbour’s hip pushed at mine, as he switched from one kind of snore to another, sadder one. Would I arrive in time to find him alive… arrive… alive… arrive…. He had something to tell me, something of boundless importance. The dark, rocking compartment, chock-full of sprawling dummies, seemed to me a section of the dream I had had. What would he tell me before he died? The rain spat and tinkled against the glass and a ghost-like snowflake settled in one comer and melted away. Somebody in front of me slowly came to life; rustled paper and munched in the dark, and then lit a cigarette, and its round glow stared at me like a Cyclopean eye. I must, I must get there in time. Why had I not dashed to the aerodrome as soon as I got that letter? I would have been with Sebastian by now! What was the illness he was dying of? Cancer? Angina pectoris – like his mother? As it happens with many people who do not trouble about religion in the ordinary trend of life, I hastily invented a soft, warm, tear-misty God, and whispered an informal prayer. Let me get there in time, let him hold out till I come, let him tell me his secret. Now it was all snow: the glass had grown a grey beard. The man who had munched and smoked was asleep again. Could I try and stretch out my legs, and put my feet up on something? I groped with my burning toes, but the night was all bone and flesh. I yearned in vain for a wooden something under my ankles and calves. Mar… Matamar… Mar…. How far was that place from Paris? Doctor Starov. Alexander Alexandrovich Starov. The train clattered over the points, repeating those x’s. Some unknown station. As the train stopped voices came from the next compartment, somebody was telling an endless tale. There was also the shifting sound of doors being moved aside, and some mournful traveller drew our door open too, and saw it was hopeless. Hopeless. Йtat dйsespйrй. I must get there in time. How long that train stopped at stations! My right hand neighbour sighed and tried to wipe the window pane, but it remained misty with a faint yellowish light glimmering through. The train moved on again. My spine ached, my bones were leaden. I tried to shut my eyes and to doze, but my eyelids were lined with floating designs – and a tiny bundle of light, rather like an infusoria, swam across, starting again from the same comer. I seemed to recognize in it the shape of the station lamp which had passed by long ago. Then colours appeared, and a pink face with a large gazelle eye slowly turned towards me – and then a basket of flowers, and then Sebastian’s unshaven chin. I could not stand that optical paintbox any longer, and with endless, cautious manoeuvring, resembling the steps of some ballet dancer filmed in slow motion, I got out into the corridor. It was brightly lit and cold. For a time I smoked and then staggered towards the end of the carriage, and swayed for a moment over a filthy roaring hole in the train’s bottom, and staggered back, and smoked another cigarette. Never in my life had I wanted a thing as fiercely as I wanted to find Sebastian alive – to bend over him and catch the words he would say. His last book, my recent dream, the mysteriousness of his letter – all made me firmly believe that some extraordinary revelation would come from his lips. If I found them still moving. If I were not too late. There was a map on the panel between the windows, but it had nothing to do with the course of my journey. My face was darkly reflected in the window pane. Il est dangereux… E pericoloso… a soldier with red eyes brushed past me and for some seconds a horrible tingle remained in my hand, because it had touched his sleeve. I craved for a wash. I longed to wash the coarse world away and appear in a cold aura of purity before Sebastian. He had done with mortality now and I could not offend his nostrils with its reek. Oh, I would find him alive. Starov would not have worded his telegram that way, had he been sure that I would be late. The telegram had come at noon. The telegram, my God, had come at noon I Sixteen hours had already passed, and when might I reach Mar… Mat… Ram… Rat… No, not ‘R’ – it began with an ‘M’. For a moment I saw the dim shape of the name, but it faded before I could grasp it. And there might be another setback: money. I should dash from the station to my office and get some at once. The office was quite near. The bank was farther. Did anybody of my numerous friends live near the station? No, they all lived in Passy or around the Porte St Cloud – the two Russian quarters of Paris. I squashed my third cigarette and looked for a less crowded compartment. There was, thank God, no luggage to keep me in the one I had left. But the carriage was crammed and I was much too sick in mind to go down the train. I am not even sure whether the compartment into which I groped, was another or the old one! it was just as full of knees and feet and elbows – though perhaps the air was a little less cheesy. Why had I never visited Sebastian in London? He had invited me once or twice. Why had I kept away from him so stubbornly, when he was the man I admired most of all men? Those bloody asses who sneered at his genius…. There was, in particular, one old fool whose skinny neck I longed to wring – ferociously. Ah, that bulky monster rolling on my left was a woman; eau-de-Cologne and sweat struggling for ascendancy, the former losing. Not a single soul in that carriage knew who Sebastian Knight was. That chapter out of Lost Property so poorly translated in Cadran. Or was it La Vie Littйraire? Or was I too late, too late – was Sebastian dead already, while I sat on this accursed bench with a derisive bit of thin leather padding which could not deceive my aching buttocks? Faster, please faster I Why do you think it worth stopping at this station? and why stop so long? Move, move on. So – that’s better.

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 still: 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