Waiting
It has been raining nonstop for days — fine raindrops pelting down, with no end in sight. The clouds are still closely packed, neither very high nor very low, as if there’s only one of them, a huge grayish-white belly; it’s raining, and the oak tree to the right of the shed is bloated with water, its leaves motionless and as heavy as lead. When the freight train passed at dawn, scarcely able to move through the liquid air, the engineer forced a smile and made a vague gesture with his hand — it’s the Flood! He, though, didn’t respond to the smile: there was no way you could be sure whether it expressed sympathy or sarcasm, or a mixture of the two; he didn’t smile back but stood there huddled in his waterproof coat, holding the soaked flag in his left hand, and burying the other in his pocket. Instead of his customary salute, he merely raised the red flag, tattered and rain-soaked, and waved the train on its way half a minute ahead of time — what did it matter? He noticed that old Manolache had come out onto the porch of the freight shed, the former freight shed, an old overcoat around his shoulders — he was cold and probably feeling sick again — the train headed off, creaking at every joint, and the rain continued to fall then as fast as it’s falling now. He looks out the window; it seems to have brightened up a little.
He got up from his chair, took the red cap from where it was lying on the birdcage and put it on his head, opened the door, which gave out a creaking sound, and walked down the staircase. The evening before, Luca had been willing to bet that the rain would stop. They’d been playing cards — all three of them — as they did every evening, and Luca had been all cheery: he was winning. You can think that if you like, old Manolache said bearishly, and the boss said, come on, play, there’s nothing we can do about it anyway. Nothing we can do about, Luca mumbled, no, nothing, Manolache echoed as he slapped his last card down on the table, I beg your pardon, I won this round!
He went into Luca’s office and sat on a rickety old chair; one of its legs was loose and wobbly, like the backrest. Luca was dozing, his head on the desk, but he started, turned toward the man with the mustache and the red, cherry-colored stationmaster’s hat, and began to rattle out his piece in a single breath. Nothing before noon, a freight train that’ll speed through without stopping, then the express at its usual time; that’s all we’ve been told to expect. Careful you don’t fall, he said in a different tone, that chair’s had it. The stationmaster stood up and approached Luca’s chair; there wasn’t another one in that dirty, unswept, dust-filled room. He leaned on the back of the chair. Luca made as if to stand up. Don’t worry, stay where you are. The stopping train’s probably late, the stationmaster said. I don’t know, they haven’t said anything about it yet. They both fell silent, perhaps with the same thought in their minds. Anyway, when the stationmaster asked (as he had many times before) why the hell they’d cut out that local train, Luca said nothing and shrugged. The question wasn’t meant to be answered: they’d been asking it of each other for the last six months, at first in genuine puzzlement; it had been the only passenger train that still stopped at their station, more out of habit than anything else. They’d been through all the possible theories, all the possible explanations. When they first heard that it had been withdrawn, they angrily began to draft a memorandum many pages long; they spent a whole week on it and ended up arguing with each other over the goddamn wording. Luca insisted on beefing up certain formulations, sometimes in quite violent terms: “we think it is completely arbitrary that,” or “you might just as well rip up all the rails.” All the rails? the boss laughed. Yes, all of them, so not a single one is left. The stationmaster rose from the table and began to pace up and down the room. It was impossible to write the memorandum in the way the young clerk wanted — he was just out of school, still wet behind the ears. Besides, cutting the train wasn’t just some inane idea they’d come up with out of the blue. That accident had played some role. . Eh, what’s the connection? Luca erupted. The freight train derailed because of the snow, and the local train wasn’t due for another three hours. Haven’t there been other accidents on the line? There was one other, the boss said, a long time ago, when I was working at a different station.
The stationmaster turned around and went to the window. Luca followed him. It was still raining, the forest looked dark and lifeless. Where can it be now, in this rain? He had whispered the question, moving his lips close to the lightly steaming pane of glass. Luca dropped his head and scratched one of the floorboards with his metal toe cap. In the forest? Maybe it’s found somewhere it can shelter out there? And the young man returned to his desk, where the telegraph equipment was installed, and began to tap something.
They had an almighty row that day, and Luca wanted to quit his job. He wasn’t in the right, though. He flew off the handle and couldn’t see sense anymore, isn’t that so, Manolache? The old man shrugged or bent his shoulders, wringing his hands at the same time: what could he do about it? The truth was that, since it had become easier to reach the sanatorium from the other side, no one ever got off at their stop any more; the path was overgrown here, and all kinds of animals were prowling around. Yes, all they ever saw was an occasional hunter, or some loony with a backpack who didn’t bother to stop and ask them the way before disappearing into the forest. Luca had stormed out and slammed the door. That’s no way to behave, Manolache had said, shaking his head, and for three days the only words that the boss and the clerk exchanged with each other had to do with the train timetable. Then they made peace, and all three got drunk and ended up singing and dancing — you can’t imagine the scene. When they heard a train would be passing, the boss struggled to button up his blue jacket, took the flag from the neck of a rum bottle they had recently emptied, and went out onto the platform. Look at him tottering, Luca said cheerily from behind the window, he’s got to use the flag to stop himself falling. Manolache drank his glass straight down and hiccoughed: lucky that one just flashes through; no one will even give him a glance. Then the stationmaster came back inside.
Manolache entered too, his tatty old coat dripping water. You can hear the wolves howling like in winter, he said, and he sat on the wretched chair that was now pulled up against the wall. No one said another word: Luca stroked a lever with the palm of his hand, while the boss tugged and twirled his mustache; all three were lost in thought. It went on raining outside.
In the end they didn’t send a memorandum: there seemed no point. Perhaps no one would even have bothered to read it, or if some four-eyed bureaucrat had seen it and passed it up higher a lot more time would have passed and still nothing would have been done. Luca too was in agreement. They bought an almost new pack of Hungarian cards from a freight train engineer — theirs had been in tatters by then — and played from morning till night. You shouldn’t have let it go, Manolache said, shuffling the cards, do you hear? you shouldn’t have let it go. It was a big mistake. . The stationmaster didn’t answer and then Luca said halfheartedly: where were we supposed to keep it? it didn’t fit in the cage anymore. Come on, play, the boss mumbled, and it was another two or three days before he said: we had to let it go, it had gotten too big. . I’m telling you, you shouldn’t have let it go, Manolache insisted.