It was snowing. Manolache was clearing the snow, his tapering fur hat pulled over his ears. He, meanwhile, was shaving in his room upstairs and calling down, good morning, Manolache. Above the forest, the sun had begun to clear a space for itself among the clouds. Then the accident happened, and the express was forced to stop at their platform. Nearly all the passengers climbed down from the carriages, as happy as larks. The large powdery snowflakes filled them with wonder. Later the blonde woman disembarked as well and began to flap her arms like wings, then led him back to her compartment, where he tried to kiss her. She didn’t even push him away; maybe her smile was enough for him to realize how ridiculous he was being. He saw the cage and, for the time being, still didn’t understand. Only much later, after the express had left and many nights had passed, after the old man had died and Luca, the talkative clerk, had disappeared — only then did things become clear.
It’s been raining for days now — fine raindrops pelting down without a break. But soon the clouds will no longer be so closely packed that you’d think there was only one, a huge grayish-white belly; it’s raining, and the oak tree to the right of the shed is bloated with water; its leaves are motionless, as heavy as lead. Not one train has passed for ages: in vain does the stationmaster stand on the platform in his waterproof coat, holding the soaked flag in his left hand, ready to raise the other to salute. No more trains pass by; grass and weeds have grown between the tracks, and the rails have started to rust.
Yet still he waits. He shaves carefully every day, puts on new clothes, and waits. Seated on a bench on the platform, he listens to the rustling of the forest, the sound of rain striking leaves, and now and then distant groans and cries. He looks for a long time at the wooded hills that surround the stop. Sometimes the rain gives up for a while, part of the sky begins to turn rosy, and all the lesser sounds are covered by the flutter of huge wings. Then he gets up from the bench and, standing straight, his throat dry with emotion, follows the circle or spiral of the eagle’s flight. His face glows, as if in ecstasy, and his fingers grip the flag shaft or the blue cloth of his uniform. It won’t be much longer. He’ll wait patiently, always at the ready. Then the rain will stop, the clouds will crumble and flee with the wind, and a clear blue sky will remain. He will once more get up at daybreak, his eyes sparkling with joy. In the mirror his smile will be as intense and enigmatic as that of the woman in the train. He will shave, rub on some perfume, meticulously brush his clothes (which look almost new, though of late he’s been wearing them every day), take his cherry-colored cap from on top of the cage, and go out onto the platform. He will enter Luca’s office, look at the dusty telegraph, then go to the window and see a part of the sky known only to him turn rosy. He will go out, take a few steps toward the dense verdure, and listen to the rustling of leafy waves and the shrieking of birds; he will hear all the distant groans and cries and panting sounds, which seem to come from under the ground, or rather from the forest depths. He will turn back, look over to the hill facing the stop, and take in the rusty rails overgrown with grass and weeds; he will sit down on the bench and wait, his eyes fixed on the sky.
There, above the forest, the sky will continue to color: rose will gradually turn into red, getting brighter, stronger, a crimson red, an imperial red! — and then all the forest sounds will grow softer, until all that can be heard will be the silvery wings of the eagle fluttering free above the treetops, huge now and covering the hills and forest with its shadow; it will soar higher and higher, a silver gleam against the crimson silk of the sky, circling once, twice, countless times, first ascending, then descending, and the circles, ever wider, ever slower, will pass above the stop, above your face transfigured with emotion, your dry throat, your eyes moist with joy, and the muscles of your neck hurting from the strain of following the eagle’s ever wider, ever lower flight, and at some point a shadow falls over everything, but you, with mechanical gestures, begin to unbutton your uniform and shirt, the eagle flies ever lower, ever closer, its swishing wings thrash the air, the branches of the trees bend, the oak’s right down to the ground, and the station roof is torn off, all is dark and cold, the silver wings closer, ever closer, you can no longer see the sky, the eagle is now your sky, and you thrust out your chest, your whole body, in one last effort.
But until then it rains nonstop — fine raindrops pelting down without a break. .
At the Bottom of the Stairs
It wasn’t complicated: the same movements, so long repeated, reflex actions, pushing a few buttons, turning some handle or other, flicking a switch, moving a lever, pushing, pulling, and turning, the same buttons, handles, switches, and levers, over and over again — no big deal at all. He could find them in the dark, like you find your mouth or nose or ears, always in the dark, but he had been making them all part of himself for such a long time. On the control panel a single light, a clear greenish eye, lay above a serrated switch that he only had to turn once in a while, with the lightest of touches, after which, for a few moments, he heard the tinkle of a bell and something like the whir of film rewinding. Pitch darkness, dense and recently a little damp. First — if there can be a first in a circular series of movements — he took three steps to his right and pressed an almost silky-smooth button with his middle finger; it had been sticking lately, and sometimes he had to press with his ring finger too. Next, another couple of steps right, where he flipped a switch two or three times — he couldn’t have said when or why it was sometimes two, sometimes three — and then another switch a little higher, in line with his forehead, which he took between his thumb and index finger; he had to lift his arm to ear level and bend it more than for the other switches, because it was further up and needed greater force, and he felt too short and increasingly weak. Next he had to pull a handle, right, left, up and down, right, left, up and down, and wait; he didn’t know for precisely how long, but he could tell when it was time to drop on his haunches and press three keys with three fingers, pausing a little between the first and the second — a triplet! Then back on his feet, two steps left, another button, a slight bending movement, an icy cold lever — it froze his hand — and sometimes, very infrequently, a quick turn of the serrated switch on the opposite side, beneath the greenish eye; its light was invisible to him, but he could feel its probing stare on his neck, perhaps sardonic, perhaps even mocking, sometimes only disdainful or, extremely rarely, compassionate. He turned on his heels and crept a few steps forward, squelching in a little puddle formed a short while ago, then took a deep breath — click-click, followed by the melodious whirring sound. He didn’t have to be near the control panel all the time; there were quite long breaks when — except for the unpleasant duty of turning a huge wheel from which something, probably a long heavy chain, hung suspended and made a horrific screeching sound, while he pushed on the wheel with all his might and had to endure the screeching and whining, by turns high-pitched and hoarse, but always horrific — he had nothing much to do. Here and there a button to press or a switch to turn. He inched around in the dark, careful not to stray too far from the green eye, so that he could be back when he felt the time had come to start work again, pushing, pulling, and turning the same buttons, switches, handles, and levers, with always the same reflex actions; time to return to the place from which, later, in three precisely calculated steps, he reached the button as silky-smooth as wrist skin, took another two steps to flip the switches up and down, lifting his arm to ear level, then the lever, then a pause, then down on his haunches: a press of his index finger on the three keys, a pause, and almost at once the other two, the middle and ring fingers, as on a piano. And again pushing and turning, up and down, right and left, countless buttons, handles, switches, and keys, and now and again the switch beneath the green sardonic eye. He also had time to walk around, taking long slow strides, knees slightly bent, avoiding puddles here and there; after he pushed on the wheel, he went for a walk and thought that for some time now things had been much easier. He didn’t put it quite like that, because the some time was immeasurable, but anyway the work was clearly easier. Before, instead of a control panel with silky buttons and simple switches, there had been heavy levers, pulleys, and wheels as on a ship; he had had to use his whole body to twist massive cables smelling of rust, to push and pull steel rods with his chest, and to duck the hot pipes winding endlessly just above his head, in an atmosphere that was now dry and stuffy, now damp and hot, and in an endless darkness unrelieved even by the green eye, and alive with foul odors. True, he hadn’t worked alone in those days. Little by little, the pulleys, wheels, and pipes were replaced with this control panel; the green eye began to glow, and in the end only a single wheel remained, the one controlling the well; he wasn’t even sure he needed to struggle with it as much as he did. The work became easier, but he was alone and deprived of the pleasure he had discovered one day when he had climbed an endless rough stone staircase — the pleasure of looking through a hole the size of an ear, or even smaller, and seeing light, colors, and part-bodies dancing to music, faint but still music, from afar. As there were two of them then, one of them could always steal off when the work only required one pair of arms and crawl on all fours up the narrow, almost vertical, stairs; he could feel the cold uneven stone against the palms of his hands as he approached the slit of pale light. It was a grayish light, as dull as the colors that fluttered for a few moments to the rhythm of the faint distant music: a washed-out field green, a yellow as pale as a grated lemon, a whitish pink like the skin at the joints; and, now and then, blue strips of sky that flashed for no more than a second, again followed by whitish gray and pink, slow distant music, and part-bodies dancing to the rhythm. He couldn’t stay long and hurried back down on all fours, because he was needed to help move the huge wheel linked to invisible chains and pulleys and, somewhere overhead, among the chains, to huge snakes of burning-hot cast iron; he couldn’t calculate how far overhead, since he had only dared to crawl up the stairs as far as the slit of light, which had appeared in a kind of vertical pipe so thick that his fingers didn’t meet when he tried to hold it in his arms. It had been better like that, the two of them together. The other man’s body bristled with rough bristles and sharp angles that dug into his shoulder or thigh, and he would sometimes clasp it fiercely with his long bony arms and clawlike fingers, but there wasn’t time for such games: the pulleys, wheels, and levers, all that hot iron smelling of steam and rust, needed to be kept in motion. The chains that formed the pulleys kept disappearing one after another, and the remaining ones were increasingly difficult to handle; they had to pull with all their might, their two bodies hanging on the end of the chain. So there had been less and less time during which he could climb the rough stairs and look through the slit at the washed-out colors, but also at the bright-blue strips of sky, enjoy the distant sounds and shapes, the music and the parts of bodies that he figured must be dancing.