The war has not yet begun in the painting in the Gare de l’Est but that soldier in 1914 already has the look of a man condemned to death by firing-squad. With one difference: here, there is no firing-squad, the killers are out of the frame, they might be Prussians or whoever gave the order to go up against the Prussians, or again the killer could come from the heaven the man is looking at, it’s not what Herter intended, but don’t linger here, you know what you’ve got to do, you came early for a purpose, opposite the end of platform 1 is a small door, nothing remarkable about it, between two union posters, no sign on the door, it’s closed, entry is restricted as you know, you wait discreetly until another man comes along and opens it with his key and then you slip in behind him as if you’d arrived at the same moment he did.
You find yourself in a corridor, you slow down to let the man get ahead of you, stairs lead up towards the administrative offices, you go up them, the steps are protected by a new floor covering called ‘linoleum’, this isn’t the place, from the landing extends a line of offices, the corridor looks new, this isn’t it, the last time you were here everything looked much shabbier, you’ve come to the wrong floor, you’re about to be asked what damn business you have being here, you go back down the stairs, door on the left, corridor, you turn right, narrow staircase, you’ve never been down these steps, you are getting lost, but it’s not that difficult in this bloody place, you are lost.
You’re wasting time, you take the stairs which descend into the bowels of the station, now the steps are bare boards, a smell of old dust, you pass a man carrying a small case, another anonymous door at the foot of the stairs, a corridor, you’re lost again, at this rate you’ll miss your train, you must go back upstairs, you can’t even find the stairs that will take you back up, this is stupid, and no chance of asking the way because you’d be challenged to say what you’re doing here, you’re going to be late, you don’t trust your watch, you pass another man, he’s got a small case too, it’s cold, a door that creaks, the man had come out of it.
You’re on the wrong track, you’re lost, no, the smell, machine oil and hot dust, the smell particular to the contact of electricity with dust, you go through the door, on the left is a kind of lodge or records office, a woman sits inside, she doesn’t give you a second glance, she is fully occupied with her index cards, the next room looks like a library, many tomes, glass-fronted bookcases, archives, the room is empty, it is very early, and then at the far end a door, above the door is an electric clock, at last you’ve arrived, you’re not late, you may go in, people greet you though they don’t know you, it’s the way they do things here, you acknowledge the nodding heads with gestures which are more expansive, very deferential, you’re the youngest person in the room.
It is a very large room, with a magnificent model railway layout on a raised dais a metre and a half from the ground, it occupies almost the whole floor space, despite the early hour men are going briskly about their business, each one has come with his own train in a small case, not many trains are running round the circuit, one of them has problems — I’ve got sixteen volts and the ammeter’s showing zero — see what he wants, he’ll get irritated, he acts like a kid, one man picks up a steam engine, it’s not working, pound to a penny it’s the brushes, no, it worked perfectly for me at home, it’s the track that’s the problem, it’s not the track, look, Henri’s Blue train has been running for an hour, if it isn’t the brushes I don’t see what it could be, a long goods train rattles along the rails and heads for a tunnel under a papier-mâché mountain.
As it re-emerges the train passes a half-built village, stops at the points, sets off again, many locomotives are lying on their sides, with their engine covers off, undergoing repairs or being tuned, a man in a Breton sailor’s cap is re-winding an electric motor, another is feeding a bundle of thin wires into the coaches of his Paris — Hendaye to install night lights, you hear the rata-ta-taat the carriages make on the rails, you widen your gaze to take in the whole network, the Breton or Basque villages, the engine shed with its turntable, the sidings with a water-tower and coal bunker, and the trains go round, the Blue train, then a Michelin railcar, and those new electric engines, the ones christened crocodiles on account of their very long noses.
In front of a station are parked cars, a black Citroën DS 19, a Juva 4, not quite to the same scale as the rest, one of the men fiddles with a whistle which mimics the sound of a real steam whistle, you bend down to get a trackside view of a train coming towards you, you close your eyes, the sound of the rails, it’s time.
You return to the surface, back in the station you walk to the end of your platform to stare up at the flanged smoke-shield mounted on top of the enormous metal cylinder which in turn reigns over a world of wheels, push-rods, fly-cranks, oscillating cams and injectors, the Mountain 241 which will haul your train at 120 kilometres an hour, a 241 P, double funnels, two new mechanical 18/24-stroke lubricators, you can’t see the lubricators, they’re on the left foot-plate, on the other side of the locomotive, what you’re seeing is the right side and, bolted to the foot-plate, the large turbo-dynamo which looks small against the body of the boiler and the four drive-wheels each of which has a diameter of two metres, a superb dark green has been used for the combined engine and tender, darker than olive green, with red stripes running along the entire length.
So, a journey by day, with the pleasure of observing the landscape change as you travel across eastern France, the steeples which will grow more bulbous as the train rolls nearer to the mountains that are the heart of Europe, the pleasure of seeing yourself pass through towns without stopping, alone in one of those empty compartments where you can be yourself, such a delight, alone with yourself, with the current number of the review La Nouvelle Pensée and a popular magazine which has the latest news about the love life of some film actress and a light opera star, you took the liberty of buying this rag in the station, you swore you’d leave it behind on the train when you arrived, wanting to leave the Party doesn’t mean that you have suddenly to acquire capitalist tastes, you’ll throw the magazine away just as you’ll throw your review away before going through customs, no need to draw attention to your political affiliations even if they are in the process of changing, yes, but where can you throw it away? in the toilets? A communist review abandoned just before the customs check would look even more suspicious, the toilet of another coach then? In second class?
Pretend to be going to the restaurant car and leave the review in a toilet in second class, or an empty compartment, you can leave the rag in your own compartment, keep one page, the one all about the camera of your dreams, the Paillard 8 mm with two Berthiot lenses, a focal length of 12/5 and one of 35, expensive, 73,000, francs, light, elegant, black-and-steel finish, very expensive.
A classical music record costs 2,600 francs, Schubert’s Winter Journey sung by Fischer-Dieskau, for example, so ten times the price of the Schubert makes 26,000, so 73,000 is practically thirty classical records, three sixes are eighteen, three twos are six plus one makes seven, 78,000, take away two records, that makes twenty-eight records, in other words I can’t buy records for two years if I want the Paillard with two lenses, that’s not counting the cost of film, there are cheaper labels than Pathé-Marconi, that’s further on, on the Phillips page, their ‘Classics for Everyone’, less than 2,000 francs a throw, true, but you’ve got to add local taxes, what’s the local tax rate on records? And Phillips doesn’t do the Winter Journey, nor the Brahms with Heifetz. How many packets of cigarettes make one Paillard?