Without speaking the woman held up the scrap of paper so that everyone could see it. But they had all seen already and so pretended to take no notice. The more frightened they were, the more they suppressed it. We were rushing toward something ending in “-tion,” something that must indeed be terrible if the population of whole towns fled immediately on hearing about it. A new and powerful factor had broken up the life of the country, men and women thought of nothing but their own safety and were abandoning their houses, jobs, business, everything, while our train, our wretched train was proceeding with the regularity of clockwork, like the honest soldier making his way through the ranks of his defeated army to reach his trench where the enemy is already encamped. And our sense of decency, our pathetic self-respect denied us the courage to react. Trains, undeniably, are very like life.
Two hours to go. In two hours we would know our common fate. Two hours, an hour and a half, an hour, it was already getting dark. In the distance we could see the lights of our longed-for city, and their unmoving brightness, sending a yellow glow into the sky, gave us a breath of courage. The engine whistled, the wheels pounded over a maze of points. The station, the black curve of the glass roof, the lights and hoardings were just as usual.
But, crowning horror, as the train continued to move forward, I saw that the station was deserted, the platforms bare and empty, not a human being in sight. At last it stopped. We ran along the platforms toward the exit, looking for some sign of life. Right down in the far right-hand corner, in the half shadow, I thought I caught sight of a railwayman in a peaked cap vanishing through a door, as though terrified. What had happened? Was there no one in the whole town? Then suddenly a woman’s voice, piercing and violent as a gunshot, made us shudder. It was a shout for help, and it echoed under those glass arches with the empty resonance of places that have been deserted forever.
The Epidemic
ONE MORNING AT HALF-PAST EIGHT PRECISELY, COLONEL Ennio Molinas sat down at his desk at the head of a large room in Cip (Cipher Office). Like all other servicemen attached to the Ministry, he wore civilian clothes. Since he was the head of the department his desk stood on a small platform from which he could supervise the desks of his decoders: a sort of dais. The walls were lined with tall shelves filled with books and records: dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, directories, sets of newspapers and periodicals, the basis for all sorts of reference and research. The whole great office had been organized for the war, and functioned at a slacker pace nowadays; but the staff of the department was still complete. The men who worked there were the best in the country at the particular work concerned. They were known jokingly within the Ministry as the “twenty-four geniuses.”
The Colonel smoothed his whiskers, opened the daily register, read the morning’s notes made by the secretary shortly beforehand and looked up to take the roll call. Eight of the twenty-four desks were empty. “Ahem,” he muttered to himself in his own particular way. One of the decoders in the front row caught his worried glance and smiled at him. The Colonel, who was always pleasant yet knew how to keep his distance, shook his head. The young man’s smile broadened: “If things go on like this, sir, the department will be empty in a couple of days.” Molinas nodded silent assent.
At this point Sbrinzel, the absurdly lean and hungry-looking secretary of Department Int (Interception and Troop Movements), came in with the sheaf of messages to be decoded. Despite his modest position Sbrinzel commanded much respect. Some said that he was related to the Minister of Internal Affairs, but this may have been nonsense. Others flatly proclaimed him a spy. In short, he was feared. People spoke guardedly in his presence.
The Colonel, seeing Sbrinzel enter, checked an instinctive movement to stand smartly to attention as though Sbrinzel were a superior. Instead, he smiled broadly.
Sbrinzel went up onto the platform, put down the file and indicated the desks, a third of which were empty, with a wink. “Well, sir, something of a purge, eh?” For some reasons his jokes were always ambiguous.
“Influenza, my dear Sbrinzel . . . this year it really is an epidemic . . . luckily it’s taking quite a harmless form so far, no complications . . . four days in bed and it’s all over . . .”
“Eh, four days! And sometimes four years, eh!” leered Sbrinzel, launching into one of his hateful laughs, dry, harsh and completely lacking in inner gaiety.
Molinas did not understand. “Four years? How could anyone’s influenza last four years?”
“Eh”—Sbrinzel invariably began and ended his speeches with this unpleasantly nasal sound—“I quite agree that the present form is mild, but personally I would prefer the Spanish variety, with all its attendant risks. . . . This epidemic is unlikely to dispatch anyone to the next world, but it’s unpleasant all the same, eh!”
“Well, naturally. Influenza is never exactly pleasant!”
“Eh, it’s quite plain that you, sir, know nothing about it, eh.”
“About what? What should I know?”
Sbrinzel shook his head. “For the head of Cip, if you’ll excuse my saying so, sir, this is a bit much. I, for instance, understood without any assistance.”
“Understood what?” asked the Colonel, now
