The train moves off; at each stop now, the only people who get on are from this country.

My little town is on another line than that of the trains coming from abroad. I reach the neighboring town, which is farther into the country and bigger. I could make my connection immediately; I am shown the small red train, only three cars long, that leaves for the little town on the hour from Track One. I watch the train pull out.

I leave the station, get into a taxi, and have myself taken to a hotel. I go up to my room, get in bed, and fall asleep immediately.

When I awake I draw the curtains from my window. It faces west. Over there, behind my little town's mountain, the sun is setting.

Every day I go to the station and watch the red train come and leave again. Then I take a walk around town. At night I drink at the hotel bar or at another bar in town, surrounded by strangers.

My room has a balcony. I often sit there now that it's getting warmer. From there I look at an immense sky of the sort I haven't seen for forty years.

I walk farther and farther in the town; I even leave it and go out into the countryside.

I skirt a wall of stone and steel. Behind it a bird sings and I glimpse the bare branches of chestnut trees.

The cast-iron gate is open. I enter and sit down on the big moss-covered boulder just inside the wall. We used to call this boulder the "black" rock even though it was never black but rather gray or blue, and now it is completely green.

I look at the park and recognize it. I also recognize the big building at its far end. The trees may be the same, but the birds probably aren't. So many years have passed. How long does a tree live? A bird? I have no idea.

And how long do people live? Forever, it seems to me, since I see the center's director approaching.

She asks me, "What are you doing here, sir?"

I rise and say, "I am only looking, Madame Director. I spent five years of my childhood here."

"When?"

"About forty years ago. Forty-five. I recognize you. You were the director of the Rehabilitation Center."

She cries out, "What nerve! For your information, sir, I wasn't even born forty years ago, but I can spot perverts from a mile away. Leave or I will call the police."

I go, return to my hotel, and drink with a stranger. I tell him about what happened with the director. "Obviously they're not the same person. The other one must have died."

My new friend raises his glass. "Conclusion: Either directors across the ages all look alike, or they live for a really long time.

Tomorrow I'llgo to your center with you. You can see it again for as long as you want."

The next day the stranger picks me up at the hotel. He drives me to the center. Just before we turn in, at the gate, he says to me, "You know, the old woman you saw, it really was her. Only she's no longer director here or anywhere else. I looked into it. Your center is now an old folk's home."

I say, 'I'd just like to see the dormitory. And the garden."

The walnut tree is there, but it seems stunted to me. It will die soon.

I say to my companion, "It's going to die, my tree."

He says, "Don't be sentimental. Everything dies."

We enter the building. We walk down the corridor and go into the room that belonged to me and so many other children forty years ago. I stop at the threshold and look. Nothing has changed. A dozen beds, white walls, the white beds empty. They always are at this hour.

I take the stairs at a run and open the door to the room where I had been locked up for several days. The bed is still there, in the same place. Perhaps it's even the same bed.

A young woman shows us out and says, "Everything here was bombed out. But it was all rebuilt. Just like before. Everything is like it was before. It's a very beautiful building and it must not be altered."

My pains come back one afternoon. I return to the hotel, take my medications, pack my bags, pay my bill, and call a taxi. 'To the station."

The taxi stops in front of the station and I say to the driver, "Please go buy me a ticket for the town of K. I'm ill."

The driver says, "That's not my job. I brought you to the station. Get out. I want nothing to do with a sick man."

He puts my suitcase down on the sidewalk and opens my door. "Out. Get out of my car."

I hand my wallet with its foreign money to him. "I beg you."

The driver goes into the station building, comes back with my wallet, helps me out of the car, takes me by the arm, carries my suitcase, accompanies me to Track One, and waits for the train with me. When it comes he helps me in, sets my suitcase down beside me, and asks the conductor to look after me.

The train leaves. There is almost no one in the other compartments. Smoking is forbidden.

I close my eyes and my pain fades away. The train stops nearly every ten minutes. I know that I once made this journey forty years ago.

The train had stopped before it arrived at the station in the little town. The nun grabbed my arm and shook me but I didn't move. She jumped out of the train, ran, and lay down in a field. All the passengers had run out and lain down in the fields. I was alone in the compartment. Planes flew over us and strafed the train. When silence returned the nun returned too. She slapped me and the train started moving again.

I open my eyes. We will arrive soon. I can already see the silver cloud over the mountain, and then the castle walls and the bell towers of many churches appear.

On the twenty-second of the month of April, after an absence of forty years, I am again in the small town of my childhood.

The station hasn't changed. Except that it's cleaner, even flower-filled, with the local flowers whose name I don't know and that I have never seen anywhere else.

There is also a bus, which pulls out filled with the few travelers from the train and workers from the factory across the street.

I don't take the bus. I stay here, in front of the station, my suitcase on the ground, and I look at the avenue of chestnut trees along Station Street, which leads into town.

"May I carry your suitcase, sir?"

A child of about ten is standing before me.

He says, "You've missed the bus. There won't be another one for half an hour."

I say to him, "No matter. I'll walk."

He says, "Your suitcase is heavy."

He picks up my suitcase and doesn't let go. I laugh. "Yes, it's heavy. You won't be able to carry it very far, that I know. I've done your sort of work before."

The child sets the suitcase down. "Really? When?"

"When I was your age. A long time ago."

"And where was that?"

"Here. In front of this station."

He says, "I can carry this suitcase. No problem."

I say, "Fine, but give me ten minutes' head start. I want to walk alone. And take your time, I'm in no hurry. I'llwait for you at the Black Garden. If it still exists."

"Yes, sir, it exists."

The Black Garden is a small park at the end of the avenue of chestnuts, and there's nothing black in it except the cast-iron fence that encloses it. There I sit on a bench and wait for the child. He soon arrives, puts my suitcase down on another bench across from me, and sits, out of breath.

I light a cigarette and ask, "Why do you do this?"

He says, "I want to buy a bike. A dirt bike. Would you give me a cigarette?" "No. No cigarettes for you. I'm dying because of cigarettes. Do you want to die of cigarettes too?"

He says to me, "We're all dying of one thing or another. That's what all the experts say, anyway."

"What else do they say, the experts?"

"That the world is fucked. And that there's nothing to do about it. It's too late."

"Where have you heard all this?"

"Everywhere. At school. Especially on television."