On the Train

A man with a moustache and wearing a hat, hung round with numerous luggage, passes through an empty train. Someone is in one of the compartments, and the traveller enters. The seated man wears a hat and glasses, but otherwise is almost indistinguishable from the newcomer. His grouchy behaviour sharply contrasts with the jovial expression of the alien, settling himself comfortably. The newcomer reveals that he has recently been cured of schizophrenia. Several years before, he used to be a flower pot in a botanical garden. The unkindly co-traveller claims the train as well as the railway track on which they move to be his private property. The recovered lunatic is scared of a train crash. To get rid of his hallucinations, his physicians recommended him to move around a lot and converse with people. His phantoms always have the appearance of middle-aged men who try to scare him away. Then the traveller begins to be scared by the speech of the "train owner" and tries to order him out of the compartment. The few slaps he receives from the offended man convince him to his contentment that this was no hallucination. But then, there is a horrendous blow and the train wagons lie scattered all over the embankment of the railway track.