Sitting and waiting for a train of the Eizan-Denshya at Mototanaka, on the raised platform that was not a station with no ticket machine and not even a clock, just wooden benches, wooden walls and a metal roof, all very solid and proper, I looked into the launderette and the Lunch-Ya opposite. Three minutes before time a train came in, empty, and though it stopped the doors remained closed. The carriages, two of them, were from a previous generation: green and cream outside; the interior fitted out in wood and brass. A yellow light illuminated the carriage from end to end. Two men were riding the train; a guard and the driver. Both stood at the forward end until the automatic crossing gates swung down, then the guard turned and started to walk to the rear. And at that moment or very shortly afterwards the train began to move, and on the instant he began to run, though to me he was stationary in his motion. In a fraction of a second he exhausted the possibility and was hauled off into the night, standing with his white gloves clenched over the rail, looking back down the wake of darkness to the station where I was sitting and waiting for a train.