the departure

Standing at his platform while waiting for his train, he could not avoid looking at this woman who was contemplating something, a woman in the train that had just stopped on his platform.And as he was thinking about something just then and also looking at her, and as he realized that this train was about to depart, and that he was not sure what he was thinking about while he was looking at her and was not sure whether she was actually looking at him, her train started to leave, in the sudden decided manner of trains. He could not but notice the uneasy expression in her eyes, he thought and the forlorn smile on her lips, which he thought he had seen just then, just as the train began to leave in earnest, and he refrained from taking a step or two in the direction that the train was departing, and he thought of that pale face and those uneasy eyes and the sad smile on her face, of which he seemed to be sure, as the train was now almost whizzing away and that face, and those eyes that had met his momentarily were departing too and he thought he would never see that woman again, he would never see that beautiful face again, and in that moment of agitation, as the train became a blur, he was not entirely sure whether she had smiled or not and at what but that she had an uneasy forlorn solitariness about her face, of that he was sure, as he now thought again, thinking that smoking was prohibited on the platform, thinking too of the steps he could have taken involuntarily, in the direction of the departing train, of that departing face and that woman.

It was indeed a law of life, he thought, that he would never see her again and that he would never know what she was called, of that he was sure at that moment, and that he would never see her again, never know what she thought of him, if she actually did see him, all these things are never known to us, life never discloses these things to us but what is their importance he thought, he was only sentimentalizing something trivial but he kept on looking in the direction of the departed train, at the departed face that he had now suddenly against all instincts started to forget, the face was so strikingly beautiful he thought, and the hair was so elegantly styled and her eyes had such an uneasy relation with her hair and her smile was solitary in its loneliness, he thought. Quite suddenly, he looked at the familiar shape of his hands and warmed his cold knuckles with his breath, for it was a winter evening, and he would never see her again, of that he was sure, and never know her name, of that he was sure too, and he thought these thoughts, thinking again about her melancholy face, her beautiful hair and her lonely smile, as he waited for his train, which he now realized was running late.