Wagon-Lit SELENE · WL 417
Compagnie des Wagons-Lits Imaginaires
Wien Venezia
Night express for Venezia Santa Lucia
On time · Platform 8Draw the page upward.
The world is already moving.
23:47 · Wien Hauptbahnhof
The station clock holds for one impossible second. Then its white face glides backward, followed by the newspaper kiosk, the porter in a plum cap, and all the lit windows of Vienna. Your compartment remains still. The continent begins to travel.
00:31 · Climbing the Semmering
Everything has two purposes and one quiet sound. Brass becomes hook, hinge, lock. Walnut becomes washstand, shelf, table. At berth height, the black Alps pass as a private moving painting.
Voiture-Restaurant
04:03 · south of Pontebba
For eleven kilometres the railway finds water. The moon lays a silver corridor across it; the SELENE and its reflection run side by side. No one in compartment 6 is asleep.
06:12 · Laguna di Venezia
The Alps have become a pale blue memory. Salt light finds the brass latch; islands assemble from mist. Ahead, Venezia waits at the end of a railway laid improbably across water.
Please leave the berth lamp for Marta.
Take the night with you.