The novel is written in the second person singular: the author, as it were, identifies the hero and the reader: “You put your left foot on the copper bar and in vain try to push the sliding door of the compartment with your right shoulder ...”
Leon Delmon, director of the Paris branch of the Italian company Scabelli, which produces typewriters, secretly leaves his colleagues and family for a few days in Rome. On Friday at eight in the morning, having bought a novel at the station to read on the road, he gets on the train and sets off. He is not used to riding the morning train - when he travels on business, he drives in the evening, and not in the third class, as now, but in the first. But the unusual weakness is explained, in his opinion, not only in the early hours - this age makes itself felt, because Leon is already forty-five. But, having left his aging wife in Paris, Leon goes to Rome to his thirty-year-old mistress, next to whom he hopes to find a passing youth. He glances at all the details of the landscape that is changing outside the window; he carefully looks at his fellow travelers. He recalls how his wife Anrietta got up early in the morning to serve him breakfast - not because she loves him so much, but in order to prove to him and himself that he can’t do without her even in little things, - and thinks how far she went in her guesses about the true purpose of his current trip to Rome. Leon knows the whole route by heart, because he regularly travels to Rome for business, and now he mentally repeats the names of all the stations. When a young couple sitting in the same compartment (Leon suggests that they are the newlyweds making their first trip together) sets off for the restaurant car, Leon decides to follow their example: although he recently had a cup of coffee, visiting the restaurant car is him an indispensable part of the trip, is included in his program. Returning from the restaurant, he discovers that his favorite place on which he used to sit and before that was sitting is occupied. Leon is annoyed that he had not guessed, leaving, to put the book in a sign that he would return soon. He asks himself why, on a trip that should bring him freedom and youth, he feels neither enthusiasm nor happiness. Is it really that he did not leave Paris in the evening, as he was used to, but in the morning? Has he really become such a routine, a slave of habit?
The decision to go to Rome came suddenly. On Monday, returning from Rome, where he was on a business trip, Leon did not think that he would go there again so soon. He had long wanted to find a job in Paris for his lover, Cecil, but until recently had not taken any serious steps in this direction. However, already on Tuesday, he called one of his clients - the director of the travel agency Jean Durieu - and asked if he knew about any suitable place for Leon's acquaintance, a thirty-year-old woman of outstanding abilities. Now this lady serves as secretary to the military attache at the French embassy in Rome, but she is ready to agree to a modest salary, if only to return to Paris again. Durie called the same evening and said that he was planning to carry out a reorganization in his agency and was ready to provide the work of his friend Leon on very favorable terms. Leon took the liberty of assuring Durieu of Cecile's consent. At first Leon thought simply to write Cecile, but on Wednesday, November 13th, the day Leon turned forty-five and a festive dinner and congratulations from his wife and four children made him annoyed, he decided to put an end to this long-drawn farce, this settled falsehood. He warned his subordinates that he would leave for a few days, and decided to go to Rome to personally tell Cecile that he had found her a place in Paris and that as soon as she moved to Paris, they would live together. Leon is not going to make a scandal or a divorce, he will visit the children once a week and is sure that Henrietta will accept his terms. Leon is looking forward to how Cecile will be delighted at his unexpected arrival — to arrange a surprise for him, he did not warn her — and how much more she will be delighted when he finds out that from now on they will not have to meet occasionally and stealthily, and they will be able to live together and not part. Leon thinks to the smallest detail how on Saturday morning he will wait for her on the corner opposite her house and how she will be surprised when she leaves the house and suddenly sees him.
The train stops, and Leon decides, following the example of a British neighbor, to go out on the platform to breathe air. When the train starts moving, Leon again manages to sit down at his favorite place - the man who occupied it while Leon went to the restaurant car, met a friend and moved to another compartment. Opposite Leon sits a man reading a book and taking notes on its fields, he is probably a teacher and goes to Dijon to give a lecture, most likely on legal issues. Looking at him, Leon tries to imagine how he lives, what kind of children he has, compares his lifestyle with his own and comes to the conclusion that he, Leon, in spite of his material well-being, would be more worthy of pity than a teacher engaged in favorite thing, if not for Cecile, with whom he will begin a new life. Before Leon met Cecile, he did not feel such a strong love for Rome, only discovering it for himself with her, he was imbued with great love for this city. For him, Cecile is the embodiment of Rome, and, dreaming of Cecile near Henrietta, he dreams of Rome in the very heart of Paris. Last Monday, returning from Rome, Leon began to imagine himself a tourist visiting Paris every two months, at most once a month. To prolong the feeling that his journey was not yet completed, Leon did not dine at home and only came home in the evening. A little more than two years ago, in August, Leon went to Rome. Opposite him sat Cecile, with whom he was not yet familiar. He first saw Cecile in a restaurant car. They got into a conversation, and Cecile told him that by mother she was Italian and was born in Milan, but is listed as a French citizen and returns from Paris, where she spent her vacation. Her husband, who worked as an engineer at the Fiat plant, died two months after the wedding in a car accident, and she still cannot recover from the blow. Leon wanted to continue the conversation with Cecile, and when he got out of the restaurant car, he walked past his first-class compartment and, after escorting Cecil, who was driving in the third class, to her compartment, stayed there.
Leon’s thoughts turn to the past, then to the present, then to the future, his past and recent events pop up in his memory, the narration follows random associations, repeats the episodes as they appear in the hero’s head - randomly, often incoherently. The hero is often repeated: this story is not about events, but about how the hero perceives events.
It occurs to Leon that when Cecile is not in Rome, he will no longer go there on business trips with the same pleasure. And now for the last time he is going to talk to her about Rome - in Rome. From now on, of the two of them, Leon will become a Roman, and he would like Cecile, before she leaves Rome, to transmit to him most of her knowledge, until they are absorbed in Parisian everyday life. The train stops in Dijon. Leon gets out of the car to stretch his legs. So that no one takes his place, he puts on him a book bought at a Paris station, which he still has not opened. Returning to the compartment, Leon recalls how a few days ago Cecile escorted him to Paris and asked when he would return, to which he replied to her: "Alas, only in December." On Monday, when she will again see him off to Paris and ask again when he will return, he will answer her again: “Alas, only in December,” but not in a sad but humorous tone. Leon dozes off. He was dreaming of Cecile, but on her face was an expression of distrust and reproach, which so struck him when they said goodbye at the station. And is it because he wants to part with Henrietta, that in every movement, in every word, an eternal reproach comes through? Waking up, Leon recalls how two years ago he also woke up in a third-class compartment, and, on the contrary, he was dozing Cecile. Then he did not know her name yet, but still, taking her to the house in a taxi and saying goodbye to her, he was sure that sooner or later they would definitely meet. Indeed, a month later he accidentally met her in a movie theater where a French film was being played. At that time, Leon stayed in Rome for the weekend and enjoyed exploring its sights with Cecile. So their meetings began.
Having invented biographies for his fellow travelers (some of them managed to change), Leon begins to pick up names for them. Looking at the newlyweds whom he dubbed Pierre and Agnes, he recalls how he once rode along with Henrietta in the same way, not suspecting that one day their union would become a burden to him. He ponders when and how to tell Henrietta that he decided to part with her. A year ago, Cecile came to Paris, and Leon, explaining to Henrietta that he was connected with her service, invited her to her house. To his surprise, the women got along very well, and if anyone did not feel at ease, it was Leon himself. And now he has an explanation with his wife. Four years ago, Leon was in Rome with Henrietta, the trip was unsuccessful, and Leon asks himself if he would have loved his Cecile so if this acquaintance had not been preceded by this unfortunate trip.
It occurs to Leon that if Cecile moves to Paris, their relationship will change. He feels that he will lose her. He probably should have read the novel - because for that he bought it at the station in order to pass the time on the road and not to allow doubts to settle in his soul. After all, although he never looked at either the author’s name or the title, he did not buy it at random, the cover indicated that he belonged to a certain series. The novel undoubtedly speaks of a man who is in trouble and wants to be saved, embarks on a journey and suddenly discovers that the path he has chosen does not lead to where he thought he was lost. He understands that, having settled in Paris, Cecile will be much further from him than when she lived in Rome, and will inevitably be disappointed. He understands that she will reproach him for the fact that his most decisive step in life turned out to be a defeat, and that sooner or later they will part. Leon imagines that on Monday, taking a train in Rome, he will be glad that he did not tell Cecile about the work found for her in Paris and about the apartment that her friends had offered for a while. This means that he does not need to prepare for a serious conversation with Henrietta, because their life together will continue. Leon recalls how, together with Cecile, he went to Rome after her unsuccessful arrival in Paris, and on the train he told her that he would never leave Rome, to which Cecile replied that she wanted to live with him in Paris. Views of Paris hang in her room in Rome, just as the views of Rome hang in Leon’s Paris apartment, but Cecile in Paris is just as unthinkable and not needed by Leon as Henrietta in Rome. He understands this and decides not to say anything to Cecile about the place he has found for her.
The closer Rome is, the harder Leon is in his decision. He believes that he should not mislead Cecil, and before leaving Rome, he must directly tell her that although this time he came to Rome only for her, this does not mean that he is ready to forever connect his life with her. But Leon is afraid that his recognition, on the contrary, will inspire hope and trust in her, and his sincerity will turn into a lie. This time he decides to refuse to meet with Cecile, since he did not warn her about his arrival.
In half an hour the train will arrive in Rome. Leon picks up a book that he never opened for the whole journey. And he thinks: “I have to write a book; the only way I can fill the void that has arisen, I have no freedom of choice, the train rushes me to the final stop, I am bound hand and foot, doomed to roll on these rails. " He understands that everything will remain the same: he will continue to work with Scabelli, live with his family in Paris and meet with Cecile in Rome, Leon will not say a word to Cecile about this trip, but she will gradually understand that the path of their love does not lead anywhere. The few days that Leon will have to spend alone in Rome, he decides to devote to writing the book, and on Monday night, without seeing Cecil, he will board the train and return to Paris. He finally understands that in Paris, Cecile would have become another Henrietta and that in their life together they would have faced the same difficulties, only even more painful, since he would constantly recall that the city that she should have brought closer to him, - long away. Leon would like to show in his book what role Rome can play in the life of a person living in Paris. Leon is thinking about how to make Cecile understand and forgive him that their love turned out to be a hoax. Only a book can help here, in which Cecile appears in all her beauty, in the halo of Roman greatness, which she so fully embodies. The most reasonable thing is not to try to shorten the distance separating the two cities, but in addition to the real distance, there are also direct transitions and common ground, when the hero of the book, walking near the Paris Pantheon, suddenly realizes that this is one of the streets near the Roman Pantheon.
The train approaches Termini station, Leon recalls how, right after the war, he and Henrietta, returning from a honeymoon trip, whispered when the train departed from Termini station: “We will be back again as soon as we can.” And now Leon mentally promises Henrietta to return with her to Rome, because they are still not so old. Leon wants to write a book and revive a crucial episode of his life for the reader - a shift that occurred in his mind while his body moved from one station to another past landscapes flickering outside the window. The train arrives in Rome. Leon gets out of the compartment.
