I was gripped by panic, I felt actual pain in my chest. Please believe me when I say I never heard snoring like that before or after in my life.
The roaring waterfall we were approaching was making my head explode, it was pressing down on my chest, my legs began to twitch and I couldn’t control them. I felt that along with his snoring, something deep inside my own existence was also being released. Maybe everyone in the compartment felt it, because no one had the guts to nudge him or to say, You’re snoring.
I pressed against the window, hoping that help might come from that direction. And thank goodness, after a short period of torment the train pulled in to my station. Without waiting for it to come to a complete stop, I pushed open the door and jumped out.
The dispatcher was standing close by on the platform, and he tore me off a strip. “You there! What’s the rush? If you break an arm or a leg the railroad’ll be liable! Do you even have a ticket? Come here, let me see your ticket!”
I walked over, still shaken up by the snoring. I reached into my pocket, but I couldn’t find my ticket.
“What did I tell you!” the dispatcher exclaimed almost triumphantly. “No ticket, and he jumps out of the train before it reaches the station.”
I rummaged around in my other pockets. In the meantime the dispatcher gave the signal for the train to depart, and when I finally found my ticket it was already gathering speed. “I’ve got it,” I said. “Here.”
“Let’s see if it’s valid.” He waved to someone in the departing train.
Without thinking I followed the direction of his waving hand; someone was waving back at him from a window of the train. All at once my heart leaped into my throat. My hat was on the train! Dear God! The last car was just passing. I rushed after it as fast as my legs could carry me. I managed to catch hold of the handrail on the very last door, but the train accelerated and I lost my grip. I still kept running, carried not so much by my legs as by despair that my hat was leaving with the train. Again I caught up with the last car and again I stretched out my hand, trying to grab the handrail, and again I seemed to have gotten ahold of it, all I needed to do was jump from the platform onto the step. But the train jolted forward again and I was thrown back onto the platform. Still I ran, till the last car was a long way off and getting farther and farther.
I was breathless, my legs shook under me, but I ran back toward the dispatcher. He was still on the platform. He may have been kept there by curiosity as to whether I’d make it back on the train. But he’d probably guessed what would happen, because he greeted me scoldingly:
“I bet you had a ticket to here and you were planning to continue on for free, eh?”
“No, I left my hat on the train,” I gasped.
“What kind of hat?”
“A brown felt one. Please stop the train.”
“Stop the train? You must be mad!” He turned around and set off toward the station building.
I blocked his path.
“Please stop it.”
“Out of my way!” He tugged his cap tighter over his head and tried to push me aside.
I grabbed him by the lapels and shook him till he went as red as his service cap.
“Stop the train! Stop the train!” I shouted in his face.
“Let go of me!” he bellowed, trying to twist free from my grip. “Let go, goddammit! This is assault! You over there!” he shouted in the direction of a railroad worker with a long hammer who was tapping the rails. “Call the men! This lunatic won’t let go of me!”
But before the other man could clamber up onto the platform, several railroad workers came running out of the station building.
“Don’t let him go! Keep hold of him!” they were shouting.
“He’s the one holding me!” the dispatcher yelled back furiously. “Son of a bitch won’t let go!” he exclaimed to the men running up, as if out of hurt pride. “Just won’t let go!”
One of the men grabbed my hands and tried to release my grip on the dispatcher’s jacket. It did no good, it was like I was holding him with claws.
“Damn but he’s strong. Little squirt like that.”
The guy with the long hammer put in:
“One whack with this and he’ll let go. Shall I?” He started to swing the hammer.
“Hang on,” growled the dispatcher, still furious. “He’ll let go himself. He’ll calm down and let go. He left his hat.”
“Where?” asked one of the men.
“In the compartment,” replied the dispatcher. “He wanted me to stop the train.”
They all exploded in laughter, while my hands dropped from his uniform by themselves.
“Stopping a train is like stopping the earth turning,” one of them said as his laughter died away.
“He couldn’t have stopped it anyway,” added the worker with the hammer, peering after the disappearing train. “It had already passed the flagman’s hut.”
They all burst out laughing again. The laughter carried across the platform, it felt like it was drifting far above me.
“Where’s his head?”
“Maybe he left his head there as well.”
They laughed as if nothing as entertaining as this had ever happened on the railroad, except for crashes.
One of them must have felt sorry for me and said:
“Maybe we should call ahead? They could tell the conductor to go look through the cars.”
The dispatcher retorted as he straightened his uniform:
“How’s he supposed to make his way through the crowd? They’re not even checking tickets on that train.”
15
Did it start from the dream or from the laughter? No, it’s no big deal, I just wonder about it sometimes. I see that surprises you. I’m not surprised you’re surprised, because I’m surprised myself — what was it for? Especially as I don’t even know what it was that supposedly started. I’m not looking for a beginning. Besides, does anything like a beginning ever actually exist? Even the fact that a person is born doesn’t mean that that’s their beginning. If anything had a beginning, it might continue in the right order. But nothing seems willing to go in the right order. One day won’t march after another in an orderly fashion, one keeps pushing in front of the other. Same with the weeks, the months, the years — they don’t follow each other one by one in single file, they charge at you in extended file as they say in the army.
No, I’m not a military man. When I was of an age to do my military service, my workplace got me out of it. The fact that I was an electrician wasn’t enough of a reason. In those days I played in the company band, like I told you. I was the only saxophonist who’d come forward. They would have brought someone else in from another building site, but they’d never come across anyone that played the sax on those sites either.
The thing is, though, that when I sometimes try and make sense of my life, and who doesn’t do that … Obviously I don’t mean my whole life, but this or that part, it goes without saying that no one is capable of grasping their entire life, even the most meager one. Not to mention that it’s always debatable whether any life is a whole. Each one is more or less broken into pieces, and often the pieces are scattered. A life like that can’t be gathered back together, and even if it could, what whole would you make out of it? It isn’t a teacup, or even some larger container. Perhaps it can be imagined as a whole after you die. But then, who’s going to be around to do that? Each person is the only one that can imagine himself to himself. Not in all things, you’re right. But as much as you can. There is no other truth.
Besides, am I really wondering about this life of mine? Why would I do that? It won’t serve any purpose, nothing will be reversed or changed. If anything, it’s life that wonders about me, I don’t feel any such need. Why wouldn’t life wonder about a person living it? It doesn’t even need our consent. Just like with dreams. You dream things even if you’d prefer not to. Sometimes you have dreams you simply don’t want to have, though they’re your own dreams. Also, you have no influence over whether someone else dreams about you. How is life different from that?