The so-called music of the wheels feels like hammer blows on my cerebellum and temples. If I stretch my leg, I involuntarily brush my neighbour’s trousers. And we look at each other continuously: while cutting apples, eating sausages, peeling oranges. Of course we squirt juice into the other’s eyes.
Our hands, our collars, our shirts, our handkerchiefs are blackened. The locomotive pours soot on my face. Often it takes us through so-called tunnels, which are the pride of modern engineering. We ride through the underworld, no coal-miners we. If we move to open a window, those with colds protest. If I leave the compartment I need to issue half a dozen excuse-me’s first. The so-called communication cord is sealed. If you use it to communicate, you pay a fine. In case of a difference of views, the conductor’s decision is final. Always to my disadvantage…
If I should elect to go in a sleeping-car, that entails sharing a small cupboard with a large gentleman. A shared night is a night halved. (Passengers are segregated by sex, worse luck.) Wives require proof. If I eat lunch on board, plates, waiters and wine-bottles are all kept shaking in iron rings. Woe if they were set at liberty…!
Conductors change about as often as April weather. They are there to draw lines on your ticket. Just lines. For that purpose, they like to wake me. These simple lines (sometimes perforations) I could do myself. Head-conductors like to check up on the lines left by the conductors. Lethally heavy suitcases teeter on luggage racks. At the frontier, customs inspectors come on board, and help themselves to my cigars. In the corridors are framed axes and saws, forever hinting at the worst.
When you reach your destination, you fall over suitcases. If your suitcase is travelling separately, it entails waiting for it for an hour. All stations are built on a prodigal scale, but with very narrow exits to the world beyond. Tickets need to be surrendered. I wonder what the railways do with so much cardboard.
No one is so badly off as a traveller. It’s a curious thing that this mediaeval torture of travelling should strike everyone as being so romantic. Our clothes are wrecked. We ruin our digestion with hot sausages and cold beers. We all have reddened eyes and dirty, greasy hands. And that should make us happy…!
Sometimes in films I see the saloon cars of American millionaires. They dictate business letters to typists. They sit in tubs and bathe, whilst travelling. A black valet rubs them dry. A cook prepares their favourite dish. Some travel in automobiles, which are independent of rails. A few take to the skies — capitalist birds. Why don’t we demand these things? Our train tickets cost enough. We shouldn’t have to pay for cinema seats as well.
Our so-called modes of transport lag far behind the times. They stand in no relation to the pride we take in our advanced civilization and the contempt we feel for post-chaises. Anyway, railway compartments are more like post-chaises than the railway authorities like to think. We’re living in the wireless age, and still they like to punch holes in cardboard! The contemporaries of the dirigible balloon still lug their own suitcases! We are contemplating travelling to the moon. We are thinking about Mars. We have hit upon the Theory of Relativity. Just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean we are happy to roost on chicken ladders when we have shelled out for beds.
Modern aeroplanes are more comfortable than trains. If I were of an aphoristic bent — which God knows I’m not — then I would say: It’s better to crash by aeroplane than arrive by train. There are no parachutes for train crashes. Nor have I seen life-jackets, come to that…
Even doing fifty mph, you’re still not travelling at the speed of time. Time passes at a hundred thousand miles per second. While I’m sitting in a speeding train, I’m still racing ahead of it. That’s what the Theory of Relativity allows…
I can transmit my likeness in an instant by telegraph. Transporting myself takes twelve hours. By the time I arrive, I’m no longer recognizable. You can’t shave on a train. My beard grows faster than the train travels. You can’t use the toilet at “station stops”. While the train is moving it’s continually occupied.
In third class you sit on wooden pallets, as in prison. If someone turns off the overhead lamp, there is no option but sleep all round. It’s too dark to read the paper. When the light’s on, the editorial jumps all over the place. You take the feuilleton page and bend it over your knee, just to prove it can be done.
If you put your head out of the window, you’ll never see it again. It’ll be in a well somewhere. If you lean against a door, you’ll fly out like a piece of orange peel. And yet, it’s forbidden to throw things out.
“All infractions are punishable.” Luggage thieves “may be prosecuted”. Not that you’ll ever get your luggage back. Anyone supplying information leading to the conviction of a thief will be rewarded. But anyone who’s ever tried will know how hard it is to get a reward from the railways.
On the contrary, there are often “supplementary fares” to be paid. (You even get given a receipt.) You can stick it in the mirror of the toilets — which are blind anyway.
Jumping onto a moving train is not allowed. Jumping off one is for criminals. In any case, ordinary humans are incapable of opening the door, unless, that is, they have the misfortune to lean against it accidentally while the train is in motion. Children must be kept on a leash. Dogs may not be taken at all. Meanwhile, chatty travellers are left criminally unmuzzled…
There are luxury trains, expresses, local trains, various fees and classes, a forest of instructions, prohibitions, discouragements. All these are felt to be “romantic”.
Even so, I would sooner travel to Monte Carlo first class than fill in a tax declaration on foot…
Ed.: We assure our readers that in spite of everything he says about “romance”, our author spends very little time at home.
Frankfurter Zeitung, 6 June 1926
56. The Lady in the Compartment
A beautiful lady entered the compartment where I was reading the newspaper. She looked at my newspaper, not at me, told the porter to put up a large silver-studded leather case, sat down, and didn’t have the right change. There was a long moment, filled with the silence of the porter, who was in a hurry. One could clearly feel the intensity with which the man was looking for an expression of impatience, haste, and possibly also bitterness. But seeing as he had no business looking impatient and embittered, he emanated a silence that was as pungent as any oath. At that moment I felt a great irritation with the beautiful lady. She was forcing me out of my tranquillity deepened by the enjoyment of the exciting newspaper to a painful pondering of how to find a swift and satisfactory solution to this predicament. Other men think on their feet, make remarks that win them the admiration of both ladies and porters. Whereas I was in the position that if I didn’t quickly do something, I would be despised by the one, and laughed at by the other. I therefore asked: “What are you owed?”; was informed, gave the porter a tip that compelled him to thank me more loudly than I would have liked, and sat back to await developments. The lady, still hunting for change, came up with a big bill, and not looking at me, asked me whether I could change it for her. “No!” I said, and the lady looked some more. Her confusion must be very great; I resolved to take pity on her, but I couldn’t do it, because I needed all my pity for myself. Was I to exclaim: “How delightful to be in credit with such a ravishing individual!” What a compliment! Was it not impertinent to disturb her in her search, was it not glib to seek to base an acquaintance on such a vulgar premise? I was unable to watch the lady, her hurried movements were of a private, even an intimate nature, and I thought I shouldn’t stare at the contents and lining of her handbag.