Art in Nature

  They were enormous, coal black, trimmed in brass, green and red. Sometimes they would roll in with a screech in a thick plume of smoke, or they would glide slowly away from the platform, gathering strength and gaining speed, pistons working like great muscles. That was beautiful. Or they would just stand there breathing their white breath into the winter cold, panting with exhaustion and satisfaction after their long journeys. They had a wonderful strength, but they were tired. Nowadays, engines carry no fire in their bellies.

  Obviously – it’s important to point this out – obviously I could have taken the trolley to school, and of course I had good, warm, well-made clothing. I was not badly treated either at school or at home. But when I try to remember, I recall no other reality than those long walks, telling myself stories with an excitement that reached its climax at the railway terminal. Sometimes I was the engineer, driving thousands of helpless people through the night, increasing the speed, stoking the fire like a madman, blowing the whistle, the passengers growing increasingly alarmed, stumbling through the violently shaking cars to find the conductor, shouting, “What’s wrong? What’s happened?” And the conductor, pale as a ghost, answering, “God help us all, the machine is out of control, something has happened to the brakes …”

  Sometimes I was a ship’s captain, and I’d let the steamer brush against a reef, an iceberg, and everything and everyone on board would quake with fear for one long, anxious second and then, with a dreadful grating sound like that of tearing metal, the ship would continue on its way. But for how long? Only I knew. I was the emperor, with the power of life and death. I closed schools, I forbade entire populations to bear children. It was a splendid game – one game in the morning on the way to school and another on the way home. Everything else passed unnoticed, like time, and I remember very little. But my games gradually grew more refined and, at the same time, simpler. No one knew who I was – that was tremendously important. They never guessed who it was that walked among them, doing the same things they did at the same times of the day. How strong I must have been. I will write no more today.

  Later. I have a very nice apartment – living room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and work room. In the work room I’ve had shelves built for my illustrations, but it is in no sense an atelier – I must emphasize that point. It is, rather, a professional library. The word “atelier” unavoidably conveys an impression of picturesque romantic squalor. Nothing could be more alien to me. But a work room is simply a room where a person works, a space for a person’s vocational materials. I have never shown anyone my locomotive art.

  I eat out but make my own tea in the mornings and evenings. My apartment is very quiet. Sometimes when I’m having my evening tea I get the odd feeling that I don’t exist, almost as if I had never existed. This is one of those details that writing may help me to explain. I need to write every day and I must always take great pains to be precise. For that matter, it is a part of my job. I have been accused of being standoffish, of never showing my face. This has happened several times. But what gives them the right to see my face? I don’t know what they expect of me, but, whatever it is, they have no right to it.

  Later. Perhaps I should use the third person singular instead. “He” is more objective than “I”. It seems to me.

  So, he had never shown anyone his locomotive art. In his job as secretary and technical draughtsman (I am now repeating myself, but I do so intentionally) at United Railways, at professional conferences, when delivering drawings, at lunches, etc., he came into contact with quite a few people, often people who talked openly and seemed to be in no hurry. He soon noticed that, unlike himself, they revealed themselves freely. He gradually discovered that he could make use of their openness. Afterwards, when he came home to his apartment and continued with the work he called his own – the locomotive illustrations – he found it easier to depict the strength, the motion, the sovereign power of the machine.

  At home, of course, he never received visitors. The apartment was utterly his own.

  In the beginning, he just listened, very attentively. Later he learned to ask the right questions, to entice his interlocutors to speak of what mattered to them most in the world. This was not usually difficult, especially at a lunch or an office party. He waited patiently. He probed his way forward with questions and very soon arrived at what they really cared about, what they hoped for or feared. With infinite care, he led them on. It was a kind of game or, shall we say, a hobby. And quite a splendid source of material. “The locomotive principle” was what he called the moment when they revealed themselves. As they approached that revelation, he observed carefully their faces and hands, their voices and pauses, all of which, much more than their words, gave an impression of restrained power – and that was just what he needed for his work. The inherent, restrained power of the machine. For that matter, faces – and especially hands – had always seemed to him painfully naked. Another indicator, even more unconscious, is body language, especially the back and the neck. One time outside a shop, I caught sight of myself in a treacherously positioned double mirror, in semi-profile, from behind. It was very unpleasant.

  I’m getting off the subject. Wait.

  He made use of their intensity regardless of where it was concentrated, sometimes in the most ridiculous hopes and propensities. He collected their energy, went home, and could often work for hours on his conception of the consummate machine. He loved machines, their power, their perfection, their supreme indifference. While people chatted their way to their manias or, let us say, to their motive power, he was very careful not to be drawn into any kind of relationship. He did draw nearer to them, but evasively, and he never sought to converse with women. There were people who retreated afterwards, but he had already used them. Now I’m tired. I’ll continue later.

  There were dangerous people and unreachable people, but there were also the confused, the innocent, the manic, and those who were friendly because they were helpless. On the whole, so much power goes to waste! Naturally, categories are always simplified concepts. In the case of human beings they are perhaps as readily distinguishable as, say, the few recurring nightmares that haunt their sleep. (I will return later to the question of dreams, in particular the one about the locomotive. Am I including too much detail? There is much of this I should delete.)

  Another day. Sometimes I become unreasonably tired in the evenings. I put my work aside because I cannot draw the full-fledged machine and at the same time make it move, rush, dash, plunge forward, and my head feels like a lump of iron, gliding out of my reach. But most tired of all are my hands. They lie beside me as heavy as the earth, sinking deeper and deeper.

  I don’t like taking people by the hand. The expression “a helping hand” is disagreeable. Why should I

  I have lost my train of thought.

  New section:

  Sometimes, when he was listening to people, he pretended that they were about to travel – always by train. They begin with small talk, tiny things, the way you do just before the train departs, carelessly, hastily. But the moment the train starts to move, they blurt out what’s important to them, the crucial, irrevocable revelation, like a postscript at the end of an irreproachably cautious letter.

  And so they vanished, he allowed them to vanish, and he drew away – safely back onto the platform as it slipped rapidly backwards – and went home to work.

  Oh stifled power, unleashed in a release of steam, the splendid locomotive of my youth with its long howl, all expectation and alarm, rising straight to the sooty cupolas of every railway shed. The pistons begin to move and then, majestically, dragging its cars in its wake, the locomotive leaves behind on the dreary platform everything that can be left behind and everyone who has said too much or managed to say nothing at all! It is thee I attempt to portray!

  I need to revise this, too personal. Check.

  Delete or explain why. But I don’t know why.

  A locomotive dragging all the world’s unease back and
forth across the whole face of the earth could grow very tired.

  Note: I have always been extremely wary of women. They are undependable.

  Later.

  Sometimes he played with the idea of focusing on one traveller – a Traveller, that beautiful, old-fashioned word – and attach himself ever so lightly and with no strings to someone about to undertake a long journey. It could be the pure, free starting gate to an attachment, a longing that need never become contaminated or come too close. The thudding of the rails is like a heartbeat, a rhythmic pulse in the stomach and gut, further down, further away, finally only a vibration, the rails are empty and clean, then silence and liberation.

  He had never ridden a train. Had no desire to do so.

  Actual experience can never be the same as imagined experience. So he believed.

  Railway terminal is another lovely, dignified expression. Now, in middle age, he often passed the terminal and would linger for a moment. But at night – and here are the recurring dreams – at night he would dream about the real locomotives. He was in a hurry, a great hurry, the train was about to leave and he wasn’t packed, he couldn’t find his passport and didn’t know his destination, but it was important, painfully important, and he ran from track to track and had forgotten which train he was supposed to take and when it left and from which platform … It was too late, it was all too late. The only person who had ever noticed that he existed was going away never to return, the only person he had not despised and who did not fit into any category. The locomotive screamed, shrieked, and he jumped between the tracks and, with a great metallic roar, the locomotive came closer and closer and drowned and crushed him in its boundless grandeur. He grabbed convulsively at a handle and the air that howled around him was hot, monstrously hot …

  I know that others also dream about trains, but not the way I do, not at all. They are only afraid of missing the train, simply that. They don’t feel the pain I feel.

  I will try to explain my illustrations. I gather all the strong colours in the locomotive – deep Prussian blue, coal black, and in the black hints of red and white fire, the machine’s splendid wide-open eyes that nevertheless carry no hint of threat, the locomotive is utterly indifferent to whatever comes in its path and to everything that coils along behind it, those anonymous cars forever filling and emptying and filling again, of no interest whatsoever, like women.

  I have now read through what I’ve written. I wonder if it is sufficiently straightforward or perhaps, on the contrary, overly explicit. I have been criticized for giving too much attention to detail, but that is precisely what makes me such a good secretary. A long life has taught me to notice and value facts, and I seldom make a mistake. I will now try to continue.

  His locomotive studies were done in watercolour, black India ink, and the transparent, luminous Bengali ink that’s used for colouring photographs. Of course, he realized he was not the only artist to see into the soul of the locomotive. The painter Turner has quite convincingly represented their dizzying speed and power, but he conceals what we might call the face of the locomotive in steam and fog. We understand, but we do not see. I find his painting of the onrushing train very depressing. He shows us not the locomotive but only himself.

  I’ll wait until tomorrow. I won’t continue at the moment.

  It was a Sunday. He got up very late and sat down at his work table. He didn’t like easels, because his hands and arms grew so heavy that he needed the table’s support. Letting your head sink onto your arms for a moment doesn’t count, no more than those quick half-dreams that punctuate a sleepless night. He spoiled an important surface that couldn’t be redone, neither with water, a razor blade, nor by painting over. He sat quietly for a while and stared at his drawing, then he put on his overcoat and walked to the railway terminal. To this day he went there when he felt distressed. Several trains were in, but he paid them no attention. He went to the restaurant and had a beer. The place was full, perfect strangers were sharing tables, trying to look past the people across from them or stare down into their plates. They ate hastily and had placed their bags and suitcases tightly under the legs of their tables. It was crowded and the smell of food was stronger than usual. He drank his beer and despised them. He despised everything just at the moment. And his back ached, the small of his back, where it always aches when you reach an impasse. Directly across from him sat a thin woman in a black coat. She’d been eating cabbage and sausage and now she took out a cigarette and started searching for matches in her purse.

  “Excuse me,” she said, “but do you have a match?”

  He pushed a box across to her and decided to go. “You have paint on your face,” she said. Her tone was utterly matter-of-fact, as if she had said your suitcase is open or you have a wasp on your coat, and her gaze moved on at once and she didn’t smile. Her discretion was unusual for a woman, and to show his appreciation he asked politely where she was off to. “Nowhere,” she said. “I don’t like to travel.” And a few moments later, as if she thought her reply had been a bit brusque, she added, “I just come here sometimes to look at the trains.”

  He grew attentive, alert as a hunter. He asked why she was interested in trains, in what way, and had she really never travelled? No, she just liked to look at trains.

  Earlier, when he was trying to uncover people’s innermost essence, he had never sought out women. It was possible, even probable, that they could have given him even more usable material, but sound instinct warned him off. Women can exact a heavy price for a confidence and it was best to avoid them. Now he studied this woman who came to the railway terminal solely and exclusively because she wanted to watch the trains come and go, and he thought, is it possible, have I finally met someone I can talk to and who will understand?

  “You are fascinated by the locomotives, am I right?” he said.

  She shrugged her shoulders and said, “I don’t really know. It’s simply the trains. You know, the trains.”

  She was a perfectly ordinary woman, maybe a little over forty. Nothing but her interest distinguished her from the others, except perhaps her heavy eyebrows. Now she put out her cigarette and rose to leave. With a little nod to him, she made her way among the chairs of all the other diners and walked out into the waiting room, a strikingly tall and angular creature. She reminded him of a crow.

  He thought about her for a long time afterwards. He had never before met anyone obsessed with trains in principle, only people whose jobs involved the railroad or who insisted on talking about their travels. In this woman’s case, it was clearly not a question of the locomotive but rather of the cars, a natural feminine perception – to follow, to accept, to be as it were swept along. Another important detail – she had never wanted to travel. What captivated her was not the banal desire to seek out warmer and lovelier climes, an easier or more exciting life, no, she loved trains as such, as a phenomenon. Did she see the beauty of the train? Did she fantasize about a train trip’s freedom from responsibility? Setting forth, out, away … And as you are carried off, everything you leave behind becomes irreparable, final, and what you’re approaching has not yet made its claims. You are a Traveller. For a short time, you are free.

  It seemed to him terribly important that he should speak to her. He returned to the railway terminal almost every day, but she wasn’t there. He tried to remember her face, but all he remembered were her unplucked eyebrows and that she was tall and thin and wore black. The winter continued cold. He worked on his drawings in the evenings. He decided to paint people in the train windows, but he didn’t like the result and washed them off. He saw people at the office but he no longer tried to get them to talk about themselves, and he walked past the terminal less and less frequently. But his thoughts returned again and again to the woman who liked trains. She became a game. He gave her qualities, characteristics, experiences, a profession, even a childhood. He made her strong, brave and mysterious. It was the first time in his conscious life that he had taken an interest in
another human being.

  One evening he could not go on working. He had reached a highly critical point. What remained to be added was so important, so delicate, that he needed to pause. I have never been able to decide whether those final, decisive lines or brushstrokes should be done with concentrated intensity or perhaps just the opposite, on sudden impulse, feverishly. I don’t know. One can destroy so much or gain you never know what – but there is nothing of the gambler in me. My principle has always been to feel my way. I’m always searching, and time passes, so very soon I have no more time. Strange, is it not, that the locomotive should be the motive force (ha ha) for this artist?

  Wait a moment.

  He went out – to the railway terminal. And there she stood on the platform. She was taller than all the other people waiting there, but what primarily set her apart from the crowd were her shoulders and the way she held her head, an immobility that showed she was not there to meet someone, that she was waiting only for the train. It came in, slowed, stopped, the platform filled with people hurrying towards one another or past one another, but she didn’t move. When the platform around her was nearly empty, she turned to go. Then he walked up and asked her if she recognized him. She nodded. Her expression was rather sharp, and for a moment he was confused by the fact that her face didn’t match the picture of her he had created in his imagination. Only her eyebrows were the same, very thick and dark, while beneath them her eyes seemed oddly uncertain. She looked away.

  “You needn’t be uneasy,” he said. “I would just like to talk to you, talk about trains, about traveling …”

  “I’ve never travelled,” she said.

  So he tried to explain. “That’s why I must talk with you. I don’t travel either, but I’m fascinated by trains, just as you are …”