Waiting for the fear, p.20
Waiting for the Fear, page 20
Yes, the state railroad administration counted us as civil employees in at least one respect: our huts had been built on a parcel of land originally reserved for the station building; and not only that, these huts all looked the same and shared the same architectural elements as that station building. The stationmaster would laugh at us. “Official storytellers,” he’d say. Then that never-ending quarrel would begin. No, he did not think of us as civil employees: for one thing, we made our money on a piecework basis covered by the passengers on the express train, which meant our wages weren’t official. You’re story vendors, the stationmaster would tell us. I didn’t care to be identified as a civil servant or a vendor—we were artists. We occupied a privileged position. Nevertheless, we didn’t feel very “privileged” when the ayran, apple, and dried-sausage sandwich peddlers were up and jostling alongside us at night as we all tried to get the passengers to purchase our wares. We had to shout just as loudly as the other peddlers did. Of course, hardly anyone could hear the young Jew, and the young woman would get stuck on the platform between the food peddlers and the passengers getting off the train. We didn’t have much to sell anyway. The stationmaster’s typewriter was on its last legs, so we could only get one or two copies of a story out of it. The last of our copies were almost too faint to read and rarely found any buyers. And once a story got passed up a few times, it became too stale to sell; we wrote stories that dealt with current events, and if we handed the passengers a story that was a few days out of date, they would wrinkle their noses and say, “We know this one, don’t you have anything new?” and throw our stale stories back in our faces, at which point we’d cede our places to the apple and ayran sellers.
There were other difficulties too: the train didn’t always stop in front of our huts. The stationmaster usually had the freight trains pull all the way up to the first platform, which was why the express pulled up to the second or the third platforms (if “platforms” was what you could even call them). The food peddlers knew this beforehand, they’d already be there waiting. Since we always woke up at the last minute, we’d be so groggy that we’d run straight into the sides of the freight cars. Then we’d have to walk around them and carefully make our way between the tracks in the dark. And it was always poorly lit where the trains stopped, which for us was especially crucial: We kept our stories bundled in little wicker baskets and never sold them right away because the passengers had to open them first (or maul them, rather) and at least look over the words. The darkness made this difficult. Since the passengers couldn’t see the writing very clearly, they often gave the stories a perfunctory glance before handing them back.
Sales were bad. It was the war years. Even bread was expensive. There were frequent blackouts, and the station’s weak lights didn’t illuminate very much, which made it hard for even us to see what we wrote. On nights like those it made no sense to work. Behind windows covered tight with blackout curtains, and in the dim light of the lamps that we had to keep wrapped up in blue paper, we tried to write stories whose sale would be anything but certain. Luckily, there were the sleeping-car passengers that snatched up whatever they bought without properly looking it over, and they’d pay double the price. These people only ate in the dining cars, so they paid little attention to our filthy ayran, apple, and dried-sausage peddlers (especially the dried-sausage peddlers). We were the only station in the country where fresh stories were sold, so they’d heard about us, and we always reserved the first copies for them: they were fastidious, demanding customers. Nevertheless, it wasn’t easy to wake up in the middle of the night and leave the comfort of one’s own bed to purchase a story. But we found a way: we paid the sleeping-car porters a few cents to wake the passengers once the train was in the station. (The porters also got a free story from each of us with every new arrival. I doubt they read them. They probably sold them second-hand.) But without those sleeping-car passengers, we would have been done for. We even made friends with some of them. Since they knew what a dismal state we were in, some of them gave us the cakes and cookies and whatnot that their friends had given them when they’d seen them off. Working at night like that, we were starving. We wrote our stories at night, typed them up at night, and tried to sell them at night. Then, as the express moved off into the darkness, we’d plod our way back to the station building; back in the waiting room, we’d eat the cookies the sleeping-car passengers had given us. Sometimes the other peddlers would join us there too. The ayran peddler would give us the ayran he hadn’t sold, since it would go sour by morning anyway. I guess they all felt a little sorry for us. And the apple peddler would sometimes—but not always—peel an apple for us. But we couldn’t give them the stories we hadn’t sold: Not one of them knew how to read or write. Only the sausage sandwich peddler sometimes asked us for our stories. It didn’t matter whose, as long as it was the final copy. He liked how thin the paper was because he used it to roll his cigarettes.
There were times I felt cheerful enough—when sales were going well—to read my stories to the other peddlers. (The young woman always disapproved of this.) The sausage sandwich peddler would fall asleep after the first few sentences, but no one left the waiting room until I finished reading. (They’d finally wake up toward the end of the story.) The ayran peddler was all ears, and I relished his attentiveness. As I read, I’d do everything I could to bring the dialogue of my characters to life. Then the sausage sandwich peddler would shake his head, say that times were bad, and let out a sigh. That’s how it goes sometimes, the apple peddler would say. The things one sees in life. I wrote sad stories about the food peddlers too, but even the ayran peddler fell asleep as they listened to them.
The stationmaster didn’t care about our writing either, but he always bought a copy of every story, keeping them filed meticulously away in their own cabinet: he claimed this was required by regulations. Our stories had been written on the premises of the railroad administration, he’d tell us, which meant our status fell within the scope of article No. 248. Whenever he talked about laws and regulations, I couldn’t help getting upset: Weren’t there any laws that could correct our status and grant us a more dignified position here on the premises of the railroad station? I’d always been against an understanding of the law that equated the work we produced with sausage sandwiches. Then another lengthy debate would ensue, and the stationmaster would take one of his black books off the shelf and insist that the food peddlers had the Health Protection Laws to deal with.
Everything seemed to be getting worse. The young Jew was wasting away. I figured he had some secret disease. We didn’t have the money to get him treated. And the railway hospital wouldn’t even admit us. I vented at the stationmaster: Throwing us under article No. 248, they certainly knew how to take our stories from us—and as if by force. Was there not an article that could get the young Jew the treatment he needed? Things were getting worse, and everyone knew it. And there were rumors going around about a new railway being built, which would bypass our station for a more direct route. Only the postal trains would stop here now.
I grew very sad; and what’s more, I’d fallen in love. It was with the young woman living in the third hut, of course, that’s who I fell in love with. A porter we didn’t know had pushed her off the sleeping car one night, since peddlers weren’t actually allowed to board them. The young woman fell in the dirt, and her basket of stories scattered over the ground. I consoled her, stroking her hair and telling her not to cry. The platform was empty except for us two. The other peddlers had quickly sold off their goods and left the station. We hadn’t been getting along with them lately. They wanted to start selling things on the sleeping car that were prepared according to the Health Protection Laws, like bottled fizzy drinks or sausage sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. They even made an arrangement with the sleeping-car porter. For God’s sake, there was a new problem every day! And these sleeping-car passengers proved to be insatiable, they’d stuff themselves there in the dining car—who knows with what—and then get hungry again halfway through the night. We discovered a temporary statute, thank God, and that’s why the food peddlers didn’t dare come near the sleeping car again. But this inept law would be revoked within a month. So the two of us—the young woman and I—stood there in each other’s arms, shivering in the cold. What wind had blown us to this town? I wondered. And what terrible conditions we worked under! We were so busy dealing with the food peddlers, the train crew, the hunger, and the misery, we couldn’t properly produce our art. Worst of all, we didn’t have any proper books. We didn’t even have the money to buy a train ticket to the city to buy books. What did they expect from us under such a state of affairs? The more I thought about it the better I understood our strange and hopeless plight: The railroad administration hadn’t done us any favors by giving us little boxy rooms right next to the station building. With all the noise the trains made whistling through the station every day, we hardly got any sleep. And no one recognized the value of our writing: one recent night, a young and straight-faced sleeping-car passenger told me that he’d shown a few of the stories we’d sold him to a well-known writer and critic, who apparently claimed they were old-fashioned and clichéd. It was drizzling out, the outer pages of the stories were getting wet in their baskets. And it was autumn. I couldn’t stop shivering inside my thin sweater, which was unraveling at the seams. Under those conditions, how could I have written anything better? I suddenly became angry with this young sleeping-car passenger and told him, my voice like ice: Give me back my stories, if you like, and I’ll give you back your money. But it was a lie: I didn’t have a cent in my pocket.
I’d been absentmindedly brooding over all this when the train pulled away and I suddenly noticed the young woman in my arms. She snuggled up close. She put her head on my shoulder. I kissed her. I slung our story baskets over my arm and walked her toward the distant station lights. We made love that night in a mess of emotions that seemed to be born of loneliness and despair. Now, as I write these lines inside a hut surrounded by other peddlers, by a surly station master and railroad tracks, I’m afraid of getting carried away by the sentimentality of my unremarkable stories. Yes, I loved that young woman, I often went to her hut. The young Jew’s hut was right between ours, so I’d have to pass in front of it on my way to hers, which could be awkward. The young Jew’s illness had gotten worse. He couldn’t go out and sell his stories anymore like he used to, and he was writing less and less. I’d recently begun to write his stories for him. He was so weak he couldn’t even object to my help. If he felt up to it, he’d sit at his table and write what turned out to be very short stories. The stationmaster told us these were insufficient and claimed that, according to an article in some other regulation, we had to write longer stories to cover our rent for the huts. No longer was he meddling simply in the subjects of our stories but in how we went about writing them too.
It was around this time that I began to write love stories. The stationmaster tried to stop me, saying it would only lead to gossip. Helplessly we submitted to his every whim. Because if he threw us out, where else would we find another train station with story-writing huts? My love began to cook the stationmaster’s meals and repair the rips in his clothes so that he’d leave us be. He despised us and, if I’m not mistaken, had always despised us. Then he told us to write only about railroads, seeing how we owed the railroad the very bread we ate. He offered himself as an example: Did a stationmaster engage in other work outside of trains? I tried to explain how difficult it was to come up with a new railroad-related story every day, but it was useless. In fact, he knew we couldn’t do it. As we struggled to maintain our way of life under these difficult conditions, he then drummed up a new source of worry by threatening to write unfavorable letters about us and sending them to his superiors. We’d fallen out with the other peddlers too, and here we were, a little community of a handful of people in one desolate and neglected corner of the country, and we still couldn’t manage to live in peace.
I felt so tired. The lack of sleep at night, the shrieking of the trains, the burden of having to come up with new stories for a crowd of boorish and ignorant—or otherwise smug and carefree—customers, the young Jew and his worsening illness, the stationmaster and his ever-souring mood . . . I was simply overwhelmed. My love became so tired and discouraged that I was forced to help her with her stories too.
My thoughts seemed to be clouding over. My link to the world beyond the train station gradually grew weaker. I couldn’t even keep track of the passing days anymore. I used to have a knack for coming up with some current issue that could be woven together with characters and a plot, but that had vanished. Most of the time, I remained ignorant of even the most newsworthy events. Well, I knew a few: the war had ended, and soldiers were streaming back from the front by the trainload. I collected scraps of information from them and wrote war stories for a time. But then I kept forgetting things: Had the war taken place in our own country? Or had it been fought on the distant steppes? Had our territory expanded, or did it contract? The young Jew’s weary smile was answer enough: What does it matter, so long as our station is still right here? We hadn’t heard any cannon-fire, which meant the war had never gotten very close.
I later realized from the way the dour passengers glanced over my stories that the war had long since ended. Then one day a passenger told me this: I’d begun to make glaring errors with the names of cities. I confused the names of our politicians too, or forgot them altogether. Of course, I hadn’t spoken a person’s name out loud in years. It had been a long time since any of us in our station community addressed each other by name. We’d never felt the need. Even the station name, which had only ever appeared on the white-washed flank wall, was now faded and forgotten. We didn’t even have a dictionary. I doubted if I could recall any words except the ones I used in my stories each day. We didn’t speak with the food peddlers either, and the stationmaster now expressed his irritation with nothing but gestures. The young Jew was so sick he couldn’t speak. He just indicated what he wanted with a nod of his head. Silently the young woman and I made love. And soon enough I got used to it all.
In fact, I lost the ability to judge exactly how long these periods of time lasted. What else could I do but grow accustomed? I wasn’t that young anymore. And writing stories was the only job I knew. I couldn’t move to the big city and start a new life for myself. Naturally, as time went on, we gradually lost contact with the world beyond the station. Since newspapers had gotten expensive and were now transported by other means besides rail, the first connection we severed was the one to daily events. Then the new railway line opened, and the express only came through once a week. But that was fine with me. I didn’t feel like dashing off any more stories that required me to start a new one as soon as I’d written the previous one’s ending.
I wrote all day without leaving my room. The only thing that distracted me was the shoemaker’s racket next door. The young Jew was gone; he’d died a long time ago. I was planning to ask the young woman to move next door. But before I could make this request—a long time before—the stationmaster showed up with this shoemaker. And the man moved in right away. Business for him here in the middle of nowhere was no better than it was for us. I thought of suggesting that he move into the young woman’s hut. I must have thought about this for a long time, because one day when I went to his hut, I mean to suggest this to him . . . Never mind, I’m confused. But here’s what happened: the young woman had already left. That’s right, her hut was empty. I fell asleep one night right after finishing one of my longer stories, and she boarded a train and left. At that point I was more confused than ever. And for some reason these longer stories of mine just wouldn’t sell, maybe because I only wrote one per week and was asking for too much. No one could have said these stories were very coherent. I spent my days half hungry and half full. One day—one day much later—a passenger I’d sold a story to a while ago—a long while ago—roundly criticized it. I’d even gotten the page numbers all mixed up. I told him that I hadn’t eaten for a week. No, that’s not true. I said this much later to another passenger. I tried to tell this earlier passenger that everything I’d done was intentional. But I kept forgetting things. And I was sensitive to criticism. At times like those, times when I felt especially anxious, I’d regain my former vigor. Then I’d lose it—much later. For instance, it made me anxious whenever the stationmaster said I wasn’t any use anymore and threatened to throw me out. But even though I couldn’t find any buyers, I believed I was writing better stories. The cobbler would tell me what was happening in the world. I don’t think I could recall any of that right now though. What he described was a complex and incomprehensible place. I tried to read him my stories, but he hardly listened. In fact, my stories seemed to be increasingly valuable in an increasingly inexpressible way. But I couldn’t explain this to the cobbler. Because he’d left too, left me all alone. He abandoned the station after—a long time after—the last conversation we’d had.
