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Authors: A L McCann
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perverse depths of the human mind.
At first the trains had been a poor substitute for this devotion to the absolute. Robert had urged him to apply for the job when it was advertised and Sid Packard, against his better judgement, had warmly recommended him to the Rail Board. Albert loathed the thought of working again. He saw work, in fact all forms of merely utilitarian endeavour, as ultimately futile and worthless.
“You have a family, Albert,” Robert urged him one evening in the Limerick Arms. “You have to take responsibility for them.”
Albert, who was always at his calmest and most reasonable in the presence of his brother, didn’t disagree, but merely avoided direct eye contact, sulking in a way that acknowledged his high aspirations would have to be put aside for the time being.
“I should have lived in another century, Robert,” he said.
His brother looked at him, but Albert sensed that Robert, a mere journalist after all, a scribe more than a writer, a simple recorder of the everyday rather than a quester for the truth behind it, would never understand him.
“What century would that have been?”
“Never mind. It’s curious to think that we are so worn out. The place is barely a hundred years old and the country seems completely exhausted. All that settling, felling and digging has taken an awful toll.”
“You used to sing a different tune. You and your mate Sid.”
“Did I?” Albert asked, looking at his brother with an expression of mild surprise.”I can barely remember.”
“Albert, you need to take that job. You can’t expect Anna to keep spending the little bit of money she has supporting the children while you fritter away your time in the library. If you wrote articles I could maybe organise some sort of freelance work for you, but …”
Robert knew he couldn’t finish the sentence without insulting his brother. With the thought still hanging he signalled to the bartender and ordered another round.
But working as a conductor was not like working in an accounts department. At the insurance company there had been a constant stream of bureaucratic detail to attend to. There was no relief from it, no time to think, no time to be oneself. As the trains swayed and bumped between Melbourne and their various provincial destinations, however, Albert found that he had time to spare. In the contraction of space between two points, as the locomotive sped between cities, a contemplative expanse opened up in which he could meander from one abstraction to another. The regimentation of the railway, the constant adherence to schedules and timetables, was also a relief. The administrative erasure of free will in the measurement of miles, hours and minutes, meant that he was spared the burden of having to concentrate too hard on the job at hand. It was simply a matter of turning up on time and then letting the mechanised ensemble of man and machine run itself. Whereas the work of a clerk involved the constant exercise of will, until there came a point at which will gave out altogether, the life of a train conductor was an automatic one. As the machine moved through space, the conductor moved anonymously through the train’s compartments and carriages without the burden of identity or responsibility.
Later, after his shift had finished, Albert struggled to remember what he had done. He was usually physically exhausted by the time he got home and could recall only strange, disjointed impressions of landscape, darkness and rushing light, of sleeping passengers, the sound of his own footfalls, the vision of a beautiful woman alone in a compartment gripped by the motion of the machine, the light caught in her hair like a nimbus.
CHAPTER FIVE
T owards the end of summer Albert took Paul with him on a trip to Ballarat, thinking that the novelty of train travel would interest his son. It was a quiet weekday and the train was almost empty, enabling him to spend a good few hours sitting with his son
At first the trains had been a poor substitute for this devotion to the absolute. Robert had urged him to apply for the job when it was advertised and Sid Packard, against his better judgement, had warmly recommended him to the Rail Board. Albert loathed the thought of working again. He saw work, in fact all forms of merely utilitarian endeavour, as ultimately futile and worthless.
“You have a family, Albert,” Robert urged him one evening in the Limerick Arms. “You have to take responsibility for them.”
Albert, who was always at his calmest and most reasonable in the presence of his brother, didn’t disagree, but merely avoided direct eye contact, sulking in a way that acknowledged his high aspirations would have to be put aside for the time being.
“I should have lived in another century, Robert,” he said.
His brother looked at him, but Albert sensed that Robert, a mere journalist after all, a scribe more than a writer, a simple recorder of the everyday rather than a quester for the truth behind it, would never understand him.
“What century would that have been?”
“Never mind. It’s curious to think that we are so worn out. The place is barely a hundred years old and the country seems completely exhausted. All that settling, felling and digging has taken an awful toll.”
“You used to sing a different tune. You and your mate Sid.”
“Did I?” Albert asked, looking at his brother with an expression of mild surprise.”I can barely remember.”
“Albert, you need to take that job. You can’t expect Anna to keep spending the little bit of money she has supporting the children while you fritter away your time in the library. If you wrote articles I could maybe organise some sort of freelance work for you, but …”
Robert knew he couldn’t finish the sentence without insulting his brother. With the thought still hanging he signalled to the bartender and ordered another round.
But working as a conductor was not like working in an accounts department. At the insurance company there had been a constant stream of bureaucratic detail to attend to. There was no relief from it, no time to think, no time to be oneself. As the trains swayed and bumped between Melbourne and their various provincial destinations, however, Albert found that he had time to spare. In the contraction of space between two points, as the locomotive sped between cities, a contemplative expanse opened up in which he could meander from one abstraction to another. The regimentation of the railway, the constant adherence to schedules and timetables, was also a relief. The administrative erasure of free will in the measurement of miles, hours and minutes, meant that he was spared the burden of having to concentrate too hard on the job at hand. It was simply a matter of turning up on time and then letting the mechanised ensemble of man and machine run itself. Whereas the work of a clerk involved the constant exercise of will, until there came a point at which will gave out altogether, the life of a train conductor was an automatic one. As the machine moved through space, the conductor moved anonymously through the train’s compartments and carriages without the burden of identity or responsibility.
Later, after his shift had finished, Albert struggled to remember what he had done. He was usually physically exhausted by the time he got home and could recall only strange, disjointed impressions of landscape, darkness and rushing light, of sleeping passengers, the sound of his own footfalls, the vision of a beautiful woman alone in a compartment gripped by the motion of the machine, the light caught in her hair like a nimbus.
CHAPTER FIVE
T owards the end of summer Albert took Paul with him on a trip to Ballarat, thinking that the novelty of train travel would interest his son. It was a quiet weekday and the train was almost empty, enabling him to spend a good few hours sitting with his son
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