by Susan Sontag
Either open the heavy door and pass over the coupling into the next car, also feebly lit by an electric hand lamp, also inhabited by quiet people docilely keeping to their travel cells—a car exactly like our own, except that no one is stationed in the corridor.
Or get off the train altogether, go exploring, find the obstruction and see, with his own eyes, what’s being done about it. What if the emergency is already over? Even though the conductor hasn’t come back with the good news. The train personnel just returning to their posts, the engineer about to pull the switch that starts up the Privateer?
Pauses indecisively. No, don’t be afraid. Even if the train should get underway while he is outside, surely it would start up slowly. Allowing time to grab hold and clamber aboard. Reason expounded, Diddy was convinced. He wrenches open the exit door at the end of our car, the metal steps unfold.
He had left the train.
The tunnel is cool but humid, thick with the smell of oil and damp rock. At the first stroke of air, Diddy shivers. But at least he has room to move about in. Plunges his hands into the wet air, then cautiously extends one arm; the wall of the tunnel lies beyond his reach. How wide is it? He snaps on his pencil flashlight and discovers the wall still some ten feet away. The tunnel has two wide-gauge tracks; Diddy steps onto the empty track. Turning right. Using the dim light to illuminate a small spot ahead of his softly polished shoes, starts toward the front of the train. Tired, terribly tired. Keep going. No time to give in to fatigue. For a while, he hears only the slurred sound of his own steps on the firm tunnel ground. But after passing half a dozen cars, begins to hear something else: hard, evenly spaced sounds like the blows of an ax. It was toward that sound that Diddy was heading.
“Hey there!” he calls out.
Sounds in the tunnel are slightly deadened. An echo effect.
Though he’s keeping to the center of the vacant track, Diddy senses that he is drifting to the right. Halts his march. He probes at the space between two coaches with his small light; discovers that the forward coach lies at a slight angle to the one behind. The same for the next space between two coaches. And the next. So the track isn’t straight, the tunnel itself is curved; which means that the train’s heavy body, stalled, lay arched within the tunnel’s sheath, bent systematically at each of its iron joints. Does this make matters more difficult? The emergency more grave? As Diddy follows the curving track, the sounds become louder and he sees a source of light. Continuing. The tunnel brightens.
Destination achieved. Panting, Diddy stands alongside the vast greasy forward wheel of the engine. Just ahead of the train is a swarthy man wearing cleated boots, denim overalls, undershirt. And a light strapped to his brow, like a doctor or miner; which supplements the stronger lighting furnished by a row of five bulbs stuck in a short board and suspended from an iron hook in the tunnel wall. The man is indeed wielding an ax, slamming it into a barrier about four feet high that straddles the track. A kind of wall made of heavy boards nailed together. Braced by or anchored to several crossties set diagonally against the wall.
“Jesus, who the hell put that up?” Diddy the Companionable. Relieved. The barrier has a makeshift look. And it was wood, not stone.
The man stoops. Picks up another tool, a sledgehammer, from a large wooden box lying on the ground.
One of the ties is under attack. The tie jumps as the man hits it with the sledgehammer. Gradually it’s coming loose. Strange sonorities. Then the man lays down the hammer, pulls a crowbar from the box of tools, and begins a different sound, continuous and higher pitched. “How’s it coming?” Diddy asks. Appears to be going well. One by one, the thick diagonal supports are yielding.
The workman pauses. Perhaps he hasn’t heard Diddy. A change of pace. Using the massive hammer (now), he’s attacking the wall itself, sending up a haze of dust. Clearly the shuddering barrier isn’t impregnable.
“Is that the obstruction? I mean, is that all there is?” Diddy almost alongside him (now), near enough to catch the familiar sweat smell that flows from the man’s body, his faintly alcoholic breath. Just watches for another moment, tasting the grit in his own mouth.
“Wouldn’t it go faster if you got someone to help you?” The workman either grunted or made no answer. Stolidly, efficiently, he just keeps slamming his hammer into the low wall. Not just neatly dismembering it, but breaking off ragged splintery hunks of wood. Whenever a big enough piece has come away, the workman adds it to an already sizable stack in a niche in the tunnel wall on his left.
Diddy troubled. “Listen, I’m talking to you.”
The man goes on hammering. Then he shoves the hammer into the box, and takes up the ax again. Diddy has backed a few feet away from him, is trying to figure out what he’s doing. Like a miner, he thinks. The damned train has barged into a mine. Something slides along the edge of Diddy’s mind, a presentiment of awful danger. Maybe the workman is a saboteur, maybe he’s undoing the tunnel, maybe.…
No, Diddy had to believe that what lies on the far side of the barrier is just more track. The rest of the tunnel. Not, say, a big hole.
“Hey, can you tell me where I can find the engineer?”
The workman looks up. “What the hell are you bothering me for? Can’t you see I got a job to do? And what are you doing out here anyway?” Then resumes his work.
“Just tell me where the chief engineer is.”
“Clear out, man,” the workman barks over his shoulder, halting his labor again. “You’re wasting my time.”
“Listen,” said Diddy, “I’ve a right to know what’s going on. The rest of the passengers may be a bunch of sheep, but I’m not going to sit around trusting you guys to do the right thing.”
“Man, are you going to get back on that train?”
“No.”
The workman bringing his ax down on the wall, but his head is turned. “If you don’t get out of here in five seconds, you’ll be sorry.” Whatever he’s doing, it’s almost done.
“You’ll be sorry,” shouts Diddy, taking a step forward. “Just who the hell do you think you are?”
A lull in the strokes of the ax. The workman lifts up the last two boards, hurls them onto the others. Then he rubs his face with his forearm, hitches up his pants, spits on the ground. He’s looking at Diddy (now). Takes up the ax again. “You see what I’ve got here? Don’t push me too far, mister.”
“The ax?” says Diddy. “Oh, come off it! What’s the matter with you? I’m asking a civil question and you can damn well take a moment to answer me.”
The man advances toward him, the beam from his forehead drilling into Diddy’s eyes. “I’ll give you five seconds to get the fuck out of here. Move!”
“I’m staying,” Diddy says. An outraged voice. “And I’m reporting you to the conductor.” Glances at the engineer’s cab: dark. Not that he can’t handle this pig all by himself. Still, where in God’s name is the crew that operates this ultra-modern train? Off placating the passengers? Maybe some, sure. But all of them?
“Five seconds!” says the man, raising the ax. “One.”
“You’d better watch your step,” Diddy snarls. Clenched his fists.
The man inches toward him. “Two.”
“Really spoiling for a fight, aren’t you?” Diddy says, bitterly.
“Three.”
Diddy smelling his own sweat (now). He’s mortally afraid; yet this is a more acceptable, cleaner fear than what he’d endured back on the train, cooped up with those zombies. Taking a deep breath; with twitching nostrils inhaling the unpleasant air. Stoops quickly and seizes the crowbar lying near his feet. Straightens up to see the startled look on the workman’s face. The workman scratching his head in a satire of puzzlement, then grinning.
Four. It must be Four already.
Diddy tensing his arm muscles, hefting his cold weapon. “Go on, you bastard!”
“I guess you’re gonna think I’m scared,” the man says.
This is too easy. He’s trying to trick me, to catch me off
guard and grab the crowbar away from me. Then whack me with the ax.
“Come on, man! I don’t wanna fight.” The workman grinning again.
“Like hell you don’t,” Diddy says, panting.
“Hey, take it easy. I was just horsing around. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”
“I don’t believe you.” Diddy tightens his grip on the crowbar, licks his lips. Why doesn’t he say Four?
The man laughs. “Okay, you win. Okay?” He winks at Diddy. “See?” Lowers the arm holding the ax. “I’m going back to work now, man. Right? You can do what you want.” He turns, offering his back to Diddy. Takes a step, then pauses. A surprise is coming.
Diddy sees he’s fiddling with the ax. Knows the man is about to wheel around and smash him with it. Five! “No you don’t!” Diddy yells and brings the crowbar down on the back of the man’s head. Diddy groans, the man groans. Diddy’s hands tingle from the blow. Letting the crowbar drop, he flexes his cramped fingers. Which don’t respond. Has to unlock the fingers of his right hand with his left, the fingers of his left hand with his right. Poor dry throbbing fingers. He would have wept, if it would have done any good.
The workman has fallen forward across the track, his neck resting on the far rail. Diddy kneels to look at what he’s done. To see the black blood welling out of the man’s hair into his ear, over his face. The light affixed to the man’s forehead still shining. Diddy fumbles at the light, trying to turn it off. Several little knobs, but none of them makes something happen. Can’t get at the damned thing! Maybe if he turned the workman over on his back.
A hard, heavy, uncooperative body. Diddy brought near to vomiting by the odd new smell the workman gave off (now)—a cold smell, like meat; flatulent. Stifling nausea and fear, Diddy is able to kneel and grip the body under the armpits. Is that wetness sweat or blood? Starting to roll the body on its right side. But it’s still awkward, too big, hard to manage. What if Diddy drags the body a few steps back, where he can lean it in a sitting position against the front of the train? Done. Can’t keep the upper torso, the part that’s clothed in an undershirt, from slumping forward. Watch out! The body’s about to keel over on its bare face. Diddy grabs hold just in time, props it up again more securely. Holding the lolling head by its loose jaw, pushes that part even farther back and to one side; so it lodges between the rim of the left forward wheel and the side of the engine.
(Now) he can figure out how to turn off this bitch of a light. Off! Diddy stands back. Without that third eye from the man’s brow blighting his own vision, he can look. Make sure whether the workman is dead or alive. Since the moment he fell across the track, the man hasn’t moved once or made another sound. Is he really dead (now)? One last test. As tentatively as if he had not yet touched him, Diddy gets close enough to poke the workman’s bare shoulder. Wet. The man groans again, stirs slightly. Oh God, no! Diddy backs away, his throat aching with terror.
Terror gives way to fake toughness. You asked for it, you bastard! But Diddy’s attempt to feel brutal and self-righteous doesn’t convince even him.
Fake toughness gives way to the pangs of exile. Heartsick Diddy considers the time before he struck the workman: his whole life. The life he’d found bitter and uninhabitable. But thinks of (now), in the new perspective just opened up, as incredibly fortunate. How lucky he’d always been. And didn’t know it. Never, never could he have imagined he’d been racing toward this moment. (Now) he was cast on the far side of the appalling moment—looking back with something much stronger than nostalgia; looking back with anguished longing at the years behind, receding. Done, like a slice. Never to be undone.
The pangs of exile give way to fear. Will I have to go to jail? Diddy thinks sadly. For this moment? No mitigating circumstances? This one moment? Don’t the others count for more?
Fear gives way to guilt. I’ve got a murderer inside me, thinks Diddy the Mortified. Why did I think I was such an amiable fellow? All along, I thought it was my own death I carried within myself. Like an interminable pregnancy which would nevertheless end one day, quite unpredictably. But it wasn’t my death coming, it was someone else’s. That’s the Done-Done I always dreaded.
Guilt gives way to more fear. I’m closed in. Trapped. I was brought here to do this. Diddy has killed a dark man in a dark tunnel. Diddy the Stupefied has never felt more alive.
Looks up at the darkened engine of the train. Has no one seen him; isn’t anyone at this moment hurrying forward to apprehend him? Where are the watchers, where are the witnesses? Asleep? Drunk? Drugged? Bewitched? Get rid of all that light. Diddy pulls down the brace of naked lightbulbs and smashes it against the wall. True darkness (now). Still Diddy stands.
How long can Diddy stand there by the body of the slain workman? Not long enough to feel all that he has to feel. He might as well return to the train.
* * *
Dried blood on his hands or clothing? A close check with the pocket flashlight turns up only some chalky stains on his trousers.
Having dusted off his trousers, Diddy the Neat has started back without the aid of his flashlight; hopes not to be noticed by someone gazing out of a corridor window. Isn’t hard to walk in the dark as the blind have to do, if one knows the way. And Diddy has traversed this space before. On the return trip, sensation is reversed. Feels the proximity of the enclosing tunnel wall on his right, the great iron body of the train with its dirty, softly lit windows on his left.
He has retraced his steps; when he reaches the third car from the end, mounted the train; passed along the corridor; regained the compartment. His compartment. Our compartment. As he takes his seat, hears the priest and the girl talking quietly. But Diddy can’t, for the hammering of his heart and the air hissing in his ears, grasp what the suave male voice and the lighter voice of the girl actually say.
For the others, nothing in our situation has changed. Only for Diddy. Who locks his arms against his chest. Waits for the aunt, someone, to say “Well?” Someone to ask if he’s found out anything more about our predicament. Diddy is readying his lies, prepared to explain that he found no one, that he never got off the train. But nobody asks.
What are the priest and the girl discussing? Him? Do they know? No, that’s absurd; they can’t know anything. What’s their conversation about then? Stamp collecting may be safely ruled out, since the girl is blind. Perhaps the priest is offering, the girl receiving, a dose of consolation. For the condition of blindness. Or, for the fact that she—along with all of us—is marooned on this dark immobile train.
The train lurched forward. “At last!” exclaims the aunt. “We’re starting.”
“No,” whimpers Diddy. The train hadn’t started, really. Just testing. First, the giant takes a small brazen step. All the obstacles cleared away?
“About time, too!” says the stamp dealer.
Another convulsive movement, in which the creaking train seems to hurl itself backward a few feet.
“Oh!” the girl exclaims. She must be confused.
Diddy is confused. He wants the barrier to be impassable, wants a motionless memory. The skull of the workman, broken open. Man, the upright animal, fallen.
The train is really starting (now). Unevenly, shuddering and jerking. But in earnest. The overhead fluorescent lights in the compartment go on, first sputtering, then locking into a continuous flow. A collective “Ah…” Diddy’s eyes hurt, he covers them with his hands. He is a stone without eyes. Anything to shut out the image of the bleeding heavy animal he’d left sprawled against the train. Though still enclosed within the tunnel, the train is (now) moving along smoothly. It can only go forward, dangerously metallic and earth-bound. Diddy encapsuled in the train crushing the workman’s body. Foolish of Diddy to have expected to feel a telltale bump when the front wheels of the train passed over the body. Matched against the weight and velocity of the train, flesh and bone yield like water.
If that’s what happened. The final disposition of the workman’s body beyond Diddy’s contr
ol. The body might have fallen between the rails and escaped being pulverized or dismembered by the wheels.
Is the train fleeing the body left behind? Is that why we’re picking up so much speed?
“That’s better!” Which one of us has spoken, groaning with relief? Could have been anyone—though least likely to be the girl. The train has broken out of the tunnel, is careening through the countryside. Crimson birds fly alongside the window, the air has a purplish neon glow, a great blue silo rises from a distant hill, strange groupings of trees throw animal shadows to the ground. Telephone wires swoop and sag like roller-coaster tracks, signs and billboards are undecipherable. A fantastic landscape? Or is Diddy hallucinated, already poisoned by remorse? The stone, the stone. Diddy is choking. He puts his face into his hands again, afraid to look. The train is going very fast (now). Diddy wonders if the iron-black wheels are bright with blood. If they are, some farm boy idling on the slope beside the track, watching trains go by, will sound the alarm.
When Diddy looks up again, the stamp dealer is jotting something down in a small notebook; the priest is mumbling over his breviary; the aunt, a brown pear in her hand, has fallen asleep propped against her niece. The girl looking straight ahead. It might be at Diddy, he doesn’t know.
Diddy must talk to someone. It can only be this girl with the inhuman, leaden vision. But he doesn’t want to be overheard. Leaning forward, he covers her stockinged knee with his hand. “What is it?” she whispers. Already a conspiratorial tone.
“I have something to tell you,” Diddy says hoarsely. “Will you come outside?”
The priest glanced up, then sank back in his breviary. Diddy beckons to the girl, as if she could see. The girl gently eases her shoulder away from her aunt’s heavy head; the gray-haired woman, her eyes closed, stirs about until she finds the adjustable headrest, grimaces, is still again. The girl stands up, removes her washable suède gloves, and lays them on the seat. She’s almost as tall as Diddy. Who takes her warm hand and guides her over the feet of the priest and the stamp dealer, past the stamp dealer’s briefcase and the aunt’s shopping bags. Having pulled back the compartment door and then shut it behind them, now what? Diddy stares at the girl in perplexity, releases her hand. Though no one else is standing in the corridor, he still feels unsafe, exposed.