A Son of the Rock

Abacus, 1995. 91p

Translated from the Czech, Ostře sledované vlaky (Close Watch On The Trains,) by Edith Pargeter.

This slim book, 91 pages of strikingly wide margins, constitutes no more than a novella, but is full of incident. It also treats of those novelistic big issues, love, sex and death.

In early 1945 various railway workers play out their lives against a backdrop of military and passenger train movements through their strategic location, a small railway station in Bohemia. The novella’€™s denouement takes place against the fire-bombing of Dresden lighting up the night sky.

Graduate trainee Miloš Hrma comes from a long line of eccentrics, one of whom tried to stop the German invasion in 1939 by the power of hypnosis alone – before being crushed by a tank. In his private life Miloš is troubled in his relationship with his girlfriend Masha by a lapse of physical prowess at a crucial moment.

The station is a surprisingly sexualised environment -€“ the Station Master’€™s oilcloth covered couch has been ripped in several places during an illicit liaison and Dispatcher Hubička has used the station’€™s official stamps scandalously – to imprint the female telegraphist’€™s buttocks.

The feel of the passages dealing with these aspects of people’€™s lives is akin to magic realism but of course along with these there are always in the background the train movements, which the workers keep under close surveillance, to consider.

I know no Czech and consequently have not read the original so cannot say how true it was, but the translation read easily. A slight familiarity with German or Latin may occasionally help the reader with the few quotes from those languages which are included but the context makes most of them obvious and the important one is later rendered in English.

In Closely Observed Trains Hrabal has written a fine novella, an impressive work about how life carries on even in trying circumstances – and also an observation on the futility and arbitrariness of war.