When I told the dream to my non-existent psychoanalyst, he persuaded me that it was not about how I longed to drive a car again, nor about how I desired to make passionate love to a strange woman. My dream was about the state of disinheritance I found myself in. The girl symbolized the world beyond my family, my craving for the intimacy of other people. At the moment when real danger appeared and the abyss opened up before me, the girl, the symbol of that distant community, vanished — what remained was an overwhelming solitude.
Two weeks later, I was invited to the Traffic Inspectorate where a short, slightly built major was sitting behind his desk. 'Ah, it's you,' he said when he had studied my summons. He leaned over and pretended that he was looking for something before opening a file that he had on his desk. 'Now I wonder how these got here?' he said, taking out my keys. He held them between his thumb and forefinger, raised them up with a look of bemused curiosity, and jingled them. 'I believe these are the keys to your car.'
He handed them to me and then began to study the documents in the file. 'My goodness, the things I'm reading about you here,' he said. 'On the evening of 20 February, one of our squad cars followed you along the embankment for a while, and between the Charles Bridge and the Iron Bridge you committed five serious breaches of the Traffic Act. At the National Theatre you even ran a red light.' He looked at me disapprovingly; perhaps he actually believed what he was saying. 'Our comrades also administered a
breathalyser test,' and he pulled the familiar tube out of the file, held it between finger and thumb and observed, as I had, its colourless state. 'The results, as you know, were negative.' He put the tube back in the file. 'Even so, the comrades justifiably held your driver's licence. Five offences — that's too many. Was something upsetting you?'
He fell silent, as if awaiting a meaningful answer to his meaningless question. 'It happens,' he said. 'The driver may be sober, but because he's upset he can't concentrate, and instead of stopping and getting out of the car, he goes on driving and becomes a threat to other road users.' Once again he fell silent. When I still had nothing to say, he asked if I were willing to be re-tested.
I said I was, not to make his role too easy, and he gave me a form with questions printed on it.
'You've passed,' he said, when he'd scanned my answers. He took my almost brand-new driver's licence from the file, grasped it» and held it up as though it were something distasteful, then opened it up, closed it again, opened it, looked at the photograph and then at me, and put it back in the file.
He said he couldn't possibly give my licence back to me in that state. Why the photograph didn't even look like me. I would have to apply for another one.
I asked him if, considering that the only thing at issue now was a new photograph, he could issue me with a temporary licence. But he was obviously so upset that he couldn't concentrate, and he didn't even appear to register my question. He stood up to indicate that our conversation was over.
When I got home, I found Martin the engine driver waiting for me. He had heard about my difficulties, and it
occurred to him that the time had come for me to try driving a train. It couldn't be put off; at the end of the spring he was leaving the railway. They were offering him a place on a farm where he was to raise mink.
I told him that they were still hanging on to my driver's licence. He laughed. Wasn't that why he was here? I didn't need a licence to drive a train.
We left together, and got off the train in a small town in the foothills of the Ore Mountains.
We also long to drive so we can escape from Her. We step up to the driver's seat as though it were a royal (or presidential or secretarial) throne. It seems that we have dominion over the living and the dead. Dumbfounded by our own power, we succumb to the delusion that we have dominion over Her as well, since She could not possibly creep up to us and take us into Her embrace without our consent.
Once, far in the past, people believed those who ruled to be gods; later, it became clear that even they were controlled by a superior force; the same force that controlled everyone. It was also believed that the force, whatever it was called, had the power of judgement and the knowledge of good and evil. Those who ruled must have known that they could only do so imperfectly; that they were stand-ins and that everything they judged would be judged in a higher court. But of course this didn't stop many from giving themselves over to the self-delusion and the intoxication that goes with power. But this is nothing compared to the self-delusion and intoxication of those who rule oblivious of the power above them.
We talked for a long time, and it wasn't until midnight that I finally got to bed, in a bunk that was lined on three
sides with books. I knew that we would be getting up at four and that then I would be entrusted with driving an engine I had never seen. I couldn't sleep. I listened intently to see if I couldn't hear, from somewhere, the whistle of the trains of my childhood, but there was only the silence of a house in the country.
Next morning the darkness was so deep that it was still black when we got on to a commuter train that would take us to the station where our engine was waiting for us. The passenger car was crammed with sleepy men and women driven from their beds by duty. We had to stand in the aisle. Did I understand the signals, at least a little, my host asked.
The language of lights, semaphors, grade indicators, detectors, markers, fishtails, order boards, wig-wags and targets was something I had learned as a child. I trusted that an institution as conservative as the railways had not changed its language.
Very well) but he would test me all the same.
At the station we walked over to an engine that, now the possibility of actually driving it loomed, overwhelmed me with its size. My friend had to go to the office for his working orders. He said it would be best if I kept out of sight. He would let me in from the other side.
The station seemed deserted. The train we'd arrived on had gone, and the passengers had dispersed. A lone old man in a blue uniform with an oil can walked along, oiling the wheels of the freight train. The tracks gave off an oily sheen in the light of the station lamps. The diesel engine smelled of kerosene. I walked around the train. Beyond the last set of tracks there was a steep embankment overgrown with shrubs. I sat down on an overturned stone bollard and waited. I was neither excited nor impatient; I had, after all,
advanced well beyond the age when a man wishes to experience everything that excites him, just as he wants to make love to every woman he finds attractive.
Why, then, had I come here?
At that moment, the window of the engine lit up, then the headlights went on. A door high up opened. 'Come up, quick. We leave soon.'
I clambered up the steep steps and entered the cabin.
'Do you want to change your clothes?' he said, and opened up a small locker. On the inside of the door I caught sight of some pornographic pictures accompanied by the dry commentary: 'Stop! Warning signal! Then all clear, all clear!'
I said that I didn't think I would get changed; I'd rather he showed me what everything was for.
On the outside of the locker door, a blonde smiled on the shore of some lake, and next to her was a picture of Kronborg, Hamlet's castle:
The time is out of joint: o cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!
There isn't much to show you, he said. It's easier to drive than a bicycle. But he showed me how to start the engine, and warned me that the half-wheel in the middle of the control panel wasn't a steering wheel, but an accelerator. It had eight positions and I would be controlling the speed with it. This was the emergency brake. The button next to the accelerator was called an 'alert button' and it would be my responsibility to push it once every ten seconds. It would probably bother me until I got used to it. Here was the speedometer. I would have to keep an eye on it all the time because the speed was recorded on a tape and the