by Rob Grant
He reached into a cubbyhole out of my sight and started flicking through some forms. 'Well, sir, if you have a legitimate complaint about the service, there are official channels for dealing with--'
'I want to see the station manager, and I want to see him now.'
'Believe me, it won't help you.'
'I want to see him, slash her, anyway.'
He shook his head. 'Like I said, it's not going to help you.' He reached under his counter and pulled out a peaked hat. He turned away, tugged on the cap, straightened it, and took a breath. Without warning, he span back round to face me, his eyes wide and his teeth bared in a grin of mad triumph. 'Because I am the motherfucking station manager.' And for punctuation, he slammed his stationmaster whistle on the Railouest manual.
I let him enjoy his moment. He stretched his chin to crack his neck, and smiled politely. 'Good afternoon, sir, how can I help you? Please be brief, I'm a very busy man. I have a station to manage here.'
I'd had enough. I really had. I wasn't dealing with a common or garden jobsworth or petty dictator type here. This man was at least clinically neurotic, if not an out and out psycho. There was only one way to deal with him. I leaned close to the glass and whispered dangerously: 'I want to know the time of the next train to Vienna, I want a ticket for that train, and I want to know which platform the Vienna train leaves from. If I am not holding that ticket in my hand within thirty seconds, I'm going to come around the back of your little domain there, slap you to the ground, pull off your pecker and your love sacs with my bare hands and whip you senseless with them while I make you my donkey bitch through the bloody new hole in your groin.'
The stationmaster didn't move. He just stood there, frozen, staring at me, with his cheeks sucked in. A small but telling fart forced its way through his ultra clenched buttocks. I stared right back at him with a fiercely calm smile that confirmed I was utterly capable of making good on my lurid threat. Finally, he made a kind of inverted whistling sound, decided that the balance of power had irrevocably shifted, and, for urgent health reasons, it would be better for him to stop being an utter dickwit and start playing along with the nice psychopath. 'The next train to Vienna, eh?'
'The next train to Vienna.'
He glanced over at his wall clock. 'The next train for Vienna comes through here at twelve twenty-seven.' The wall clock showed 12.17. He started punching the keys on the ticket machine. 'First class, second class, Eurotraveller or cargo?'
'First'
'I'm sorry, there is no first class on the twelve twenty-seven.'
'I see.' My eyes flitted towards his back door.
He picked up my point. 'I'm sorry, but I have to offer it you, anyway.'
'Company policy, right?'
'Tell me about it. Second class to gay Vienna... ninety-five euros, fifty-seven cents.'
I slipped two fifty bills under the counter window.
He looked down at the notes, dismayed. He looked up and pursed his lips again. 'I'm sorry, I'm afraid we can't accept cash.' Reluctantly, and with Oliver Hardy gingerness, he pushed the notes back through the slot.
Cash is almost useless nowadays in the US of E. If you don't have plastic, you don't exist. Cash is only good for putting in a bank or buying something illegal.
Well, I didn't want to use my credit card, see? I had no intention of leaving a plastic trail for anyone to follow Harry Salt. On top of which, the clock was a tick, tick, tocking, and the Vienna train would be rumbling down the track in a matter of minutes. I pushed the notes back through the slot. 'You do today.'
He looked down at the notes again, and made the right decision. 'You're absolutely right,' he said. 'Today, cash will be splendid.' He picked up the notes and stared at them. The wall clock was showing 12.19. His eyes flicked right, then left, then right again, then back down at the notes.
'I do have a train to catch.'
'We don't have any change.'
'You can keep the change.'
'There's a company policy on employees accepting...' I looked towards his door again. He got the message. 'I'll keep the change.'
He slipped the notes into a drawer and printed out the ticket. He checked the ticket and slipped it under the window like he was passing a scalpel to Hannibal Lecter. 'Platform Five.' He smiled, winningly.
'Thank you so very much.' I smiled back, and turned to go. A thought struck me. I turned back and hit the bell again. His eyes and his smile stayed in situ, but the rest of his face winced.
TWENTY-NINE
I walked through the doors out onto the vast platform. The station clock showed 12.22. I was on Platform 1. Platform 5 was, of course, the furthest platform from me. Achieving it would involve a journey up over the metal passenger bridge far away to my left at the end of Platform 1. The bridge, naturally, traversed Platforms 2 through 4. The voyage, I estimated, would take an Olympic sprinter at the peak of his training a good six minutes. I had less than five.
There was nothing for it. I leapt off the platform and onto the track. I could feel the stationmaster's eyes burrowing into my back. I was probably violating pages 419 through 587 in the big red book. I crossed the lines and clambered gruntingly up the maintenance steps onto Platform 2.
As I jumped down from Platform 3 I felt a rumble underfoot. A train was coming. I glanced up at the clock. 12.25. Platform 4 was about twenty metres away. Two thoughts struck me simultaneously. If the Vienna train were on schedule, it would obviously arrive at the station before 12.27. And what if the monkey in the ticket office had got the platform number wrong? You wouldn't put that past the bastard, would you? What if the Vienna train were at this very moment hurtling pell-mell towards me along the very track I was about to traverse?
Right on cue, I heard the electronic blaring of the engine's horn. I decided to make the dash. On balance, I preferred the risk of getting splatted by a train to the more urgent, nightmarish danger of having to stay one single second longer in this bucolic limbo.
I didn't run. Tripping over a rail or a sleeper was not top of my list of desirable objectives right now. But I did hurry. The vibrations from the train were juddering up my leg now, and I could hear the chackety-chack of the wheels getting louder. And louder.
The up-down cadence of the blaring horn again, shockingly loud now. I looked to my left. The nose of the train was in view. It seemed to be moving very fast and in my direction. I was halfway between the lines for Platform 3 and Platform 4. It was impossible to tell which line the train would take. No point in going back now. I scrambled over the lines and made it to the track at the foot of Platform 4.
I looked around for the maintenance steps.
There were no maintenance steps.
The horn again.
I glanced left. The train was close now. I could see the driver.
I grabbed the rim of the platform and tried to hoist myself up.
I failed.
There was a time I could have pulled off such a manoeuvre without raising my heart rate. Not so long ago, too.
I looked again for the maintenance steps.
There had to be some maintenance steps.
There were no fucking maintenance steps.
And again, the horn. Loud enough now to make me wince. I looked over at the train. It still hadn't made up its mind whether or not it was going to squidge the messy life out of me. I could read the promise of Vienna on its destination board. I could clearly see the driver and his co-driver now. They were deep in amiable conversation. They didn't seem to have noticed there was a large man on the tracks in front of them. I could see their lunch boxes on whatever passes for a train's dashboard. I tried waving my arms and shouting, but it was hopeless above the engine's roar.
I had one chance. The big man's chance. Momentum.
I took five steps backwards, took a deep breath, then ran forward and launched myself at the platform.
My palms slapped down on the platform edge. I straightened my elbows. Pain shot through my wrists like twin bolts fr
om Thor's hammer. I swung my right leg onto the platform and tried to swing the left after it in a continuous motion.
But the left leg didn't make it.
Its shin caught the rim of the platform painfully, and the rest of the leg decided to go all dead on me.
Almost three quarters of me was on the platform now. I was that close to staying alive, but my left leg was dangling useless, its dead weight dragging the rest of me down, and my right foot couldn't find any purchase. The boot scraped desperately at the slimy wet surface of the concrete, but it was losing the fight. I needed something extra. Anything. A foothold. A dry patch of platform. Just the tiniest thing to stop me slipping.
I tilted my head back and looked at the train, upside down. It had reached the tip of the platform. It had made up its mind.
It was coming my way.
Now I could see the driver needed a shave. I could see a swimwear calendar tacked to the back of the cab. I could even read the bloody month. My only choice now was: would I prefer the train to slice me neatly in half, from top to toe, or would I be better off dropping onto the line and taking one neat hit face-on?
There was a crackle of static, and the stationmaster's voice boomed over the PA system: 'The twelve twenty-seven for Vienna will now be arriving at Platform Four. That's a platform change. Railouest would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.'
I found the something extra.
The inspiration of pure, primal hate.
I had to live. I had to survive in order to kill the stationmaster.
My fingernails dug into the platform like eagle talons into a rabbit, and with my bare hands I hauled the bulk of my body weight onto the platform. The rest of me followed.
I was actually upright and dusting myself down by the time the engine reached me. The driver and his mate were looking down at me, open-mouthed. I smiled and tossed them a nonchalant wave.
The engine thundered past.
So did the first carriage.
So did the second.
I began to wonder when the train was going to start stopping.
As the fourth carriage rumbled by, I suddenly realised what was happening.
The train was not going to start stopping at all.
The Vienna train never had any intention of stopping at this station.
Because no trains ever stopped at this station.
They probably never had.
THIRTY
The entire station was just one big mistake, with its deserted shopping plaza, and its customerless restaurants and its newspaper-free news-stands and its multi-storey car park where no tyre had ever left its tread.
It was doubtless some local council planning blunder, probably funded by some ineptly apportioned lottery grant. Maybe someone, somewhere had filled out a station requisition form with an overly blunt pencil.
And the stationmaster had been sent here to take proud charge of this magnificently equipped, state-of-the-art flagship station, to find the only thing missing was passengers. That's why he'd been so neurotically keen to demonstrate that what he did was important. He came into work every day and supervised a station where nothing ever happened, and spent his time filling out safety forms that nobody ever read.
I caught a glimpse of him in the gap between the sixth and the seventh carriages. He was hastily mounting a bicycle. And I was thinking, well, he'd better hastily mount a bicycle. He'd better know how to pedal it faster than the yellow jersey in the mountain section of the Tour de France, too, if I missed this train.
But I still hadn't given up on the 12.27 to Vienna. I'd been through a lot to get me a ticket and get to the right platform. I wasn't in the mood to let it thunder out of my life without a fight.
The train was not travelling at its full speed -- they have to slow down when they pass through stations, even stations as meaningless and ineffectual as this one. I don't know why, they're still travelling fast enough to squash any passengers who might inadvertently find themselves stranded on the tracks, or who decide, as they seem to do with bewildering frequency, that throwing themselves in front of a train seems like a fun way to commit suicide.
But I had acquired a certain degree of expertise in the field of alighting from moving vehicles, and that was surely more dangerous than trying to board one.
Fortunately, the Vienna train was a long one, and I had plenty of platform to work with. I took a deep breath and centred myself, then kicked off running in the direction the train was heading. In a perfect world, I would exactly match the velocity of the train, and hop on board without so much as scuffing a toecap. Of course, that would mean achieving a running speed way beyond the reach of the swiftest jungle cat. I would just have to improvise.
I got up a pretty good lick for a big guy who hates walking, but I wasn't going to be able to sustain it for long. I kept glancing at the carriages to my right for some sort of handhold, some protuberance, some jutting feature of any kind. But there was nothing. No running-boards, no handrails, no door handles. Just polished, sleek, featureless smoothness.
Passengers were looking down at my progress with various degrees of amusement, as if the big guy running alongside the train were some kind of sideshow laid on by the railroad to break up the monotony of their journey. I tried signalling them to pull the emergency cord, but the ones who noticed just mimicked my tugging action and made 'choo-choo' shapes with their mouths. Funny people. I resolved, if ever I made the train, to find their carriage and beat the living breath out of every single one of them with a rolled-up copy of Paris Match.
I glanced back over my shoulder and ran smack into a stanchion holding up the platform canopy, flinging me violently backwards. Even as my rump hit the floor, I was back up again and running. I was dazed and hurt. My ear hurt, my head hurt, one of my buttocks hurt, but I didn't have time for pain.
When I'd got up to speed again, and my vision had cleared, I checked for oncoming bastard stanchions, then risked another glance over my shoulder.
The last carriage was coming up.
It was a different colour and a different design from all the others. I was hoping it might be the goods truck, that it might be equipped with large doors through which large things might be loaded, with big, robust and grabbable handles, or steps of some kind, or even a cargo winch. Alas, no. The last carriage was just as polished, just as sleek, and, if anything, even more featureless than any of the other carriages. It didn't even have windows.
It did have one thing going for it, though: because it was a different design, it didn't quite attach to the rest of the train in the same neat way as all the other carriages. That was the choice then: stay here in the back of beyond and certainly miss Klingferm's appointment in Vienna, or attempt a leap into the gap between the last two carriages, and pray there was something to hold on to.
If I'd had more opportunity to think, I wouldn't have tried it. There were so many things that could have gone wrong. I could have timed it badly and slipped between the final carriage and the platform edge, and been spread along both like a peanut and jam sandwich filling. I could have timed it perfectly and found myself between the trucks with nothing to hang on to, my desperate fingers clawing at a featureless facade, as I slid with slow inevitability straight through the gap to be trammelled to death under the relentless chackety-chack of the wheels. I could have got wedged in the gap, unable to move with a significant part of me protruding, ripe for removal by the next convenient tunnel.
But I didn't think of these things; I was probably still dazed from my collision. I didn't think of anything at all except getting aboard that train.
I got up my speed as close as I could to a sprint, all the while dividing my attention between glancing back over my shoulder and glancing forward again for looming stanchions and other violently static platform menaces with cruel intentions.
It was a one-shot-only deal, with zero margin for error.
The gap was now parallel with my shoulder.
I made my judgement.<
br />
And I leapt.
THIRTY-ONE
My judgement was perfect, but that's the only good thing I can say about the entire enterprise.
I hit the gap between the speeding carriages, but, of course, the carriages were speeding faster than I was speeding, and they had urgent, Newtonian plans to make up for that.
The front of the rearmost truck hit me like... well, like a speeding train, sending the wind out of my body and hurling me hard forwards into the back of the penultimate truck, which then returned the favour.
My head was being batted back and forth like a demented woodpecker on a lethal binge. All the while the carriages were playing their little game of badminton with my brain as the shuttlecock, my hands were clawing blindly for something to grasp, and my feet were scrabbling away to find some kind of foothold.
I finally got control of my neck back and settled into the train's ragged motion. When my lungs remembered how to perform the whole in and out breathing thing again and my brain had stopped hurling itself around my skull like a kamikaze hamster flinging itself against its cage, I found myself standing sideways to the two carriages, my arms outstretched between them, as if holding them apart, like Samson between the temple pillars, and my feet precariously straddling the madly juddering buffers.
I can't say I was comfortable.
The carriages were mismatched. They lurched sadistically, and never in the same direction, threatening alternately to crush me, then dump me mercilessly on to the track. I was probably developing exactly the right muscles to enable me to play the complete works of Mozart on an industrial-strength concertina without a break.
I thought I caught a glimpse of the stationmaster standing by his bicycle on the top of a passing hill, straining to scan the tracks by the platform for gristly evidence of my splattered remains, but I was being vibrated so vigorously, and the cruel turbulence was whipping my hair into my eyes with such relentless ferocity, that I couldn't be certain.
I couldn't go on like this. There was no knowing when the train might reach the next station. For all I knew it might carry on all the way to Vienna without stopping at all. I had to get inside.
