Closely Observed Trains (1965) by Bohumil Hrabal, trans. Edith Pargeter (1968) 

 

The novella Closely Observed Trains (1965) by Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal is set mainly in a Bohemian railway station as World War Two is ending in Europe in the spring of 1945.  The station is small but important as a transport nexus for German troops and war matériel to and from the shifting Eastern front.  Although ultimately a story of sacrificial heroism, humor softens the tragic trajectory.  

 

The main character is Milǒs Hrma, a naïve 22-year- old railroad traffic controller, whose job it is to raise and lower the signals for trains. His family has a reputation for laziness based on the great-grandfather, a drummer boy wounded in 1848, who thereafter lived off a war pension.  His gloating about it often provoked beatings, one of which caused his death in 1935.   

 

Milǒs’s grandfather had been a circus hypnotist, which townspeople saw as “an ambitious bid to stroll his way through life as idly as possible.” (p. 11)  When German troops passed through the town in 1939, the grandfather was the only one to confront them.  But his attempt to hypnotize them was thwarted by a tank rolling over him.  Milǒs’s father was a retired locomotive driver who collected rubbish and odd parts from dumps, resulting in their place looking like a scrapyard.   

 

In flashbacks, we learn that Milǒs fell in love with a young woman, Masha, while they were painting opposite sides of a fence.  Later, his anxiety prevents him from fulfilling the act of lovemaking and his subsequent humiliation leads him to slash his wrists.  The unsuccessful suicide attempt is seen by townspeople as an attempt to avoid work. 

 

Among the book’s cast of colorful characters is stationmaster Lánský, a pigeon-breeder whose opulent office “left you with the feeling that it ought to be carried around on a palanquin, complete with the station-master in it ...” (p. 20) 

Seeing his current situation as “casting my pearls before swine” he anticipates promotion to inspector. (p. 24)   

 

The funniest part of the book is the scandal of lecherous dispatcher Hubička who imprinted telegrapher Virginia Svatá’s derriere with station stamps and photographed the result.  The stationmaster, a member of the Society for Public Regeneration, is horrified and an official investigation ensues after Virginia’s mother reports the incident.  When the traffic chief Slušný arrives, Lánský hurries back to his office, covered with pigeon droppings and “above whose face a feather … fluttered like a white question mark.” (p. 52) 

 

Yet, for all the humor, the suffering caused by the war manifests through several vignettes:  a neighbor who has lost her mind after four years of German imprisonment; dying animals transported from the front to the slaughterhouse; a medical train of wounded soldiers in agony; evacuees from Dresden arriving in their pajamas.  

 

The story culminates in an attempt to blow up an ammunition train between stations, thus avoiding collateral damage.  Devised by Hubička in collaboration with a German resistance agent, Victoria Freie, it is to be carried out by Milǒs.  Before Milǒs leaves on the mission, Victoria awakens his manhood in another comic scene penultimate to the dramatic ending. 

 

Author Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997) was born in Brno, Moravia, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, later living in Prague. During World War II, he worked as a railroad dispatcher. He received a law degree in 1946 but never practiced law; instead, working in a serious of jobs, including stagehand, notary clerk, postal worker, insurance agent, and traveling salesman.    

 

In 1962, Hrabal became a full-time writer, but Communist censorship meant that he often published underground or abroad.  Closely Watched Trains [an alternative English title for this novella] was filmed by Czech New Wave director Jiří Menzel.  It won the 1967 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and gained Hrabal international attention.  Other major works include Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age (1964), I Served the King of England (1973), and Too Loud a Solitude (1977).