Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal

First published:Ostre sledovane vlaky, 1965 (English translation, 1968)

Type of work: Impressionistic realism

Time of work: During World War II

Locale: A provincial railroad station in German-occupied Czechoslovakia

Principal Characters:

• Milos Hrma, the narrator, a young train dispatcher
• Ladislav Hubicka, an older dispatcher, who is experienced with women
• Lansky, the stationmaster
• Virginia Svata, the station telegraphist
• Marsha, a young conductor, Milos’ girlfriend
• Viktoria Freie, a member of the anti-Nazi underground, Milos’ first lover

The Novel

Closely Watched Trains tells the story of a young man’s coming of age in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. The novella, written in the first person, presents a wry account of the protagonist’s comic struggles to achieve manhood. The plot unfolds in a series of disconnected episodes, using flashbacks, plot compression, and surrealistic imagery to unify the narration. The dreamlike tone is enhanced by the portraits of ordinary people surviving extraordinary events.

Milos Hrma, the protagonist, is an apprentice railroad dispatcher working in a small station in a provincial Czech town. The time is the winter of 1945, during the final months of World War II, when the Nazis are fighting desperately to maintain their eastern front against advancing Soviet troops. The Nazis have already lost the air war over Czechoslovakia, and Allied dive-bombers are continually disrupting German rail transportation to the front. The countryside is littered with debris from aerial dogfights. Milos has just returned to his dispatcher’s post after being away on sick leave for three months, having cut his wrists in a hotel bathroom after finding himself unable to make love with his girlfriend. Though he is twenty-two, he has never been with a woman, and he lacks self-confidence. His fear of impotence led to his attempted suicide, though the townspeople think he did it simply to avoid work.

Milos comes from an eccentric family. His great-grandfather, a retired army pensioner, was beaten to death by a group of unemployed quarry workers. His grandfather, a circus hypnotist, was crushed when he tried to prevent German tanks from entering Prague. His father, a retired railroad engineer, collects scrap metal.

Milos’ troubles began when he took his girlfriend Masha to spend a weekend at her uncle’s photography studio in Prague. Milos was sleeping in the studio, under a backdrop of a large airplane, in front of which people had themselves photographed as pilots and observers. During the night, Masha came in and pressed herself against him. They embraced and were about to make love when Milos wilted. Disappointed, Masha crept back to her aunt’s room, leaving Milos embarrassed and humiliated. The absurd scene climaxes when a bomb from an Allied raid blows the wall of the studio away and exposes a sign among the scattered debris: finished in five minutes.

On Milos’ first day at work after recuperating from his suicide attempt, he learns that dispatcher Ladislav Hubicka, who prides himself on being a ladies’ man, has got himself into trouble for printing station stamps on the backside of the lady telegraphist, Virginia Svata. The girl’s mother has threatened to complain to the Gestapo.

Milos contrasts his suicide attempt with his behavior during a real test of his courage when he is taken hostage aboard a German close-surveillance military transport train. The train has been delayed by the Czech dispatchers in his district, even though it was ordered to be cleared—an act that could be considered sabotage. He is taken aboard the locomotive by the German SS commander and two young guards, who hold automatic pistols to his side. Milos is certain that he will be killed, but the commander notices the scars on his wrists and decides to release him. Milos’ colleagues at the station welcome him back, just as Slusny, the traffic chief, arrives to hold the inquiry about Hubicka’s behavior.

Disciplinary action is soon recommended against Hubicka. Undeterred, Hubicka proposes that he and Milos try to sabotage a German ammunition train. The two men arrange a caution signal to slow the German transport long enough for Milos to drop a bomb into one of the middle cars. Milos must stand on the signal tower above the track, with the explosives, waiting for the train to approach. The bomb is smuggled into the station by Viktoria Freie, a Resistance fighter, who initiates Milos into the mysteries of love on the stationmaster’s couch. Once Milos has thus proved his manhood, he is ready for his final challenge—blowing up the German ammunition train. He also feels confident enough now to agree to visit Masha again on her next free day.

Later that snowy evening, as the German train approaches the station, it whistles for an all-clear signal. As Milos climbs the signal tower with the bomb under his arm, the signal turns green and the train approaches. Milos waits until the fourteenth car passes and drops the bomb exactly in the middle of the train. As the last car departs, Milos is spotted by the guard and the two men fire at each other. Both are wounded, and Milos falls from the signal tower as the guard drops from the rear of the train. The men embrace in a macabre dance of death, one shot in the lungs and the other in the stomach. The German’s legs move in a frenzy of pain, and Milos shoots him in the head before he himself weakens from his own wound. He holds the dead German’s hands as the ammunition train blows up in the distance. As he loses consciousness, Milos repeats into the ears of the dead German soldier, “You should have stayed at home.”

The Characters

Milos, the narrator-protagonist of Closely Watched Trains, is an ordinary young man trying to grow up in a world distorted by forces beyond his control; Milos has the misfortune to come of age during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. Not only must he cope with the usual adjustments of gender and identity, but he must also decide whether to join the Czech Resistance. In his poetic account of Milos’ coming of age, Bohumil Hrabal stresses his ordinary, even antiheroic qualities: his innocence and immaturity, his lack of family distinction, his timidity and inexperience with women, and his overreaction to his problem with his girlfriend. The rich humor and pathos of this novel arise from Milos’ fumbling attempts to come to terms with his absurd situation. At times, he seems to be something of a Chaplinesque character, asserting his humanity in a world largely hostile and indifferent to his needs. Milos wants to do his duty and prove himself as a man, though his first efforts are inadequate. The emotional complexity of his responses to his dilemma create the poignant comic tone of Hrabal’s novella.

The two poles of Milos’ world are love and war. In each, he must prove his ability in order to gain self-respect and overcome his postadolescent diffidence. In a series of comic episodes, Milos fails or succeeds not so much through his own efforts as through chance. He has been in love with the young conductor, Masha, ever since they kissed through a fence while painting at the railway yards. Masha, in turn, shows affection for Milos, but before they can consummate their love, Milos must be initiated by an older and more experienced woman, Viktoria Freie. Hrabal shows wisdom and humor in dealing with the problems of sex. Milos’ failure to make love to Masha and his subsequent embarrassment are humanizing touches that make his later heroism all the more impressive.

The other characters in Closely Watched Trains are comic caricatures who sustain the tone of wry, earthy humor. Stationmaster Lansky is ambitious but inept, a middle-aged, portly, balding prig who abuses his wife (and is in turn abused by her), keeps pigeons, and shouts his frustrations into the heating vent in his station. Mrs. Lanska is a heavyset housewife, beyond her middle years, who is both shocked and sympathetic when Milos comes to her for advice about women. The train dispatcher, Hubicka, is a flyspecked Lothario whose nonchalance is somehow irresistible to women. His prowess evokes jealousy in the stationmaster and awe in young Milos, who envies his ease with women.

The women in this novel seem underdeveloped and serve primarily as foils for the protagonist. Milos’ mother and Mrs. Lanska merge as nondescript maternal figures—sources of comfort and consolation for the protagonist rather than self-motivated characters. Masha is young and sweet, with shiny cheeks, strong arms, and healthy instincts. The equestrian, Countess Kinska, is merely the object of Hubicka’s erotic daydreams, and even the well-endowed Viktoria Freie seems little more than a projection of male fantasies.

The other minor figures are stock characters. Milos’ father, grandfather, and great-grandfather are all allergic to work, content to “stroll their way through life.” They serve perhaps as humorous allusions to the Czech willingness to enjoy life without strenuous exertion. Traffic chief Slusny and Councillor Zednicek are recognizable as Nazi collaborators, and the Nazis themselves are uniformly villains, though Hrabal does show some sympathy for the bald train guard whom Milos shoots at the end of the story.

Critical Context

Though Hrabal’s short-story collection, Automat svet (1966; The Death of Mr. Baltisberger, 1975), has also been translated into English, he is still little known to English readers, and Closely Watched Trains may be his best-known work. Hrabal collaborated with director Jiri Menzel in writing the screenplay for the brilliant film version of Closely Watched Trains, which won an Academy Award in 1967 as the best foreign film of the year. Hrabal’s forte is clearly the light, ironic tale, or bagatelle, in the manner of the fin de siecle Viennese authors, who wrote complex and sophisticated tales of ordinary people forced to cope with circumstances beyond their control. In their struggles, even if they fail, they reveal their human and appealing qualities. Hrabal’s works are much more impressive than the dull grist of Socialist Realism that constitutes so much of postwar Czech literature. Hrabal’s whimsical point of view in his work perhaps reflects the difficult circumstances of his own career. He studied law but was unable to practice during the Nazi occupation, during which time he worked at a variety of odd jobs. Hrabal did not begin his career as a writer until he was forty-eight, and though his output has been slight, his graceful, lyrical style and humane wisdom make him an appealing writer. Unfortunately, the Czech authorities suppressed his work after the 1968 Soviet invasion. All of his books were destroyed, and he was not rehabilitated until 1976. Along with fellow writer Milan Kundera, Hrabal stands as an important representative of postmodernist innovation in late twentieth century Czech literature.

Bibliography

Hrabal, Bohumil. “Too Loud a Solitude,” in Cross Currents. V (1986), pp. 279-332.

Skvorecky, Josef. “American Motifs in the Work of Bohumil Hrabal,” in Cross Currents. I (1982), pp. 207-218.

Skvorecky, Josef. Jiri Menzel and the History of the “Closely Watched Trains,” 1982.

Souckova, Milada. A Literary Satellite, 1970.