A long time ago I boarded the daily Dakar to Bamako train in West Africa. The timetable publishes arrival and departure times to the minute for every station on the overnight journey, which ended up taking 2 days longer than listed and by all accounts was shorter than usual. I had a great night under the stars in the courtyard of the the local chief at Kayes, Mali. For better or worse, my current schedule allows less time for wayward trains. For the first edition of the "Small Beast, Dortmund" on tour, three venerable locomotives of the Deutsche Bahn managed to break down one after another on the way to Hamburg, putting me at the venue 5 minutes on the wrong side of showtime. When I was a kid getting carted around by my parents on their tours--(to all these same cities)--you could set the second hand of your watch by the punctuality of German rail traffic. 30 Years later nobody has a watch and the only thing you can count on is the tardiness of the train. The hundreds of travelers freezing on the platform in Muenster didn't even have it in them to get mad. In Africa there aren't enough trains or roads--or watches or timetables--for any of this to make a difference, but in India, where the railroad is both a vestige of the Raj and a source of local pride, pretty much everybody is resigned to the fact that the time in the timetable is merely a suggestion. They might be headed that way in Germany.
Last week was Small Beast, Dortmund #2, and after getting to Berlin almost on time, I had high hopes for Hamburg. 'Til 15 kilometers south of the city when the engine died. Bored and pissed off, I pulled the Bahn magazine "Mobil" out of the seat pocket and discovered that 2010 is the 175th anniversary of German national rail service. The first train was called the Adler. In 1933 came the Fliegende Hamburger. In the 50s the Kraftwerk immortalized Trans Europ Express. And there in the centerfold spread in Mobil, right between pictures of steam engines, troop trains, soccer teams riding to victory and East Germans coming west, is a photo captioned: "1941, Deportation of Jewish families from Bielefeld." An officer in a Wehrmacht uniform directs traffic, while the hordes carry bedrolls and rolled up blankets. They are smiling; looking cheerful. They probably think they're going someplace better.
When I moved back to the east coast from California around the turn of the century, my dog Wanda, (a sprightly 15 and now a resident of Dortmund), didn't yet have a home in New York City and by some not so simple twist of fate, managed to lodge at the home of a particularly devoted Botanica fan in St Paul, Minnesota who owned world-class Doberman show dogs. Champions, as they're called in the business. My dog is a mutt bearing the traces of any number of breeds, but with something of a plurality in Doberman genetic material. Ears and tail unsnipped, she is nevertheless a handsome, brown creature, albeit about half the size and weight of the pure bred Pincher. One day, a certain Champion Adina and Wanda got into a little skiffle over a rabbit and while Wanda escaped with a scratch on her ear, Adina, with the help of a blood transfusion and the nation's best vets, survived, despite over a hundred puncture wounds. To my wife's horror, I've told this story many times, basically because I think it's a good tale to tell. Still, I do understand why my wife objects. The fact is, I'm proud of my dog. Like the white lines marking the grass of the football field, the line between being able to confront one's atrocities and showing them off gets blurrier and grayer as time goes by.
The Turks will put you in jail if you even so much as hint, in public, that an earlier generation of Turks slaughtered a few million Armenians. And I haven't seen too many monuments to lynching on display south or north of the Mason Dixon line. You have to hand it to the Germans for staring down their own history. And Turkey wonders why there might be some opposition to their joining the EU. My second public appearance in Dortmund was playing in the BvB football stadium for the entering class at the University. The third year of a "tradition" sponsored by the football team and the theater in an attempt to hook new fans among the newest Dortmunders. It's the largest stadium in Germany. This town is a football team with a city attached. Waiting to go on, in the VIP area where the local civic leaders sip their sekt at halftime, I get a chance to see the faces on the wall of fame. A century of soccer madness. And in the middle of the wall, in a frame bigger than most, is a black and white photo of the most aryan of all youths staring heroically off into a future of glorious goals--and sporting a sweater with a large swastika expertly stitched in the center.
When I was riding the rails with my parents, crossing the alps into Italy was always cause for joy--as it is now. The trains definitely didn't run on time, if they ran at all. And a hundred times I was told that "Mussolini made the trains run on time." As if it were his only accomplishment. (Which it well might have been). Sometime later I heard Gang of Four and thought--what the fuck are they singing about? "The scoundrel discipline is his passion" intones Jon King. Is it Yeats and conviction ("the worst are full of passionate…") all over again…or just a great groove? In north India, where Aryan pride is as strong as anywhere and Mein Kampf is perennial bestseller, hearing of Hitler's virtues is a common feature of casual conversation. Here in Dortmund, during my first meal at the fine Taj Mahal restaurant, our waiter rhetorically inquires as to our thoughts on law and order in Germany. The question proves a setup for his prescription for Indian prosperity: "Hitler, that's what we need. India needs a Hitler."
I can't be sure if the trains are any more punctual in the subcontinent than they were 20 years ago, but I have a feeling they're not. And maybe that's not so bad. I did make it to Hamburg for the Small Beast last week and shared the stage with that most un-German of rock stars, Herr Alexander Hacke, who shouted, growled and wailed like a southern blues man who never paid for a seat to ride the rails. Hacke and his wife have a band called Hitman's Heel and they sing about beauty and solitude. In Hamburg, we all played Walk on Gilded Splinters together as the encore.
No comments:
Post a Comment