Essay
Two Hundred Seconds Before the First Train
首班车前的两百秒
The alarm goes at 3:52 and I am out of bed by 3:55 — not because I am disciplined in any heroic sense, but because my body stopped arguing with the clock somewhere around year three. In winter, Minsk is still black at that hour. I eat standing up, drink tea I do not taste, and walk to the depot through streets that belong to nobody.
At the depot the air is warmer than my flat and smells of grease and cold metal. The train sits where I left it, and for a few minutes we are simply two quiet things agreeing to work. I put on the orange vest, take the lamp, and start the walk-around.
The Walk-Around
Wheels, brake shoes, the coupling, the doors. Ten minutes, the same order every time, because order is what stops a man from inventing shortcuts at half past four in the morning. Nothing dramatic has ever happened on that walk. That is the point of it. I sign the sheet, and I mean the signature.
Nothing has ever happened on the walk-around. That is exactly what I am paying attention for.
In the cab I am alone with the timetable and the tunnel. People think the job is lonely. It is, but a very particular kind: there are two hundred passengers behind me whom I will never see, and I carry them carefully past every curve I know by heart.
Ten Years, Not Once Late
I have driven this line for ten years and have never been late once. It is not a virtue; it is a habit that got out of hand. If the doors close at 5:47:30, they close then. A man who waits for himself will wait for everything else in his life, and end up believing the delay is owed to him.
My wife says I am slow to warm up. She means with people. She is right. Machines and timber I understand on first contact; humans take a while, and I have stopped apologising for the while.
The tunnel only asks me to be on time. It never asks me to be interesting.
We surface at Zelenoluzhskaya just as the sky turns grey. The first passengers are already there, collars up, none of them looking at the front car. That is fine. That is the whole arrangement: they do not need my name, they need the doors to open.
中文译文
闹钟定在三点五十二，我三点五十五之前一定下床。倒不是有多自律，而是身体大概在第三年就不跟钟较劲了。冬天的明斯克这个点还是全黑的。我站着吃几口东西，喝一杯尝不出味道的茶，然后穿过那些不属于任何人的街道去车库。
车库比我家暖，空气里是机油和冷铁的味道。列车停在我昨天留下的位置，有那么几分钟，我们只是两件安静的东西，商量好要一起干活。我套上橙色反光背心，拿上手电，开始绕车。
绕车一周
车轮、闸瓦、车钩、车门。十分钟，每次都是同样的顺序——因为顺序这东西，就是防止人在凌晨四点半给自己找捷径。这一圈从没出过什么事，而这正是它的意义。我在记录表上签字，签得很认真。
绕车这一圈从没出过什么事。我盯着的，恰恰就是这件事。
进了驾驶室，我就只跟时刻表和隧道待在一起。别人以为这活儿孤独。是孤独，但是很特别的一种：我身后有两百多个一辈子不会见面的乘客，我带着他们，稳稳地过每一道我背得出的弯。
十年，一次没晚
这条线我开了十年，一次没晚过。这不算美德，是一个失控了的习惯。门要是五点四十七分三十秒关，那就是那时候关。一个肯为自己等的人，往后什么事都会等，最后还觉得这耽误是他应得的。
我妻子说我慢热。她说的是对人。她说得对。机器和木头我一上手就懂，人要多花些时间，我已经不再为这一段多花的时间道歉了。
隧道只要求我准时，从不要求我有意思。
车在泽列诺卢日斯卡亚钻出地面的时候，天刚发灰。第一批乘客已经到了，竖着领子，没有一个人看车头。这样挺好，本来就是这个规矩：他们不需要知道我叫什么，他们只需要门开。
