From Trains of Thought
Victor Brombert

At the beginning was the train. It seems to me that I have always been on one. At times I almost believe that I was born on a train. I even imagined that I was conceived in a sleeper, between two European cities, or crossing some frontier. It later amused me to learn that certain specialized bordellos in Paris had rooms that simulated the rocking and the sounds of a moving train.

As a child I stored sensations inseparable from the compartment's cradling motion: lights gliding along the ceiling, other lights flicking by the window, the shapes of cranes and water pumps against the night sky, the sounds of jarring and couplings when the train had halted in some station. There were so many other train sensations--but how to be sure that they are truly the infant's impressions, that they were not inscribed into memory at a later time? When exactly did I register the sound of the probing hammer against the axle or the brake, the more accented beat in the tunnels, the almost organic creakings when the train stood still, the human panting of the locomotive? I knew nothing yet, for sure, of the throbbing and panting of the locomotive in Italo Svevo's Confessions of Zeno, associated with the death of the father. I later discovered by myself how choking a son's sense of guilt can be....

Ontario Review #46