There were also, just like his desk at work, various stationery items laid out as if rigidly spaced—pens in a plastic holder, magic-tape, stapler. Otherwise there was nothing—no pictures on the wall, no pin-board of postcards, no standard lamp for a more subdued lighting option, no wastepaper basket, no mess to put in one, no coffee cups, no slippers kicked off under the desk. It was so sparsely furnished, so tidy, and in the glare of the bare bulb so flat, that it looked like a trompe l’oeil painting of a room rather than a real room. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, Walter found his study comforting.
He sat down at his desk heavily, as usual straight-backed and flat-footed, ran his hands through his hair, damp with sweat, then rubbed at his eyes and temples with the heel of each hand. He took a deep breath and blew it out noisily, through his lips, like a horse. He felt … how did he feel? His heart was beating quicker for a start. He could feel it, feel the pump of blood in his neck and the inside of his elbows. He let it go for a while, just sat there and felt the foom-foom of his blood, sat with it until it quietened down. When that had happened he got up and went across to the bookcase. He drew his forefinger across a number of the spines, none of them cracked or broken, of course, all aligned perfectly with the edge of the shelves, until he found what he was looking for—a small book, smaller than most of the rest, slimmer. He took the book out and held it for a moment. It was the size of a small paperback, covering almost exactly his palm and extended fingers, where he let it sit for a moment, as if he took comfort in the weight and size of it. He then flicked through the book with one thumb, fanning the pages carefully. He could smell the paper, the slightly chemical smell of bleached stock, an unusual smell, stronger than the smell of his other books. The pages, blurred as he fanned them, were not printed thickly with paragraphs of text but instead contained tables, lists and numbers in a regular, generic font, widely spaced. It did not look or smell like something that was commercially printed and distributed for sale. It wasn’t. It was published by a group that called itself the National Australian Committee for Safety and it contained statistics for each and every recorded death in Australia between Federation and the current year. The title on the front of the book was The Odds of Dying. In short, it predicted how Australian people would die.
Walter didn’t have to look it up. He already knew that the odds of dying in a train crash were one in sixty five thousand eight hundred and seventy. He couldn’t work out whether that number seemed like a little or a lot.
*
The next morning Walter was back on the Wintergardens train platform waiting for the 7.15am express. It was Thursday so he was wearing his Thursday suit—navy, three button jacket, double vent, single pleated pants, 40% off, but almost six years ago now. He would have to go to a menswear store at some point and replace Wednesday’s suit—charcoal, three button jacket, single vent, flat front pant—the one he’d thrown in the bin the previous day. He carried his briefcase and also had the daily newspaper, rolled in plastic, under his arm. There was no sun-shower that morning. The temperature was mild enough and the sky blue, so he did not carry an umbrella.
Again there was the motley assortment of his Wintergardens fellow commuters around him. Some of them carried papers and briefcases, or laptops, the occasional one a backpack, or a packed lunch in a plastic bag, leftovers perhaps in a Tupperware container.
Some smoked, but not under the covered areas of the platform where it was not allowed. Some talked on mobile phones or listened to their ipods.
Walter looked up and down the platform, looking for the man who had spoken to him the previous day, but there was no sign of him. Not that he could remember what the man looked like, not really. He was older, Walter remembered that, maybe edging towards sixty, with grey hair, an ordinary sort of face, clean-shaven. Walter found he couldn’t remember details. He felt sure he’d recognise him if he saw him again, but he wasn’t sure he could accurately describe him, which was unexpected and a little unnerving.
Even though he’d only done it one minute ago, he looked at the platform clock. It was 7.14am. Then he looked down the tracks. No train. He double-checked the time on his wristwatch. It was correct and the train was late again.
Walter juggled the newspaper out from underneath his arm, took it out of the plastic wrapping, which he discarded in a nearby bin, then set his briefcase between his feet, shook the newspaper open, bent the kinks out of it and looked at the front page. The headline gave him a nasty jolt. KNIFE ATTACK ON CROWDED TRAIN.
Walter scanned the story quickly. Apparently the previous morning a young man with a knife had lashed out at commuters on a packed peak-hour train. The attack had been random and unprovoked, although many commuters interviewed afterwards said the young man had appeared to be nervous. One witness had said he looked ‘off his nut’. The young man had been subdued by a number of commuters who exited the train with him at North Melbourne and handed him over to station security who held him until the police arrived. The story seemed to end, but there was more, Walter saw, on page three. He turned to page three.
‘Which train?’ he asked the newspaper.
He read on. Six people sustained injuries and one man was taken to hospital where he later died. The names of the victims and suspect were not reported.
Then he saw it. The knife attack had happened yesterday on the 7.15am express train from Wintergardens to the City—his train.
Don’t get on the next train, the man had said, and if it weren’t for that warning Walter would have been on that train, his regular train, and he could even have been in the carriage, the one with the man with the knife. Possibly. Why not? Pressed in, packed in like a sardine right near this young man who attacked unprovoked, lashed out with a knife. He could perhaps have been one of the people injured. He could have been that man, the one whose name they hadn’t released, the man taken to hospital where he later died.
Walter gave a start and crumpled the newspaper between his hands. The train had pulled into the station and the sudden noise of it, the wind around his knees, had surprised him out of all proportion. He smoothed the newspaper, folded it, put it under his arm and picked up his briefcase. The warning beeps sounded, the train doors were opened by passengers from inside, a couple of people stepped off, then those waiting began filing on. In a few seconds it was his turn and he stepped onto the carriage in a determined, stolid way, as if holding himself very tight and focussed. He found a seat and sat there rigid and well-arranged, his briefcase square on his lap, his newspaper neatly folded and square on top of that. His face was fixed.
Taken to hospital, he was thinking, where he later died. The phrase chilled him. The death bit, certainly, but even the first part— taken to hospital. He didn’t like hospitals. He didn’t want to have anything to do with hospitals. Not after last time. Not much had been wrong with him then, not really, not physically; nothing that wouldn’t mend at home, but they’d kept him there, for observation they said. He’d hated it. It had been more than just the smell of the place, the smell of sickness partially disguised by disinfectant and a sort of chemical smell which he thought of as the scent of medicine, it was also the attention he received from the staff, many of whom came to look at him, just look at him—OK, examine him, they said—as if he was something odd and unexpected and out of the way. He didn’t need examining. There was nothing wrong with him, nothing special about him, nothing to observe. There had been others too, outsiders, reporters, one time a man with a camera, although he was escorted off very quickly. Paparazzi, Walter thought, and he thought it as he would have said it, with an intonation of irony, of ridicule, of distaste, and of pure disbelief that he, Walter Kovak, should be hounded by paparazzi.
Behind these thoughts on hospitals and paparazzi, like an incongruous soundtrack, Walter could hear the sound of the train, rickety-clack, rickety-clack. Nobody else in the carriage heard the sound. Of course they did, but they didn’t notice it as Walter did. He heard it all the time, listened for it,
