Wars

Business is at a standstill in the dining car of a long-distance train. The waiters, waitresses and cook bide their time, conveying the indifferent lethargy of exhaustion and a loss for what to do. They lounge around in their bright uniforms like a ship’s crew in the hot sunshine; non-communicative as they are, they are hardly more than part of the furniture. Their uniforms and the appointments of the train car – as a symbiosis of modernist clarity with a hint of folkloric accents – contrast with a colonialist-looking potpourri of chips, nuts, chewing gum and beverages appealingly presented. Every action seems passive, conditioned by the train car, the state of the tracks, the route, the ambient climate, etc. And yet, one person seems to be taking care of some important written work! Balance sheets or sales (?) are typed into a calculator. Otherwise, there’s only sitting and waiting amidst wafts of smoke, while the landscape rushes by on fast forward behind the curtains. Finally, some life comes into the car: not customers – no – but the cleaning equipment is fetched, mops and buckets at the ready. The trip seems to be coming to an end – how else to explain the excessive mopping and polishing into which the three now plunge themselves, first standing, then on their knees and under the tables (Josef Dabernig).