The Man in the Bowler Hat

When I go to work, I usually take the train from the station closest to my house. It's only about a ten-minute walk through the neighborhood and is surrounded by little shops and kiosks, so when I’m on my way home from work and I’m too hungry to cook, I can just grab something to eat.

The station itself is beautiful. An old late-19th century brick building with a raised platform which was partially destroyed in the Second World War, rebuilt in the 50s and expanded in the 70s. The way in which the red brickwork blends over into the weathered concrete gives the station quite a timeless look; not like the bland design of many other train stations which could effortlessly blend into any decade of the last century or this one. No, this station is disjointed, anachronistic, out-of-time, the same way a wristwatch would look in a Rembrandt painting. Two unlikely characters welded together by history, alien to each other and to the present.

And yet, hardly anyone will give it this much thought when they take their train to work. The history of the station is displayed on plaques inside the building, put up sometime in the 80s and replaced with new ones a few years ago. I've read them – three in all – multiple times by now. Not just out of genuine historical interest, I'll admit. Sometimes, when it is particularly hot or cold out on the platform, I like to stay inside and wait there until the train arrives and listen to music on my headphones or scroll through messages on my phone or read the plaques. I know why the building looks like this. Yet, to most people, it is just another train station, a place to pass through, a place that might as well stop to exist once they leave.

There are a handful of people that take the same trains as me and I feel like I know most of them by now. That is just an inevitability when you see someone every day, even if it is just standing on the train platform for a few minutes or sitting across the compartment from them on the half-empty morning train. Over time you get to know them somewhat, their mannerisms and personalities. At least you think so.

There was one person – a slightly rotund middle-aged man who often wore a flat cap and checkered scarf – who waited for the same train as me for about as long as I can remember. He was always there, maybe missing for a day or two, perhaps even a week, but always back on the platform with me. We never talked, never shared as much as an intentional glance or even a nod, as you sometimes do with people in that uncanny space between strangers and acquaintances. And yet I thought I shared something with him, something akin to companionship. We endured the same rains, waited for the same late trains and were probably both equally annoyed when someone played their music on loudspeakers. Then one day, he didn't show up. And he kept not showing up. Over time I accepted that I might never see him again. And additionally, I would never find out what happened to him, why he stopped taking the 8:12 southbound regional together with me. Was he dead? Did he move? Retire? Does he take the bus now or a later train? I might never find out.

That's when I realized that, as much as I like to pretend to know these people, as much as I like to imagine how I might interact with them (as if it wouldn't be a grotesque breach of unspoken social etiquette to just approach strangers on a train platform and strike up a conversation, at least one that consisted of more than asking for the time or when the next train comes), they were also fully-formed people with their own lives which work according to their own inscrutable rhythms which I would never gain any meaningful insights into. And I realized that if I were to disappear from the train platform, none of them would bat an eye. They might ask themselves, just like I did, where that one young person went and then they would forget and stop caring, just like I do eventually.

One particular individual, however, stands out from the rest.

Every day – every weekday, that is – there is an older man at the station, waiting for his train. He's on the other side of the platform, waiting each and every day for the 8:08 northbound train which visits a few more stations in the city before heading out to the suburbs. He is old, as I've already said. I'd estimate him to be somewhere in his sixties. He wears a charcoal grey suit with very fine, almost invisible silver pinstripes and a matching bowler hat. The only accent of color in his outfit is the maroon tie. Together with the thick walrus moustache, the walking stick or umbrella (depending on the weather), the two silver rings on his fingers and the pocket watch, this gives him a sort of aristocratic appearance or at the very least that of a well-groomed upper-middle-class gentleman. His look always reminds me of the characters in Agatha Christie novels (my only real cultural connection with the interwar period, sadly) or the men-in-suits in René Magritte's paintings, like his famous fils de l'homme. And just like with the station, that makes him feel out of place, too early 20th century for the early 21st. Like a ghost from the past. Who knows, maybe he died when the station was bombed in the war and now continues to take his morning train, not even thinking about departing to the afterlife, lest he miss his appointments.

The rigor with which he pursues his morning routine would certainly support that theory of mine. He enters the platform at precisely at 7:55 from the stairs at the back. In his left hand he carries his suitcase (dark leather, silver clasps) and today's newspaper, in the right his cane or umbrella. He positions himself somewhat off-center at the back of the platform facing the tracks. At about 8 o'clock he tentatively opens the paper and flippantly scans the pages, probably searching for the more interesting articles to read in peace once he's on the train. After a few minutes he closes the newspaper, folds it up again at and at 8:05 he takes out his pocket watch and checks the time. Three minutes later his train arrives, he boards it together with the other passengers, leaving the platform empty. If his train is late, which seems to happen more frequently everywhere nowadays, he will look at his watch every few minutes and look around the platform impatiently, tapping his foot or bobbing back and forth slightly, as if this display of indignation might shame the train driver into moving up a gear.

Seeing him carry out his daily rituals with a preternatural patience and regularity that would surely make his pocket watch envious, I feel a certain hope. I am reminded of that idea that 'man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant.' I don't think that's true, but maybe my philosophy is just rusty. I believe that our lives are but one long story, past events not self-contained chapters but foreshadowings of our present selves and our futures actively being written with every breath we take right now. I look at this station and I can see its history, how each historical event made it into what it is today. And I look at the man in the bowler hat and think of all the countless decisions that made him into who he is today, however peculiar, all the moments that led him to this point; that led me to where I stand today, walking up the stairs to the train platform every day, knowing, like Sisyphus, that I will have to walk back down in the evening and up again tomorrow.