And when a train goes by, it's such a sad thing

And when a train goes by, it's such a sad thing is a lyric from a song by The Smiths that surfaces at a pivotal moment in the marriage of The Narrator and The Husband. The line appears during an early-morning drive through the next town, as the couple listens to rock songs on the local radio despite the terrible reception. The Husband, who has just issued an ultimatum about the state of their relationship, begins to hum and whistle along to the English-language song, then turns up the volume and declares it a great tune. The Narrator, who has never heard of The Smiths and thinks only morons listen to rock, finds herself alienated by his enthusiasm — to him, she might as well be from another planet. The lyric thus becomes a marker of the cultural and emotional distance between them, even as they share the same car and the same destination.

The Setting of the Drive

The drive takes place in the cold hours of early morning, no longer two or three but four or five, after a tense standoff at the family home. The Husband had flashed the car lights at The Narrator as an ultimatum, overheating the engine while she sat stuck inside, unable to move, as if behind a door waiting to be let in. The dog was in the back seat, its filthy paws all over the baby's car seat. The Narrator had left the front door open and gone to the car window, where the Husband insisted they needed to talk and that things could not go on like this. She bit her tongue and got in. As they drove through the next town, the early-morning mist hid the roofs, stables and wineries, covering the sleeping animals, milking yards and churches like a murky veil. It is into this hushed, veiled landscape that the music of The Smiths enters, the Husband's humming and whistling a fragile attempt at normalcy or connection.

The Collision with the Stag

During the chorus — And when a train goes by, it's such a sad sound, corrected to such a sad thing — the Husband's hands came up off the wheel and he barely managed to slam on the brakes. A stag hit the windscreen: first its head, then its body took off to the left of the car, like some kind of flying creature. There was a huge dent in the bonnet. The dog whimpered. The Narrator, who always forgets to wear her seatbelt, shot forwards and hit her forehead against the glove compartment, left feeling dazed. The Husband scolded her — she could have really hurt herself, he had told her a thousand times to wear her seatbelt — then turned to the excited, panting dog that was fogging up the windows. But then he saw the stag's leg, swaying disobediently to the rhythm of the windscreen wipers as though it were scratching its hip. The music was still playing. The stag ran off as best it could, limping, as though it didn't understand it had survived. The Husband looked at the damaged radiator, then remembered about The Narrator and gave her a hug. The heavy smoke coming out of the car blinded them, and for a second he kissed the dog on the mouth and she kissed the trunk of a fallen tree.

Aftermath and the Naming of Bloody

The collision transforms the drive into a scene of makeshift survival. The Husband announced they would have to push the car, but first he walked a few feet away and lowered his tracksuit bottoms, an act The Narrator found obscene — how could he take it out at a time like this? The animal did the dirty work, licking the remains off the bonnet, shaking its head once the job was done. They christened the stag Blood, in English, but ended up calling it Bloody. They wrapped it up in whatever they could find, put it in the back of the car and fastened the seatbelt. The Narrator pushed while the Husband accelerated, then ran to catch up with the moving car, running so hard she thought they were trying to leave her behind. At home, she found the baby standing up, his hands sticking through the bars of the crib, screaming for the prison warden. The Husband was already rinsing the car off with the hose, while the dog followed him around with a pained look, its eyes watering, its leg dragging, its body writhing as it made holes in the ground. Bloody's cry — eeeeee, eeeeee — echoed throughout the house, driving The Narrator crazy, until she got up, grabbed the small torch from the tool drawer and went into the garage.

The Lyric's Thematic Significance

The lyric about the sadness of a passing train resonates far beyond its literal content. It arrives at a moment when the marriage itself is passing — the Husband has issued an ultimatum, the drive is an attempt to talk things through, and the collision with the stag interrupts whatever conversation might have occurred. The song's melancholy, its meditation on things that pass and are gone, mirrors the couple's own trajectory: the train that goes by is also the marriage, the family, the ordinary life they are failing to hold together. The Narrator's alienation from the music — she has never heard of The Smiths, she thinks only morons listen to rock, she doesn't find guitars exciting — underscores the fundamental incompatibility at the heart of the marriage. Yet the lyric also binds them momentarily: it is the soundtrack to the accident, the shared reference point for the event that will become Bloody's origin story. The correction from sad sound to sad thing, made by the Husband mid-chorus, is a small, almost imperceptible moment of precision in a scene otherwise marked by chaos and injury — a detail that suggests the song matters to him in a way The Narrator cannot fully access. The lyric thus functions as both a wedge and a bridge: it exposes the distance between the spouses even as it provides the shared context for the night's defining event.