Six-seat compartment in a tourist-class carriage on a regional train
from Padova to Arezzo
The door opens. Sound rushes in like a sudden gust of wind. The door closes. There is a man and a woman sitting opposite each other next to the window. We all want what they have but must be contented with stealing furrowed searches of the rushing countryside over and around their heads. They begin to become a little self-conscious, as if just for a second they believe that we are looking at them, at their choice of attire, reading material or the appropriateness of their conversation. They know, ofcourse, that it isn’t them we are looking at - indeed it would be ideal if they were transparent - and they are a little jealous of their possession, so they become more animated, talking seriously with each other, leaning over to make a point: blocking the view.
The man who just entered stands for a while with his slightly revealed belly-button about a tongues’ length from my face. He is moving my rucksack on the shelf above my head and I am growing concerned about three things (in no particular order):
1) His belly button (which is black and has no end) is a tongues’ length from my face.
2) He is handling my luggage without so much as a nod, a raised eye or a mumbled request for consent.
3) He is on tip-toes (revealing his belly-button) and has barely a fingetips purchase on my rucksack which is almost the same size as him.
He‘s determined. He feathers my pack to one side, releasing small purses of air from his lips, then begins to haul up an extraordinary array of packages which must have followed him in to our compartment silently and obediently without any of us noticing.
The air is stagnant and I am conscious of my breath. I decide the best strategy to avoid any problems is to inhale like a whale swallowing krill and exhale like a fairy dying slowly. This makes me a little nauseous so I try to look out the window but the man and woman are unwrapping bread rolls and arranging fruit drinks on the table beneath the window; this makes me hungry. They’re curling their lips into knowing smiles. “How do you like the view now?” They’re saying this with their suddenly delicate fingers unfolding each corner of their napkins as if their making beds for their grandchildren.
I turn away and glance over the man whose belly-button I almost tasted. He has a large face with a black trucker’s cap balancing on the top of his surprised-looking forehead. He sits on the edge of his seat and his eyes - which are small and look lost in the vast ocean that is his face - are fixed on his collection of bags on the shelf above. I can smell the crunching of pannini with prosciutto from the man and woman next to the window and I notice that I’m breathing quite heavily now.
Once again I’m worried about my breath so I take some mints out of the bag that I’m clutching sweatily in my lap. Suddenly the man with the ocean-face looks directly at me. He is staring at me, then at the mints in my hand, then back up at me again. His eyes are burning and his face is swelling as though my seemingly innocuous act has suddenly created a conflicting storm of desire and regret. I stare back at him. The rushing countryside, the zealous lunchers and the stuffy compartment all suddenly drain into a whirlpool suspended between my apprehension about my bad breath, the mints in my hand, and the man whose ocean-face is seething with emotions that I can’t identify. I continue to stare back at him and his eyes are almost drowning in his cheeks, small white-caps forming and dissipating in the fine hairs on his top lip. I’m not sure if this moment has an end, if I have to offer him a mint, if that will calm the storm. I tack and turn towards the window and the man with a half eaten pannini is also looking at us, engrossed by the struggle but unconcerned about the consequences.
I turn back and the ocean-face man has stilled, his small eyes fixed back up on his luggage. I pop a mint and take a long, searching look out the window. I study the distant, smog-obscured landscape, looking straight through the heads of the man and woman, straight through their gesticulating hands and profiled noses.
There is a muted commotion in the passageway outside our compartment. Three very tall men with large backpacks have sat down in the corridor and have to get up and press themselves against the side of the train to let people through. The ticket inspector comes down and tells them they can’t sit in the passageway. They tell him, in broken english, that they can’t find a seat. He replies, in broken english, that this is because there are no seats and that they should have taken the next train and that now he will have to fine them fifty euro each. One of the tall men apologises and as he wearily peels a fifty from his wallet says: “We don’t have trains in Brazil.”
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