Benjamin Cittadini: Prato

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.”

We all take comfort in other peoples misfortune. Our stagnant, cramped, socially sensitive compartment is suddenly a privilege. I only have two more hours to enjoy it. Pity is Rubbish

Pity is rubbish

La pieta’ è spazzatura

Inside my eye there is another

and another, and another

colouring the intangible

hiding behind each other

Inside my ear there is another eye

stealing sounds and sending them down

to sweatshops of swollen eyes

conquering the senses

This may not be the most beautiful place in the world, but I have decided to stay right where I am, probably because she is looking directly at me. Maybe I would move but I want to know what she is looking at. If she looks away then I’ll know that it’s not me, or if she blinks then I know that she has seen enough.

She doesn’t look away, she never blinks. She has a pair of eyes that never stop looking at me. She is recording everything she sees, but does she see everything? I don’t doubt it. Perhaps She is God, appearing now to look me up and down and pass judgement. But who am I to warrant judgement before anyone else? Anyway, I’m not sure God needs eyes, or any other anthropomorphic feature. If you could be a whisper, a broken leaf, a hundred-million grains of sand, a knife in the dark, blood that shames my cheeks, an atomic blast of sunset or uncanny harmonies plucked from a tightrope across the abyss, why would you need eyes? No, She is not God.

But if She’s not God and She is always looking at me, then what does She see? Her eyes don’t look through, around or into me; they are looking all over me. I’ve seen myself in a mirror, in a photo, even in the expression on someone’s face. I know I have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, two arms, two legs and feet that can take me away from here. I also know that there is a certain fullness to my lips that makes me feel exposed, as if my mouth were turning inside out, revealing words I never wanted spoken. These things are well documented, so what else does She see?

I see nothing of myself in the expression on her face, only the intense - but calm - apprehension of characteristics I will never know. She’s taking them in and noting them all down; She’s stealing myself from myself. But what can she be stealing? If She were to ask I would give it to her, or if She needed it and were too shy to ask, I would offer it to her discreetly. But I can see in her eyes that she doesn’t want - or need - my self. She is taking something else. Maybe She has found something I lost, like the ability to laugh without considering when to stop. If She has found it, then I want it back. But there’s no use asking for it back because she doesn’t need it.

She is looking all over me. She wants nothing I can give her, nor has She taken anything I have lost. She is not God yet she sees everything.

It seems that She doesn’t experience fatigue. She’s looking at me as if She is surfing the internet, scrolling up and down with her eyes, noting everything down not because it’s important, but because it’s there. Maybe when She looks at me that’s all she sees: a fevered collage of predominantly pointless information occasionally yielding something poignant. I wish I could shake her and say: “I’m sorry, but you’ve got it the wrong way around, I’m a considered union of meaningful components standing out against a background of predominantly pointless information!” I would tell her but it would be useless; her resolve is permeable. I just pass through her like passengers at a train station.

If only She would express something of me in her eyes, or maybe just a slight expansion or contraction of her forehead - either way, I’m not fussed - a flared nostril, a tightened lip, a pulsating temple, a tried breath, anything really. It’s not hard. I’ve seen people barely look at me once and casually express deep flaws in my character with the hitch of an eyebrow.

She looks up . . . and down . . . and up again. I’m beginning to think She has no eyes, just two clear glass buttons filtering colours through to some kind of reclining, languid perceptual lobe that is really just a parasite draining all her senses so that She is relieved of the burden of expression. She looks up and down and up again. Maybe She just smiled . . . no, that was just me creating a smile for her and painting it on with my eyes. Does She see everything? Surely she can’t see the smile I just painted on her face, or the slight blemish I have just placed above her right temple. No, she looks up and down, her face expresses nothing of me, but now I have also added a sartorial lift to her smile, as hough she has just heard me for the first time. If I darken the tint of her hair a little, perhaps thicken her eyebrows . . . now she looks like a teacher who has forgotten her teaching notes.

She’s looking all over me, but I can’t really see her anymore. She doesn’t express anything of me, but I can express something of me in her. I can widen her eyes a little and slightly shade her eyelids so that she reminds me of a girl I once loved who drank lots of whiskey. When she looks up and down again, I add a quick exhalation of air from her nostrils, as if she is sitting on a train and has just been disturbed from her magazine by her own curiosity. When she is looking all over me, I make her lips turn inside and out, moistening them, highlighting some kind of readiness.

She looks all over me with her glass-button eyes, seeing things I don’t have, things I may have lost, things I would willingly give her; but she is not God and she can’t see the hand I have just placed over her eyes or the stars that are now exploding beneath her eyelids. She can’t see the thick red blush that starts around her neck and rises up into her cheeks, or the anger gathering in sharp angles at the intersection of her eyebrows and the top of her nose. I can see her hand clutching a used tissue while her other hand is placed firmly on her chest; her eyes well with tears and her lips are thin in defiance. More and more she is becoming the archetypical She: the Grandmother, the Mother, the Lover, the Earth.

I can see her in the process of becoming, but ofcourse she is none of these things; she is the pair of eyes that never stop looking all over me. I am an assemblage of information: a wall, a tower, an old man with an umbrella, a bicycle, its shadow, the thing being pointed to by a child, the walking away, the approaching and the standing still. These are are all things that she sees and things that I don’t have to give her. If I have lost anything then it is because she is not God and she cannot see everything. She looks up and down . . . and up again. If she can take me from myself then I have not wasted my time sitting here.