"Journey"

Glennis Salmon
Dunedin

Deep South v.2 n.1 (Autumn, 1996)

The number of people dropping off to climb aboard first class carriages had dwindled. Those quick to seize the opportunity steered their way towards the second class carriages. In a moment, each carriage was full, and the next had a stream of travellers waiting to board.

The huge station clock's hands inched their way resolutely towards the hour of departure: 1300 hours. The voice issuing instructions over the loud speaker boomed loud and incoherent. Those of us left running for a second class compartment became fewer and fewer.

At last I saw my chance. Heading towards one of the waiting doors, I landed in a queue of about half a dozen people. Silently, we trooped up the stairs into the train.

Inside, the noise resumed, and it became a matter of some urgency to find a seat. These were few in number as many had been filled by people filtering through from the front carriages. I moved jerkily down the aisle with the pack on my back. Ahead of me, a mother trailed two young children. I felt sorry for her as she was obviously feeling even more harassed than I was. She clacked orders to her children in a speech of such momentum that it was almost incomprehensible to me. There was no mistaking her intention, though, to find a seat for them all as quickly as possible.

I heard the station clock strike the hour. Seconds later the whistle blew and the train departed. Those of us still standing lurched backwards on top of each other. The woman with the children and I exchanged sympathetic glances.

After regaining my feet, I resumed the interminable search for a seat. It was hot. The train was overcrowded and stuffy. I had unwittingly climbed into a smokers' compartment, and the air was blue with the fume from continental cigarettes. The woman ahead of me had at last found seats for herself and at least one of her children. She flopped thankfully down into one of them, pulling her younger child onto her lap and propelling the elder into the seat opposite. I pushed on.

I had worked my way through three carriages by this time. At last, in this third car, I saw a seat ahead of me, and with a sigh of relief, dropped into it.

After regaining my breath, I stood up to place my luggage in the rack overhead. I had to put my smaller pack under the seat. I was glad, though, as it meant I could easily reach my tools of travel: books, lunch and writing paper.

Once established, I relaxed, exhausted from the effort of just getting there. I had travelled across town from the pensionne to St Lazare by tube; there, to question an unsympathetic attendant in the bustling, impersonal Information Bureau only to find that I had just fifteen minutes to cross town to the Gare d'Austerlitz and catch the next, and only for several hours, train south. Then lastly, the mad dash into the Metro, the ensuing search for the departure platform, and finally this frantic seat seeking.

However, all of that was now behind me. I was at leisure, at least for the next two hours. I examined my surroundings. Outside was alive with olive green. The high speed train fled past countryside creating an impressionist oil painting: a blur of greens, with the occasional smear of brown I took to be a farmhouse or, if smaller, a cow. This landscape, although animated, held little promise of prolonged stimulation.

Turning my attention back to the interior of the train, I became aware that, in fact, I was the focus of interest for the two occupants of the seats facing me. It appeared that I had unintentionally ruffled their calm as they were engaged in their various activities. I could see them sizing me up, awaiting my next move. I also had the impression that they disapproved of what they presumed were my idle intentions.

These expectations of travaille, the fact that they had expectations at all of me, a complete stranger, surprised and unsettled me. I looked away from them, and turned my attention back to the palette outside the window. An equal and opposite sound of movement came from the seats facing me, accompanied by an unmistakable sigh from the young man.

I glanced at him. He had turned his attention back to the pile of papers on his lap. He was a student, I think, young, and casually dressed by Parisian standards. Undeniably handsome, in the classical style, his nose was as angular as his jaw. His hair was a mass of tight brown curls, his skin clear and dark, his physique slim and supple.

My scrutiny made him uncomfortable and he, once again, raised his eyes. I held his gaze for several seconds, then resumed staring out the window. I heard him shuffle together his papers and, from the corner of my eye, saw him replace them in his briefcase and take out a magazine. This he put onto his lap, and began to read, flipping over the pages. His concentration seemed hesitant.

It was then I noticed that the woman sitting next to him was paying both the young man and me, and our interest in each other, a good deal of attention. She was older than both of us - self-possessed, attractive and feminine. Her interest both surprised and puzzled me, as she and the young man were apparently unknown to each other beyond the acquaintanceship that is made on a journey such as this. And yet there was a sympathy between them, a mutual feeling of having their private endeavours intruded upon. I felt that my behaviour wasn't entirely my own to regulate. Although strangers to each other, they had a shared heritage of which I was ignorant.

Neither particularly enjoying my thoughts, nor their interest in me, I reached down into my pack. I felt their combined eyes upon me. I had several books there, and I didn't mind which one I drew out. I encountered plastic wrapping - lunch, book..it felt like...yes, it was...Nausea, by Jean-Paul Sartre -- in English.

Pages opposite were turned over quickly.

Opening the book, I turned over its pages. Until now, my memory had functioned well enough as a book mark. But now, I struggled to remember my place. Several passages appeared familiar, but none had been my final stopping point. I felt a slow flush crawl up my neck and onto my face.

I thumbed through page after page. At last I thought I had found the place I was looking for, and started to read. Page 161, "I don't look very important but I know that I exist and that they exist..." I glanced up and saw that I was still being watched through half-closed eyes. The text became a blur in front of my eyes. I felt my own language alienating itself from me. More pressing was the message which this silent couple were conveying.

I determined to shut them out...page 175, "What am I doing here? What are these people here?... I want to leave, to go somewhere I should be really in my place". The elegant woman in front of me thumbed over a page in her book. How enviably relaxed and divinely peaceful she appeared in her engrossment. Page followed page - each read with this same quiet calm.

She and the young man appeared to be reading in harmony together. I was the discordant note. The book lay dormant in my hands. The young man glanced at me again, and sighed quite loudly. The woman's page swept his impatience aside.

I read on. "And suddenly, all at once, the veil is torn away, I have understood, I have seen". Page 181 had become page 253, and the train was shuddering to a halt at Bordeaux. It was raining.