Night Train

Atocha to Azuquequa de Henares

The C1 on the Guadalajara track doesn’t offer much in the way of a panoramic view: the endless hills of dried hay of Castilla La Mancha, the brick apartment buildings and graffiti painted on walls surrounding industrial parks and warehouses. But when it rains, the smell of wet earth permeates the air, infused with the lavender, rosemary that grows wild everywhere -- not just from the rich siena-colored soil -- but also from cracks in sidewalks, bridges and concrete walls.

Lights shine through apartment windows of this brick and wire monotony that surrounds Madrid. Each light represents a life, someone sitting still, someone already home, while the train takes others to the same stillness. As the train approaches Guadalajara, its final destination, the carriage becomes emptier and emptier, my soul more drained. The light inside the train is too bright, the darkness outside inviting. I see the edge of my reflection on the window and that of the empty seats around me. I think of the many silent conversations I’ve had with empty chairs, at restaurants, in trains, of all the souls that have traveled on this very same path. I am going into the night and so are they, the dwellers of brick buildings. The last train home.

In Memoriam March 11, 2004 Victims of Terrorism

Kafka on the Train

Cercanías Train, Villanueva to Atocha

One morning on the C1 train to Atocha, a good looking man sat next to me and wrote frantically, beginning at the first page of a fresh, white virginal notebook. He never stopped, as if he were racing against time. He never once looked away from his notebook, as if he were committing a shameful misdemeanor, writing in flagrante delicto. By the time we reached Atocha, he still had not come up for air. I would have loved to talk to him, but I had to respect his desire to write. How odd, I thought, he could have sat somewhere else, the train was practically empty. But I understood. Even though writing is a solitary activity, it would be unbearable in an unpopulated universe.

In Memoriam March 11, 2004 Victims of Terrorism

Cloisonné

Guadalajara to Azuquequa de Henares, Cercanías Train

On the train a young punk girl sits across me. Her presence is anachronistic because punk “belonged” to the 1970s. Her presence is also common, all too common and not anachronistic at all, because the statement she’s making -- of not fitting into the Spanish mainstream -- well that’s as old as the first gypsy that set foot in Spain.

Her dark, short black hair and overly-done eyes don’t distract me. It’s the cheap cloisonné pendant with the image of Che Guevara that makes this ordinary train ride seem like a colossal tear in the fabric of time: if she only knew what my parents went through to flee communist Cuba. She’s wearing an emblem of a history she never lived.

How easily teenagers adopt the struggles of others, when they’ve got no struggles of their own. Some day she’ll wipe that make-up off with cold cream. Yes, I see it clearly: some day she’ll wipe that make-up off for the very last time and she’ll see her own face for the very first time. She’ll have her own struggles, with her own beautiful, tired face as its symbol.

In Memoriam March 11, 2004 Victims of Terrorism