By: Kim Farleigh

Platform lights illuminated her pleased eyes as she entered the dark compartment that Jones had entered without paying for a full-price ticket.

She removed a glossy magazine from a bag. Her pink top, white jeans, cream shoes, creamy hands and face go perfectly, Jones thought, with that magazine’s shininess.       

“No torch?” he asked.

She had started reading in semi-darkness.

“A torch!” she chuckled.

“It’s money, tickets, passport, torch,” Jones said. “The essentials for travelling.”       

She chuckled again.

“Have you lived in The States?” he asked.

She had a slight American accent.

“New York,” she replied, swaying her head wondrously. “Weerrrrild placceeee.”

Platform lights flashed by as the train left.      

“That book you’re reading is my favourite,” she said. “I came into this compartment because I saw you reading it.”

“Chapter Twenty,” Jones replied, “is the crux.”

Her features froze. He hadn’t said: “Yeah, it’s great, hey?” like they might have said in New York. 

“What happens in Chapter Twenty?” she asked.

“The narrator visits the butterfly lover and learns how to be.”

“How’s that?”

“Risk, sink, then rise again, increasing wisdom through perseverance and failure.”

“I’ll have to read it again.”

“Are you a student?” Jones asked.

“I’m starting economics in October. I’m teaching English at the moment to survive.”

“I’ve taught English as well,” he said.

“Did you like it?”

“I hated it.”

Titillation dimples surrounded her cheeks. She looked interesting when spontaneously delighted.

“Only artist, sportsman, pilot, astronaut, musician, writer, film director, war correspondent, politician, astronomer, comedian, doctor, architect, publisher, researcher and aid worker are worth taking the destructive path for,” Jones said. “The rest are absurd.”

“So economist doesn’t count?” she asked, smiling.

“You’ll be bored, but rich.”

Three Japanese entered the compartment. They sat facing Jones and Ivana, eye contact avoided, Japanese irises passionate amid facial restraint. Facing knees met in the now cramped compartment.

Jones said: “We’re in a reserved compartment.”

Three human statues, cast from the same cultural mould, stared up as Jones and Ivana rose, the Orientals’ heads lifting simultaneously with the hope that the Caucasians were leaving. Pretentious neutrality surrounded the yearning burning in the Asians’ eyes.

Ivana dragged her bag out into the corridor, the unmoving Japanese preying that Jones would follow. He quipped “Sayonara.”   

Hope spun six Japanese eyes towards him, Jones’s “Hah!” not affecting their fake immutability.

He and Ivana went along a corridor. Darkness and brilliance alternated between tunnels and daylight, SWERWISSS…BERRANGGG…CLANG….the train thumping rails.

They entered an unoccupied compartment, Ivana saying “Ahhhh” in relief.

Jones put his passport and money down his jeans. Thieves operated on the trains. He stared out the window while she slept. Moonlight, brightening night, resembled daytime filming with filters to produce darkness. Wisps whitened a dark-blue horizon. The world looked abstractions-free, like the Carbonifurous.         

Ivana’s breathing lilts tingled Jones’s neck. Moonlight’s effects and that musical lilting conveyed that life was driven by aesthetics, by sensation, not by metaphysics.

An adjoining compartment’s door got ripped open.

“Che pasa?” an Italian yelled, Ivana not waking.

The Italian stuck his head out into the corridor, yelling: “Che pasa?”

Holding a knife, Door Opener, touching his lips, advised quietude. The Italian slunk back into his compartment, danger eliminating heroics.

When Jones’s door got pulled open, Jones thought: A Zimmer frame! Not a mountainous thug! But a cripple with a Zimmer frame!

Darkness prevented him seeing the man’s face clearly; after confirming that Jones was awake, Zimmer left, leaving the door open, Ivana’s lilting breathing continuing, the Hungarian chicaned in by unconsciousness, her bed parallel to the sliding door.

Jones woke–light!–train in a station. Villas dotted emerald slopes. Lemon and sky-blue facades populated greenery. The ethics behind the money acquired to buy the villas probably contrasted with their beauty. Unconsciousness had saved Ivana from seeing Zimmer standing over her like a fairytale ogre.

“Are we in Italy?” she asked.

“If not,” Jones replied, “it’s the weirdest French I’ve ever seen.”

Lacking energy for laughter, her lips only quivered. Mornings, after slumber’s attacks on our hopes, level enthusiasm. Nothing, however, that coffee can’t usually solve.  

“How long have we been here?” she asked.

“Apparently,” Jones replied, “our brains reached their current size 300,000 years ago. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

She produced a deep smile.

“Five minutes,” he said, “if we assume that life started a week ago.”

She brushed her hair, concentration smoothing her face. Her fingers ran through her purse like spiders’ legs across a web, re-checking, delicately hunting for cash.

“My money,” she whined, “isss ger-onrrnnnn!”

Her bag had been beside her head; easy for Zimmer, Jones thought.

“I haven’t got,” she cried, “enough money to get from Bologna to Ravenna!”

Her mouth twisted into an irregular gash.

“Have you got your passport?” Jones asked.

“Yer ussz.”

“Credit cards?”

“Yuss.”

No problem, Jones thought. 

Her contracting swan-like neck left tendons protruding like tree roots in parched land. The tendons disappeared with neck expansions, reappearing when her neck sucked in.

Probably the first bad thing that’s ever happened to her, Jones thought.   

Realising he was a suspect he mentioned Zimmer and the Italian.

Ivana shot up and ripped open the Italian’s door, second time in four hours–again!–Italian groaning suggesting that ripping people’s doors open wasn’t perhaps polite, the Hungarian, not apologising or saying hello, yelping: “Was there a thief?” the Italian saying: “He had a knife and did this.” (Chopping). “What else could I do?  I made noise, to warn….”

Haphazard lines of dismay on Ivana’s face mimicked an aged palm. The Italian had to explain his behaviour–not her.

“He took my purse,” she blubbered, neck contractions and expansions returning; “then he put it back!”

Uncomfortable silence met this innocence.

“I’ll give you the money,” Jones said, breaking that embarrassing disquiet, “so you can get from Bologna to Ravenna.”

CLANG….the train bashing its way through a tunnel.                  

“Ohhhh thankszzzz,” Ivana said.

The Italian’s green, startled eyes suggested amazement at life’s possibilities. He also offered money. His face disappeared in loud darkness. Then light returned.

“Oh, thanks,” Ivana repeated.

The seated Italian, facing Ivana, rocked with delight, saying: “No, no, no, it’s not much,” his eyes ejecting sweetness. “You need to eat–(darkness, clamour)–to have–(darkness, CLERLANG)–food–(BERANG!!) drink–(CLANG!!!)–to relax before–(CLATTERING SMASHING KERRRAGING)–taking bus.”

The train, entering another tunnel, clobbered the rails, clanging in black space. 

Ivana opened her bag, offering wine.

“No, no,” the Italian said, smiling. “In Italy we have much wine. You keep.”

The train screeched and smashed with impunity.       

Jones left the compartment to let the Italian work on Ivana, Europe’s rural idyll passing by, pink, red and purple flowers upon windowsills, cotton-ball clouds in blue, orange-roofed farmhouses dotting green. Through benign order, the train charged. 

If I got robbed, Jones thought, would he say: “You need to eat, to drink, to relax, before taking bus”? Imagine what would have happened had I ripped open his door, demanding information?

The rushing train made ravens rise from terracotta.

Given we seek pleasure without punishment, Jones thought, some people might even give to avoid acknowledging their indifference–to protect self-perception. But who knows? Indifference might really prevail in my case. I’m not rich or beautiful. Minute reproductive worth. My mistakes get punished. Prudence for me isn’t just commonsense: it’s survival. Who’d help me? I can’t offer gratification. I stimulate the indifference that everyone tries avoiding.      

The Italian glowed at the sleek Hungarian, Jones thinking: Generosity and genitals go hand in hand, Hungarian appropriate given the Italian’s “hunger.” No doubt Zimmer steals, knowing his victims couldn’t care less about his physical difficulties–assuming those difficulties actually exist. How many people would be generous towards him?

The Italian gesticulated joyfully. Ocular aridity punctured the Hungarian’s mask of amusement. An Italian woman observed this while passing. That woman was again bemused, this time by Ivana’s change in demeanour. Jones had seen that woman looking mystified as she had passed by earlier when the Honey from Hungary’s neck tendons had appeared.

“My grandfather gave,” the Italian clanged on, “his best potatoes to the girl in the fruit-and-vegetable shop.”

Thunderous train flight rendered Jones’s chortle inaudible.    

“And,” the Italian continued, “he—”

“How much,” the Hungarian interjected, with door-opening subtlety, “is it to go from Bologna to Ravenna?”

The Italian’s face, stunned by this slapping enquiry, froze with stung bewilderment, his “enthralling amiability” now clanging like the train.

Yes, Giovanni, Jones thought, she couldn’t give a tortellini toss for your grandfather.

Her destination was close, her luggage in the aisle.

At the station, she said: “Thanks again.” 

Jones kissed her on both cheeks, saying: “No problem.”

Her smile got shredded by a wave-like disgust that rippled from her hairline to her chin. His awful mouth had touched her face! Jones imagined stalactites of repulsion hanging from her cheeks, the frozen frost from his vile kisses.

He laughed after she turned away. Kissing, acceptable in one place is bizarre in another. In southern Europe, it’s natural and kind.

“Goodbye!” the Italian yelled, as she strolled across the platform. “I’ll write.”

She didn’t look back.

Expect, Jones thought, the cold ravioli of rejection.

On the platform, the Japanese were carrying their bags, their careful insularity helping them avoid unwanted concern for the unwanted.

The train restarted its rushing. The Italian’s eyes, now ejecting lifeless tedium, stared vacantly out a window, back to returning to predictability without a beautiful blonde, the train bashing ahead unrestrained.      

Registering that that thing–Jones–was staring at him, the Italian looked away. Deadpan disinterest filled the Italian’s previously lively eyes. We swing between passion and indifference. Swinging had coloured the Italian’s day.    

If I lost everything, Jones thought, I’d be a lone wildebeest trying to cross crocodile-infested rivers to reach fertile plains. Without beauty or power, I create indifference. 

When the Italian fled from the train, he accidentally booted a beggar’s box on the platform, coins dashing in different directions, the beggar’s stubble-engulfed mouth shock-widening, the Italian not looking back, coins rolling onto the track, the beggar white-eyed bewildered.

You and I, Beggar, Jones thought, occupy the same boat.

The train’s rail-bashing cacophony blasted on, façades of decency flashing by.  

THE END