We could be on a train together and it could be a nice feeling. Yes, I know, to you the train would probably look like some ship that sunk in the past century, but I must confess... I like these trains better than the new ones. Cold bare steel is just not my thing and although maybe the leathery brown comfy benches of communist times are not exactly my time... I enjoy that time.
I had a conversation, with a woman, on the train ride back. I should start with the one I took to Bucharest though, should tell you how I just shook off my black shoes and put them up in your lap, how you smiled at me, at my lazy cattish ways. Thank God, you are used to cats. We looked out the window, but I do not know what you would see, I can only imagine that you imagine seeing... despair. I see it too. The garbage landscape. The people, the little blond girls among gypsy families, my own prejudices mirrored in their faces. But mostly, it is the old lady I see beside me, the one dressed in black, who I would wonder... what do you see? A frail looking human, curled up on a bench for heat, tired and ghostly pale. She reminds of someone. Of a woman who I once saw in front of my own mirror, right in this house, doing her hair. She had beautiful long hair, but she kept it under some .... well, you'll tell me that word. It was practical that way, to hide it, for she no longer was beautiful, she was dutiful. She was my grandmother. And she adored me and I did not adore her. A spoilt brat like me ... could not adore a peasant, someone who sometimes smelled so awfully, someone who made dark cocoa instead of sweet cocoa. Do you know where the irony comes in?! Today, so many years after her death, I like... dark cocoa. And I remember her. Her delicacy. Her iron will. Her power of command. You once told me I have a hard tone on some occasions. It is from her, from her ability to one minute tell me a story, or play in my hair, or talk to my drunken father, asking him why he got drunk, desperately wanting him to say... it was not her fault, that she was... good. If I could run to her grave, I would. But I'm in a train, on my way to an exam that will lead me to a place where I'll be happy.
I'm happy like this, with my feet in your lap, warm, with you, but then the chatter of those two annoying females reaches me. The acid green of one, the sprinkling white hair of the other. Their chatter about breasts! Breasts! And Jews, which again was so... ahhh! And how they look at us, how they would look and how I'd just love to tell them to ogle their own business and not my very nice breasts! But I won't. For she is there, in her corner, in black, mourning.
We reach Bucharest. My father and me. You wonder where he was the whole time and I will tell you that he could not stay in the company of those two parrots any more than me. He just left, stood, looked. Just like me sometimes. Just like us. We saw Sinaia, you know, the residence of kings and everything, everything there... it's majesty. Not majestic, not extravagant, it's just majesty. You'll never improve my English you know...
So we arrive, meet this strange man at the station. He looks like you, resembles you, even the glasses and I keep wondering, do you have the same hands? I smile... because maybe you do, but I would not know yet, even though you hold me so many times. OK, so maybe the hands I'd like but his language?! Heaven forbid. I go to sleep, I'm tired, and I sleep well, thinking that you are there with me, but then, he comes. My father I mean. It is... 1, something like that, I know, but I don't know how I know, but I wake up, and think... I have been asleep for 4 hours. I do not mind him at all, we can share a bed, we're family. But then... at precisely 1:51 the nightmare starts... the sounds, like chains killing someone, sucking life out of him, making him cry out. In short: he snores. And not little, manageable snores, no, the real " I'm in the woods cutting off trees" snore. And he turns towards me in his sleep and I smell the alcohol, even though I am turned away, and I remember the nights, when I was sleeping, as a child, and he used to come home drunk, waking my mother who slept beside me. I liked sleeping with her, later I came to hate it. It became like being stripped of my freedom. It became... prison. With him, it was different, with him, it was disgust, pure disgust. I felt his warm sweaty hand on my shoulder, heard his growls and snarls, kept wishing it would stop, kept wishing he would go back to his side, which was extra big because I took just the tiny tiny corner. I curled up and then his leg moved as if to cover me and I... wanted to cry, to hide, to... anything just not stay. I had my ears covered, my hands hurt, they became numb, it was 2:27, and I put a pillow on my head, turned so I was on my back and told myself: one day, I will die like this, I want that peace now. And with a pillow on half my face, I slept.
I dared not mention it. Not to him, not to mom, not to anyone, but you. I was trembling before the exam and the fake American accent of those pinkish schoolgirls did little to mollify me. Then, there was the ironic principle, simple, polite, and then there was you, telling me I'd be happy. So I calmed. So fast. Of course it was morning and I could not think of any good example for my essay, so I did not do that good on that section probably, but hey... I know I could have done better, but then at that moment, that was my best. Then all the words, all the damn vocabulary sections in my test booklet, all of them, they just kept coming and every time I saw a new text I was wishing: "Please... Math, a little of it, I can't just continue to read and think and read and think and... ". The usual SAT. I did fine, I think. So I did end up thinking again.
Train ride back. Woman in front of me. Way... fast forward. We spoke about politics, about my exam, about my opinion of the next elections. I was shy to say that my opinion merely consisted of firing the president. I had no replacement, no strategy, no... We talked about why I would go to the US. You came to mind. First. Then, there was ... the politics, ours, yours, and I realized I do not like your view on many things, but that did not matter because in that instant, in that second, you became the woman in front of me, and she said: "I am old. My vote is what is left, my opinion, my voice, but I have been marked by times you did not live and you do not need to have lived them, if you are to do better, if you are to make things better for me." She wished me luck and admired my courage of wanting to go to the US, so far, and then, actually come back, actually help. Help the horse I saw on the side of the road, near my hometown, being kicked in his testicles by three boys. No human, no animal, no plant, no life.... should undergo that. No one. And I couldn't help but think of the Holocaust, I was reading Isherwood anyway, and I wanted to just stop that train, open a window, yell at them, but I was far away. My train took me... far away.
I saw a mother smoking next to her newborn child.
I saw a family living in a dumpster, because they had enough to make a fire.
I saw the ruins of old factories, of old houses, of old anything ... because the people who came after communism were so bent on forgetting the past, that they forgot to establish a present.
I saw my father looking away from me and I keep asking myself if I shall ever make him proud? He looks away clearly mistrusting my opinions, my claims, my thoughts. He sees children playing in front of him, he likes them, he is gentle to them and I wonder if he is because he sees me in them, or, on the contrary, sees nothing of me there. He is tired but he came with me, supported me, was there, and I try to talk, he drives me away. He is a good father, in his way. He offers me what he thinks will be good. Does he look away from me because I disgust him, or because he fears me, the unpredictable beast of a child he fathered?
I don't know, but I do know, that when I could not sleep, when I was tired because of all the tests, I wanted to come home.
To you.
I had a conversation, with a woman, on the train ride back. I should start with the one I took to Bucharest though, should tell you how I just shook off my black shoes and put them up in your lap, how you smiled at me, at my lazy cattish ways. Thank God, you are used to cats. We looked out the window, but I do not know what you would see, I can only imagine that you imagine seeing... despair. I see it too. The garbage landscape. The people, the little blond girls among gypsy families, my own prejudices mirrored in their faces. But mostly, it is the old lady I see beside me, the one dressed in black, who I would wonder... what do you see? A frail looking human, curled up on a bench for heat, tired and ghostly pale. She reminds of someone. Of a woman who I once saw in front of my own mirror, right in this house, doing her hair. She had beautiful long hair, but she kept it under some .... well, you'll tell me that word. It was practical that way, to hide it, for she no longer was beautiful, she was dutiful. She was my grandmother. And she adored me and I did not adore her. A spoilt brat like me ... could not adore a peasant, someone who sometimes smelled so awfully, someone who made dark cocoa instead of sweet cocoa. Do you know where the irony comes in?! Today, so many years after her death, I like... dark cocoa. And I remember her. Her delicacy. Her iron will. Her power of command. You once told me I have a hard tone on some occasions. It is from her, from her ability to one minute tell me a story, or play in my hair, or talk to my drunken father, asking him why he got drunk, desperately wanting him to say... it was not her fault, that she was... good. If I could run to her grave, I would. But I'm in a train, on my way to an exam that will lead me to a place where I'll be happy.
I'm happy like this, with my feet in your lap, warm, with you, but then the chatter of those two annoying females reaches me. The acid green of one, the sprinkling white hair of the other. Their chatter about breasts! Breasts! And Jews, which again was so... ahhh! And how they look at us, how they would look and how I'd just love to tell them to ogle their own business and not my very nice breasts! But I won't. For she is there, in her corner, in black, mourning.
We reach Bucharest. My father and me. You wonder where he was the whole time and I will tell you that he could not stay in the company of those two parrots any more than me. He just left, stood, looked. Just like me sometimes. Just like us. We saw Sinaia, you know, the residence of kings and everything, everything there... it's majesty. Not majestic, not extravagant, it's just majesty. You'll never improve my English you know...
So we arrive, meet this strange man at the station. He looks like you, resembles you, even the glasses and I keep wondering, do you have the same hands? I smile... because maybe you do, but I would not know yet, even though you hold me so many times. OK, so maybe the hands I'd like but his language?! Heaven forbid. I go to sleep, I'm tired, and I sleep well, thinking that you are there with me, but then, he comes. My father I mean. It is... 1, something like that, I know, but I don't know how I know, but I wake up, and think... I have been asleep for 4 hours. I do not mind him at all, we can share a bed, we're family. But then... at precisely 1:51 the nightmare starts... the sounds, like chains killing someone, sucking life out of him, making him cry out. In short: he snores. And not little, manageable snores, no, the real " I'm in the woods cutting off trees" snore. And he turns towards me in his sleep and I smell the alcohol, even though I am turned away, and I remember the nights, when I was sleeping, as a child, and he used to come home drunk, waking my mother who slept beside me. I liked sleeping with her, later I came to hate it. It became like being stripped of my freedom. It became... prison. With him, it was different, with him, it was disgust, pure disgust. I felt his warm sweaty hand on my shoulder, heard his growls and snarls, kept wishing it would stop, kept wishing he would go back to his side, which was extra big because I took just the tiny tiny corner. I curled up and then his leg moved as if to cover me and I... wanted to cry, to hide, to... anything just not stay. I had my ears covered, my hands hurt, they became numb, it was 2:27, and I put a pillow on my head, turned so I was on my back and told myself: one day, I will die like this, I want that peace now. And with a pillow on half my face, I slept.
I dared not mention it. Not to him, not to mom, not to anyone, but you. I was trembling before the exam and the fake American accent of those pinkish schoolgirls did little to mollify me. Then, there was the ironic principle, simple, polite, and then there was you, telling me I'd be happy. So I calmed. So fast. Of course it was morning and I could not think of any good example for my essay, so I did not do that good on that section probably, but hey... I know I could have done better, but then at that moment, that was my best. Then all the words, all the damn vocabulary sections in my test booklet, all of them, they just kept coming and every time I saw a new text I was wishing: "Please... Math, a little of it, I can't just continue to read and think and read and think and... ". The usual SAT. I did fine, I think. So I did end up thinking again.
Train ride back. Woman in front of me. Way... fast forward. We spoke about politics, about my exam, about my opinion of the next elections. I was shy to say that my opinion merely consisted of firing the president. I had no replacement, no strategy, no... We talked about why I would go to the US. You came to mind. First. Then, there was ... the politics, ours, yours, and I realized I do not like your view on many things, but that did not matter because in that instant, in that second, you became the woman in front of me, and she said: "I am old. My vote is what is left, my opinion, my voice, but I have been marked by times you did not live and you do not need to have lived them, if you are to do better, if you are to make things better for me." She wished me luck and admired my courage of wanting to go to the US, so far, and then, actually come back, actually help. Help the horse I saw on the side of the road, near my hometown, being kicked in his testicles by three boys. No human, no animal, no plant, no life.... should undergo that. No one. And I couldn't help but think of the Holocaust, I was reading Isherwood anyway, and I wanted to just stop that train, open a window, yell at them, but I was far away. My train took me... far away.
I saw a mother smoking next to her newborn child.
I saw a family living in a dumpster, because they had enough to make a fire.
I saw the ruins of old factories, of old houses, of old anything ... because the people who came after communism were so bent on forgetting the past, that they forgot to establish a present.
I saw my father looking away from me and I keep asking myself if I shall ever make him proud? He looks away clearly mistrusting my opinions, my claims, my thoughts. He sees children playing in front of him, he likes them, he is gentle to them and I wonder if he is because he sees me in them, or, on the contrary, sees nothing of me there. He is tired but he came with me, supported me, was there, and I try to talk, he drives me away. He is a good father, in his way. He offers me what he thinks will be good. Does he look away from me because I disgust him, or because he fears me, the unpredictable beast of a child he fathered?
I don't know, but I do know, that when I could not sleep, when I was tired because of all the tests, I wanted to come home.
To you.
