zafusy

The train is worn and dingy. You are alone in a compartment. It is dark, lit by one yellow light above the door, and cut off from the passageway by gray curtains that have a lingering odor of sweat and hair oil. There are stitch marks from a long gone strap that could tie back the curtains and leave the compartment open to the passageway light. It is daytime, but the windows are filthy, so coated from dried drops of grimy rain that very little sunlight makes it through to the compartment and the landscape is rendered dark and uncertain. You try to remember getting on the train. You try to find your ticket. You can’t. Warnings and instructions are posted on the wall in a violent and angular alphabet you don’t recognize. The faded vinyl seat covers are torn in several places, bits of blackened yellow foam emerging from the wounds.

You arrive at a station and get off the impatient train before it speeds onwards to its final destination. A girl from a 1960’s film awaits you on the other side of the platform. She wears a then-stylish white dress and clutches a white purse in her slender hands. Her brown hair, teased back into a slight bouffant, blows forward into her face. She brushes it away from her kohl-blackened eyes.

You cross the two tracks of the humble provincial station, and when you get to the girl’s side, she draws close to you, giving you a coquettish peck on the cheek. She speaks a lost Medieval tongue from the south of France. You understand nothing, but are content to listen to the music of her voice. She is pretty.

The girl takes your arm and leads you out of the station. Spring wildflowers dot the hillsides in poppy red and cornflower blue, but the wind chills you and you squeeze closer to the girl, the warmth of her body drawing you almost against your will. She continues speaking, calming you with her melody. A taxi is waiting and she puts you into it. She blows you a kiss and tells the driver to take you to the banks of the Lethe. You leave her behind and speed off into the sunset as the crows in the furrows of the fields softly whistle Cole Porter.

Liam Moore