Within the Lines

Winter. Train keeps on steady. Scent of your sweat on my skin. Vienna ’65. ’75? Next car ’63.. calendar by the bar.

Was it Prague?

Outside only trees… and the years in no discernable order.. I walk in each.. same wooden cars.. wooden seats.. It takes a moment to realize the dreading loneliness, pronounced by your absence, lingering scent crystalizing the effect.

Wake up in sweat. Reflection.. memories compartmentalized? Things unresolved? Would my mind at this stage work in these orderly forms? Nothing in any of the cars to suggest anything resembling an experience. Just a date, pinned forefront. Implicit of unconscious meaning? Something more?

All these years.. And as is given lives come in and out of ours. But some remembered, in clear focus as still on the day. You.. your skin.. subtle hint of tobacco.

“We did well,” you’d say. “We do well.” “We do good.” “Giving them a fighting chance, just knowing we’re not far off.”

World could’ve spun off its axis into a grate and I wouldn’t have cared, even now, when with you, in our safe cocoons between night rides, exfiltrating in cities that start to look like one front.. Warm yellow of tungsten sinking us into dream world more true, more what we were before we came here, spirits entangled in the soft beyond..

Galaxies spinning above our heads in our little claustrophobic cabins..

If I can get to the conductor maybe there’s a....

’67.. ’77.. ’72…. Cabins don’t seem to end.. years repeated.. Outside pines, train bending in turns, at either end no end to the cars, but then again never enough distance to see far enough.

Cold sweat three days in the row.. Unconscious dreams rarely repeat in this clear of a manner..

You hold stoic.. letting your eyes falter only afterwards with me.. Witnessing fathers, mothers, getting arrested as with frenzied last ditch effort they’d pass you their little ones - an often repeated occasion - tearing away as you’d huddle them past the safety of our zone. Slave to the larger forces at play, unable to step over the line, but with your fervent effort within it at least do the most impactful..

Black and white photo in the minds eye, familiar. Train cars look almost the same this time, even the years, but at the moment of waking the number fades. It’s the fifth day. Eldest daughter comes in bringing a tray of food and medicine. “I need to speak to him, call Robert..” the look on her face and the subtle formation of “mother..” trailing into a pause brings it all in clear and painful view..

It takes longer for things to come into focus these days.. Things get jumbled..

A blonde little girl with our hastily bought plushy to distract her, men in cold suits there to greet her, keeping their end of the bargain. Robert the only glimmer of warmth while delivering. Seeing him so young, fatherly, planted a hint of hope that we could have a reserved life after all this..

Car ‘72, I stand naked, materialized without having entered it, facing a photograph I’ve never seen but know clearly it’s her.. then noticing the same headband she carried from home.. I get a sharp feeling she’s in danger, why, she was only a child… I know I need to run and tell someone.. Each car looks the same, outside only trees, snow falling on them, no hint of a station on the horizon, no hint of point of origin or destination, each car looks the same sans the photograph now.. In the following car it’s missing and its absence fill me with terror.. My body starts to resemble what it is now.. It’s sweltering inside, condensation on the walls, sweat almost drowning as the conductor's car comes into view.. Sheets are soaking wet.. early rays on the ceiling.. The walls are dripping and the conductor's door opens.. I run to enlist their help but the room is empty.. Daughter’s hand holding my arm.. that same look I’ve been seeing a lot lately.

“Get me Robert, something feels undone.”

I find a stack of cards in one of the cars, fervently flipping through: Robert; Robert; Robert; Robert... with his only address in Vienna. Champagne on the roof on my first promotion, “He was very impressed.” Shy young smile, always felt like letting the guard down with him, liked doing it.

Another card in the stack, a long forgotten name, a series of numbers etched in my mind even after waking, abuzz as if begging to be let out, ricocheting inside all around even through the tips of my fingers as I reach for the phone and let them out one by one. Of course he’d recognize me. Finn, my old boss. “What happened to her, where did we place her?” “Why after all these years?” “What’s this in connection to?” “Is she safe?” “Did we cover everything?” Our words intertwine into one another as a sensual rhapsody of frail crackling voices slipping though a familiar warmth. “It might be nothing, my mind plays tricks on me lately, but you’ve taught me not to ignore even the tiniest detail, for old times, let’s remember..” “Take care to rest, I’ll see what I can unearth.”

“She read at Oxford, classics, helped us recruit..” He calls back. I see her father, wishing her away from all this, a truer life, un-recognizing of the sewage underneath.

We are in Warsaw, no longer alone, Robert is with me although I can’t see him, but know he’s there. Train passes the station, cold dread filters into the bones. I turn to run but each car is the same again, the gray doesn’t seem to dissipate, almost want to vocalize something but can’t, can’t open the windows, an animalistic impulse to jump off. If I’d known where the train was heading earlier… Would I jump off or still stay the course?

Train makes an almost unnoticeable stop as I’m motioned to the table by those bloodied hands and wry smile I hoped to be rid of even in memory, hoping he’d perish by all the ills kept locked away within him.

“We had an understanding, neutrality is the only possibility of safety, and even at that highly prone to exception.”

"Is it in Oxford?” I dread to imagine her now having to see their basement walls like many who’ve made her life possible had.

“Vienna, it’s a large city..” “Let’s face it you’re not up to the task, you’ve grown old.” I sit naked in front of him, as I am now. That glib look. No satisfaction given even to what this is. Getting up carelessly, unafraid of what is seen.. I move past him. Unafraid pass from one car to the next no matter if I have to walk for a thousand years I will and find her. I feel the desire to the last atom and a freeing surrender stripped of the self to the life of service as I approach the conductor's cabin.. door swaying.. entering I see a model of a building I’ve seen many times.. and instantly know this is where she's held.

Dialing the same number I relay it to Finn.. And sink back into the clouds of our cabin, linen sheets, smoking a cigarette and talking the way we always did, nothing about work, seeing each other for the people we’d found affection for, watching the vein on his neck as he talked, curtains above us swaying, while the train seems to pull into a station. He turns to me and we smile at each other.