The Film in the Window

Sitting inside the train, I lean against the cloudy window that reminds me of an old photograph with blurred edges. Through it I watch men and women bustle purposefully along the platform, looking as though each one of them has been treated abominably and are marching indignantly to the local police station to make a complaint. If the world were black-and-white, I might be able to imagine I were watching a comedy sketch at the cinema, in which everyone needs the policeman but no one knows where to find him. Somewhere deep inside my brain, I laugh. My inner child still invents stories to amuse my outer adult. But today, the adult cannot laugh. The world is colorful, and its color reflects its reality. I can’t fool myself that the solemn, troubled, nervous faces on the other side of the glass will be smiling by lunchtime. I wonder if anyone in the world will ever smile again.

As the train wails warningly and smoke fills the world outside, I lean back against the tired velvet bench and spread my skirt over it. I am covering the thing which has the power to betray me but save others. I can feel its dry, crinkly paper wrapping against one of my fingers. I think of the faces of friends and neighbors I am too late to save, and I imagine empty faces and forms of those I might still, by some chance, help.

Trying to keep my face blank, inside I feel a fire raging in my chest and a herd of elephants trampling my stomach. I slowly breathe out. A conductor appears at my shoulder, asking for my tickets, please. For a moment my manners take over and I nod politely, calmly, watch him punch my ticket, and take it back. As soon as he leaves, my heart remembers where it left off, and begins pounding again. I glance carefully around the train car. There are only three other people with me, and none of them match the description I am watching for. I am to wait for an elderly man to come and recite to me the password, “Your aunt missed you at her birthday party.” I have rehearsed my response so many times, it feels like a prayer. “I hope she likes fruitcake. Please give her my love.”

Green countryside undulates by. A small farmhouse and a large herd of cows. I can almost imagine I am heading home to the village I grew up in; images of my mother and grandmother sitting on the front porch shelling peas fill my head. For a moment, I forget my mission and hover in the happy memory. Then all too suddenly, my awareness falls on my head like a bucket of water, and a white-haired man is lowering himself onto the bench beside me. He looks at me with eyes blue like a frozen lake, none the less sharp for the sagging eyelids half covering them. He reminds me of my grandfather.

“Your aunt,” he says quietly, “missed you at her birthday party.”

I look back at him, my chest filling with air. I try to exhale calmly. “I hope she likes fruitcake.” His eyes flicker with recognition. I reach under my skirt and slide my fingers around the small box wrapped in brown paper. Heart pounding, I extend it to his waiting hand. “Please give her my love.”

He doesn’t even glance at it. His eyes remain on me. As the train peals into the next station, he leans over and kisses my cheek. “Bless you, child,” he whispers. I hold my breath as he leaves the car and dismounts onto the quiet platform. He doesn’t turn around. I watch his stiff shoulders, embraced in a brown knitted cardigan, slowly disappear from my line of sight. Just like an actor walking off screen, I think. As the smoke again begins to build outside, and the train exhales loudly before screaming its familiar warning, the last thing I see is a red flag rippling at the end of the station. It strikes me as odd, seemingly the only colorful thing in a world of black and white. As I watch, the flag unfurls just long enough to reveal a threatening pattern of black angular lines. As the lick of red disappears in the rising billows of smoke, I can imagine I’m watching a film at the cinema again, and it’s black and white and safe to stare at. I wait for the words “The End” to appear onscreen, as they always do. The train wails and beings to pick up speed, and my eyes cloud over in disappointment. The real world is colorful. The real world is dangerous. The real world has no end.