I was on the train to La Rochelle, an old port town midway down France’s Atlantic coast, where I would spend 24 hours researching an article before going to a new year’s eve celebration in the Vendée countryside.
I shared a 4-seat section with a laid-back couple and their joyful, fidgety 3-year-old daughter. I had a window seat, riding backwards. The family and I had exchanged greetings in Paris as they settled into a seating arrangement whereby the woman sat across from me, the man to my left, and the child diagonally, with the warning from her mother to ne pas donner des coups de pied au monsieur, that is, to not kick me.
It was one of those new TGV interiors with red and purple seating, carpeted floors, checkerboard tables for which you can get checker and chess pieces from the snacking car, tables lit by frosted light panels, and tiny reading lights between the seats that I hadn’t noticed until the 3-year-old started playing with the buttons: on, off… on, off… on, off.
Across the aisle sat an English family—a 45-50ish couple, their androgynous 8-year-old, and an older woman, whom I figured to be the woman’s mother because the two sat side-by-side and because she looked disapprovingly at the man. He had has arm around the child as they watched a Harry Potter film on their portable DVD player.
The androgynous child wore a loose-fitting beige tracksuit with a pink crown logo. After much consideration I figured the child to be a boy. When he fell asleep the man turned off the DVD and started chatting with his wife. Their accents hopped and dragged like a large bird too heavy to fly.
The French couple—about 33 years old—and their child were comfortable strangers to be sitting with. I worked, listen to the family’s interaction and enjoyed the view out the window all at the same time.
We rode past plains of winter fields, bare trees, village homes the color of wet cardboard with rust or orange roofs, and ponds that reflected the sky, some partially covered with a thin layer of ice. The clouds were low and ill-defined. Occasionally the sun broke through. In an hour it would be setting.
I was writing about La Rochelle, which may seem odd since I was going to rather than returning from La Rochelle, but I often write about a place before going there as a kind of warm-up, like an athlete before a game. Writing down memories of previous visits or reflecting on recent research or describing what I imagine the town to look like or simply noting things I expect to do or see there, I set down impressions (perhaps mistaken, clichéd or partial) before those impressions have been corrupted by details, knowledge, pleasures, frustrations, weather, hunger and encounters or lack thereof, i.e. by the realities of the trip.
Inevitably I get confused as to what I might actually find at my destination and, in this case, why I was going to La Rochelle at all rather than directly to my friends’ house, and with that it began to feel as though I’d actually left Paris simply to be riding this train. So I began describing the scene around me.
Just as writing down one’s dreams (something I don’t do) is said to make you aware of those dreams and set a framework for their context within one’s life, writing while in transit frames one’s movement across place and time. Writing in transit draws the mind away from thoughts of arrival and departure such as “I was at point A now going to point B,” “I wonder how B has changed since my last visit,” “I wish I had stayed at point A” “Point B is going to be magical/wonderful/frightening, etc.,” “I forgot to call X before leaving,” “I hope Y likes the present I’m bringing.” Drawn through description into the moments of transit or transitional moments, one realizes or determines, as in dream writing, that something significant has been taking place and/or might take place at any moment.
The couple on my side of the aisle took turns reading to their child or commenting on passing views out the window. All three of them wore jeans and thick plain woolen sweaters over long-sleeve t-shirts. The woman had a short, easy cut of black hair. The man had wiry black hair and a rough, country-hip beard. They all had well-worn, comfortable shoes, though the little girl eventually took hers off. The couple was relaxed and easy-going in their dealings with the fidgety child, and with me, for when my bag fell from the overhead rack and hit the man’s shoulder he assured me that he was alright, not to worry, it happens.
While one parent was occupying or occupied with the girl, the other read. Strangely, they read the same book, a single copy, always picking up where the other left off. The woman, say, would splay the book on the table, straighten up her fidgety daughter, and start playing “what’s out the window” or reading the child’s book: “one apple, two carrots, three pears.” And during that time the man would lean away from his daughter, take the book from the table, and begin reading on the very same page where the woman had left off. Ten minutes later he would place the book face down on the table and reach over to give the girl a piece of homey cake or read to the girl from her book: “four mushrooms, five strawberries, six cauliflowers.” And the woman would then pick up their common book exactly where the man had left off and start reading from there.
Their book was called Enquête sur les saviors indigènes (Inquiry into the knowledge of indigenous peoples) by Sylvie Crossman and Jean-Pierre Barou. The little girl’s book was about fruits and vegetables and numbers.
At one point her father, seeing that the androgynous English child was watching and listening to the reading of his daughter’s book, squatted down in the aisle between the two children and began reading to both of them, pointing out images on the page so that one and then the other could see: “seven leeks, eight pineapples, nine melons.”
“You’re learning French, dear,” said the English mother.
After the 3-year-old lost interest her father regained his seat and the families to either side of the aisle fell into a lull. The man beside me was now reading the joint book and the woman across from me was staring out the window as was their daughter, lying on her lap, watching the passing sky. Across the aisle the English couple made occasional comments as they, too, stared out the window, while the mother/mother-in-law sat stiffly and looked into her lap, and the androgynous child slept, his head leaning towards his father’s hefty shoulder.
Suddenly the androgynous child reached down between his legs and started shouting “Where’s the bone? Where’s the bone?”
We all looked at him as though in our own dreams, as though there was nothing we could do but watch.
“Where’s the bone? Where’s the bone?” he said as he felt around on the floor.
It hadn’t occurred to me that the child might be mentally handicapped, but this went on long enough that on my side of the aisle we all, I suspect, wondered if this might be the case, particularly since his parents simply watched, patiently, and even smiled over to our side of the aisle in some kind of reassurance that they were used to this and there was nothing to alarmed at.
The 3-year-old looked at her parents and even at me as though we might offer a clue as to what the older child was doing bent over with his hands frantically grabbing at the floor between his legs. The little girl sat up and watched the older child search for the bone. The androgynous child’s grandmother sat even stiffer than before in polite horror while the child searched for a bone by her very feet.
This went on for a long minute before the child’s mother finally said, “Wake up, dear, you’re dreaming.”
The father laughed. He finally touched the child’s shoulder.
The mother said, “Don’t worry, dear, go back to sleep, you’ll find it.”
After another 30 seconds—which is quite a long time to watch such a scene—the androgynous child sat back and opened his eyes. He looked around him with a flat, sleepy expression then said to his mother with surprisingly cheerful politeness, “Can I have some candy, Mum?”
“It’s in the bag overhead,” the woman answered.
Just then the announcement came that we were arriving at Poitiers, and the older woman stood up to retrieve her bag from the overhead bin. The child also stood up to reach for the bag with the candy. As he was reaching the bag his mother said, “That’s a girl, you’ve got it,” making it clear simultaneously that the androgynous child was actually a girl and that the departing older woman wasn’t her grandmother. The older woman left the wagon with a restrained Au revoir.
As the train left the station the English woman said to her daughter, “What were you looking for when you were sleeping, dear? You got up but you were sleeping, and you were down on the ground looking for something. Everyone was laughing. You said you were looking for the ball”—which surprised me since I’d thought she’d been saying “bone.”
The girl corrected us both. “The bomb,” she said nonchalantly as she chewed on a gummy bear. “I was looking for the bomb.”
The mother smiled to us across the aisle, as though to apologize for the word, and neither she nor her daughter pursued the question of the bomb.
Her daughter now said, “Can I offer a candy to the little girl?”
“Can she offer a bon-bon to your daughter?” the English woman said in French to the woman on my side of the aisle.
“Merci,” said the latter with a nod. “C’est très gentil.”
The androgynous girl held the candy bag open to the little girl whose mother encouraged her to reach in to take just one. Instead she retrieved a handful, but her mother promptly put most of them back. “Dis ‘Merci,’” the woman across from me said to her daughter. “Dis ‘Thank you.’”
The girl said nothing for a moment as she stared at the two gummy bears in her hand, then she said, “Pierrot.” She said it once, and then again, and then a few more times: “Pierrot, Pierrot, Pierrot.”
Her mother explained in French to the English family across the aisle that Pierrot was the girl’s little brother. She then said in English, “She is going to see him because we are going home.”
The English mother relayed this to her own daughter: “She’s saying the name of her little brother, Pierrot. You don’t have a brother, do you?” she said with a smile, as though teasing her own daughter about being an only child.
“No,” said the girl, resigned, her head down to her candy bag.
“No,” her father said cheerfully. “She’s the only one. We’re the family!”
He and his wife laughed.
“They’re going home,” he said to his daughter.
At that the girl brightened up.
She turned to our side of the aisle, smiled at the 3-year-old, and said, “Well we’re going on holiday!”
© 2008 by Gary Lee Kraut