 © Paul Brown
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Night Train to Pisa Click to read Click to Visit |
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© Paul Brown
|
Night Train to Pisa Click to read Click to Visit |
Night Train
to Pisa
It was the middle of the Gulf War. The already ugly Americans were especially despised
abroad, and not only by Muslims. Yanks were staying home in droves, for fear of terrorism
of one sort or the other, bombs, kidnapping, hijacking, random shootings. My wife, Robin,
and I, who had been planning for a year to travel to Europe—the first time for me, at
the advanced age of thirty-seven—were only spurred on by the highly reduced airfares.
Americans are xenophobes, we thought, paranoiacs. It wasn’t like we were going to the
Middle East. That sort of thing didn’t happen to us.
The night was chilly and wet, and we were at the Gare de Lyons, to ride the overnight train from Paris to Pisa. A young man in somewhat punky clothes approached me and asked, in Italian, whether I was Italian. Only several hours later would I remember him, and think: Perhaps he knew something. Perhaps he was screening his countrymen, keeping them off the doomed train. For now, I simply replied no (one of my few foolproof Italian phrases), and we boarded.
Just past midnight I was awakened by our rolling into the Dijon station: the changing sounds and motions of the train, garish platform lights, various accents reverberating down the corridors. Compartment doors opened and closed, baggage trundled along, conductors called out in French. Peering out the window, we wondered where these people were going and why so late. Some, by their light dress, were locals, and some clearly foreigners, with much luggage.
Soon the train clacked into darkness, slowly accelerating to about fifty miles an hour. We were grateful that we still had our small compartment to ourselves—that dreaded sharing of space, such as it was, with strangers. By morning we’d be in Italy. We had a big day ahead, many connections to make.
Then we came to a stop. I opened my eyes, let up the shade, and looked out the window again. Moonless night filled the window except for a faint illumination like phosphorescence, thrown on the siding from our cabin’s lamp. We were nowhere—among Welds, apparently. In the distance, two pale headlight beams crept across the horizon, between the star-like pinpricks of lights from a house or two. Were we at a crossing? Why should we stop like this? The train remained silent. We sat and sat.
Eventually other passengers became restless. Their murmur snapped me alert. Even in peacetime, many media-saturated Americans picture European trains as being under a constant siege of communists, Palestinians, Nazis, pirates, gypsies, God knows what—pick your prejudice—all bearing automatic weapons and searching out Yankees, Jews, young women, or even worse, random hostages. Between us Robin and I fit the first three categories, not to mention the fourth. Still, I resisted this; we were not in some country where soldiers might pour onto the train at any time, stereotypically asking for papers and then dragging us away. Were we?
To make matters worse, the power soon went off. We sat in the dark. Normally I adopt the common stance of "it can’t happen here" (knowing that it often can, and usually does). But perhaps that bravado, that whistling in the dark, can serve as a beginning of true fearlessness. Robin, scrunched against the window, wrapped in a small blanket, was certain enough of our safety to try to sleep. I didn’t sleep. I listened for clues.
Maybe all the stay-at-home Yanks were right. It’s well and good to fantasize (by looking at Gothic architecture, or hearing, as we had, accordion music coming archetypically from an apartment in a Parisian lane) that time has stood pastorally still in Europe, but one tends to over-romanticize. Anyway, the past was no less dangerous than the present.
Finally footsteps—the terrorist’s?—tramped down the corridor in our direction. An English passenger nabbed the person, asked why we were stopped. "Un accident," was the cryptic reply "in the next car." "Authorities" were being summoned from Dijon, an hour’s wait was expected (we’d already sat for twenty minutes). I was reassured, but only slightly. Who had spoken? There could still be someone with an Uzi, holding hostages, I imagined. The train staff wouldn’t want a panic. Though it only prolonged the mystery, I was not about to investigate, not wanting to get my head blown off.
At length the power came back on. This seemed a good sign. However, it failed again after a couple of minutes. Perhaps, I hoped, they were trying to conserve their batteries. This happened twice, an interesting way to measure time, like slow-motion water torture. At last we started creeping along—but back toward Dijon. The wheels squealed, the train groaned as it negotiated gentle curves. What could this mean?
At about 1:30, over an hour after first stopping, we rolled lugubriously into a switching yard I’d seen at the outskirts of Dijon, empty trains and extra cars lined up and dark as crates in a huge haunted warehouse. Here, unbelievably, we stopped once more. Again we waited. Were they swapping cars? Rerouting the train? After a bit, creaks and clunks signaled a move, and we pulled forward. At last! I thought, let’s get on the road. And then with a jerk we stopped, hope restored and dashed yet again. Another long and enigmatic lull.
Then once more we continued forward, increasing speed (ah!) and passing a small station house, which had been lit but empty not long before. Now in the dim light of a street lamp, we saw by the tracks a man in a gray suit, walking back toward town. He carried a doctor’s black bag with silver buckles. A doctor. A safe icon, recognizable, apolitical. Two men stood before the station house in serious talk, while others inside appeared to be filling out papers, hunched over a small table, bright lamp-glow on their faces. We were back on our way, papers unasked for, lineage unquestioned, bodies untouched. The night train to Pisa had claimed, though mysteriously, only one victim, and he was not us.
Profile
Since then Sean has turned me on to writers Albert Goldbarth, Colin Wilson, and H.P. Lovecraft; and I have turned him on to Glenlivet, Oban, Cragganmore, and other such golden elixirs from the highlands and lowlands of Scotland. I’m not sure who got the better deal, but they definitely go together.
Two instances stand out of life imitating art: On a journey we took to the Oregon coast during a powerful wind storm, Sean buried himself in a giant pile of seafoam; and one night in the Canadian Rockies, near the Athabascan glacier north of Banff, he took a burning stick from our fire and traced Picassoesque images against the frigid dark which hung glowing green in the air longer than we thought possible.
It is this spontaneous joy and beauty that make Sean’s writing so compelling. His latest book, Grace & Desolation, pulls together the last six years of his life, which have seen the death of his father and the birth of his son.
—Herb Payton
Bio
Sean Bentley
Place of residence: Bellevue, Washington.
Birthplace: Seattle.
Day job: Senior Technical Editor, Microsoft Corporation.
Education: B.A., University of Washington.
Books: Into the Bright Oasis. Instances. Grace & Desolation.
Current project: Essay on being a second-generation artist.
Favorite book: A Sympathy of Souls by Albert Goldbarth.
Craving: To travel abroad.
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