The slow learner

Getting on the metro looks like an easy thing to do, but the truth is you have to learn how to do it. I used to know how, then I forgot, and afterwards I had to learn how to do it again. I didn’t have any other choice, although some people say that, whatever you do, you’re making a choice because you always have, at least, two possibilities between which you can choose.
I thought about this idea the day before I started working in the office where I still work, because I realised I would have to learn again how to travel on the metro. No other way to get to the office occurred to me, because it’s too far to get there by bicycle, or on foot or even by bus. So I suppose the other possibility consisted of renouncing that job and trying to find something around the area where I live, which would have opened a new range of possibilities: from sweeping the streets to part-timing at the bakers’. Taking this into account, I guess I can safely state that, in the end, I did choose the metro, strange as it still seems to me.

The night before I started working in the office, I hardly slept a wink, so worried was I about being out of practice. But as with most unpleasant things in life, all you have to do is train yourself hard, in other words: do it again and again until you get sick of complaining and start doing it mechanically, until you lose any trace of synchronicity between your acts and your thoughts. From the moment I open my eyes one minute before the alarm clock rings, until I am under the ground sitting next to a dozing stranger, there is a sort of blackout. I know there has been a shower, a coffee, and a Kiss, because that’s what there always is. But I am not making those little decisions. The only decision I make is to let things happen, as they happen for everybody else on the metro.

It’s my first day on the underground for a long time, and I know I’m not choosing to have a man sitting next to me and trying to catch some phrases from the book I’m reading. I’m sure I don’t choose that he suddenly says:

“I don’t have any memory at all. I can read a sentence and the next second I don’t remember what I’ve just read.”

There is a code on the metro that states that someone with a book in their hands doesn’t want to be disturbed, they are not available for a chat, the book is a screen, a protection, a paper shield, a message meaning “Leave me alone.” Everybody knows that. And when someone dares to break the rules it could be for two reasons: he’s a nutter or he’s not a regular metro traveller. It just takes me the time to look him in the eye to know today I’ve got the nutter.

“That’s a pity.” –I say with a small forced smile, and get on with my book, trying to forget his shady look.After five seconds he replies:

“Why do you think this happens to me?”

It couldn’t be that easy. I answer “Well, I don’t know”, but by then I’ve assumed I’m gonna be having a conversation with a loony all the way to the office, which is not a great way to start my brand new life as a metro traveller. But all I can do is give up, close the book, resign myself.

He’s quite young, and stout, and his eyes are of a scary deep black. Is the kind of scruffy-looking guy whose greasy hair makes him look as if he had been licked by an enormous tongue. He takes things easy, and pauses like a couple of minutes between sentences. Maybe he’s a thoughtful nutter, or just a slow one. Or maybe, as happens to him with books, he forgets sentences before he says them, and has to wait until they come into his head again and say them straight away.

“Maybe it’s my hard disk. Could that be the reason? Do you think my hard disk could be full?”

“It certainly could. Yes. Definitely.”

There’s just three stops left. I’ve resolved I’m gonna get through this unharmed.

“It’s the same with faces. I never remember a face.”

I nod.

He talks.

“I wouldn’t recognize you if I saw you in an hour.”

I try to look worried about it, but I think that’s great news.

We cover the last part of my trip in total silence. And when my stop comes I stand up, say goodbye to him and, for a moment, I have the feeling he doesn’t know who I am. When I get off the metro and walk down the corridor I can hardly feel the hollow beat of my heart because of the rush, and the rabble, and I know this is gonna be tough. I say to myself “you should quit now, it’s easier while it’s still painful”, because soon this sharp pain will become just an occasional sorrow that will strike me when I least expect it. I know that, from now on, this feeling that I’m living somebody else’s life will walk me home every day, and I’ll shut the door in its face until next morning, when I’ll go downstairs, open the door, and feel it fall on my shoulders, like a robe I won’t be able to take off easily. I’ll walk to the metro and carefully pick my seat, next to a bored secretary, a smelly drunk, a builder carrying macaroni in a plastic box… the possibilities are endless, because you always have at least two possibilities between which you can choose. I guess it takes a little more practice to feel grateful for that.