Off the Rails

by Beppe Severgnini

  * * *

  Washington, DC, is a green, geometric misunderstanding that brings together American and foreign tourists. Fifteen million of them every year. They arrive expecting to find a monumental, transitory, artificial city, built by politicians for politics, cut off from the rest of the country. Which is nonsense. Washington, DC, is more representative of America than New York or Los Angeles, which are both unique and irreproducible. There’s only one White House, but there are lots and lots of white houses just like ours. They’re as lively as they are numerous. To a fault, in some cases.

  Washington is a mixed-up, fanciful city, muggy in the summer, freezing in the winter, magical in springtime, brisk in the fall. A strange city: a center of power that has very little of its own. The city is not represented in Congress, which irritates the residents, seeing that they pay taxes, like all other Americans. The license plates carry the somewhat contentious motto “Taxation without representation,” a variation on the slogan of the American Revolution (“No taxation without representation”). The colonists, in the middle of the eighteenth century, were protesting the fact that they were obliged to pay taxes to London but had no say in parliamentary decisions. The residents at the turn of the twenty-first century are objecting because they are obliged to pay federal taxes, and they have no say in Congress. Washington is a border city: it’s the South of the North, and the North of the South. A city where whites are in the minority, where plants grow luxuriantly, and where many houses have a porch. The classic WPA guides—a series of guidebooks to the American states, published between 1937 and 1945, under the auspices of the Federal Writers’ Project—informed visitors: “Everywhere in the Capital one hears the indolent cadence of Southern speech, and encounters that admirable though often irritating Southern characteristic—the innate aversion to hurry and worry.”

  Well, that’s not the way it is anymore. For many years now, the nation’s capital has been an anxious, brusque, and formal place, like the rest of America’s cities when it comes to work. Even on a day like today. The heat is ferocious, the humidity oppressive. Antonio looks at me and says nothing, but he drags his feet as if to ask, “Where on earth have you brought me?” Beneath a sky the color of dirty glass, men in ties and women in skirt suits dart back and forth like pinballs: they’re trying to run up as many points as they can before vanishing into some quiet building. Ideally, with air-conditioning, something pinball machines don’t have.

  Driven by a combination of suffocation and civic duty, we visit the Newseum, where America tells its story as it likes to hear it: heroic and true to its values, with the occasional touch of enthusiastic madness. We walk past FBI headquarters. To decorate the temporary wooden barriers around the renovation work, they’re using famous sayings of the presidents: in chronological order, playing no favorites. We climb up to Capitol Hill, we walk down to the Mall, and, exhausted, we suddenly remember what we ought to have known, since we’ve lived here before: in America no one goes for a stroll; they go somewhere and come back.

  We hide out at Charlie Palmer’s, a steak house that’s popular with members of Congress. An austere place that could be mistaken for a hospital if it weren’t for the color: mahogany instead of pale green. Antonio—sweat drenched, sleepy, and argumentative—wants a hamburger with fries. The uniformed headwaiter looks down his nose at him, the way a Venetian gondolier might look at a Realtor from Richmond, Virginia, as he snaps pictures on the Grand Canal. I look at the headwaiter. I explain to him that, in any tussle with the appetite of a jet-lagged twenty-year-old, he’s bound to lose. He smiles and comes back with the hamburger.

  We grab a taxi, we head for Dupont Circle, and we get stuck in traffic caused by the Pride Parade. The situation meets with the Somali taxi driver’s disapproval, and he breaks off the intense conversation he’s carrying on over his cell phone to curse the parade in an unidentifiable language. Antonio, suddenly wide-awake, starts asking me a series of difficult questions.

  “Why are the streets full of half-naked people, but it’s considered scandalous to show a breast on television? Do you remember that time at the Super Bowl?”

  “What does Dykes on Bikes mean?”

  “Why is DC Eagle wearing nothing but a black leather miniskirt?”

  “Why is that priest in the march?”

  And then, back at the hotel:

  “Why did that guy in thermal underwear on the elevator offer us free condoms, but I’m still not old enough to order a beer?”

  Coward that I am, I suggest he ask the coffee shop waitress, who looks to be about his age; but Antonio, lying in his turn, claims that his English isn’t up to the task. But the young woman is talkative. She tells us that the Gay Pride Parade snarls traffic and brings in plenty of customers; her salary basically goes to pay taxes, seven hundred dollars every two weeks. She makes her money off tips. With foreigners, it’s best to be direct, she tells us; they don’t always know it’s customary to leave a tip, and if the tip is generous, all the better. She doesn’t seem particularly interested in the world around her, nor do the Americans in the restaurant seem particularly interested in her.

  We leave, go into Kramerbooks to buy a Rand McNally road atlas, then walk down Sixteenth Street—the street that once separated the world of the whites from everyone else—to Pennsylvania Avenue. Outdoor café tables, bicycles leaning against walls, people chatting. Washington, DC, seems to have figured out what it had forgotten twenty years ago: there’s no law against slowing down, no regulation forbidding you to stop and chat with your friends on the street.

  * * *

  Union Station has changed since 1995. The American love of strict procedure hasn’t, though. We all have to wait in one place; we all have to enter the gate at the same time, then wait our turn to be taken to the faraway track in an electric vehicle. The driver, dressed in a scarlet uniform—age impossible to guess, and with an inexplicable enthusiasm—drives and shouts as if he were competing in a rodeo. He drops us off at Track J25, train no. 19, destination New Orleans. He wishes us happy travels, eager to reprise his show for the next passengers. We take possession of our compartment, which is a concentrate of American mechanical fantasies: a sink that folds away and becomes a step, for instance. We need to find a place to put everything. We’ll be spending a little more than twenty-four hours in this compartment, but we can’t spend that time with the wheels of our roller suitcases on our necks. I show Antonio my copy of Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck, which I brought with me from Italy. I open the book, find the page, and read aloud:

  When I laid the ground plan of my journey, there were definite questions to which I wanted matching answers. It didn’t seem to me that they were impossible questions. I suppose they could all be lumped into the single question: “What are Americans like today?”

  Antonio replies: “Well, they’re shorter than we are, that’s for sure. At least, the ones who travel by train must be, because I’m too tall to fit in this bunk.”

  “Any other comments?” I ask.

  He looks at the cover of the book. “Your author traveled with a dog, who barked or wagged his tail to make himself understood. I am your son, and I’d like to inform you that you’re sitting on my backpack.”

  I have a suspicion that the boy’s not going to read the book, but he’s already commented on it. When he grows up, he could be a book critic. Time to go.

  Night Train for New Orleans

  Our train is called the Crescent, and it left Manhattan’s Penn Station at 2:15 in the afternoon. It stopped, ninety-one miles later, in Philadelphia; it pulled out again at 3:55. Ninety-four miles later it arrived in Baltimore, which it left at 5:14 p.m. After forty miles it pulled into Union Station in Washington, DC, and left again at 6:30, with two Italians aboard. An older one, euphoric. And a younger one, puzzled.

  The train is supposed to reach Charlotte, North Carolina, tonight at 2:20 a.m. Atlanta, Georgia, tomorrow morning at
8:13. Birmingham, Alabama, at 10:23. And then, finally, New Orleans. Arrival scheduled at 7:32 p.m., 1,377 miles from its starting point. I’m certain of the schedules and the distances because Amtrak has salted the train cars with brochures providing all this information about the trip. The national love of numbers has been satisfied; the love of comfort—another national commandment—a little less so. Amtrak represents the side of America that is practical and unshowy; not the highly efficient, innovative, and aesthetically impeccable America. The only thing our train has in common with an Apple product is the color: the gleaming silver that is reminiscent of Airstream trailers and diner counters. These are places where the nation likes to see its reflection, and remember the way things were. There are three Scenic Highlights touted to the passengers:

  vibrant Northeast cityscapes (that is, the train is going to run through the ramshackle outskirts of several large cities)

  Blue Ridge foothills (the train won’t go up into the mountains, but you’ll be able to see the mountains from the windows)

  Louisiana bayou country (the train is going to run through the swamplands of Louisiana)

  Considering the violent downpour now under way, and the others that the weatherman is calling for, the bayou country will just be the wettest part of a very wet journey. Still—Antonio says—no train has ever been involved in a shipwreck, so there’s no cause for concern.

  The ticket states: “Car 1911/Room 008.” “Car,” to an Italian, is just one of the oddities of American English, meaning what in Italian would be carrozza (which is much closer to the word that would be used in Great Britain, “carriage”). “Room,” in this case, is what we Italians would call a cuccetta, or berth. To call it a room, in fact, would seem to be overstating the case. It’s a meter wide, two meters in length: maybe twenty-two square feet. The lower seats recline to form the lower bunk; the top bunk swings down from the wall. But Antonio doesn’t complain: he immediately claims the lower bunk, on account of a case of alleged vertigo he doesn’t actually have, and starts fiddling with his iPhone.

  I tell him, from above: “Look at America out there.”

  He answers, from below: “Where are we going?”

  Swelling with pride, I start my explanation: the Southern states, segregation, civil rights, jazz, the revolution brought by air-conditioning. He listens in rapt silence. A little too silent. I lean over: he’s asleep.

  The Crescent rolls on through the rain—slowly, but with admirable determination. Four matronly women in their seventies, in the adjoining berths, laugh happily, regaling one another across the corridor with tales of their adventures.

  * * *

  We show up late for breakfast, which is being served in the dining car. But the waitress, friendly and imposing, forgives me: “What would you like, honey?” At first I think she’s asking me “Which do you prefer: honey or jam?” When I realize that she’s calling me honey, I decide I like the winning enthusiasm of the old-school American waitress. The newer recruits to the profession are, often, just as well-mannered. But for them, the job is just a stop along the way to something better, and there is something automatic to their courtesy. If they ask, “What would you like, honey?” they really do want to know: What’ll it be, honey or jam? The menu, the front of which features a romantic depiction of our train (crescent moon, trees, mountain silhouettes), offers Scrambled Eggs (548 calories), $7.50; Continental Breakfast (699 calories), $8.75; Classic Railroad French Toast (438 calories), $9.50; Chef’s Good Morning Special (1,085 calories), $10.75; Omelet Selection (551 calories), $11.25. In italics, the traveler is warned that “occasionally, verbal substitutions may be offered instead of printed menu selections.” That’s fine: it’ll just be another opportunity to talk to the waitress, and have her call me honey!

  * * *

  American long-distance trains are remarkable. This is no commuter train, like the one that runs up the Northeast coast, linking Washington, DC; Baltimore; Philadelphia; New York; and Boston. That Amtrak train probably even has Wi-Fi, I’d bet. This one, creaking through Georgia under a gunmetal gray sky, only has air-conditioning. Fingers crossed that the air-conditioning works, at least.

  In the U.S., only certain categories of people take the train. People who live too far from an airport. People who are afraid of flying. People who are young and restless. People who are old and restful. People who have the kind of physical disabilities that airlines don’t much care for: obesity, for example. The lounge car—dark blue and white, Formica tables, seats in Naugahyde upholstery—is a likable congregation of special cases. We’re sitting with an elderly couple who boarded the train at Greenville, South Carolina. She tells us that the station in Atlanta is the unfriendliest one of all (“Only one elevator, just think of that!”). All around us are solitary travelers with a book, students with a tablet, young girls with earbuds. Antonio has pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and has joined the well-known international sect: its members, instead of telling those around them, “Leave me alone,” pull the hoods of their sweatshirts over their heads. A toddler comes down the aisle, festooned with pigtails and necklaces, dragging a pink teddy bear. In a few years she, too, at nine in the morning, will pull the hood of her sweatshirt over her head. But for now, she smiles.

  It dawns on me that we are the only genuine tourists: the passengers on this train don’t look like they’re on vacation. In Georgia we pass through a litany of suburbs, the exponentially expanding periphery, an urban ectoplasm with a variety of names—sprawl, exurbia, suburban supernova—and numerous consequences. I was here for work, a few years ago. A town just north of Atlanta in Fulton County. I remember the name of the place: Alpharetta. Not even the screenwriters on Star Trek, after four vodka and tonics, could have come up with a name like that. One of the epicenters of the American real estate meltdown. Lots of people bought houses here on subprime mortgages; there were foreclosures here by the thousands; the banks sold house after house they had repossessed. The traces of that destructive financial hurricane can still be seen. Just try counting the FOR SALE signs.

  After Atlanta, as we head west, the tempest becomes a meteorological one: no longer money blowing in the wind, this time raindrops hitting the glass. An American rainstorm, robust and methodical. The auto dealerships, full of pickup trucks and shiny banners, seem to have landed on the wrong planet. At the level crossings, we can glimpse shadows behind the windshield wipers. As we roll along the tracks running between the houses, we see backyards, bicycles, and sheds to store the toys of the children, already grown. An America caught from behind. The back of an Edward Hopper painting, rain-streaked.

  * * *

  Tallapoosa, Georgia. Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Then, a sign: CLINTON. This isn’t a presidential reference. It’s just one of the twenty-six places in America with that name. I explain to Antonio: Clinton is the second-most popular place-name in the U.S. after Springfield (forty-one), but leading Madison (twenty-five), Franklin (twenty-four), Washington (twenty-four), Chester (twenty-three), Marion (twenty-three), Greenville (twenty-two), Georgetown (twenty-one), and Salem (twenty-one). Then I think to myself: there was a time when you could impress your children with this kind of knowledge. These days, though, your children know that there’s such a thing as Google. Two young people, a young man and a young woman, are talking at the table next to ours. Apparel: pajama pants (checkered flannel), extra-large sweatshirts, knit caps, unlaced shoes.

  SHE: How do you like Philly?

  HE: I don’t.

  SHE: How long have you been there?

  HE: Three weeks.

  SHE: Why?

  HE: I moved over there with my girlfriend.

  SHE: What don’t you like about Philly?

  HE: The city, I’d say.

  In Alabama, intense greenery, ninety degrees; the rain has stopped, but there’s still water everywhere. The train stops at Birmingham. We pass through underbrush: there is no
land in sight on either side of the train; it seems to be running through a swamp. Though maybe “running” isn’t the verb I should be using: we’re moving at a crawl. I remind Antonio of the musical polemic between Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Neil Young recorded the song “Alabama,” accusing the state of racism (“Alabama, you got the weight on your shoulders / That’s breaking your back”). The band replied with “Sweet Home Alabama” (“Well, I hope Neil Young will remember / A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow”). All arguing aside, I tell him, two magnificent songs. In Meridian, Mississippi, ninety-one degrees Fahrenheit. We were scheduled to get there at noon, but we’re running late. Three teenagers are traveling with their parents; they’re passing through New Orleans, and they’ll continue through Austin, Texas, and on to the Grand Canyon, in Arizona. The youngest is using Siri to dictate on his iPhone. He thinks he’s in Montana.

  At a stop, Antonio gets off the train to stretch his legs and comes close to being left on the platform, but the maternal shouts of the female train conductors foil him in that attempt.

  The train starts up again. I close my computer and I open one of my favorite railway books: Paul Theroux’s The Old Patagonian Express (after all, it’s about trains, and it’s about America, or the Americas). “Half of jazz is railway music, and the motion and noise of the train itself has the rhythm of jazz. This is not surprising,” the author explains. “The Jazz Age was also the Railway Age. Musicians traveled by train or not at all, and the pumping tempo and the clickety-clack and the lonesome whistle crept into the songs.”