by KUBOA
…Afternoon...
The tiles were eroding under her feet. The commercial booths were surrounded by flies and lined with the sticky grime that forms when dirt and grease blend together. Pigeons flew in from the open ceiling above the trains and pecked at the crumbs around a food kiosk. A tourist with tawny skin ran into the flock of birds yelling “rats with wings, rats with wings.” The scavengers scattered and reconvened at a kiosk on the other side of the terminal.
Bettina was going toward a place that couldn’t be reached with a direct train route. The best she could do with the money in her pocket was Austria anyway. She had no employer to notify, no friends to see her off and her family was too far away to care. She purchased a ticket for the six fifteen train then headed back to her apartment to the collect the few things in the world she cared about: a decent pair of pants, boots and a well-made jacket. The bag Bettina carried with her was little and attractive, leather with a double buckle, a bit worn-in, it told strangers she was experienced, that she had been places and survived, and she liked that.
She knew the train bound for Austria would move slowly through Romania and take a long rest in Budapest. She thought of what she might encounter while she sat waiting for the train. She could have sworn she saw the girl’s blue eyes reflected in the window of her apartment, but when she turned to look there was nothing. On her way to the station she thought she saw the little imp’s skinny legs running alongside her. But when she looked again it was only a crippled woman with a humpback giving her a dumb grin. She struggled to hold still at the train station. She twitched and fidgeted, constantly playing with the straps of her bag, watching over her shoulder walking up and down the platform, kicking garbage over the edge and toying with zippers on her boots. If people weren’t so distracted they would have noticed and thought she was on something. “For god’s sake, there are teenagers huffing paint fumes out of bags on the steps of this place. I am no kind of spectacle by comparison.” On her third pacing rotation she saw the girl. She was standing there, on the tracks, smiling with feigned innocence. “The little demon,” Bettina said, barely audible. The girl’s crackled skin twisted and writhed over her muscles and her half-smile twitched. Bettina shouted “Move, move.” A dignified woman in a floral shirt moved away from her. Bettina shouted again, “Get away from there. “ There wasn’t a train but the girl wouldn’t move. She taunted Bettina. Her eyes flashed. She looked down the tracks and waved. A train appeared out of nowhere and faster than what seemed appropriate for a train pulling into a station. “Get off the tracks--please get off.” Blood, white sheets, a scream and his blank face came back to her. She was here and all the regret, the guilt, all that goes with it and that surprise she felt at the relief of being free, all of it hit her as she watched a piece of skin flake off the girl’s hand. So she ran out in front of the train—the girl was gone, the train kept coming. Someone yelled something from the platform, the train brakes squealed and Bettina jumped back onto the opposite platform. She didn’t know where she was for a moment. People were staring and a security guard was running. Two women joined the security guard in a panicked babble directed toward Bettina, but she didn’t understand and didn’t care. She mumbled something about seeing a child on the tracks and how she had made a mistake. The security guard responded in broken English.
“Do you need help?” He asked
“No, no. I am very sorry-I thought I saw-its okay, I am okay. I am on my way to see my family, they are in an emergency and I was a little upset. I thought I saw a child there and I thought she might be hurt. But everything is fine, don’t worry.” Bettina said.
The security guard shook his head and scolded her with something in Bulgarian then walked away. The two women continued to babble to Bettina, but she tuned them out and they became no more important than the buzzing of a couple flies over a garbage bin.
She had thought of him, as if it happened all over again, but she couldn’t even remember what he was like before he got hit. She remembered she had feelings for him, he was certainly very much in love with her and that was enough; she wasn’t interested in feeling any love herself; she found all the business with romantic love insufferable and not really sustainable, she enjoyed his love-it was simple and sweet, besides he had a sharp mind.
Time passes and now she might be making all those memories up, like some demented version of what he could have been. In any case, it didn’t matter, staring out a window with half his brain swirling inside his head and knocking against the sides of his skull, trying to remember who he was. When he couldn’t remember her name anymore, she left. There was no point in staying, others would take care of him. There was no responsibility on her part. She thought of all this and didn’t shed a tear.; she never shed a tear for him. She did as much as was expected of her, but never shed a tear-she never even felt them waiting behind her eyes, she simply didn’t feel. She encouraged herself to grieve, to let the cathartic sensation of a choking sob shake her free and break her reserve so people could see that she was human too, that she felt things profoundly and could weep with the best of them. But it was a lie. She felt nothing but a detached and amused sympathy.
…On the Train...
Hours of nothing, Bettina held a book in her hand but didn’t read, on account of the words making her dizzy. The last thing she wanted to do was vomit in a train’s toilet and watch her own refuse slosh around with the rhythm of it. She stared out the window at the flat landscape, partially watching the landscape and partially watching her own reflection. She liked the way her reflection looked against the backdrop of the dark countryside, ephemeral and haunting, it bounced around with the oscillations of the car. She sat this way for at least two hours, staring out the window, her neck was stiff and her eyes hurt. A pale man with thick glasses sat across from her for a time, playing some kind of word game in a magazine, cursing occasionally at his own ignorance, then smiling at her as if to say, “sorry, was that out loud?” He left the train two stops before and Bettina was left alone. Two women joined her early in the evening-they were kind and full of good humor, Bettina thought they must be old friends. They gave her apricots and asked where her husband was. Bettina showed them her ringless finger they advised her never to marry and then left the train. Bettina laughed to herself and went back to her window. It was a long ride and the train made frequent stops in the middle of nowhere for who knows what-a smoke break, a coffee, a piss in the open air- a combination of all these things at the same time.
Shadows ran alongside the train, these might have been stray dogs chasing it in hopes of catching one of the coaches between their jaws and letting it take them for a ride, to let their scruffy bodies flap around in the wind. Some of these dogs appeared to be running on two feet and watching her, some of them had skinny legs and dark hair that waved like a flag behind them. In these moments she clung to her journal as a last vestige of sanity-if she wrote these things down somehow they disappeared. She remembered a classic therapy technique she heard about that asked a troubled, angry or heartbroken person to write a letter to the object of their obsession, but never send it. Bettina wondered how many of these letters were floating around in the world-letters that were never meant to be sent, but the writer couldn’t bear to destroy for fear some truth that would be lost forever. Bettina thought that the fear of forgetting and being forgotten must outshine so many other fears. She looked down at her hands gripping the journal and her knuckles were white, her fingertips were purple. She loosened her grip and forced herself to breathe again. She closed her eyes and reminded herself that she had hit rock bottom and that she was a coward, there was no doubt about that and that this compulsion was only some symptom of her prolonged isolation, it came from the disappointment of her desire for human touch.
…Two Years Before Bulgaria...
“You seem so satisfied. Are you?” She asked him.
“Yes, I am. I am with you, I work and I don’t have any health issues. There is nothing wrong, not
hing. I got lucky is all.” His brow was free from wrinkles which made him look younger than he was.
“Yes you did.” She smiled.
“Why do you ask? Are you not satisfied? I mean, I am not the only one. You have luck too, you do, you know. What is it you don’t have? Look at us. I mean the odds of meeting each other, it’s incredible, an incredible thing. Don’t you think? We could have not met.”
“Don’t you think we would have just met someone else and gone on the same way? That this really doesn’t matter in the long haul? I don’t think we’re that important really; just another species, a happy accident of evolution. Do you think that as we evolve we will cease to have voices and only communicate with electronic beating or a gas released from our pores?” Bettina could feel her forehead relax too, he always had this effect on her. He was like a child and she loved the feeling of being around an adult who looked forward to old age; he was a rare one. She laughed mischievously.
“No, I think it is a process. There is purpose I am just too idiotic to see it.”
“Do you want children?” She pulled him close and immediately regretted she asked the question.
“Yes, I will grow old and give them all my money and a house and let them bring me cups of tea while I tell their kids stories about ‘the business.’ I will live to be very old I think I have a feeling.” He said. “Because some people are different.”
Bettina grew distant, like she always did.
“Don’t you think so?” He asked again.
“I feel empty inside. I don’t think anything lasts long except where we came from. It will last forever and we will go back there just like we left, with nothing.”
“That’s bleak.” He pulled away and looked at her eyes. “Your eyes change color when you say things like that. They get darker, browner or something.”
“Maybe the pupil is growing. ” They kissed. His tongue reached deeper than hers.
“But do you love me anyway?” He asked like a wide-eyed, ignorant schoolgirl and she hated him for a moment.
“Enough anyway.” She teased.
…Dream Over...
When Bettina opened her eyes again everything was back to normal, the dogs were gone and her train cabin empty. Her eyelids were swollen with sleepiness so she got up and pulled the bed down from its attachments on the wall; she secured it to two notches on the side of the cabin, pushing it down until she heard a click. She jumped up and curled up for a sleep, but she left the light on and kept her eyes opened. Instead of begging sleep to come, she was going to let it find her with the clicking of the tracks. It enveloped itself around her as she listened to the repetition of the wheels hitting the spikes.
…Early Morning...
She woke up to Romania. It looked no different from Bulgaria in the south with chaotic, cramped villages spotting the landscape. She saw things as she slept but by the time she was awake enough to see out the window the dreams had faded. Something about a jolly old man and the freckled woman, just memories of people I had seen somewhere filed away. Three more people joined the cabin while she was sleeping. It was always disconcerting waking up amongst strangers; but they didn’t seem to mind. A middle-aged woman with white socks and plastic sandals sat reading a magazine; the boy next to her was listening to music on a set of headphones that were each the size of a fist. She could only see the legs of the third person, he was sitting underneath her. His knees were knobby and his pants were to too short for him. She looked out the window and thought they must be nearing Bucharest; things were getting more populated and the air seemed dirtier. The middle-aged woman looked up at her.
“Good morning.” She said in Romanian.
“Good morning.” Bettina replied in English.
“Ah, English-okay.” She said with a smile.
“Yes, I am sorry. I am just passing through.” Bettina didn’t know why she felt she had to apologize, but it seemed like the right thing to do.
“Okay, no problem. It’s a good morning, okay. Come.” The woman waved Bettina down from her bed and started riffling around in the grocery bag on the seat next to her.
Bettina hopped down, doing her best to avoid the protruding legs of the man below her, who didn’t move to accommodate; he was too engrossed in his reading. The woman retrieved the bag of pretzels she was looking for, opened it and offered some to Bettina. The later accepted and took a handful. It was sweet, the way middle-aged, Balkan women always wanted to take care of you, no matter who you were or where you came from, it was like second nature to them to feed and fawn on the younger generation. Bettina thought maybe this was because now that their children had less travel restrictions they all left the country to live and work, so these women were here preserving traditions and waiting for their babies to come home. In the meantime they filled the void with itinerants who needed the mothering. It also explained why the younger generation of Europeans seemed so spoiled. Bettina smiled at the woman across from her. It seemed brave and desperate to her, “God love them,” she thought. Bettina interrupted her thoughts to remind herself to change trains in Bucharest.
“Where are you going?” The woman asked. Her accent was heavy but her English seemed solid enough.
“To Vienna.” That was the best Bettina could do under the circumstances. She felt like to reveal more would be a betrayal.
“Ah, yes a beautiful city. Do you know Timișoara? It is Romania’s ‘Little Vienna’ that is what it is called by the tourists.” The woman’s face beamed with pride. Timișoara was obviously her hometown. “But I live now in Belgrade, yes the Serbs they know better the European way of life. They take long coffees, they eat well and relax and they give everything to their friends. Everything they give, it is true generosity. You wouldn’t expect it but it is true. I like it very much, Romania is a bed of lies however, but it is my home.” The woman’s thoughts were disjointed, but Bettina followed.
“Do you miss your home?” Bettina asked.
“Of course, I miss moments, people sometimes, individuals. Please, eat more snack, please. I miss the color and the money, sometimes I miss the money. We have a good-looking currency. But I miss the passion, yes the passion. Oh my, the love I had, it fills me.” The woman smiled to reveal a broad row of white teeth. This distinguished her as someone who had some money in Romania and one of the few non-smokers. She spoke with fervor as if being interviewed by a travel magazine. She smiled, clasped her hands to her chest, lifted her shoulders and pulled her arms in the way a grandmother does when they say “oh, such a cute baby,” it was unnatural and intoxicating.
“Do you have children?” Bettina asked.
“Yes, yes a son.” The woman’s face changed and saddened.
“Does he still live in Romania?”
“No, he left. He lives in Germany now, working there of course. He does not call his mother. He is ashamed of me, of my attentions. But I loved him too much, more than a mother should and I had trouble saying goodbye. For that he will never forgive me. But now time has passed and I smile again. He will come back one day.” She answered like a character in a melodrama. “Are you married my dear?”
“No.” Bettina gave a short reply, but continued. “Not any more.” Bettina sat quietly for a moment but decided it would be best to continue. “Do you remember your dreams?” It was a non-sequitur.
“Sometimes, sometimes. You are sad?” The woman noted. She spoke softly in an attempt to keep the conversation private. Of the other two passengers, one was asleep and the other absorbed in a handheld video game.
Bettina continued in a daze. She felt like the movements of her mouth were something out of control. It was an exciting feeling. She felt her face flush and her body grew hot. She wanted the woman to hold her and coo comforting words to her; she wanted the woman to know everything about her before she left; she wanted to be part of the melodrama and watch the horizon for the woman’s son.
“I always remember my dreams vividly, well, not always, but most of the tim
e. In detail and in color I remember them and when I am alone, which is often, I relive them. I search them in hopes of finding some kind of depth revealed or the key to heaven, or hell, some truth long since buried in my subconscious unearthed, but sometimes I am only looking for a connection there, a reason or justification, looking for patterns in the stars. Lately my dreams are alive, I don’t need to seek them out, they follow me. I have to admit, it is a pleasant thing to lose control and let someone else. But I have moments of fear, not an external fear, like the fear of arachnid, heights, or people, but fear of something else that I maybe created and that can’t be destroyed. I am afraid that maybe there is nothing to be afraid of at all and nothing worth the struggle, that survival is a gamble anyway and we don’t have much say in the matter, we have no real self-awareness. I am quite comfortable with death and I don’t feel like I must fight for control but I let myself be taken advantage of too often and can’t erase the impulse to strive. Let the rest of the world forget me, I want them to, but if I don’t make an attempt I have degraded myself beyond saving.” Bettina finished and a cold sweat was on her brow.
The woman sat silently.
“I think I have some water in my bag. Ah, here we are and please have more snack.”
…Bucharest...
Bettina tossed her bag over her shoulder and inched her way out of the train cabin. She checked the sign board the Budapest train. The board hadn’t flipped to show the train’s departure time yet and she had enough Lei in her pocket for a small, stale sandwich and a plastic cup half-full of coffee from a kiosk. She ate the sandwich ferociously, taking each bite before she had swallowed the one before, to avoid the taste. She took her last sip of coffee and looked down the platform, she saw the girl there. She was standing with her back to Bettina. Bettina dropped the cup in the garbage can next to her. She approached the girl quietly, the little thing didn’t move. Bettina stood behind the girl but didn’t touch her; she waited with anticipation, the hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up. The girl turned around, her eyes were wet with tears. The blue sloshed around the pupil like aquarium water during an earthquake. She opened her mouth to speak and Bettina saw missing teeth and smelled a hundred years of rot, she wanted to throw herself in front of a train. For a moment she preferred the fate of her ex to the girl’s voice; she knew what a comfort in would be to live in a world of illusions, it enticed her and she took a step toward the tracks. A wisp of air left the girl’s mouth, it was a thin cloud of words that was so soft Bettina could barely make it out; she couldn’t help but lean in to better hear the child, the rot stench wrapped around her neck and pulled her close. She could feel the wisp of air curl across her cheek and snake into her ear.
She reached out to touch the girl, but lost her courage at the last minute and ran backwards. She turned around just before hitting a post holding up the platform’s ceiling. The clicking of the train timetable kept time to the pounding of her feet on the cement and she followed the noise; the Budapest train arrived on time. In one breath, she ran to her platform and sat on a bench, she collapsed with a heavy sigh, her stomach spasmmed with a dry sob. She felt her face contort to express pain but the tears didn’t come. She shook herself like a dog shakes off water and repositioned herself to normal hoping normal would return. She looked across the platforms to where she left the girl, but the creature was gone. She tossed her rucksack over her shoulder and boarded the train for Budapest.
…Early Afternoon...
The train travelled through the Carpathians. She was grateful for the mountains, they seemed to have a neutralizing affect on her visions of the little girl. Bettina spent most of her time standing at the window with her arms pressed against the edge of the metal windowsill. The window was cracked open at the top, allowing the air to blow in and hit her face, causing a few strands of hair to whip around and smack the corners of her eyes making them water. She stood there breathing in the mountain air until her arms fell asleep and she could no longer feel the pressure of the windowsill make an imprint on her skin. Budapest came faster than she imagined it would, she was shaken from her stupor by a frantic passenger rushing down the alleyway.
…Moment in Budapest...
Bettina climbed the stairs to the upper level of the station for a coffee. She pulled out what she had left of Florin from a previous trip and bought a cup of coffee then headed back to the platform for the next train. The train cars for the line to Austria were significantly newer and cleaner than the Eastern European cars, so Bettina had no problem curling up on a seat and falling asleep.
…Austrian Train...
The touch of a tiny hand woke her. When she opened her eyes she was in the car alone and the train was in the station. Her first thoughts were “Austria, station.” Her heart went into a panic and a wild collection of melodramatic images inside a broken down train car, dehydrated, yelling for help from a window with graffiti-covered, rusty heaps of metal laughing back at her from all sides. She laughed at herself, but her heart was still pounding against her chest when the border guard passed by and asked for her passport. He swung the door open so roughly that it popped back a little making him ridiculous when he had to push it open again. He was tall and well-shaven with an exceedingly ugly face; it was scarred with acne especially on his bulbous nose, but he had an interesting mouth that turned downwards in a forced grimace that threatened to laugh at any moment. However, the uniform gave him authority, “a uniform often gives authority to men like him,” she thought. He snatched her passport, flipped the pages, mumbled her name and the number with some instructions in German toward the mouthpiece of a radio receiver clipped to his lapel and disappeared with a soldier’s march down the car. The waiting was tedious, the residency visa in her passport always confused them-often because they couldn’t fathom why an American citizen would live where she lived. When Bettina confronted this question in her daily life she replied “I am a journalist,” this seemed to make sense to people, so they stopped asking questions, sometimes it would throw her into suspicion with the locals, but for the most part they left her alone; they had far better things to do then concern themselves with a lonely spy who seemed a little distracted. The border guard came back and opened the door with the same ridiculous result. He handed the passport back with what was almost a click of his heels.
…Evening at Airport...
Bettina sat at a bar; she hadn’t checked her money transfer with her bank, she hadn’t bought a ticket, she’d take care of those types of things later. All she knew was a flight time, and the next flight was at nine in the morning, so she would be sleeping in the airport. She would rather stay up all night then cuddle up on a set of seats with her rucksack, so a drink was the only thing on her agenda. She pulled enough money off of an emergency credit card to hold her over for a night of people watching. For all she knew, she could be losing her mind and this might be her last cocktail before some imagined child told her to open the emergency exit and jump out. She saddled up to the nearest bar and ordered a glass of champagne with cranberry juice that cost almost the entirety of her emergency fund. “But if you’re going down, go down with the band playing, why not?” She thought to herself and smiled slyly. Next to her sat a large woman, too large for the barstool, who sported a haircut that reminded Bettina of teenage heartthrobs from the 90s with frosted blond tips and a close shave at the nape of the neck. The woman had glasses and an emotionless face. Bettina thought she could see the traces of a beard, but two full, pendulous breasts under the oversized t-shirt rested like unfurled banners denoting the sex of the creature. There was also a softness to her face that suggested femininity and the expression in her eyes was passive, one never sees that on a man unless he is being tortured or publicly humiliated. The woman looked troubled but Bettina’s stare jostled her out of her reverie. She made eye contact, Bettina didn’t say anything. Bettina became embarrassed at her unabashed judgment of the woman and muttered “Sorry.” The woman started at the English but
raised the full shot glass in front of her anyway. She looked at Bettina without changing her expression and said “Poison,” then she threw back the clear liquid in one gulp and resumed her stare. Bettina looked at the woman in amazement and decided it would be best if she finished her drink as quickly as possible.
…One and Half Years Before Bulgaria...
“Remember what you asked?” He looked at her helplessly.
“Yes.” She was cold.
“Well, do you want to or not. You never said.” He looked at the edge of the bed toward his feet and watched his toes wiggle.
“I don’t know, maybe.” She was propped up against the headboard so she could see the top of his head.
“I do, I want a child.” He said still looking at his feet.
“I don’t know if anyone ever truly wants a child, they just don’t want to be alone. You are never alone with a child. Not really anyway.” Even she didn’t believe what she was saying, but she wanted to provoke him.
He took her in his arms and held her there. He kissed her aggressively on the head over and over again and squeezed her ribs making air escape from her mouth in a squeaky sigh.
…Morning at the Airport...
She boarded the plane in a daze thanks to the booze and the train travel. When she finally found her seat, she nestled up to the window and peered out, she lifted her hand and felt her face, it was oily with stress. She swept her hand across her face beginning with the forehead and moving across her cheeks and chin, she could feel bumps all over, acne sprouting up. Her hand slid down her neck and over her shoulder where she paused over a piece of rough skin. She peeled the skin off. She felt a pinch when the skin separated itself completely but it wasn’t enough pain to cringe. She touched it with her finger and brought a blood-soaked tip to her mouth. She held the discarded skin in her hand and inspected the green, coppery sheen. An aged woman glowered at her from across the plane’s aisle; Bettina loathed the aisle seats for just this reason. The gypsy mother had been waiting for Bettina to make eye contact and give her an opportunity to chat, show her pictures of her adored grandchildren and stroke Bettina’s face. Bettina smiled and nodded at the woman’s broken English. The woman smiled back with a familiar glint in her eye winked. Bettina ordered a small bottle of red wine and sat back in expectation of more smiling and nodding.
“Enjoy it, this wine.” The woman said with a wink.
“I intend too.” Bettina replied.
“It is the live blood, the red wine.” She said.
“Lifeblood? Yes, I agree.” Bettina replied.
“But no good, no good. Just plane and...” The woman pursed her lips together, stuck her tongue out and blew in place of a descriptive adjective for the wine.
Bettina continued her charming game of smiling and agreeing, this seemed to please people. The plane rattled and shifted altitude; Bettina’s stomach followed suit and her eyes went hazy, fortunately the small white bag in the pouch of the seat saved her from making too much of a mess. She sloshed the acidic wine around in her mouth and tried to make a graceful exit to the toilet with the bag hidden underneath her jacket.