Zurd

There were only four people in the last car of the 1:44 train headed to ____.

A young woman who looked to be about twenty one years old, but was in fact twenty six, sat by the window, her body tilted just enough for her to comfortably rest her hand on the last metal bar of the window. She wore a canary yellow dress adorned with white embroidery which fell down to her ankles but if she crossed her legs, it would lift just enough to let the man sitting diagonally across from her catch a glimpse of her smooth brown legs. The young woman would cross her legs every time the train stopped at a station, repeatedly kick her foot so that her dress would lift even higher while the train was stopped, and then, the second the train began to move again, she would uncross her legs and sit still until the next stop. With a particular cadence, she would look into the man’s eyes for the smallest fraction of a second just before she crossed her legs and just after she uncrossed them.

The subject, or perhaps target, of this spectacle was a twenty eight year old man, a cartographer. He was moving to ____, having recently been hired to be part of the construction of a new university. The man had been sitting with a notepad in one hand, a pencil in the other, sketching feverishly the entire journey. He would, like clockwork, pause his sketching when the train pulled in at a station and lift his eyes just enough to meet the young woman’s. He would then lower his gaze to stare palpably at her butterscotch legs.

The young man was perspiring. Although a cartographer by trade, and by lineage, the sketch in his notepad resembled the geography not of a place but of the young woman in yellow. Beads of sweat sat on top of the young man’s bushy but shapely eyebrows, pit stains apparent on his light gray safari suit. To the old woman sitting next to him this was easily explained by the carceral heat, especially at this time of the day. To the old man sitting across from the cartographer, accompanying the young woman, it did not matter. He had fallen asleep, open-mouthed, precisely seven minutes after he got on the train.

The train to ____ pulled in at its second to last stop. A gust of dry, piercing wind made its way through the window, causing the young woman to jerk her head away and, in turn, interrupting her ritual of meeting the cartographer’s eyes.

The young woman blinked several times and then lifted her head to look at the young man. She found him already staring at her and when their eyes met, the cartographer’s appearance became sallow but he did not look away. The two stared at each other for some seconds, then a minute, until the older woman sitting next to the cartographer pointedly cleared her throat. She waved a paring knife in the air as if to cut through their eye contact.

Both the cartographer and young woman looked away. The older woman returned her attention to the mangos she had been judiciously peeling. The yellowness of the mangos made the young woman sick. At any other time, outside of what felt like captivity of this train car, she might have asked the older woman if she would trade a mango for some roasted chickpeas the young woman had in her purse. But in this heat, the mango looked too yellow and what would have been an aroma became like a stench.

The young woman’s heart was palpitating. She wanted to vomit. She stared at her lap to distract herself but when her eyes fell on her dress, the yellow of it reminding her of the mango, she felt worse. She turned her head to stare out the window again but was blinded by the sun. It too was sickeningly yellow. The young woman sighed and titled her head back, closing her eyes. The insides of her eyelids were burning and she felt feverish.

“Sir, you cannot stand here,” said the conductor’s voice. The three awake passengers in the last train car turned towards the aisle.

The conductor spoke to a man who had just climbed onto the train car, barely making it on, and stood by the door. In his right hand, the one inside the train, he held a brown package. The package was about the size of the young woman’s forearm in length. It looked bulky, enough to make an observer wonder why the man had not simply used a briefcase instead. With his left hand, the man held onto the metal bar in the doorway. His knuckles were white from the tight grip, creating a stark contrast to his deep brown skin.

“No, I am fine here,” the man said, politely. He was out of breath and sweating, far more profusely than the cartographer.

“Sir, this is not allowed, you need to sit down,” the conductor demanded, his voice louder this time. He lifted his hat and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the ticket book in his hand. The young woman saw the droplets of sweat swim in midair as they fell to the floor. Her stomach lurched.

“Please. I am fine here,” the man in the doorway repeated.

“It is dangerous and not allowed. You need to sit down.” The conductor gestured to the empty seats, of which there were many. The man in the doorway shook his head. The conductor sighed, “Ticket?”

“Yes,” said the man. “It is in my left pocket.” He looked down at his chest.

“Show me.”

“It is in my left pocket. Sir, if you can please take it out and punch it.”

The train conductor, along with the passengers watching this spectacle unfold, stared at the man in the doorway, astounded.

“Sir?”

“My hands…” the man said, motioning to both of his hands, showing that they were occupied.

“Sir, please put your...bag... down and show me your ticket.”

“I cannot.”

“You cannot?”

“No, I cannot.”

The train conductor took a deep breath, tilted his head upwards and pinched the bridge of his nose.

The man in the doorway made no movement to indicate that he would show his ticket.

“What is in the brown package?” The conductor demanded. “Put down the package and show me your ticket or I will have to check what you have in there.”

The man’s complexion paled. The young woman thought of the word her mother would have used to describe the sallowness of his face. The same word could be used to mean pale and the yellowest of yellows. Her mind went back to the mango and she gagged, drawing attention to herself.

Everyone in the train car was now looking at the young woman in the canary dress; that is, everyone except the man sleeping, open-mouthed, next to her.

The young woman mumbled an apology.

“You!” exclaimed the man in the doorway, looking at the cartographer, “Come, come show my ticket to the conductor.”

The cartographer looked, at first, at the young woman, as if he needed her approval. Then, realizing the absurdity of this, turned to the conductor.

The conductor sighed again, turned to the man in the doorway. “Is there a bomb, some other harmful thing in the package?”

The man in the doorway smiled, shook his head animatedly. “No, sir! There is nothing of the sort in this package. I was in a rush and simply wrapped my things in brown paper. I swear on my mother, on the Holy Book.”

It was the mention of the Holy Book, or perhaps frustration from the heat, that made the conductor succumb. He motioned to the cartographer to take the ticket out of the man’s pocket.

The cartographer put his notepad down on the seat beside him and walked over the short distance to the man holding the brown package. The ticket was punched by the conductor, then returned to the man’s pocket by the cartographer.

The man in the doorway was headed to ____, on a one-way ticket. ____ was, after all, where the poor, the ambitious, the refugees, and the opportunists went. ____ was the city by the sea, the metropolis of equal amounts hope and despair.

“Please, at least sit down,” the conductor said to the man standing in the doorway, his tone defeated and pleading.

“I am alright, thank you.”

The conductor took a deep breath, shook his head, and headed towards the other train cars.

“Thank you, son,” the man in the doorway said, nodding at the cartographer who, in reply, managed only to muster a tight-lipped smile. This made the young woman giggle, and the cartographer looked at her, smiling.

The old woman, who by now was done eating her mango, was following the exchange of looks between the two like a tennis match, “Shameless,” she muttered.

The man standing in the doorway laughed.

“They are young, lady,” he said. “Let them look.”

The old woman turned away, shaking her head. The young man and woman exchanged another look before the young woman turned to look out the window again and the cartographer picked up his notepad, resuming his sketch.

The train car was quiet now except for the sound from the tracks. ____ was no more than ten minutes away and the man in the doorway seemed to be smiling bigger and bigger as the distance lessened.

The young woman in the canary yellow dress could see the ____ train station now, just ahead. She turned to the man next to her, still asleep, to wake him up and then thought better of it. She could stand to not have to talk to him for a few more minutes.

The cartographer and the old woman began to gather their things, both flinching, on cue, as the train horn blew. The young woman giggled again and the cartographer smiled. He decided, then, that he would talk to her before they both stepped off the train. Even if all he could know about her was her name. The old woman made an absurd sound, one of horror, and started to recite an incantation to ward off the devil.

The train which should have begun to slow down now moved along without doing so. Suddenly there was noise.

Everything became loud in an instant: the train horn blaring repetitively, train whistles from the station, some screams.

The cartographer and the young woman both stood up and headed towards the door while the old woman tried to look through the window. The man sleeping was still asleep.

The man in the doorway leaned his head out looking towards the commotion.

He turned to the young woman and the cartographer, “I think there is someone on the tracks.”

He turned back to look, again, and that’s when it happened.

The train lurched.

The man in the doorway, betrayed by his own grip on the bar, fell out of the train. He and his brown paper package. Two sounds, above the train horn and the tracks, reached the ears of the passengers in the last train car: the crack of the man’s skull hitting the concrete and the barely audible thump of the brown package falling next to him. The brown paper had become unraveled upon dropping.

The contents of the package were not harmful, just as the man had told the train conductor. The harm had already taken place before the brown paper had been wrapped around the contents, for it was full of limbs. Human limbs. Arms, from the elbow down, to be specific. They were all adorned with gold jewelry.

The young woman whose nausea had been subsiding felt bile rise up her throat, make its way out her mouth and she let it. Where she had been seeing yellow the entire train journey, all she saw now was red.