![]() ![]() I wield the power to decide if that man is interesting, and I deem two women in his life the most interesting thing about him.īut this is not the story I promised you. ![]() But he smelled of cheap cigarettes, got despondently drunk in the train’s buffet, and his ear-splitting snoring kept me awake all night. I’ll give him this: not everyone’s aunts worked on the atomic station and not everyone’s mothers spoke a soon-to-be-dead language. I feel a strange companionship with dying languages, alive only when someone, somewhere, is speaking the words. No one will sing a dirge for it the tiny village on the outskirts of Kishinev is its grave. Second: his mother was fluent in the Moldovan language, probably of the last generation who spoke it. First: his aunt worked on some nuclear power plant in Soviet times. Only two facts about him were interesting. His-uncle? grandfather? his someone-had a garden full of peaches the size of both my palms. Worked as an engineer, or a foreman, or something and was commuting from his last assignment. Dropped out of college because he was young and stupid. He was born in Moldova, moved to Russia, lived for the last ten years in Moscow, then in a suburb, where it’s quieter. Perhaps he’s driven by the same instinct that makes me check if I’m the prettiest person in the room. Perhaps he thought his story was worth telling. They never ask if you find them interesting. They never ask if you want to participate. They will always try to be interesting, to make you their company. Cannot stomach ignoring us, being ignored. Men cannot stomach being alone in the room with a woman. I tried to deflect, but he didn’t care, just bombarded me with his whole life’s biography. Last time, I shared a compartment with a man, only the two of us. We silently agree to ignore each other’s presence. I can change in peace, and no one will bat an eye. A seasoned traveler, battered by life on the road one recognizes one. She competently makes her bed on the upper bunk. Blessed be the Russian Railways app, a tragedy reduced to inconvenience. I wonder if she made it in time or, like me, had to re-buy her ticket. She is red in the face: probably was running late too. The fourth girl ushers into the compartment a minute before departure. I pull a pen and a notebook from my backpack: I would tell my mother a version of our story that hasn’t been told yet.Īs I write this letter, I will close my eyes now will you listen? This is a story of when the world was younger, rawer, and I was younger too, a girl unbowed by the memories I bear. You remember only good things, and it’s enough to convince yourself that you like them. With time, you forget what you hated about them. Living separately from family has its benefits. What would I even say? I am a tumbleweed, wandering, unrooted. I want to call my mother too, but I never was the type of daughter to share. “We’re departing in five minutes,” the talking girl says as I ungracefully crawl past her to the upper bunk. I’m hot in my knitted sweater, wet under the arms and breasts and around my neck, tired. I missed one train already, it left fifteen minutes ago, and later, when I’m alone, I will cry about the wasted money. Heavy after a sprint through Moscow, I huff and shove my stuff under the bunk. I conclude that they both are prettier than me. One is talking to someone the other one is scrolling through, sometimes typing.
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