5

Sitting on a bench at the station, she waits. It is made of concrete and the cold seeps through her skirt. Someone heats water inside the hotdog stand. There aren’t too many people around, more than she would prefer but not so many that she won’t find a seat once the train pulls into the station and she gets on it. The earlier trains, the seven o’clock, the eight o’clock and even the nine o’clock, Elena knows, would’ve been impossible, too many people waiting, too many people squeezing in through the same doors, too many passengers inside the train. But for people who have to arrive at work on time, who wake up early every morning to get to the office, a school, a bank, the ten o’clock train is no good. The ten o’clock train isn’t even any good for people who work in shops, because they wouldn’t get to Constitución until almost eleven o’clock, and by that hour the city is already exhausted from so much coming and going. There aren’t many people who can start their days late enough to share the ten o’clock train with Elena, just the few who don’t belong to that universe of people forced to get up early. A group of teenagers on the cusp of adulthood stand laughing and hugging their notebooks, pushing each other every once in a while to emphasise a joke. Two men in suits, one at each end of the platform, both reading the same newspaper, maybe the same line of the same article, without knowing it. A married couple fights about the price of a medication the man has just bought. The next train to Plaza Constitución will arrive at 10:01 on platform number two, a garbled voice blares over the loudspeaker. A woman and her daughter sit on the bench next to Elena. The girl’s feet don’t reach the ground, Elena watches her swing them in the air. She knows the girl is looking at her. She knows that she leans over to her mother and whispers something in her ear. I’ll tell you later, the mother says, and the girl swings her legs faster than before. Elena stares forward, never raising her head higher than Herself will allow. Litter has accumulated below the platform opposite them, some of it will disintegrate with time, Elena knows, some of it will outlive her: the plastic bottles, polystyrene cups, the chunks of concrete. Someone walks by whistling. The whistle gradually fades until it is drowned out by a sound like a far-off stampede. Elena’s feet shake and she wonders if it’s the floor that’s making her tremble or Herself, and even though she doesn’t know the answer she grabs the edge of the bench almost out of instinct, aware that nothing bad is going to happen, that this platform, this bench, these walls are sick to death of so much repeated trembling without anything happening, without anyone even noticing except Elena. The woman and the girl stand up and move to the end of the platform. The mother takes the girl by the hand, pulling her along, saying Hurry up, but the girl stumbles as she walks forward but looks back, at Elena who’s trying to stand up from the same bench where she sat swinging her legs. What’s wrong with that old lady, Mum? I’ll tell you later, the mother says again. The string of train carriages whizz past Elena like a gust of wind, the noise of their weight on the tracks, the screech of metal on metal blocking out all other sounds. Until little by little the gust loses speed, the noise quiets and sounds resume, the blurred images settle, the windows take shape, framing the passengers, who Elena will join, once she manages to stand up. The doors open with a whoosh of decompressed air, Elena’s feet shuffle hurriedly to get through before they once again close. There’s a crowd of people trying to get on, and Elena leans against the back of the person in front of her to take advantage of their inertia. The whistle blows, someone pushes her from behind and she is thankful. Once inside the train she searches for a seat, any seat, the closest one, and begins to move towards it. The train wobbles, gently, rocking her as she walks. As the train gets going and picks up speed the rocking stops. A young man brushes past her, impatient. She sees the legs of a man coming at her from the other direction, Excuse me, the man says when he reaches her, and Elena tries to move aside, but the space gained is hardly noticeable, so the man repeats, Excuse me, ma’am, and she tries again to get out of his way but she can’t move much more than she already has, so the man turns sideways, raises his arms, lifts his backpack and slides past her. Two rows back she can once again see the empty seat she wants to sit in, but before she makes it there a woman sits down. All she can see is her skirt, a red flowered skirt that flutters with the woman’s movement and disappears when she sits. Elena has to start over, she lifts her eyes and wrinkles her forehead, trying to raise her defeated head a little higher, desperately scanning the carriage for another empty seat. When she spots one, she engraves the position in her mind and then lowers her head back down to where Herself wants her to keep it, now with the knowledge that there are two spots at the end of the carriage, which she’ll have to walk the length of the aisle to reach. She lifts her right foot and moves it through the air until it passes the left but before lowering it a hand touches hers, Have a seat here, madam, says a man whose face she can’t see and she says, Thank you, and she sits. The man who has just stood up moves to the empty seat at the back of the carriage. Elena clasps her hands in her lap; beside her, in the seat by the window, a man beats his hand against his knee to the rhythm of a music that only he can hear. I hope he’s travelling to the last station so he won’t ask me to stand up to let him out, Elena thinks, but no sooner has she thought it the man says, Excuse me, can you let me by? And without waiting for Elena’s answer he stands up in that tiny space between his seat and the back of the seat in front of him waiting for her to move her legs aside, to make enough room for him to pass before the train reaches the next station, Excuse me, the man says again and Elena says, Go ahead, son, go ahead, but she doesn’t move.