I went to New York for five days, to get some books I hadn’t been able to find in Chicago. Since getting together with Agnes, I was starting to work a little better. Just knowing that she existed and that I was going to see her seemed to spur me on. Even though my book was about luxury trains, I could only afford a second-class ticket for the night train. It was pretty full, and I was glad that the seat next to me was empty. But then, at the second stop, in South Bend, an enormous fat woman came and sat in it. She was wearing a thin knitted sweater with Santa Claus appliquéd on it, and she smelled of rancid old sweat. Her flesh ballooned over the armrest between us, and even though I pressed myself against the wall of the car, I couldn’t avoid her contact. I got up and walked to the bar near the front of the train.
I drank a beer. It was slowly getting dark outside. The scenery had something approximate or unfinished about it. When we went through a forest, I thought of what Agnes had said about being able to disappear in one of these forests and never be seen again. From time to time we passed houses that didn’t stand alone but that didn’t constitute a village either. There too, I thought, you might disappear and never be seen again. A young man started talking to me. He said he was a masseur, and was going to see his parents in New York. He told me about his work, and then some stuff about magnetism or aural therapy or something like that. I stood next to him looking out of the window, trying not to listen. When he offered me a cut-price massage, I went back to my car. The fat woman had turned onto her hip, and was taking up even more space. She had gone to sleep, and was breathing noisily. I clambered over her and squeezed into my seat. In the bag at her feet I saw a book called What Good Girls Don’t Do. I cautiously pulled it out and started looking at it. Halfway through it, I came upon sketches of penises and vaginas and two diagrams that claimed to show male and female orgasms. As I pushed the book back into the woman’s bag, she woke up. She smiled at me and whispered: “I’m going to see my lover.”
I nodded, and she went on: “It’s our first meeting. He’s Algerian. We got in touch through an organization.”
“Is that right,” I said.
“Do you like my sweater? Doesn’t it make me look attractive?”
“It’s different.”
“I need to go to sleep, so I look fresh and rested for tomorrow.”
She giggled, turned onto her side, and was soon asleep again. Eventually I too fell asleep. When I woke up, it was starting to get light. The train was going along next to a wide river. I went to the dining car and got some coffee. Before long the fat woman turned up.
“May I?” she said, and sat down opposite me. “Don’t you agree that trains are more comfortable than planes?”
“Sure,” I said, staring out of the window.
“In six hours we’ll be there,” she said. “I’m too excited to sleep any more.” She pulled a photograph out of her handbag and showed it to me. “There he is. His name’s Paco.”
“You ought to be careful. It’s not every man you can trust.”
“We’ve been writing each other letters for months. He plays the guitar.”
“Do you know anyone else in New York?”
“I know Paco, and he’s enough for me,” she said, saying the name with a strange and affected drawl. Then she pulled a dog-eared letter out of her handbag and gave that to me. “Here. Read it.”
I read the first couple of sentences, and handed it back to her. Paco was writing about some photograph that his lover had sent him.
“Do you think he loves me?” she asked.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said.
She smiled gratefully and said: “I can’t believe anyone who writes such beautiful letters can be a bad man.”