Unsent Letters #25

Is this your stop?

Photo by Aleksandar Pavlovic on Unsplash, rendered black & white by me

Dear S.,

I was on the phone with Emma yesterday. She called from the subway, on her way home. What station are you at, I asked. Tribunal, she responded, which I couldn’t quite place on the Madrid subway map I had Googled while talking to her. What color is the line, I asked again. Blue; why all these questions? I told her I just wanted to see where she was on the map, and that I was still her dad, until proven otherwise, and that she had just moved to a new city for college. Was that enough? You know how she is: at the first subtle hint of control, she gets confrontational. No surprise -- I was like that too, remember? I still am. 

Anyway, there were two blue lines on the map: the dark blue and the light blue. I finally saw the station on the light blue line, the one that goes from Valdecarros to Pinar de Chamartín. Actually, it’s on both the dark and the light blue lines, she specified, they cross right there. She was right. The dark blue line goes from Hospital Infanta Sofía to Puerta del Sur, and crosses the light blue line at Tribunal, Plaza de Castilla, and Chamartín. Interesting. 

You're the only one who understands my obsession with public transportation routes. You’re the one I used to study the Milano tram map with, back in college -- the routes they took, how far they went, and where their termini were. We were fascinated to discover, for example, that the number one went all the way to the Greco cemetery, the number five reached Ortica, and the number twenty-four ventured to the far end of Via Ripamonti, at the southern edge of the city. We would imagine the reasons behind the design of certain routes, why some lines passed through specific points rather than others -- the people these little cars collected along the way, their lives and jobs and daily routines depending on them. And, invariably, the points they reached at the end of the line were always semi-deserted, quiet, almost surreal, with only a handful of people -- or none, sometimes -- getting on and off, and enough space to allow a turnaround, before starting all over again toward the other extremity, and getting increasingly populated with life and noise and hard reality.   

On light study days, we would ride a tram line end to end, silently observing the people and the landscape -- a metamorphosis of sorts, from one periphery to another, through the center. There was something poetic and mysterious in those rides, something connected to the flow of places and thoughts, as if everyone and everything were in tacit agreement that this was the way -- the only way, in fact -- things had to be. 

Subways add (and subtract) a dimension to all this: they run underground, so no landscape metamorphosis can be observed, but they construct surprises. Taking a line to its end catapults you into a different world, with no prior -- or rather, gradual -- notice. It’s like traveling in a time capsule, deep down into the ground, where everything is pitch black and stops are only names painted on the walls. Until you arrive and resurface, and things are dramatically different and quiet and peripheral, a soft breeze making the trees sway, slow footsteps and birds chirping now clearly audible. It might not even be a surprise, after all, as traits like these seem to be common to all peripheral stops. And yet, the mystery remains. 

But you know all that, don’t you. We shared this mystery, and these feelings, many times. I’m not writing to rekindle, today. 

It was well past eleven at night, when I ended my call with Emma. I stayed up for a little while staring at that subway map, on the computer screen. Is this your stop? I heard someone say, close to my ear, as if whispering. I hadn’t realized that I’d fallen asleep on the train. When I turned to look at the source of that whisper, no one was there. In fact, no one was in the subway car, its doors open at a station whose name I couldn’t read from where I sat. Outside, the platform was deserted. When the doors closed and the train started moving, the name ‘Palais Royale -- Musée du Louvre’ became clearly visible on the wall of the station, out the window. I smiled to myself, and remembered that time with Caterina, when we were locked in at the Louvre after closing time and the alarm went off and we ended up at the police station for the rest of the night trying to explain ourselves in broken French, gesticulating. 

The train began to pick up speed in the underground darkness; my mood was one of total acceptance. A time longer than usual passed without the train making another stop. When it finally did, it was ‘Notting Hill Gate’. That’s strange, I thought. And suddenly recalled the house in Holland Park and the summer I spent there, with Luigi and Livia, and that World Cup and the penalty that Baggio shot way above the goal post in Pasadena, all of us in a semicircle in front of the TV, without words. The doors stayed open for a while, or maybe it felt like so, as if waiting for someone to get on. But no one did. There, too, not a soul was on the platform. 

After what felt like an eternity, the empty train stopped at ‘Porta Venezia’. I realized that the car I was in was one of those they have in the New York subway, with seats alternatively colored yellow or orange with no immediately discernible pattern. But everything seemed as normal as the blue sky on a clear day. The little studio apartment on Viale Vittorio Veneto appeared in front of my mind’s eye, with its two gray and yellow armchairs and light brown carpeting and that poster on the wall that Stefano hated, the TV on with Ivan Lendl and Michael Chang playing on Roland Garros’ clay, the latter winning a historical fourth round. A female figure in a hoodie entered the car right before the doors shut, and the train resumed its ride. She sat next to me; I couldn’t see her face. 

The next stop was ‘Tribunal’. I had nothing to remember. She took off her hood, and Emma’s face appeared in all its familiarity. 'I’m getting off here', she said to me, smiling. No words came out of my lips. On the platform, she stood watching me as the train began to move, heading who knows where.  

The next morning, I called and told her everything. Now you have something to remember there, too, she said. We laughed a little.

---

"Unsent Letters" is a series released every other week. These are imaginary letters to fictitious or real individuals who may or may not have influenced my life, not always mirroring actual events.

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