The Compassionate Conductor

There comes a time in most everyone’s life when he or she is forced to board a train without a ticket. As a teenager I did this frequently on principle, just to show that it was possible to stow away in the bathroom, go from Naples to Rome and back again while skipping school the day of algebra tests without tapping into the funds reserved for important things like cigarettes and the Panini with mozzarella we used to buy at the salumeria near our high school. As an adult, my attitude toward ticketless travel has, naturally, changed. I no longer live with a sense of invulnerability. I prefer to play by the rules. I don’t much like Russian-roulette anxiety or adrenaline rushes, especially during the sacred time of train-travel during which I experience preferred kinds of rushes: creative energy for story-writing, novel reading, iPod listening, paper grading, people watching and the periodic trap-door moments of falling into someone else’s life and story. It will not do to be distracted by the possibility of being caught without a ticket or booted off the train or, God forbid, forced to pay the multa/fine as happened last April 1st when I thought it was March 31st and had my abonamento/monthly pass right there in my hand believing it still valid (April’s Fool!). And yet it turned out, Tuesday, that I found myself in Rome without a train ticket or money to buy one, and rediscovered the magic of being an outright renegade.

When I found myself without train fare (long story; I’d eaten up my daily budget on the early morning Eurostar) I did consider borrowing the small sum from a colleague. When I encountered no one in the course of my teaching day free enough from a clutch of students to approach, I mustered faith that I’d find a ten euro bill shining on the yellow brick road between Piazza Navona and the station or, if I did not find either bill or yellow brick road, something else would save me: a friend encountered serendipitously in the station, or even coins forgotten in the “change” compartments of the many vending machines lined up near Piazza Cinquecento (never mind that I am sure every beggar and gypsy in Rome would beat me to that source of revenue). I’d been listening to the Tao te Ching on the iPod most of the walking-morning and felt strangely immune to panic or mistrust in things working out the way they should. I would follow the Tao and I would know mercy. It was the pranzo hour and the conductors of the train I was about to board could all be out to lunch. Things are never as bad as our fears paint them. I believed in the Tao, in Mercy, in things working out they way they should. Even if I did get caught, even if I did get arrested, even if I did get deported—I’d trust the Water Course Way to lead me where I naturally belonged.

It was truly a sense of surrender that led me to my seat by the window, Carrozzo 5, smack dab in the middle of the train, away from either end where I imagined the conductors could be holed up eating pasta from cartons. But no sooner had I sat down than a conductor did manifest, the selfsame conductor who had charged me the fine on April 1st for a delinquent pass, a mean and unforgiving man, all grizzle and beady eyes, who on occasion had even tried to kick me off the train for traveling with my dogs in an aisle-compromising dog-stroller. A kind of panic brought me to my feet as I considered hiding in the bathroom as I had as a teenaged-stowaway. I stood. I started walking in the opposite direction of the grizzled conductor, and ran smack dab into a second one, a lean and affable-looking fellow, shooting the breeze with a group gathered near the doorway. His eyes met mine outright—vivid with instant concern: What is wrong? What is wrong? Why are you leaving your seat so soon into the journey? He accosted me. I ditched into the bathroom, but imagined that during the calculated minutes I stood staring at myself in the warped mirror (who are you, you vagrant teenager?), that this genial, puppy-eyed conductor stood outside the door, hyper-vigilant with the concern I had seen. I was sure that I must have been glowing indigo, drawing attention to myself, the guilty party, the fugitive from justice. But I did not dare stay sequestered in the toilet for longer minutes than it takes to pee. I summoned the spirit of surrender along with images of gang planks and guillotines, and lumbered down the aisle, past the conductor who was indeed still watching me, toward the seat I had established for myself.

It surprised me how long it took for him to reach me. I could not read or listen to the Tao te Ching , I was so anxious about his pending approach. I am sure he backtracked to the most distant carozza, ate his lunch, and then progressed, seat by seat for at least five cars, punching the little square holes in the ticket. I sat with my forehead pressed into the glass wondering would I feign ignorance: search my purse, scream with horror, blame it on a pickpocket, or try honesty, confession, sincere appeal. I resolved on the latter and it felt like free-falling, the hour or so I sat there, assured of confrontation.

Mercy is a beautiful thing: perhaps I had understood that my fate was entwined with the conductor’s fate the moment his eyes met mine when I was lunging toward the safety of a locked bathroom. There had indeed been something familiar in the way his eyes had met mine and beseeched me: “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” I have taken the train from Rome to Spoleto, from Spoleto to Perugia, and all possible vice versas so often over so many years that there probably does not exist a conductor on this line whom I’ve not met before, even countless times. The familiarity of this particular man was not so much a surprise as was the connection we made almost instantly, as though he had been poised there precisely to be the one to catch me and save me at my moment of crisis. I had the clear and distinct sensation that we were participating in a story together and each recognized the other as co-protagonist, so that when he finally did reach my carozza and my seat, rather than ask for my ticket, he sat down beside me and began what has now become a kind of love affair of endless discussions regarding train culture, destiny and other mysteries.

“I have been riding this train back and forth, back and forth for thirty years. I’ve watched you for years. I watch everyone. At this hour of the day in this month of September the only people who take this train are those who fanno la pendulare/commute. Take you, for example, I know you have an abonamento. Do you know how many times I’ve checked your abonomento?Your name is Cinzia. You were born in August. Do you know we are the exact same age? I never understand why people don’t come right up to me when they board the train and tell me they don’t have a ticket. I’d much rather they tell me these things a quattro occhi—face to face. Most people have a good excuse for traveling without a ticket. I could write books about the people whose lives I’ve watched unfold traveling back and forth on this short stretch between Rome and Perugia. Did you see the boy without a nose, sucking air through that tiny hole of a mouth? The whole family—mamma, papa, big brother were traveling without tickets to Assisi to take him to a special clinic to see if it will be possible to make the poverello an artificial nose. Do you think I am going to kick that family off my train? Do you think I am going to charge them a multa of 200 euro when they didn’t have enough money for a 7 euro fare in the first place? What kind of person would charge a family with such hardship a multa?? Most people who travel without tickets are suffering some kind of hardship. Unless they are delinquent kids. I have a radar for such things. Delinquent kids I park on one of the fold-up seats by the door and make them get off at the first station we come to. Of course I find them boarding the train again the next time we pass. What else can they do? They’ve got to get home. You know the Romanian who puts a saint’s card in all the seats asking for a donation to feed his family? I bet you think he’s a gypsy. I bet you think he’s a vagabond, sneaking on these trains and jumping off before I can catch him and fine him. But no. He’s just like you. He has an abonamento/a monthly pass. He is actually employed by a high-official at the Vatican. I swear I can tell you stories. I may never leave this train but the whole world finds me here. I live a new novel every day. Isn’t it extraordinary?”

I think it was love at first sight, certainly at first conversation. I often wonder if it was the look he gave me when I was ditching into the bathroom, the “what’s wrong, what’s wrong?” and the way his eyes seemed to drink in my entire soul, or the earnestness of his voice when he said to me: “I swear I can tell you stories. I live a new novel every day.” How could this man have possibly known that I live for stories, especially train stories, and that I suddenly felt myself living a thousand and one nights with him, captured in a kind of reverse Scheherazade role, calling forth from him story after story after story hoping the stories will never end lest he pause long enough to ask to check my ticket.