Transitscription

It will take this train 15 hours to touch towheaded København from Europe’s Gordian heart: Praha. Through the cracks in Praha’s cup of mountains to Berlin, past Rostock in the dark, by the bone-white wind farms in the flat sea to Danmark, gold and hot with harvest, this middle bunk of a six-stack will be mine.

The train breaks inertia and gathers speed, and I am soon joined by two Russians: a boozy, craggy man like a zoo lion, and a prepossessed young woman. I don’t expect anything from them except the simple intimacy of collective sleep.

She says hi in English, sits down and tunes out. He and I make hand chatter, share food; I have no idea what he’s saying. He doesn’t seem to realise I don’t know Russian. Suddenly he is jabbing at my arms, slashing at his own with the edge of his hand – ghastly parody of a violinist –

“Why? Why?” He says everything twice, throaty p?????? voice; I am spluttering.
“C-razy? C-razy?!” he is shocked; he really wants to know. I am shaking my head, ‘no, no’; I can’t believe I’m trapped here.

“Faw Love? Faw Love?” and his eyebrows and mouth mobilise to form an incredulous O, a concerned O, like a stern chorister. I demur again and again; he regresses: “...Crazy?”

My face is hot. My sleeveless top, unconsidered in the miasmic heat of Rome, now feels flagrant.

His hand goes low to the floor in a show of smallness; he’s explaining, ‘my friend, little children.’ Now he mimes a telephone, ‘police come’ he says, ‘no good.’ Now oh holy fuck he’s shooting himself in the head. Fingers to temple, slow-motion gunshots, “p-khhh, p-khhh,” the works: jerking his head as bullet slams brain, gesturing at me; this is the most insensitive thing I’ve ever seen.

I square up, ask his girlfriend – almost forgotten – to translate:

“Crazy is a bad word. It hurts people to say Crazy. You must not say Crazy. It is an illness” – I hold out my wrists to him – “it is my past. I am not ill now. There is nothing wrong with it.”

They look at each other; I don’t see what it means. He rattles off some ?????????? ??? ??????? ????.

She turns to me. “He is saying, in Russia – in England you are lucky. In Russia, there is no recovery from this. He misses his friend.”

In the night the Russians leave us. When this train halts at last in København, I am alone, emerging slowly into the promising sun.