Written by Enrique Diaz Translated by Ross
Let’s travel without moving us.
To see daily afternoon
Through another glance,
To see everyday glance
Through different afternoon.
Let’s go without to move us.
Xavier Villaurrutia
This happened in a common morning which I used to go for a walk by Mexico City subway while I was unemployed. I went out from my apartment located in the terrible Morelos neighborhood, unfortunately, a place known for its violence blocks immersed in the ‘City of Hope’.
“City of Hope“, I thought, “It is better called it ‘City of Hopeless‘”. I was walking on Canal del Norte Avenue but I didn’t know why I had been done because I didn’t like to walk among streets shops and many beggars who try to get some money from people that didn’t have another option than to walk through that street.
I turned my head and looked to the sky. My eyes bumped into the elevated train rail between Martin Carrera and Santa Anita stations. Suddenly, I wanted to go on board by subway in that moment. I bought only a ticket, despite I used to buy two.
I don’t know if I told you but I like to travel by subway. However, I try to avoid it during high traffic hours. There are many people, many faces, beings that expect to be narrated; in spite of that everybody averts their gaze than others, I think they are afraid to another person discovers their secrets. Eyes tell many things about people, something that I can to sense immediately. All this is very curious for me.
When I arrived at platform, I had planned my trip: I was going to go until Morelos station, and I was going to transfer to Buenavista terminal where I could look the huge and old train stations, a place where many passages had been traveled to different point of Mexico and now it was only a dream. But this morning the destiny had prepared me a big surprise.
I had traveled for six stations and when I was about to get off train car something stopped to continue my trip: I felt someone observed to me, I turned my head and I found a beautiful woman about 40 years old with red hair. She wore a black suit and high-heel shoes. She looked enigmatic and sensual. I thought she was waiting for someone but later I realized I was wrong.
She had been waiting for me and I didn’t know until that moment. I went down stairs quickly and walked to her even though it cost me my life. With a little luck (something that I have always had), I got to be close her but I did it on the sly. I simulated I hurried on so I wouldn’t miss the train.
In that moment our glances met each other and she said to me directly with a beautiful smile: ‘Good morning, Armando’. That confounded me but I didn’t really matter because I want to talk to her so much than the fact that she knew my name lacked importance for me. Finally, the train arrived and we went on board. We sit together and we started to talk. During the talk, I realized she knew another thing about me. I was intrigued but I couldn’t leave the conversation. When I asked her name, she answered:
—Oh, you know it!
—I swear I don’t—I said but she pretended she hadn’t listened to me.
We let time passed without I could become aware that we had gone over 13 or 14 stations of the line. While the train ran, I listened from her very improbable assertions about myself, things even I didn’t know it but I thought were true in a sense. But when I wanted to know about her, she only smiled and said that it was better to talk about me.
For a moment I had the idea I stand up and say good bye with politeness. Until now, I don’t know why I couldn’t do it. I didn’t understand how she knew many things about me. Suddenly, she told me that the meeting with her wasn’t by causality the other way around: I must have a meeting with my destiny.
I hadn’t believed in the destiny because I thought that it was a consequence of our actions. So, I hadn’t analyzed the actions in my own life. From that moment, I remembered some vague events from my childhood and my youth that I wanted to change. Yes, it is never too late to turn the rudder of the beautiful ship called life.
But suddenly I felt that I hadn’t much time and I began to a cold sweat. In that moment, my admiration and my attraction for this lady disappeared: I knew who was her. She became invisible before my eyes and I wished strongly she would disappear. I closed my eyes and I simulated to be asleep, I hoped that all was only a dream and I would wake up soon. At the end inside this wagons people ended their daydreams, not achieved goals and even slept when the time in bed wasn’t enough, or because didn’t like to give up the seat to a lady, maybe didn’t see inevitable travelers’ face. But I couldn’t be like them despite I really wanted it.
‘What have I done?’, I thought, ‘All my life I’ve waited for being happy things that never are going to happen.’
I always had been depending on other people to aspire my own happiness. I never could love a woman even if I would want to do it and now when I really wanted to close this lady with a romantic purpose I didn’t have enough time. By the way, what is the time? It’s not another thing that all good and bad things, joys and pains, which I was aligned for a long time. I thought I level inside a horde, but l was only surrendered many souls. There wasn’t much time, of course, there wasn’t.
At the end, the woman who I had been talking disappeared. So, I got up from my seat quickly and went to wagon’s doors. ‘I will get out just here’ I thought. I believed that nothing had happened. When I started to feel calm turned my head and I saw the lady again. Besides, I saw another person: me. I was just in the same seat where I had been. But I was asleep so peacefully that I didn’t want to wake up myself. Perhaps I thought it was silly to do it also. Unexpectedly, I realized I couldn’t move me although I wanted it. In that moment I only could ask me: ‘How much time would happen before all realized that I wasn’t asleep?’
Ross 