These trains have eaten into my mind and my writing, I realised, sitting in this quiet room in Maroggia with twenty or so other meditators. I hadn’t realised how many train scenes I’d put in my books. And now they are preventing me from observing my breath, from concentrating on the sensations in skin and bone and belly. Now I remember a man in pain, physical and mental pain, obliged to move from the plush green seat of a first-class compartment on the Torino–Roma night train. He doesn’t have a reservation. He doesn’t even have a ticket. He finds a place in second class where two women are discussing the supposed superiority of Swiss railway carriages. It is Christopher Burton in Destiny on his way to bury his son. Anything can happen on an Italian train, he tells himself when he is moved again. Later he passes out when two prostitutes put the make on him and the capotreno has to call an ambulance to pick him up at the station in Genoa.
How I have cursed, I remembered then in the meditation room, the times a train of mine was delayed because a passenger was ill – once a wait of half an hour in Milano Centrale while they tried to get an ambulance up the platform – or again because someone had committed suicide on the line. How I fumed for the lost time. What an ungenerous fellow I am. Travelling by train means sharing a common fate; we are on this journey together, as the meditators at the retreat share their silent journey together through the long hours of the day; a journey to no particular destination. We know we will not reach enlightenment.
The train whistled again at the beginning of the metta bhavana on the last day, the meditation of loving kindness. ‘Let your mind go out to all those who are close to you and wish them well,’ Edoardo instructed us. ‘Then to all those you are acquainted with. Finally, to all people and creatures everywhere. If you have offended anyone, perhaps, in your thoughts, you could seek pardon from them; and if anyone has offended you, you could try to grant them your sincere pardon.’
I began my metta and the train whistled. Have I offended people on trains, or in this book? I’m sure I have. I can be very rude on trains and in print. I seek pardon. Have I been offended on trains? Oh, infinite, infinite times! Offended by noises, offended by smells, offended by delays, offended by ticket inspectors, offended by loud conversations, offended by filthy toilets, offended just a week or so ago by a young man who sat opposite me and picked his nose quite grossly all the way from Verona to Milan. I’d never realised how offensive that can be. I grant pardon. I grant my sincere pardon to the nose picker, and the ticket inspectors, the stinkers and the loudmouths. I wish them well, all the men and women travelling on Trenitalia this morning, all the inspectors and the drivers, the ticket sellers and the minibar men, I wish them well. And especially I wish well to any passenger with a book in his hand, any man or woman following the lines on the page, perhaps these very lines, as the wheels follow the rails across the landscape, hurrying forward through the world yet not quite part of it. What a beautiful respite a train journey is and a good book, too, and best of all the book on the train, in life and out of it at the same time, before we arrive at Termini and disembark and the book is put down and we must all part and go our separate ways, forever.
Acknowledgements
FOR SOME OF the historical background here I am indebted to Stefano Maggi and his excellent book Le ferrovie. I would also like to thank the Failla family and Angela Pia Salamina for their hospitality during my travels down south. The book would not have been written without much prodding from Matt Weiland whose editorial assistance proved invaluable when it came to giving shape to my endless backs and forths; many thanks to him, then, and likewise, finally, to all those thousands of Trenitalia employees, ticket collectors included, who have taken me safely around my adopted patria for more than thirty years.
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Copyright © Tim Parks 2013
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A portion of this book appeared in different form in Granta.
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