The melancholy of the voice (The clockwork boxes 11)

There will always be someone in the train that will be talking loudly without any stop. He will be narrating events that marked his life, he may be  narrating what happened during  his  present busy day, he may also be stating outright and straightly how he hates deeply certain racial groups or how much he gets irritated by a mosquito drowning in his cup of coffee. His face will be colored by the matchful, each time, expressions, he will also be coloring his voice tone with the right percentage of detest or with the right amount of enthusiasm.  He will be interrupting the other person talking with him and he will make sure that  his voice can be heard even into the next compartment.

Every time that I was travelling with such a co-passenger, I used to become indignant, to grimace secretly and look at his face profile, over my glasses. I observed  how he was sitting and crossing his legs and I used  to wish the sudden and sweeping opening of a huge hole on the train roof, a hole over his head that would literally suck him out. Him and only him, selectively, like a giant vacuum cleaner. But I was too naïve. And as a naïve, I couldn’t realise the fact of his necessary presence in my compartment..Ah..yes..right now, a man dressed in beige clothes entered the compartment just now, having a handbag across his chest. He is standing next to me, in the aisle, among the rows of seats, indecisive to where he should sit, which seat is more comfortable for him, which window can blow the air more affectionately on his face. I never trusted people in beige clothes. I know that this is completely irrational and that this irrational detest cannot be based on any logic. It’s just a stupid detest, but I cannot resist to this inner impulse which, every time a person dressed totally in beige comes into my sight, yells in my ear : “look, a stupid, a stupid, a stupid!”

But I am getting too far from what I want to say. So..I was saying that being a naïve person made me turn a blind eye on the importance of such a passenger. Or it might have never crossed my mind. How indispensable he was, how comforting his babbling was, how melodic his rudely loud voice used to be, as we, the other passengers, were sitting inside the tummy of the giant serpent, half-sleeping, in a state of flight between the borders of  normal breathing rhythm and the rhythm of a long sleep. Our head was touching the window glass hesitantly every time the train was entering the tunnels whistling, we were getting blind from the multiple reflections of ourselves on the glass panes, listening to the deep dull singing of the engine drive, but without daring to speak about this singing. Each one of us was sure that he was the only one who could hear that singing and that no one else could hear it. It’s a thought that makes the skin shiver wildly. I was clutching my bag tightly onto my stomach, pretending that I hadn’t understood anything, I was looking at my watch, the same watch that I had  looked at, five minutes ago, or I was observing insistently the distant faces of the passengers sitting opposite to me, trying to detect on them the same silent agony I was feeling.. For that song…A song tangled with the rails, coming from the scratching metal sound, mixed with the timid sounds of a resonant male voice which seemed to have been dwelling inside those tunnels since ever.

 A voice that through its melancholy was twisting around my neck like a spider web, knitting slowly and elegantly its nets and squeezing me softly as if it was the lullaby of an imminent death, a death trying to meet me in every shaking bent of the rails, in every loud whistle of the engine, but it kept staying behind, like a delayed passenger who runs breathless on the platform with his validated ticket, buried in his pocket. 

image: International Surrealist Exhibition in London, attended by Miro (11 June 1936). In image: Diana Brinton-Lee, Salvador Dalí (in diving suit), Rupert Lee, Paul Éluard, Nusch Éluard, ELT Mesens