Halfway to Africa

James Lawrence

1. TRAIN OF THOUGHT

It was just bursting with symbolism and stuff somehow, I was certain of it: parallel lines gleaming silvery-blue in the soft light of the moon, receding into inky blackness – and somewhere out there in that eternal night was my luggage, headed towards Spain. There was my pointless life, stretching out behind me. There I was, with just the clothes I stood in, irrevocably set on rails towards an unknown destination. I was the same age as Tony Blair. How had I got into this mess?

Let me explain how this moment of agonising self-reappraisal came about. I had just arrived at Lisbon airport, and after being relieved of a wad of banknotes with a lot of troublesome zeros on them by a kindly taxi driver, found myself four minutes later confronting the flight of steps up to Oriente Railway Station. The ticket offices were thoughtfully positioned with their back to the entrance – after nearly three hours in ‘Go’ economy class it did me good to stretch my legs looking for them.

The lady in the ticket office was most helpful. She explained in quite passable English that I could not buy a ticket there. The problem was that I wanted to go to Coimbra. If I took the regional train she could sell me a ticket, but she didn’t recommend it: the journey took about four hours, I would have to change at somewhere which sounded like ‘Trunkmental’, and anyway it didn’t leave until around midnight.

No, far better to take the fast intercity train, which was due out in a few minutes, though would cost more, she warned. “I don’t mind, I’ll take it,” I said.

“I’m sorry, you can’t buy a ticket here,” she reminded me, and directed me to another booth.

“But there’s nobody in it,” I pointed out.

“He’ll be back in a minute.” The train was due to depart in nine minutes.

My rebellious cases were by now very fed up with the journey and just wanted to go home. I ushered them across to the other office to stake my claim in the queue, but they fought me all the way. My shins felt like they’d scrummed down against the All-Blacks. I clenched my jaw manfully, determined not to cry.

Two very slow minutes ticked by, and then there he was! All-seeing and benign, surrounded by a strange aura - the man who was going to sell me a ticket. “You want the Alfa Pendular?” he asked, as if he didn’t already know.

“Yes, yes!” I’d done my homework and knew this was the fast train, the very one I wanted to board in four minutes’ time.

He pointed to the ‘Multibanco’ (ATM) machine standing demurely at the other side of the station. “You buy ticket there,” he indicated.

“I don’t have a card! This is a railway station, isn’t it? I just want to get on a train!”

There was a lifetime of weariness in those eyes: here was another idiot foreigner who wilfully refused to understand that things were inherently not that simple. But he wasn’t paid enough to deal with troublemakers: with a forlorn sigh conceived to let me know he shouldn’t really be doing this, he asked me if I smoked and then handed me a ticket – second class. I wondered why he hadn’t offered me first – was it the shirt hanging out of my jeans, or the two days worth of six o’clock shadow?

The ticket had two numbers: one for the carriage, the other the seat. This was deemed too obvious to tell me. When the train rolled in (bang on schedule), I threw my vindictive luggage into the carriage which happened to stop in front of me, and myself into the nearest free seat.

I was settling down, looking forward to two hours of mental void, when the inspector demanded to see my ticket. He shook his head woefully and jabbed his finger at the number 21: I was in carriage 23, and would have to move up the train. My luggage morosely refused to budge, so I wended up the aisle alone, past rows of empty seats.

I passed through carriage 22 into 21 – logical enough. My seat number was 51. Easy, I thought, naively: that’ll be between 50 and 52. My eyes first lighted on seat number 16, which was travelling in the company of seats number 17, 18 and 19. So far, so good. In passing I did wonder what had happened to seats 1 – 15, but their fate didn’t seem important at the time. But then came 26, followed by 39, 65 and 102. With the involuntary eye of a trained mathematician and scientist I looked for a pattern, but could find none. Eventually I found seat number 51 next to 77.

Seven years on and I still haven’t broken the code. Neither has anybody else of my acquaintance, and part of the entertainment of a train journey is to watch innocents wandering up and down the carriage, brows furrowed, looking for their seat. It can be chaotic, but it helps pass the time – we might be half way to Oporto before everybody is finally hunkered down.

I have checked: the seat numbering system is not an extension of pi, neither is it based on logarithms. Did they just screw in the number plates at random? I don’t think so. The solution lies in the mind of the man who devised it. He didn’t sweat three long years for his doctorate in Train Seating just to give us a simple sequence which any clown could have dreamed up. Não, senhor! The very fact that nobody else can understand it is proof of his superior intellect. That is what these seats are telling us, and the common folk respect this. And I offer a litre carton of Lidl’s red table wine to anyone who can come up with a better answer.

Back to my journey. 20 minutes out from Coimbra I made my way back down the train to reclaim my sulking luggage. It was at the rear end of carriage 22 that I had the profound life-crisis described in the first paragraph. The guard managed to communicate that the train had split at Trunkmental and the rear end was taking my bags to the Spanish border.

He was soon on the mobile to his colleague on the runaway train. He turned to ask me: “What colour are your cases?”

“Schwarz.” I don’t know why I replied in German. Perhaps it was his smart black uniform. Or maybe the suspicious way he had asked to see my papers.

I was suddenly overwhelmed by a weird calmness, or call it resignation, followed by an exhilarating sense of liberation in owning nothing, of being able to walk hands-free, childlike, through life. Why be burdened by possessions, anyway? They are only a worry. Truly, this was a new beginning. At the age of 44, I was a born-again thingy.

My recalcitrant baggage would now have to learn to stand on its own two feet, and serve it right. What would happen to my belongings? Perhaps my clothes would be distributed amongst the poor and needy of eastern Portugal. My Thresher and Glenny shirts would be turned into cushion covers, my Gabicci pullovers into tea-cosies, my Marks and Spencer underpants into table napkins. I wondered what they would make of the Co-op baked beans, HP Sauce and Branston Pickle – probably a pig-nostril stew.

Fortunately this carriage had a bar, and there were still ten minutes to go to Coimbra. I thought to myself: “I’m going to like it here.”

James Lawrence is based in Central Portugal. He can be contacted on traduz@mail.telepac.pt

Visit James' websites at www.portugalhols.com and www.portugalpropertydirect.com