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The Third Place
by Olga Zilberbourg
After
a brief delay, the train
went into motion
so softly that Marie,
making her way down the
aisle, barely felt the
change of forces. Three
men stood in the aisle
guarding their heavily
loaded road
bicycles—they had to
lift them up to let
Marie pass. The car was
full, but she had booked
a forward-facing seat
ahead of time. While her
laptop booted up, Marie
watched the electronic
tableau over the door,
ticking off numbers. The
train accelerated
noiselessly and
effortlessly, as though
moving tons of metal and
glass required no more
energy than Marie
blinking her eyes, and
speed itself existed
only within Marie’s—or
somebody’s—imagination.
Thirty, forty,
fifty kilometers per
hour. One hundred, one
hundred twenty five, one
hundred eighty two. The
numbers paused briefly,
then continued to climb.
The outside landscape
was obscured on both
sides of the tracks by
tall walls smeared with
graffiti. In a few spots
along the way, black
naked tree branches
reached over the wall,
but soon the train dove
into a tunnel and the
trees disappeared.
Marie was working
on translating a poem
from German, her most
recent language.
“Am fernen Horizonte /
Erscheint, wie ein
Nebelbild / Die Stadt
mit ihren Türmen, / In
Abenddämmrung gehüllt.”
On the distant horizon
appeared like an
apparition the city with
its towers, shrouded in
dusk.
The German words felt
definitive and weighty
in her mouth, the
English ones looked lost
in the middle of the
computer screen,
surrounded by all the
white space of the
margins. The task, which
Marie had hoped would
provide new insight into
connections between the
two languages—and help
the time go quicker on
her vacation—was doomed
from the beginning.
Marie was a professional
interpreter, but
translating poetry
seemed to be outside her
grasp.
The train emerged
from the tunnel, a
transition not marked by
any sound or change in
velocity but rather by a
new quality of light in
the car. The outside
view was hidden behind
more walls, freshly
whitewashed on this
stretch of the track.
She couldn’t see the
sun, but the air itself
became brighter, all the
colors of the
passengers’ clothing
were more vivid, all
shapes defined with
greater sharpness. For a
moment, Marie felt that
everyone on the train
had become a perfect
stranger, a completely
unknown, unquantifiable
entity. Of course, they
had been strangers to
start with, fellow
intercity travelers. A
man sitting next to
Marie was trying to
sleep—she’d muted the
speaker on her computer
in order to not disturb
him. She had assumed he
was a business traveler,
returning home from a
sales meeting. He was
wearing a brown corduroy
jacket, but instead of a
briefcase tucked
underneath his seat, he
had with him a plain
black backpack. He could
be a student, an
airplane pilot, a
computer engineer.
Marie’s confidence in
her original assessment
now seemed
unaccountable. The three
men who had, against all
rules, blocked the
passage with their
bicycles—Marie had been
sure they were traveling
together, that they were
old friends who had
spent weeks, maybe
months planning out
their journey together.
Now she wondered what
made her think so. Their
bicycles were of
different makes, nothing
about their gear
suggested that it had
been acquired at the
same time and place, and
their faces—they were
the bland, happy faces
of very young men,
devoid of any traces of
the past or intimations
of the future.
Marie turned her
eyes to the computer
screen and waited
patiently for this
moment to pass, for the
light in the car to pale
and smooth out. It was a
given that
people—complete
strangers—had the power
to affect each other’s
emotional states without
effort or intention,
simply by sharing space.
To be free from this
chaotic, unfair exchange
of energy, even for a
moment, was a blessing,
but it also terrified
Marie.
Her feeling of
isolation was provoked,
undoubtedly, by her
work. As a conference
interpreter, Marie had
crisscrossed Europe
several times just this
spring alone, traveling
over 80,000 km, enough
to circumnavigate the
Earth twice. Her
teachers in California
used to compare the
stress of simultaneous
interpretation to
controlling air traffic.
They likened each twenty
minutes in the booth to
running ten miles uphill
in the full sun. Marie
loved her job; she found
the variety of her work
assignments mentally
stimulating, but sooner
or later came the
dreaded vacation, two
dozen exhaustingly long
days of summer, and now,
Marie, on the train, was
struggling to find
language for a simple
old-fashioned poem. The
skipper of my boat rows
with a sad rhythm. The
words lost meaning as
they sifted through her
consciousness. Marie
highlighted the text on
the computer screen and
pressed the “Delete”
key. She was as cut off
from the emotional
experience of the dead
German poet as she was
from the people around
her on the train.
A few rows down and
across the aisle, the
seats were turned
around, arranged to face
the rest. From the
moment Marie had settled
in her chair, she felt
threatened by a figure
she’d glimpsed in that
corner. Now, her mind
blank and the light in
the car still bright and
cheerful, Marie dared to
look there. She saw a
woman by the window,
sitting with her back
toward the front of the
train, facing Marie, but
not looking at her or
anybody else in the car.
The woman’s attention
was directed at the
window, where she stared
intently at the parallel
tracks leading back
toward where they’d come
from, the space being
emptied of their
collective presence. It
occurred to Marie that
all along she had been
imagining a connection
between herself and that
woman, maybe saw a part
of herself in the woman
and found the reflection
unbearable. The
similarity between them
was not physical, Marie
recognized. The woman’s
wispy brown hair was
cropped close to her
head, while her own hair
was long and twisted
into a neat bun. The
woman wore blue jeans
and a plain maroon
t-shirt too large for
her bony frame, while
Marie, returning to
London from the closing
of the European
Parliament, was dressed
in a fitted pant suit.
Marie decided she could
tell neither the woman’s
age nor her nationality,
place of origin. There
was a deliberateness in
the way the woman’s body
occupied the very end of
her seat, in the way her
right palm was splayed
against the glass of the
window. Marie was
certain that the way the
woman’s forehead was
creased should incite an
emotional reaction in
her, but she didn’t know
what the emotion should
be. Under Marie’s gaze,
the woman lifted her
hands from the window
and rubbed her temples.
Marie laughed.
The businessman in
the window seat opened
his eyes and stared at
her. Short, rapid bursts
of high-pitched laughter
emerged from Marie’s
throat, and she didn’t
stifle it. “Is
everything alright?” the
man asked. She shook her
head, and kept laughing.
Logically, she knew that
he must be annoyed with
her, but his discomfort
failed to resonate in
her body. She was
completely immune to it.
The discovery thrilled
Marie, her excitement
tempered only by a
consideration that there
might be something
clinical about her new
state of being, a
symptom of a
debilitating
neurological disease
that was liable to send
her on disability and to
keep her away from the
booth long past the term
of her vacation. She
didn’t think so. She
didn’t feel ill, but
rather
enlightened—liberated
from an unnecessary load
that had been hindering
her life. Marie’s
laughter had finally
spent itself, leaving
behind a sense of
well-being and calm.
There was not a
connection between
herself and the
businessman—or the man,
whoever he was—no bond
between him and her,
save for the smell of
his body odor poorly
covered by a sweet
cologne. She had nothing
in common with the
bicyclists, who were now
being escorted by the
conductor towards the
bicycle compartment in
the back of the train,
where they could store
their equipment out of
the way of the other
passengers. One of the
bicyclists separated
from the others and
headed in the opposite
direction, towards the
exit. Even the woman by
the window certainly
could not affect Marie
by breaking down. Marie
watched tears
noiselessly falling down
the woman’s cheeks,
delighted in the new
knowledge that there
were no ties between the
woman and herself.
The train was now
slowing, numbers on the
tableau above where the
bicyclists had been
began counting
backwards. The bright
light in the car
flickered for a moment
and started to fade. A
high squeaky noise
throbbed in Marie’s
ears, building until it
popped. She looked at
the crying woman again,
at her distasteful
maroon shirt and unkempt
hair. The woman’s pain
was hers alone, but all
the other passengers,
Marie noted, acted like
the pain was infectious.
The older woman in the
next seat to the crying
woman leaned as far as
she could away from her
neighbor. The
businessman, having
traced the object of
Marie’s attention,
observed the woman’s
tears, then leaned back
into his chair and
closed his eyes. Even as
long as half an hour
ago, Marie, afraid for
her own equilibrium,
would’ve acted the same
way. Now she remained
calm. In fact, she felt
slowly rising within her
a new strength and a new
kind of curiosity.
Before the light faded
completely, Marie turned
to her computer and
undeleted the poem.
The sun rises once
again, alighting the
sky, and it shows me
that place where I’ve
lost my solitude.
Flawed as it was, the
translation was hers to
finish. Marie saved the
document, set her
computer aside, walked
across the aisle and
placed her hand on the
hand of the crying
woman. “Tell me about
it,” she said.
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