Where is he? Right now, still on the train, if he has taken the train, he has taken the train. Where else would he be if not? He would never have gone home without letting her know first, he wouldn’t be nasty enough to punish her like that for being late. Of course, he could have waited for her so they could have taken the next train together. But he must have thought they might have trouble getting two new seats or that changing the tickets would cost too much. He must have hesitated then decided not to change the plan, thinking she would have the presence of mind to do the same.
The doors open, the travellers surge forward, the platform fills with a chaotic flow of humanity, the train is taken by storm. She is shoved along right up to the steps of her carriage. Pushed by a bulging stomach, she narrowly misses getting smacked in the forehead by the bony elbow of the grandmother in front of her. She has looked at them often, on café terraces, surrounded by their suitcases and their laughter, under the departure boards, heads tilted back, standing in line, their mouths half-open, by the platform entrances, being met, embraced, surprised, kissed, tears streaming down their cheeks, by the ticket machines, puzzled, conscientious, examining the front and back of their tickets again and again, and she had thought them so happy, so serene, so charming. And now to her great disappointment they are behaving like vulgar métro passengers instead of appreciating how lucky they are to be setting off in a straight line and not travelling round in circles. And even if he’s not by her side, even if she’s starting to get worried, a wave of joyous excitement washes over her as she steps into the carriage. She wants to talk to them, to shower them with smiles, but they’re all busy attending to their suitcases and their tickets. Everyone is blithely bumping into everyone else.
Modern is the word that comes to her as she surveys the interior of the carriage. The floor and windows are clean, the seats comfortable, the lighting low, the colors match. It feels as if she has shrunk and stepped into a model. Her seat is next to the window. Perfect for watching the landscape rush by. She stows the sports bag on the overhead luggage rack, imitating a young woman she has seen doing the same at the far end of the carriage. She decides to keep her handbag on her lap. A man has put a briefcase under the seat next to hers, has sat down, and without giving her a glance or exchanging a word has opened a thick book. The Best Marketing and Communication Techniques. Several people hurry by on the other side of the window. She wonders why there are no seatbelts on trains. A sensuous voice she doesn’t recognize announces that they are leaving. The platform glides slowly backwards.
Grey houses, shut windows covered by whitish curtains, long electric wires, the bare, black trunks of trees that seem to have been planted haphazardly to make it look as if they were spared when the city was built. A female voice announces the existence of a bar at the center of the train and lists a whole range of sandwiches and refreshments. She is hungry but doesn’t want to disturb her neighbour, who is engrossed in his reading. If he leaves his seat to go to the toilet, she’ll take the opportunity then. Outside, the woods and the walls in the foreground are flowing by too fast for her to see them. Stretched between barely perceived poles, supple and sinewy telephone wires attract and repel one another. She has to look into the depths of the landscape to see the things she wants to see, for them not to disappear at each moment. She likes the gentle, barely perceptible motion of the carriage. He too is on a train, miles ahead of her, but on the same track, bound in the same direction. Her eyes close, she presses her handbag against her body. She is on a train, she is going away somewhere, he is at the end of the line, waiting for her.
A feeling that something has touched her. While opening his briefcase, the man next to her has jogged her with his elbow. She is awake now. He has stood up and, swaying back and forth, has walked down the aisle to the far end of the carriage. To her relief, she discovers that her handbag is still on her lap. On the other side of the windows, huddled rows of brick houses are slipping along, accompanied by murmurs and sighs, the zipping of zips, the rustling of pages and plastic bags. The people outside are as invisible here as they were on the outskirts of Paris. London would therefore be nothing but a single long row of identical houses, all of them deserted. Her mouth is dry, her body is as stiff as the seat she has slept in. The voice from the loudspeaker announces their arrival at Waterloo station. She remembers now that the same voice spoke while she was asleep. She hadn’t managed to open her eyes then, to regain consciousness and understand what it was saying. Without her noticing, the train went under the sea, travelling through a dark tube to avoid the water by plunging below it. An under-channel crossing. She thought it was going to be a unique experience but, to her great disappointment, she hasn’t felt a thing. Back when the tunnel was being built, she had wondered if it would be possible to see anything through the walls, algae, fish, one of those marine creatures that live deep below the surface. Later, she’d been sorry to find out that the tunnel didn’t pass through the sea but under it, through dense, blinding, solid, reassuring earth, the same earth in which it is customary to put the dead.
He is waiting for her now, somewhere inside the station. He probably walked around for a while to stretch his legs, then sat down somewhere in a café where he can watch the fresh arrivals. Very soon, they’ll be together again. She can’t imagine anything else.
The jolt of the brake has sent the passengers tipping forwards. She retrieves the sports bag, inserts herself into the Indian file shuffling its way off the train and falls in step with the passengers trotting along at different speeds in the same direction. After the platform come level corridors, followed by an inclined walkway leading to the customs booths. Her country is a member of the European Union; she is in London, hundreds of miles from home, to meet someone who is her only reason for being here. She doesn’t know what she’ll be doing in the hours ahead, any more than what she’ll be doing in the days ahead. She gives no thought to what she has done before this, to the chain of events that has led her to this place. Her two feet are on the ground, at a precise point on the globe, but until she crosses the London border, she will still be in a parallel dimension, in the timeless space of the journey. She walks past the booths, attracting no attention, free. She is on the other side now. The other side of the sea, the other side of a symbolic border, the other side of herself perhaps. She walks down a wide corridor, passes through doors. Dozens of anonymous people are gathered there, necks craning, arms crossed. Their eyes see her, then turn, looking for someone else, until they raise their arms and rush forward, lips ready, to the elected being they’ve been waiting for. She feels a slight contraction in her chest, which increases the further she walks. She can’t see him. Not to the right, not to the left, not on the chairs, not by the pillars. The palpitations are constant now. An escalator takes her up to the main concourse. So many people, never him. It feels as if her head has swollen, her bags have shrunk. She wanders around, retraces her steps, peers over railings, gets up on tiptoe, walks in and out of cafés, shops, hidden corners, scans, searches, turns places upside-down with her eyes. And then suddenly she stops, overwhelmed, for she knows only one thing for certain now: he is not there, he is no longer in a place where she can reach him, except inside herself, inside her body which is here, although she is alone.