sparkling, soda, not to mention the one containing more or less sodium and so on. Well, nowadays even choosing water becomes difficult. Just in case, I choose a brand that I know and I go back to my tour, looking at the watch now and then to avoid the risk of remaining in Rome. When my train finally arrives, I get on the coach displayed on the ticket and I have a seat. I connect my tablet to the station free Wi-Fi and I check the last messages, always hoping to find a contact from him. Disappointed from receiving only advertising e-mails and some answer to work messages, I turn everything off and I wait to hear the whistle that heralds the departure.
When the train starts to move I close my eyes, cradled by the increasing pace on the tracks that are slipping under my feet. That noise brings me back in the years, when I was a girl and I used to go to the mountains with the group of friends of my district. We always travelled by night and we almost never slept during the ride. There was always someone who brought the guitar and played in the couches with all the others pushed inside to sing. Someone stopped in the corridors, watching outside the windows the darkness lighted only by many street lamps along the way that moved away leaving behind a light trail. The rumour of the tracks, always identical like a chant that was a base for the choral voices and the sound of the guitar. Long trips that passed quickly in the euphoria of a holyday far from home, from families, from school… Ready to the adventure that only mountain experienced in tent can offer. The same train would have seen us again after ten days spent totally immersed in nature, between green trees and cold
streams that became source of water to bath and wash dishes. The same train that would have taken us home tired but as happy as ever with the backpack full of dirty clothes and with many adventures to tell. At that time there weren’t mobile phones or Internet to divert our attention from what surrounded us and the only contact with home was a single call made in the half of the week from a cabin far away from our camp. And we used to live so well…
When I open my eyes again, I am alone and outside the window it’s still day. I am enchanted by the landscape that surrounds me and it seems that it was eaten by the unbridled run of that long means of transport. Its sound is still the same of the one of a lot of years ago, its regular pace is always unaltered. I am the only one who changed, but with the usual smile that is finally came back to shine on my face tired and marked from the events of a lifetime. I enjoy taking some picture from the window. Luckily, my seat is just the window one and so I can admire undisturbed the scene that changes before my eyes. I enjoy modifying the photos that I’ve taken through some applications that are nowadays installed on every mobile phone and I post some of them on my profile. I check the mail, even if I see that there is any new message. Nothing, not a trace of my mysterious café friend who probably doesn’t even know where and how to find me.
In front of me sat a couple who will be more or less my same age.
Since he got on he has done nothing but calling with his latest fashion headphones and playing with his smartphone. She has a listless face and, without saying a single word since she sat down, she has her look lost in the central corridor glancing at who knows what inexistent spot before her. Then she took a bag of chips from her purse, hangs it to
him who shakes his head while continues typing quickly on his virtual keyboard. With the same mood showed until now, she starts to eat chips, slowly and almost coerced. There’s no emotion in her eyes, always abandoned in the void. Suddenly she stops, the vibration of her mobile phone notifies her a message that she reads quickly but with a light in her eyes that she had never had until that moment. While she puts her phone back, in the same speed she had taken it from her coat pocket, I detect a slight smile on her lips and a little tear on her face.
She swiped it immediately away with her hand while she turned in the opposite side with regard to where her husband is sitting. Then she continues eating her chips, coming back to her absent world and regardless of what is happening around her.
I start to imagine who could have texted her to make her resurrect from a trance and boredom state when I am also reached by a message that takes me back to reality. I start to look for my phone in my bag with such a fervour that I drop some of the things that were inside of it.
My fellow traveller immediately activates and helps me pick up what I’ve lost from the floor of the coach that is making my personal belongings swing back and forth as in an endless ballet. I thank her and we exchange a smile and I understand that hers is a strong solitude that she would like to break even with the first person who comes along.
I’ve finally found my phone: it’s my cousin from Venice who tells me that I’m going to find her outside the station waiting for me in her car.
I answer her writing about the slight delay and I put my phone back, this time in the pocket of the bag so that I’ll easily find it the next time.
As soon as my ‘new friend’ realises I’ve finished to fight with technology, she starts to speak to me: ‘I also always happen to drop
things from my bag’. At her first words, her husband jumps on his seat almost surprised to hear his wife’s voice coming out her vocal chords.
Then, in the same way, he goes back to play with his phone looking a little bothered by our chat. We continue to make small talk until our arrival in Venice without noticing that the sun has already given its place to darkness and we even exchange our contacts to see each other again, maybe for a pizza, once we’ll be back in Rome. They live not too far from me and, being childless, it could be funny to organize a ladies night, thing that she has never done since she married the love of her life five years ago. I don’t know if I’ll see her again but seeing her enthusiasm only at the idea of our pizza gave me hope about her taking her life into her hands again and leaving a too boring routine. And who knows who sent her that message so intriguing to make her cry. Maybe one day I’ll be able to ask her, satiating my endless curiosity. We say goodbye as we were great friends, with him only a cold ‘hi’ instead, and then we went separate ways.
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