Tivoli

I remember my dad always used to read me this story before I went to sleep at night. It was about a girl who ran away from home and tried to cross a bridge that went across a kind of ravine. The bridge broke and when her parents went looking for her the next morning all they found were footsteps in the snow leading up to this broken bridge. I mean seriously, what kind of a story is that to read to a kid before they go to sleep? The funny thing is I used to beg him to read it to me. There was something about that story that gave me goose-bumps.

I don’t know why it popped up in my head just now. I’m on a train and sitting next to a man who told me that he plans to eat his own dog. Crazy people always talk to me on trains. It’s hard to know what to say to him so I ask him ‘why?’ He says he loves his dog so much that he wants it to become a part of him after the dog dies rather than just burying it under a pile of dirt. I tell him I understand. Mostly to make him stop talking but also because I mean it… I kind of do understand.

I wanted to write some things down on this trip, just get the events straight in my head. But ever since this guy started talking to me about his dog everything else I had in my head has disappeared and all I can think about is how this guy got so lonely that he feels like he has to tell these things to a total stranger like me. He’s got an accent. French maybe. He obviously comes from another country so it seems strange that he is sitting on a train in the middle of the night passing through towns with names like Exeter.

 

I guess I should be worried that any minute people will come looking for me. But somehow I feel protected. Maybe it’s the darkness outside or the fact that talking to this guy tells me that a human being can just disappear. In fact a human being can become so invisible that they practically have to corner a total stranger and tell them their deepest, darkest secrets just to feel like someone else knows they exist. And so I don’t mind talking to the guy who wants to eat his dog. I guess I recognise something of myself in him... cause in a way, I’m a fugitive too.