Regional Trains

The other day I was heading home.

Traffic all the way to the station, the fast trains at a standstill. All that was left was the regional train. The one that stops everywhere.

The seat was faux leather, warm from whoever had got off before me. The window cold against my temple. At every stop the brakes squealed softly, one long whistle, then the doors opened with a sigh and let in the air from outside: the smell of wet gravel, of rain that had just stopped, of a café pulling down its shutter.

Stations whose names I had never heard. A green bench, its paint peeling. A streetlamp already lit. A man with his jacket over his shoulders, smoking one last cigarette before getting on.

Voices. Stories. Smiles.

Across from me, a woman was peeling an orange slowly, without breaking the skin. The scent filled the carriage in an instant, sweet and sharp.

Outside the window, patches of land I had never noticed slipped by. A vegetable garden behind a house, the tomato stakes already bare. A freshly ploughed field, the earth dark and glistening. A boy on a bicycle along a dirt road, who raced alongside us for a few seconds, then stopped to wave.

Glimpses of joy, small ones, that the fast train had never let me see.

I didn't look at my watch, not even once. Nobody did.

I watched the people. Hands gripping the handles of their bags. Two old men talking in dialect about a cousin they hadn't seen in years.

From a few overheard words I imagined a whole life. Someone waiting for someone. Someone coming back from a goodbye. Someone simply coming home from work, like every other day.

And time slowed down, to the rhythm of iron on the rails.

I was in no hurry.

Every now and then, if you can, take the regional train, the one that stops everywhere.

You'll still get there.

You'll just have seen more.