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XXIV. A Train and a Bottle

I had been waiting for her for a long time. I had visited her in her bedchamber, and watched her, as she sat for long hours before the window, hearing the crack of the whip, and the sounds of a parting carriage over and over in her mind. The shot that scared the horses into motion. The wheels crunching on the gravel. Over and over, over and over in her mind.

After a while, she had acknowledged that I was there. She had acknowledged that no man would give her the comfort I would. I would never betray her. I would not even need to speak, she understood everything as soon as she realised that I was the only one.

And in time, she had begun to desire me. I saw her turning her head to look over her shoulder as she sat by the piano, tentatively...slowly...as one does when one knows a stranger has entered one's room, but still fears to discover him there...as one does when one knows the object of one's fear is there, a breath away, and yet does not know what form it will take.

That day, the day I knew she would join me, the day I knew she could wait no longer, the day he left her forever, I had gone to wait for her at the train station. There weren't many men there, in any case no man that would look me in the eyes. I remember walking onto the platform, with its humane solidity and tracing the way it dropped down to where the rusty rail-tracks lay with my eyes, tracing the intangible air above that hole, like the air above a cliff, that somehow allows one to fall faster, cutting through the mist of the morning.

As I waited for her, men, women, children, came and went, some shrugging past me like an empty space, some looking me straight in the face, some deliberately looking away, others laughing, laughing and smirking at me. I particularly remember one old man, who stopped before me and stared at me, his eyes full of knowledge, eyes calm like a huge, quite ocean, post-apocalyptic vessels of stillness. He knew me, but he did not speak. Only poets speak to me.

And there, she had come, dressed in black, a veil pinned to her bonnet. Oh yes, she had been longing for me for a long time. She had been preparing that dress for this rendezvous for weeks in her head. But only that day did she put it on. She had approached me, and I knew she was thinking of her childhood. I knew she was thinking of how she breached that airy distance between a cliff- even if it was shallow and small – and the river, the river she so joyously jumped into as a small child. And so, while she was watching me, a small smile playing on her lips, I jumped off the edge of the platform and walked over to the middle of the rail-tracks. As I had turned to face her, standing in the middle of the rail-tracks, she had smiled at me.

I remember that woman very well. I remember her now, even as I wait for another, albeit in a different place. I wait for her in her bedroom, I wait patiently, for I am sure she will come. I had been watching this woman too, ever since her wedding. I even came to her wedding to warn her. No, I am not a fatalist, though that is what one would be inclined to think. I do not believe in fate. As simple as it is, I am smarter than that woman, that woman and her husband that I have not quite yet managed to befriend. I have seen too much of the world not to detect a jealousy and posessiveness so extreme that it may lead one to sin.

The jealousy and posessiveness of a man she had refused, of a man she no longer remembered, of a man who read the announcement of her engagement and wedding with a commoner with spite and malevolence in his heart. I knew, even before it happened, that that man would not let her be happy with another. I knew that one day, he would see her somewhere, happy and content, and his being would spill over with hate. And I was right. He had seen her at the market place, holding the baby in her hands, standing next to her husband. He could not bear to see her happy with another.

I warned her at her wedding. I made that clumsy priest drop one of the rings. A bad omen? That is what she had thought, but in her ignorant bliss, she let it rest and die away in the back of her mind. That was what she had thought, although it had not been just an omen. It had been a warning. And yet, she payed me no heed. She didn't even see me.

Now, as I had done countless times before, as I had waited for countless other women in their perfumed bedrooms, I wait for her in hers. I sit on the cold side, the cold, unruffled side where her husband once slept. The cold side where his coat lies, crumpled and warm, the coat she clutches in her arms as she falls asleep, the coat she held so many times that it no longer smelled like the man who had once worn it.

As I sit on her bed, I remember that other woman, and how I had waited for her on the rail tracks as the train approached. I can hear its ear-splitting hooting even now.

I remember her as two women enter the room. Two women, of which only one of them interests me. The gold-haired woman in a black dress. A black dress, black as a crow's sooty coat, black as that woman's, that woman who had come to meet me at the train station.

The gold-haired woman stood at the window near her writing desk, and held a bottle in her hand. When would the other woman leave? That red-haired woman with the floured hands and widow's dress? She was talking about me. She was telling the gold-haired woman about me, about leaving me. In vain, in vain. My muse wouldn't betray me, just as I wouldn't betray her.

Before she came to the train station, that woman I always remember, that woman of the black hat and veil, had arranged a meeting with another. A meeting with the very man who brought her to me. Certainly, she had hoped, for hope leaves last. Certainly, she had hoped that he would come to her. She had hoped. That he had recieved her letter. That he had honoured her request. And yet, she willingly threw herself into my arms, and I have seen too much of the world not to see that it was desperation, desperation and destruction of the final hope of his arrival that made her finally make her choice. Me above him...for, as I have said countless times, I am not, and never have been, a traitor.

It would have been better if this woman, this golden-haired woman I look at now, standing before the window, remembering how she once had a beloved man by her side and a child bubbling with life and joy in her arms, had also gone to meet me at the train station. Perhaps, then, I would not have had to wait for her to come back to me once again. If she had chosen the train station, not a vial of glass. A train, not a bottle, as an excuse to join me.

The woman, that woman with the floured hands and red hair, she was talking about me. Telling the gold-haired woman about me, about leaving me. In vain, in vain...even more in vain as she did so half-heartedly. One could hear it in the calmness, the detachedness of her voice. She did so out of hypocritical duty, because by doing so she would wash her hands clean.

«My eyes hurt...I can't look anymore. I can't breathe.» She was crying, I could hear the tears in her voice. She was crying for me.

«Well, missus, I told ye to give it ter me...» came the woman's half-hearted reply. Half-hearted and resigned, in a way that affirmed her belief in her clear conscience. She dithered a little, and then, without further ado, turned on her heel and left.

«Thank you...» whispered the golden-haired woman, whispered to an empty room, an empty room that resounded with the slam of the door. Resounded with the footsteps, my footsteps, in her head. I placed my hands on her shoulders. She shivered lightly, and pressed the glass to her lips as I guided her hand like a mother would guide a spoon to her young child's mouth.

There were three empty bottles of laudanum on her bedside table. The woman of the train station, that woman of the black dress and black hat, with the black veil, she also had bottles, bottles and bottles of liquid, liquid that would send her to sleep. And yet, no liquid could give what I could give. She realised that. This woman, the woman that now walked over to the bed and lay down, lay down to wait, and countless others, had realised that. This woman that left me, abandoned me, though not of her own willing.

As I stare at her, frothing at the mouth and writhing, as I see the doctor bend over her, I remember the other woman walking onto the platform. Seeing me there, and smiling widely, closing her eyes, and remembering. Remembering how she would dive into the water, into the lake, how she would imagine she had wings in that short flight between the edge and the cool surface she would break and swim into...

And as she remembered, she flung herself at me, spreading her arms wide like the wings of a black swan, flying into my embrace. Oh, how happy I was then. How I fume now, now that my golden haired muse has left me.

«No!» I yell, «No, No, No, damn it!», as she lies, breathing, shallowly perhaps, but breathing – breathing! – on her lonely bed. A soft wind blows on her, on her fevered brow, on her wet hair, as I storm out of the room, as I slam the door, as I pace the room beyond it. Will she think about me again? Will she wonder about the wind that moves the curtains, like it moves the marshes on a windless day? No, she is out of my reach now.

True, I have power. But do I have authority? There is a stark contrast, an immense difference, between power and authority. Authority is the ability to influence. It is a status that allows one to persuade almost anyone to to do anything, and yet to persuade them to do it willingly. Some say that I do not have authority. And yet, what is authority compared to power? The ability to make someone do the same something, even against their will?

Even so, does one not want more? Does one not want authority, and power? For when they come to me willingly – when they lie at my fleshless feet, when they beg me for release, when they jump into my embrace from the platform of a provincial station...dressed all in black, just for me...is that not so much more satisfactory?

As I walk away, I put my hands in my pockets.

I can feel dust, dust from the train station prickle my fingers.

I smile widely.