The morning train to Marendo

keeping her voice very low, close to his shoulder Vlad. waiting until he moves before she says any more We are almost at Leriduson. The panel says thirty minutes before it should, and I think either the panel is wrong or this train arrives early.

drawing her hand back and settling on the rail as he sits up At home a train that runs ahead holds at the next station until the timetable catches it, because every connection after it is built on that minute.

sitting up against the rail I did not know that figure. I only ever counted mine, and it was twenty five hundred, so whatever the country averages, I was never inside it. Gaman was the word I used on myself when I needed a reason to keep going, and it worked well enough that I stopped looking for another one. Two people in my section told me plainly that I was making my life heavier than it had to be. a small pause You know Romania from the inside, which is very far west of us, and north of here.

nodding slowly, watching the coast go past We generalise about ourselves constantly. There is a whole shelf of books explaining what the Japanese are, and programmes where foreigners are invited to confirm it. The weight comes when the same sentence arrives from outside, because then it lands as a verdict, and the room goes quiet and polite around it. a small pause We also never argued about who we were. Yours sounds disputed, so people can pull at it. Ours was settled, so the description held, and when I failed to match it the fault was mine.

a small breath, something close to recognition Somebody says one careless thing about us and four people arrive with figures and corrections, and for a long time I was grateful for it. Then I noticed the defending was all for the country, and the country was doing perfectly well. Not many in those arguments ever asked what my week had been. a pause The laughing you describe is a thing I have no practice in. If I had been able to laugh at the description of us, I think I would have got out from under it some years earlier.

already down off the upper bunk and on the floor with her back against the bunk frame before the message finishes, one hand out for his arm Come down here. quietly, once he is beside her My body did that before I understood the words. The two tones are almost the ones from home.

keeping her hand on the bar until the cord stops That is all of it. Kinkyu jishin sokuho, you said it correctly. It is my first one here as well. a small breath At home you get the tone and four words, and the rest reaches you on television an hour later when you are already at your desk. This one read out the entire country to us while the floor was still moving.

letting go of the bar and sitting back against the bunk frame I heard it. That is the NHK voice exactly, the same flat delivery, the same order of items. At home it comes to you in pieces. First the tone and the region, then the intensity a minute later, then the map with the sub-prefectures filled in once somebody has drawn it. This one gave us the depth, the magnitude, the scale equivalents and every sub-region in the country before the shaking arrived.

Then the length of it makes sense. You explain everything when nobody has heard it before. At home the explaining was done for you in school, so the broadcast could be short. Here the broadcast has to carry the school as well. a small pause I do not know how well it works. I suppose you find that out on the day something bigger comes.

thinking back through the sound of it Sometimes. The Fluidian ran first and it finished before the English did. counting off the two she is sure of Abaxa and tena. Abaxa is get down, and it is the word a driver uses for slowing. Tena is hold, and it is also hold a post, and keep going a while longer. a small shrug English wanted a clause for each of those. My Fluidian is poor, so I may have the third sense of tena wrong.

Densification. That is a fair name, and we do more of it than you do here. counting it out on her fingers Sumimasen is an apology, a thank you and an excuse me. Daijoubu covers am I hurt, do you need help, and no thank you. a small pause We also take things out. The warning at home has no subject at all and nobody is confused by that. Fluidian keeps every word in its place. It gives one word more work to do and it never shortens the sentence around it.

repeating both of them under her breath to hear the join Me no jizde. Me no se jizde. looking at him I have heard se hundreds of times and I took it for a small sound people put in for rhythm. a pause We hang that off the particles. Norimasen with wa in front of it says I am not someone who rides. The same verb with a different particle says this ride, tonight, the one you are asking me about. The verb itself does not move.

the shape of it settling Huclav, huclava, Huclavy. So the place is the hungry ones. a pause I never once looked up what Baraki meant. Nakayama is middle mountain and there is no mountain anywhere near it. The name was simply the sound the train made before the doors opened.

working it through slowly Then the suffix decides nothing on its own, and you have to know what the word was before it can tell you anything. Huclav is an adjective, so huclavy makes it a place. Pod is a noun, so pody would come out meaning of the bridge. checking his face Have I got that the right way round?

Podak. saying it twice, the stress landing where he put it So I had the rule and the wrong word to try it on. a small pause Is there a list of the irregular ones somewhere, or do people simply learn them one at a time from being corrected?

feeling the brakes take hold again and the carriage swinging as the line curves and steadying herself on the frame and looking at the window, where lights are beginning to pass We are moving, and those are streetlights. I think this is Leriduson.

taking her shoes from beside the wall and putting them on without hurrying A suburb. looking again at the lights going past Then I have some minutes. reaching for her bag and setting it on the lower bunk Marliene will be asleep.

taking the UBTC out and sliding it into the front pocket of her bag where her hand can reach it without looking Then she knew before we did. folding the blanket on the upper bunk back into the shape it was in How does she know?

stopping with the blanket half folded So she put our train in her phone and it woke her. setting the blanket down, picking up her bag and checking the small lamp is off and the room is as she found it Nobody has ever set that for me.

following him out with her bag on her shoulder and stopping behind him at the door She is already at the gate. watching the platform slide past the glass and slow I do not know how she will greet me. Marliene hugs people, you said. setting her feet slightly apart as the brakes are being applied If she does it, I would like you to not warn her off.

stepping down onto the wet platform behind him and stopping two metres short, her bag held in front of her with both hands

setting her bag down on the wet platform beside her feet and straightening up with her hands loose at her sides Yes.

staying where she is with Marliene's hand still on her arm I never married and I have never been in love. There was no room for it.

keeping pace beside her, the arrivals gate coming up ahead How did you know we were early? Vlad said you set the train to wait.

stopping halfway up the ramp, her hands empty and not knowing where to put them I do not know. looking at the two of them Get on the train. After that, whatever you two are doing.

reaching the top of the ramp and seeing it standing there, four green carriages with the paint gone chalky along the roofline That is fine. looking down the length of it I have slept sitting up for most of my adult life.

taking hold of the rail and looking up at her on the step I wanted that. climbing up after her Most people at home slept more than I did. My sister slept and the women in my section slept. I was the one who kept finding reasons why my own hours were a special case.

finding a seat by the window and sitting down with her bag on her knees It was mostly overtime. The contract said eight hours and the rest was counted separately, month after month, and every hour of it was written down properly and paid.

looking out at the yards going past Yes. I was very good at looking it, first of all, and sometimes it was real. A clean shift, the last pallet away, the train home at the right minute. turning back to her I am happier here.

the yards giving way to fields, the sky starting to lift behind them The future. settling back into the seat The past is finished and I have gone over it enough times to know there is nothing left in it for me.

I like it. a small pause Keep asking.

nodding at that Then ask badly.

the fields going grey blue outside Because I had already broken the rule by opening my mouth. turning back from the window At home you do not speak to a stranger on a train. There are too many of us and the quiet is the only thing holding it together. If I was going to break it, I wanted a question worth breaking it for.

her hands still on her knees The question was real. I wanted to know why the car was empty. a pause Then you answered it and I had my answer, and I understood that if I said thank you and looked away, that would be the end of it. Being polite had got me nothing except a flat where nobody knocks. looking across at Marliene I had been told by then that people read me as cold. I did not want you leaving the tram thinking that too.

Output, on paper. The shift had a target and the target was the whole of it, and when the last pallet went out the work was finished. Then there was the other layer when the section head sat until eight and nobody stood up before him, so you found things to do with your hands for an hour after the job was done.

Not much. Enough for the flat and the fare and something left over that I did not spend. looking out as a level crossing goes past I looked at other work. There were jobs paying higher for the same hours, some of them for fewer. a small pause I never applied to one.

The docks warehouse. I went there because it was the work I already knew how to do well, and they were generous about taking me with the language I had. I sit at a desk and I run the bots on the floor, and I watch them find their way round each other. It gives me something which I had never been given before.

shaking her head The system locks me out. My hours run down and the desk stops accepting me, and there is no way round it that I have found. I stayed late once in my second and half month, standing there with a bot stuck in a bay and nothing I could do about it from a screen that had gone dark. Somebody on nights sorted it in ten minutes. looking at him I have heard about the developers. I think they are allowed to be foolish because nobody can see them doing it.

turning that over So the ceiling is on the hours and you find the edges of it anyway. looking at him steadily How much is a lot?

I agree with them. On my first week here I saw a crew stopped on the road outside Sederna for collecting scrap past their hours, and the officer counted them and sent them home. I remember thinking it was excessive. Then the organic law allows twenty hours a year and the Court says the ceiling binds the person, and those two do not sit together.

shaking her head slowly The bug will be there tomorrow. It will be there at nine and you will fix it in an hour with a rested head. Every hour I ever gave was for something that could have waited, and I was certain at the time that it could not.

And nothing happened. looking between the two of them You both said what you thought, and Marliene took your side against mine, and we are still sitting here. I would usually have spent the rest of the journey working out how to withdraw what I said.

the light coming up now across the fields, the window going from grey to pale Yes. settling back into the seat Then I keep my position and you keep yours, and we find out in twenty years which of us was right.

thinking before answering Very few, because I have said almost nothing to anybody until this week. counting what there is The floor supervisor wanted the bot routes redrawn by hand and I thought the system should be left to learn them. I said so once and then let it go. a pause And there is a woman in my building who says the twenty-four hours should be cut again, to twenty. I think that is too fast but I have never told her.

nodding at the window I went for rice vinegar in March and there was none for three weeks, and I waited, and in April there was some. Nothing about it was arranged against me. turning back Somebody else got the last of it, and they needed it that day. At home an empty shelf meant I had come too late again, and that was mine to carry.

repeating both under her breath Příští zastávka. Prexa statiun.

Laku noci maimune. saying it once more to fix the vowels What does it mean?

correcting herself carefully Laku noc maimune. the shape of it landing Good night, monkey. looking between the two of them Who says that to whom?

working at it with her hands still on her knees Kuso shika yaremasen. shaking her head That gives the words and takes the joke away. Ours would land as an insult to the person standing in front of you, and yours is aimed over their head at whoever emptied the shop. trying the other one Nani mo agerarenai. I cannot give you anything. a pause That one comes across whole. It is the polite version that survives the crossing.

turning to her How can you tell, if you cannot understand it?

thinking through it slowly Tenuki kouji. turning it over once more Work where the hands were pulled out of it.

reading down the screen with her head tilted Statiun. November. Ministru. a pause That is what I have. Three words in the whole of it, and two of them I know because they are almost the same in Japanese.

Ministru. saying it in her own accent Minisutaa. And november, which we take from English as nobenbaa.

looking up from the phone Panelcu. It is on the board at the entrance of my building and I thought it was the name of the block. handing the phone back May I sleep now? I was awake for most of the night.

gathering her bag and standing up in the aisle Somebody should modernise this train and put beds in it.

settling into the row across the aisle and putting her bag under her head Then sleep. turning onto her side, facing them Wake me if either of you has something to say.