A usual and unusual train trip

The train ride started out almost ritually. M Karmel, the Algerian taxi driver who drove me to the Gare du Lyon greeted me warmly. As usual we discussed current events: the Parkistani earthquake, the civil war in Iraq, his children’s latest exploits. I took my usual petit déjeuner at Le bleu Express. French men were huddled over their espressos while reading Le Figero, L’Equipe and Le Monde. Tourists’ head swivelled as they soaked up the atmosphere. As usual the croissant was hot, the orange juice freshly squeezed and the hot chocolate really chocolately.

As usual the station looked like an impressionist painting but with the same difference. Instead of steam belching clunky engines, sleek-nosed TGVs waited for passengers to board. As usual the posting of the quai was late while riders waited in front of the departure announcement boards, although most guessed correctly it would be quai I.

My seat was in the middle of car 18, which meant two people faced me. They were a couple about my age both wearing beige sweaters and we nodded politely. Sometimes the train rides involve seat mates each locked in their own world. Sometimes it involves great conversations.

This time our conversations were anything but usual.

A blond woman, wrinkled but still beautiful came to take the fourth seat. She carried a sponge mop, but instead of a flat sponge it had a roller. This started a conversation on mops. The woman said it was gift for her sister who couldn’t find one like it in the south of France. The beige sweater woman said she had one. She said she had tried one where she constantly had to buy some kind of cover until she realised that it was just a connerie (something bad) on the part of the manufacturer. ‘Une betisse,’ (another word for something bad) she said. ‘One time you bought products that were useful but they were one time purchases. Now the companies trick you into thinking you constantly need replacements.’ She gave another example of anew coffee maker than only works with little canisters supplied by the manufacturer of the machine.

We went on to joke (faire à blague) that the woman with the mop could be a modern witch. She said she wanted a blue pointed hat to match the colour of the mop.

As we made our way through the foggy country side the mop woman told us she had been a trapeze artist with Ringling Brothers Circus for 15 years than worked in their production department. Finally she had returned to France. Her parents had been deported in WWII and killed at Auschwitz. She and one of her sisters had been hidden in the country side and although the woman there was mean, they survived.

She opened her pocketbook and pulled out a photo. In it, she was leaning out a window with two other women. ‘It was a miracle,’ she said. She pointed to the woman on the far right. ‘Last January we got a phone call. This woman turned out to be our missing baby sister. She didn’t know she was Jewish until a few years ago and then when trying to get a passport for the first time learned her true identity. She then went on a search to see if any of her family had survived. The picture was taken at their reunion.

Tired of talking, the trapeze artist pulled out several issues of France Dimanche and Paris Ici, weekly papers like The National Enquirer. The husband buried himself in his book, while the three women read about Johnny Halliday not attending his grandson’s baptism, Michel Sardou’s new hit CD and the chances of Brad getting married soon, the latest news from Star Academy.

The train pulled into Perpignan in what seemed like a half hour trip but in reality had taken almost five hours. I recently read a book describing a journey from Paris to Lyon, half the distance as taking three days during WWII, the time the trapeze artist was in hiding.

As we left the trapeze artist congratulated me on my wonderful French. I hope her stories of her life were truer than her compliments.