I took her to the station. I even carried her bags: I’m helping her to get away from me, I thought. She’s leaving, she’s leaving right now and she’ll never come back, I’m sure of it. I don’t want her to, I don’t want her to, I thought with all my might as I helped her with her luggage. She boarded the train. I handed over her bags one by one without saying a word. I was mute. I am mute, I thought, as I stood motionless on the platform watching her. She tried to open the window but couldn’t. She tired of trying and gave up. She stood there at the window, her face pressed to the glass. I stood there, doing nothing, knowing I’d never see her again. I turned away from her and fixed my gaze at a point on the train car just above the name of the destination. Now’s the moment when I’m supposed to pull out a handkerchief wave it goodbye at her, but I didn’t take my eyes off that point on the train car. I focused on that point trying to condense the entire train to that point. That point is the train, I thought. I’ll hold the point still and paralyze the train so it doesn’t leave. I can do it, I told myself, it’s not hard, I’ll hold it still, I just have to focus on the point as intently as possible. How long did I stand there like that? I don’t remember, but the point remained still in front of me. I did have the impression that the train moved... but not for certain, I told myself, not for certain. It could have been a mere optical illusion: movement, ultimately, is relative; maybe I was the one who moved. And then the point, and therefore the train, remained still there in front of me! It didn’t move, it didn’t move, I kept telling myself, I did it, I kept it from leaving. I looked around. Everything seemed normal. I turned and started walking, without turning back, toward the exit. I crossed the underpassage which seemed so long but I didn’t turn back once. The essential thing is not looking around and keeping the point still in front of me, I thought. I came to the atrium: it was immense, so wide and high and vast. The Vicenza train station is just a small provincial station, I thought, it can’t be this big. I went out and took a full breath. I looked around again. I crossed the street—so wide—with a straight avenue ahead of me whose end I couldn’t see. I had found myself in a completely unfamiliar city.
I turned back to read the name on the station gate.
(1996)
Author and Translator Bios
Vitaliano Trevisan was an Italian screenwriter, playwright, actor, and writer of several books, including the novels I quindicimila passi (2002), Works (2016), Black Tulips (2022), and story collections Shorts (2004) and Grotteschi e arabeschi (2009). His work often depicted the province of Vicenza, where he was born in 1960 and died by suicide in 2022.
Jamie Richards is a translator of Italian literature currently based in Los Angeles.
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