April 25, 2024 | FEATURES | By Anya Jones
The way inner-city trains work in Europe is similar to U.S. subways: you get on and off at your desired stations, but instead of just one minute between stops, it’s more like 25. There are two seating options on these kinds of trains: “two-seaters” on either side of the aisle or groups of four seats facing each other, separated by a small table. It was one of these tables that became the point of utter fascination for the duration of this cross-country journey.
The characters who sat across from me did not all sit at once. They came onto the train at different stations, one by one, creating a buzzing electrical field of conflicting personality types. The first one to sit got on the train at the same small southern town where I boarded. He was around the age of 58, or perhaps a youthful 62. No hair but a tight, gray beard. He wore thick khaki work pants with an equally thick button-up shirt. For shoes, he sported industrial-grade, lace-up boots. He was dressed like he was prepared to summit a formidable mountain, or like that one science teacher you had in high school who wore his dirt obsession quite literally on his sleeve. His look was complimented by a pair of tiny round glasses that sat below the bridge of his well-endowed nose.
He looked like an Igor despite his evident Frenchness. (I asked ChatGPT what the French equivalent to Igor might be –
Me: “What do you think would be the French equivalent to the name Igor? If you can imagine the characteristics of a man named Igor – hardened, soft-spoken, hates cell phones … you know.”
Chat: “For a French equivalent to the name Igor with those characteristics, ‘Étienne’ might fit well. Étienne has a classic and somewhat hardened feel to it, while also being soft-spoken and traditional. Additionally, someone named Étienne might have a disdain for modern technology like cellphones, reflecting a more old-fashioned or stoic demeanor.”
But I like Igor more because “Étienne” sounds too much like when Future comes in on “FTCU” by Nicki Minaj and says “ATL [Jacob he a fucking millionaire].” So I’m sticking with Igor.
Igor did not have a smartphone, nor did he have a flip phone. He had one of those ultra-thick SOS phones with an actual antenna coming out of the top. It sat on the table in front of him next to his two mason jars of bizarre-looking food, if you can call it that. He spent the first hour working through his enormous mason jar of what looked to be sauerkraut. He would take a bite and then look pleasantly out the window, his mouth stuck in perpetual contentment. Once he finished this mason jar, he opened the one full of almonds submerged in a dark brown liquid essentially making the almonds appear more like tadpoles. He completed his meal by reaching into his bag, pulling out a tall thermos, and pouring a pee-colored liquid into a small glass. I am powerless to describe emphatically enough just how much this liquid looked like pee.
In true Igor fashion, he pulled out a book to pass the rest of the time on the train. It was called “Le Carnet Viking” which I Google Translated to “The Viking Notebook.” I learned that this is a book about a woman on a fishing boat, and it depicts the raw emotions onboard and of the sea (paraphrased from the book’s summary).
He wore no wedding ring. But I’m confident he has a life partner.
Next to Igor was a young woman, aged 20-24, with dark mousy hair and the frame of someone whom Jojo Siwa could easily defeat in physical combat. She was wearing shorts that reached below her knees and unlaced high-top sneakers. Her eyes were rather vacant. The defining characteristic of this girl was her earbuds. She had wire Apple earbuds plugged into her phone, and she was playing intense metal music. I know this because I could hear her music all the way where I was sitting. I could hear every cymbal crash and anarchist lyric. It sounded like what I imagine the musical child of Greenday and My Chemical Romance would sound like were it severely addicted to cocaine and pornography.
It went on like this for about half an hour until Igor tapped her to ask her a question. He tapped her six times before she realized he was doing it on purpose. The way his hands moved with a gentle curiosity rather than an animated irritation made me think he was not asking her to turn her music down but what the next stop was. Whatever he said to her, the music softened quite considerably.
Across from the girl sat a guy who was around the same age as she. He fell asleep as soon as he sat down and did not rise for the rest of the trip. He had on those tiny HypeBeast glasses with square frames and barely tinted lenses. He had a diamond ear piercing and the wrong haircut to make his appearance look any less appealing. He wore a white t-shirt with a itmoji-style cartoon of a black man in a durag. I might note that this individual himself was not Black.
To top it all off, the walking pube-stache of no more than 18 years held onto his electric scooter like it was a balloon animal; he was not going to let go. He was dressed in a not-matching Lacoste sweatsuit, but the shorter version–a t-shirt and shorts. He too slept the whole time, never loosening his grip on his scooter. But he’s the kind of sleeper who can’t close his eyes all the way. There was a sliver of white visible, and his iris was rolled all the way to the top of his eyeball.
All four of them got off at the same stop and disappeared into the bustling city of Toulouse.