• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He was clean-shaven, wore thin-framed, rectangular glasses. His hair cut short, maybe half an inch long.

“Dix minutes environ,” I said.

He thanked me, looked at his watch and blew air through his closed lips—a national gesture acknowledging that life is and will always be this way. Then there was the sound of the train.

“Le voila.”

“Enfin,” I said smiling.

The train came fast into the station. Just as it did I sensed a flash of movement behind me and to my left. And then in an instant the man shot forward. The rushing train slammed into his body with a dull muffled noise and he vanished.

Someone screamed. My eyes went clear, I stepped back immediately turning to my left, bracing myself, and saw a large, haggard man standing alone. We locked eyes, unblinking. I didn’t move. He nodded at me as if I were somehow involved, turned and began to walk toward the exit. I watched him go and imagined tackling him to the ground.

I heard footsteps pounding behind me, coming from the other end of the platform. Someone ran past and drove his shoulder into the man’s back. There was more screaming.

I did nothing.

Soon the station was filled with police.

I was sweating. And then I saw Gilad standing alone. He’d been waiting for the same train. He watched me come toward him. I stopped in front of him.

“You saw it?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Come on,” I said.

We walked to the Luxembourg Gardens and sat down on a bench beneath some trees. There was no one there. It was very cold. I was nauseated. I called the school and explained what had happened, that I wouldn’t be there, that I’d need a sub, that Gilad was with me, that he wouldn’t be at school, the métro wouldn’t be running for a while.

I didn’t know what to do next so the two of us sat there in silence in the cold park. I kept imagining the man with his white scarf, his delicate glasses and his immaculate clothes. Although I hadn’t seen them, I thought about his fingernails. I was sure they’d been neatly manicured.

“Ça fait longtemps que vous attendez?”

“Ça fait longtemps que vous attendez?”

“Ça fait longtemps que vous attendez?”

“Le voila.”

I wondered about his glasses, whether they’d been broken. I watched him die over and over again. I listened to the sound of the train hitting his body. It was the sound of a heavy duffel bag hitting a concrete floor.

My phone rang several times but I didn’t answer it. They wanted my lesson plans.

Eventually I stood. Gilad looked up with the same expression he’d had on the platform. As if asking, What happens now?

“We can go to a café I like.”

We took a table in the mezzanine and ordered cafés crèmes. When they came we wrapped our hands around the warm cups.

“Did you see it?” I asked him.

“Yes.”

“I mean you saw it happen?”

“Yes.”

“You O.K.?” I asked him.

“Yeah. You know, I’ve seen bad things before. Violence. I don’t know. The thing is I saw you first.” He was playing with his spoon, turning it slowly through his coffee. “I saw you standing there. I recognized you and was thinking of maybe coming over to say hello or something. And then I saw that homeless guy, he was pacing around you know, and all of a sudden he just spun and charged and from where I was standing, it looked like it was you he was going to push. I mean it could have been you.”

I nodded.

“Actually, I thought it was you, you know? I mean when that man went forward I saw you, not him. I mean I saw you being hit by the train.”

This kid with his shaved head and his dark blue eyes. He bit his nails and looked from me to his coffee cup and back again. He was waiting for me to say something but I didn’t know what to tell him.

I hadn’t considered how close we’d been standing.

“It’s really messed up, Mr. Silver. But I’m glad it wasn’t you.”

I smiled at him.

“I wish I had something important to tell you, something that might explain but I’ve got nothing.”

“There is nothing.”

“You don’t think so?” I asked, looking at my hands, hearing the sound again and again.

Ça fait