Room For Three

The train pulled slowly past a long, gray tank car with light showing through the rusted holes in its belly. Past it was the wheat. Then there were only the old grassy tracks running alongside and the wheat starting past the drainage ditch and running out until it reached the white of the blue sky.

            He heard them quietly in the compartment. Outside the corridor window, the wheat slipped past, and he tried to watch it. It was hot, and leaning his elbows on the window to keep it from closing, the wind was hot and dry against his face. The tracks split, and then there were many more alongside and multiplying, running grassy into a yard with a concrete building on the other side. There weren’t any cars in the railyard. A road led from the back out into the wheat and toward the sky. It was not paved, and there were not any cars on the road.

            He heard it again and turned around and then there was the glass and the two through the glass, and then the window and the hills coming up blue-green, and he waited until they stopped and then slid the door open.

            “Finally joining us?” the woman lounging asked.

            The man who’d been at the corridor window sat down across from her. Outside the compartment window, there were small farm plots with trees around them that went on past the plots and thickened and sloped up, and then suddenly broke, and there was the tall, bare mountain.

            “I’m glad you’re here,” he heard from beside him.

            A hand rested on his shoulder, and he moved forward, and it left.

            There were stone buildings with red tiled roofs, and the train slowed and pulled up to a small station. The switch was here, and the train emptied onto the platform. The man sat with the bags on the ground while the other two went inside the station. Across the tracks, before the wheat began, there was a locomotive resting on top of another, older platform. It was large and powerful-looking in its time, and many of those waiting were looking at it. The two returned and said they had an hour until the connecting train came and that they would go and find wine in town somewhere.

            The man was sitting on top of the bags on the platform. There was giggling coming from a couple on the long bench in the shade, running along the wall of the station. He pulled the bags into the shade and walked past them to the kiosk that sold newspapers to old men and ordered a beer. He returned to the bags and drank his beer, looking out from the platform where now a blanket of gray cloud was coming over from behind the station. He walked to the end of the platform, past the station building, and turned to see smoke rolling down the hills and over the town and the station, and now spilling out over the wheat. He drank his beer and watched the smoke.

            The other two returned holding a canvas shoulder bag laden with several bottles of wine.

            “There is plenty for everyone if we share,” the woman said.

            “I think I’d prefer it that way,” the other one returning said.

            The man continued drinking his beer. The train arrived, and they boarded and were back in another compartment, sitting in the same arrangement and passing around a bottle of wine. The plane rose steadily and into a forest, and the smoke thickened until the attendant was walking down the corridor, fastening closed the windows and asking the same of the groups in the compartments.

            “Kazhi mi, priyatel. Where is it all coming from, then?” asked the woman who had gotten the wine and was now making healthy use of it. She spoke, looking at no one. “Tell me, buddy, will it ruin the trip?”

            “Molya,” the attendant said. And then, turning, “The window, please.”

            The man only watched the smoke as it flooded in through the open window.

            “Don’t be an ass,” he heard from beside him.

            The window slid up and was latched, and through the glass it didn’t look much like smoke anymore. He watched through the glass the sparse undergrowth half blending into the gray air around it and the trees with now only the trunks and unearthed roots visible in the grayness. For the entire length of the journey so far he had not listened to the woman, who was talking to his wife.

            “The summer fest is now,” the woman said.

            “Oh, it is?” his wife said. “I think I’d heard that.”

            “Yes. It is free. Open to anyone.”

            “That’ll be lovely.”

            “Of course,” the man said. “You ought to know.” He had almost turned toward them when he said this, but had decided instead to remain as he was. They did not hear. They were not listening to him, and he had not tried to participate. He had looked out the window. They went on talking.

            “And there is music every night,” the woman said. “Near the sea, but not so close you can see it. Just enough to hear.”

            “That’s good enough for me,” the man’s wife said. She paused and then said, “I miss dancing.”

            “I will take you out,” the woman laughed. “Will you allow me?” she said to the man.

            He said nothing.

            There were several minutes of silence that the man did not see. He still looked out the window. The train was running along a ridge in the hills. Outside it dipped and bowled out in a large bank so that he could see the tracks coming ahead of the train. They came from out of the smoke. The smoke was thicker here, and then they were cutting through the white stone, and there was not anything for a time. Then they were back in the hills and the man glanced away from the window to see the other two looking at him. They looked back at each other.

            “And you’re from there?” asked the man’s wife.

            The woman was not from there. She was from the capital, but she had spent her early adult years there. She made a point of returning frequently. Her family was in the capital as well, and unfortunately, they did not travel enough and subsequently did not know this place well at all. But that did not matter because they were with her and she still had many friends that they would meet when they all got into town. They also liked dancing. In fact, it turned out that they had taught her how to dance and how to love it as well, without the lace, or however people said it in English. It was good that his wife liked to dance. And his wife had experience, true enough, but she could teach her how they danced here. All her friends danced, and anyway, Americans don’t really know how. But in the end, it was only a matter of time for all women. His wife would learn, the woman would lead her.

            They were cutting through the stone again. The train slowed as it got brighter, and then they were out, and down the slope on the left and out and climbing up the next was a village burning. On unhitched wooden carts and the beds of old trucks were water tanks with hoses being used to spray a fireline around the remaining buildings. There were many women holding each other and men standing alone, watching the village burn. Then they were cutting through the stone once more.

            The light came back and the smoke was gone, and the train was banking to the right and down and everything past the window descended and spread out to the sea far below. Along the sea were the tall white buildings that lent rooms too expensive for two, and the little sails past them seeming not to move for being so far off. It all lay quite stark in the light and difficult to look at, but the man did not take his eyes off of it.

            The window slid open and the warm, clear air rushed in.

            “Yes,” the woman said, sitting down, “the women dance very well.”

            “That’s such a relief,” the wife said. “When did you visit last?”

            “It has been some time, actually. I was feeling out of practice; that is why I am going now.”

            “When was the last time?”

            “I think more than three years.”

            “I wouldn’t think so, given how good you are.”

            The woman smiled. The train was off the hills now and out of the forest and driving straight for the sea.

            “I think,” the woman said. She waited and then said, “I think the same for you.”

            Now the wife smiled and said, “I believe my husband agrees.”

            The man was pulling down the woman’s bags. Outside passed the beginning of the city in clusters of stone buildings becoming concrete buildings, and the tracks doubled and tripled as the train slowed, and people began to be seen in the late afternoon light. The man slid open the door to the corridor and pulled the window down, and leaned out with his elbows on the window to keep it from sliding up again. The wind was moist and cool on his face, and he tasted the spray in the air, a little salty but refreshing and exciting. He could still hear them.

            “I think it is best to go straight there,” the woman said.

            “Yes,” the wife said.

            “It is a good hotel. I think you will find it very comfortable.”

            “We can be comfortable anywhere.”

            They were crawling past a cafe with a terrace under a pergola and many men and women sitting around tables in the shade. They were dressed well for the coming evening.

            “There’s your dancers right there,” the man said.

            “Yes, but that’s for later,” his wife said. “First, we’ll get to the hotel. I need to get out of these rags.”

            The train pulled into the station and stopped, and then they were through the corridor and handing down the bags. The platform was outside and covered by a long, green metal tent that ran to the building at the end. Outside the station was bright, and there were many taxis waiting and shouting direct rides toward the line of hotels on the beach.

            The taxi was comfortable with the windows down and the evening light settling nicely on the white buildings, and at the hotel, they all decided on sharing a room again.