out the window at the dirty snow-covered glass dome of the railway station. A few birds flew back and forth between the steel girders that supported the glass ceiling, swooping down toward the platform and then arcing back up into the air. The man realized he had not seen any birds at all in this place, and wondered if the railroad station was where the few who did not migrate spent the winter.
Livia Pinheiro-Rima turned away from the window and looked at the man. It’s dear of you, she said, very dear indeed, to invite me to come along with you. But I know that you know that I can’t.
I don’t, said the man. Why can’t you?
Oh, there isn’t anything as consequential as a reason. It’s just something we know, don’t we? I can’t leave here. I’ve learned this the hard way. I barely make any sense here, and anywhere else, especially New York—well, I’d be a gorgon, wouldn’t I? A freak. People would run screaming down the streets.
You’re wrong! People would love you in New York. You could act, and you could sing. You could perform. And not just for somnambulistic businessmen and oil riggers.
Oh, it isn’t as bad as all that. They wake up from time to time. And besides, sleeping people hear things more profoundly than the woken.
Then just come for a little while, just to help me get settled. Until I learn everything I need to know.
Everything you need to know! You’ll never learn that. Especially from me.
The platform began to slowly slide past outside the window, and the man realized that the train was moving.
Livia Pinheiro-Rima opened the carriage door. Let’s not say goodbye, she said. It’s why I’ve waited till this last moment. I couldn’t bear to say goodbye to you. Say nothing. Nothing! Nothing!
She stepped out of the carriage but lost her balance on the step, stumbled to the platform, and fell forward onto her hands and knees. When she stood up and turned around the carriage with the man and his child had passed by. The carriage she looked into was empty, and so were all the ones that followed. Both of her gloves had ripped neatly across the palm.
The man tried to get out of the carriage along with Livia Pinheiro-Rima, but he was unable to open the carriage door that the forward motion of the train had swung shut, and then the train was moving too quickly. He opened the window and stuck his head out into the rushing air to see her and call out, but the train had curved out of the station and she was gone.
He closed the window. Beyond the glass dome it was snowing. The child in his arms seemed transfixed by the sound and motion of the train and stared hypnotically out the window at the falling snow. The man felt similarly stunned and also watched the snow, which fell thickly and slowly.
Perhaps she will realize that she is meant to come with us, he thought. She will take a taxi and meet us at the way station.
They passed through an ugly, modern part of the city that the man had never seen before. It seemed a different place entirely. What else had he missed; what else had he failed to see?
After a moment the man returned to his seat and held the child up to the window so he could watch the falling snow. There was very little else to see, for they had passed through the city and were now traversing the wide-open spaces of the countryside. The man thought about everything that was buried beneath the snow and realized that a year is like a day here—half of it in darkness and half of it in light, and so the winter is really nothing more than a single night. A long night followed by a long day. Perhaps that was a better pace for life, and his own ceaseless and inescapable revolution of days and nights, being yanked from the depths of sleep and slammed into a new day every twenty-four hours, was all wrong. It was certainly brutal and exhausting.
The train ran faster as it traveled from the city, as if liberated and eager to get as far as it could from the constraints of communal life. The child seemed to delight in the speed, and beat his muffled fists against the window in time with the clacking of the wheels beneath them. He had an excellent sense of rhythm,