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woman at the window does not favor him with so much as a glance—her attention is concentrated on her aluminum suitcase, as though it were in danger; pencil in hand, the old man across from her is immersed in his notebook; and the soldier’s back is turned, for he is standing at the door as though to guard it. True enough, some others try to get in: first a loudmouthed couple, who at the sight of the four fall silent and go away; then a priest in travel dress who, after a greeting all around with one foot already on the threshold, vanishes as though to resume his greetings in the next compartment. Only a child strong enough to open the door by himself pushes past the soldier, and his parents have to stick their heads in and order him out with the words: “Not there. Somewhere else.” The child complies with a shrug.
    The hubbub outside dies away. But the train doesn’t move. There’s plenty of time. The soldier sits down, pulls himself up again as though in expectation—not of an event
but of a first word. It’s the woman who turns quite casually to the others and says: “When my childhood was over I began to wander around. I left the house and went farther and farther away, until I didn’t know where I was anymore. When they caught me in some small town or out in the country, I didn’t know my name and address. I usually took the train, never one that was going very far, always a local; no matter where it was going, I never bought a return ticket. What did I do when I arrived there? They told me I just sat around in the waiting room at the last stop or on the loading platform, and sometimes at the edge of a field, in a gravel pit, or by the side of a brook, regardless of the season. People began to notice me because of the way I’d sit there for hours—before that, when I was wandering around, it seems I walked like someone who knew his way and was going somewhere. Men often stopped their cars and told me to get in, but none of them touched me, they never laid a finger on me; there was never any conversation, because my answer to everything was the same: I don’t know. So they took me to the police. I couldn’t be a tramp, that was out of the question; even the village constables came out from behind their partitions when they saw me, and all of a sudden they stopped talking dialect. I always had plenty of money on me. And that is what made them think I was crazy. Instead of sending me home, they took me to an institution. There I was exhibited to students in a lecture hall shaped like an amphitheater. The professor showed me off, not because I was sick but because it was me. Though I only answered his rehearsed questions with yes or no, he always shook my hand with both of his and held the door open for me when my act was done. The students were
crazy about me, too. My wanderings can’t have made me very happy, because often when they found me sitting there I’d be crying or even shouting for help—but my act must have opened the eyes of the onlookers to something they’d never known before. While the mental patients were performing, I’d be sitting in the cubicle waiting my turn, and I’d hear the listeners coughing or laughing, but when I appeared, they’d all fall silent. They didn’t feel sorry for me, they envied me. What they heard about me filled them with longing. If only, instead of moving in crowds through familiar streets, they could wander around like me in a dream and alone. My adventures made them long, not for other continents, but for the towns and villages nearby, which up until then had meant nothing to them. Thanks to me, the names took on a resonance and the places became possible destinations. Though I was standing there barelegged in an institutional gown, for them I was a heroine. And it’s true that, though actually I wasn’t so very well off, I was better off than those people, who thought they were