A Window Rattler

Rolling into Zhengzhou.  Chugging in on a good old fashioned “regular” train that goes forty- MPH.  I got up in my soft sleeping car at 2:00AM.  Rising to consciousness unpleasantly, with an urgent need to urinate, in a place it is difficult to rise up out of.   I flopped around I my top bunk trying to ignore it, perhaps I'd drift back to nod.  I looked to see what emails had arrived in the five hours since I last checked.  The impeachment news:  that ought to put me back to sleep.  But it was no good.  Nature's call was too strong.  I grabbed my shoes and considered the folding metal ladder step, between me and the facilities. 

Across from me were my two colleagues.  Below me though, was the stranger.  I would need to rest my foot on the bed of the strange man.  Could I do this without waking him up?  If you've seen "A Hard Day's Night" you might recall the scene when Ringo asks John to confirm that he doesn't snore and John's reply is that "Aye, you're a window rattler son."  The stranger is a window-rattler.  I step on his bed and then on to the ground.  The rattling continues on. 

The bathroom is empty.  The toilet is a squat toilet, of course.  I’m not a woman.  I can use this thing easily enough.  There is water which is good, but no soap.   Outside in the space between the cars,  I look down into the next car on my way out and it appears to me, at this early hour in the morning, to be a sort of bathing car with circular areas for washing oneself.  But then I realize that is silly.  A man walks past me and goes to sit down.  It is the dining car.  And at this hour, I’m not hungry. 

I’m back awake again before six and figure I’ll take a call that I have coming up, back in the dining car.  By now its crowded and I ask if I can join a lady at one booth, sitting down before she can reply.   She has long since finished whatever food she had ordered and now she has her head down on the table.  There are many people doing the same things.  I order the set menu that has and egg, a bowl of porridge, cabbage and some pickled things.   I don’t really want anything to eat but I nibble at it anyway.  It’s China so it I don’t think twice about talking on the phone in this public venue.  The young lady behind me is doing the same thing.  I peer outside to see the Zhengzhou suburbs but the sun isn’t up yet and I can’t see far behind what light there is, beside the tracks. 

Thursday 12/05/19