...between two stations it became known that there was a bird in the car, loose. A bit of hubbub ensued, with everyone talking or half-talking and quarter-exclaiming to the person next to them. Some sounds were bird sounds. A short man with a serious expression who seemed not to speak English well he was the one who caught the bird. He did this as if he did such things every now and then. First he was sitting and then it was in his hands, a pigeon. He sat there holding the pigeon, which grew quiet as the train grew quiet. The man made little expression and mostly looked straight out the window at the tunnel lights as they passed and held the bird with two hands. He held the pigeon with a kind of graceful indifference the pigeon seemed to respect. At the next station when the doors opened he handed it off to an exiting woman without a word; as the new passengers got on, they saw a short man passing a bird to a woman who carried it off the train and onto the platform. We believed she would take it up the escalator and throw it into the town, indeed this seemed exactly as predictable as the whole event would have been difficult to predict.
Posted by jane at February 20, 2006 06:57 PM | TrackBack