The Transition Artist

Or are pushed in rather.

Or, well, only one is at first. Pushed from behind, he snaps at the lady on his heels.

“DON’T PUSH ME. Do NOT push ME. Don’t touch me like that. Please madam, no one on earth can touch me like that, would you like it if I touched you like that? Would you? Not even my mother can touch me like that, not even god, no one on this earth,” he says. He’s not yelling, just scolding at a relatively high volume.

His outburst is so abrupt it startles everyone, most notably the woman who gave him a push into the train. She looks at him shocked, red, mouth agape; she wasn’t expecting a telling off, not least from the skinny, unshaven man in rags and dirty tennis shoes who was, before this very moment, eating yogurt out of a plastic cup with his finger. 

He continues scolding her, muttering and rambling, stuttering and repeating himself until it becomes apparent he’s not fully aware of what’s coming out of his mouth. His face looks slightly confused and perturbed, but his tone remains severe. He releases streams of words that stop making sense, “not even god, nobody, touch me, not even god… like that..”

He looks around, looking for confirmation, agreement, but everyone’s started looking the other way. No one wants to be complicit with this man who is now making a scene. There are too many bodies in a small space, so the lady who pushed is stuck next to him; the train is packed and she has quite literally no room to even turn. She looks at him and apologises, loud enough for those around to hear and profusely at first, but then settles into a whisper and a few more mumbled apologies before going quiet as the man keeps ranting. She looks at him, then at the floor, then to the side, then only at the floor. A few ladies nearby try to catch her eye to give her a look of pity, a look that says “we know you didn’t mean it..” 

The man can’t help himself, he’s still scolding, but his face pinches and he seems to realize he’s making a scene. So now he apologizes, too. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean… I’m sorry but no one can touch me like that, no one, I’m sorry.” 

The boundary of cold anonymity is broken. People are trying to pretend not to notice but can’t help looking at him, looking at the woman, and back to him again. 

He continues apologizing and scolding as he slides into the seat he’s now leaning against. He pulls out a freshly sealed box of Chinese take away, tugs the plastic wrapper back, and sticks two fingers in to grab a piece of the food. It looks like chicken, dark mushrooms and an sticky orange sweet and sour sauce. I wonder briefly where he got it as I fixate on the shoes that are hanging by a thread and must be a size too small for his feet.

At that very moment, the doors open, and another skinny man steps in holding one of the free newspapers distributed at the metro entrances. He feins reading the wrinkled pages but is flipping them around too quickly. He looks to his right just as the first man lifts his head to repeat, “I’m sorry but…” 

Before he finishes his sentence, the first man locks eyes with the second man. It’s as though the first man recognizes him without knowing him. He mutters “touches me like that,” as if to explain, and suddenly becomes conscious of the food in his hands as the second man leans over him. 

The first man looks down at his take away box and back up at the second man, then around him, and says, “Do you want some? You want some? Want some?” He directs his offer towards the man who’s just entered and the lady who pushed him.

All the commuters move to look away, slightly embarrassed, but small smiles twitch on their lips. A few people shake their heads. The second man pauses a beat, peers into the plastic box and says, “ah hm what is that? What do you have? Pork?” To which the first man replies, “I don’t know. I don’t know, it’s Chinese, it’s, eh, pork, chicken maybe, you want some?” 

Much to the surprise of, well, all of us, the second man says yes. He stretches out his hand, picks up a piece of meat, and pops it into his mouth before loudly saying, “MMM HMM wow hmm that is good, hm yeah that is, wow, what is that? That’s good.” 

Up to this point, I hadn’t paid much attention to the man, but suddenly I wondered what kind of stranger in their right mind accepts bites of chicken off a crazy man’s plate. I glanced over, trying not to stare, and took in the huge, relatively clean black coat with an engie logo – the energy company – sewn into it. The coat seemed to swallow the man alive. In fact, everything he was wearing seemed to swallow him, and it was only as I glanced down as his shoes and his dirty jeans and took in his scarred, bony face that it occurred to me that this man might not just have finished his shift at an energy company.

The second man keeps his eyes trained on the food and his own set of dirty fingers make their way out of his oversized coat pockets, finding their own way back to the box. His fingers are already hovering above it as he asks if he can have another bite. The first man nods furiously, “of course of course, yeah here have some, have some, you want some more? Have some.” 

The second man picks out a few more bites. Loudly, unabashedly, he goes on and on about how good it is. “Hmm, WOW, yeah wow that’s really good. Where’d you get that?” He asks and continues without waiting for an answer, “that’s good stuff.”

I can’t help but notice how similar the two sound – the pitch and tone of their voices match. Their unrelenting, loud commentary carries in the otherwise quiet train car and they don’t seem to notice. A few people cringe, though I’m not quite sure which part of this scene solicits their distaste. 

The second man goes back for his second and third bite, without asking this time, and I’m surprised to see that the first seems perfectly happy to share with this stranger. After a third or fourth bite, the second man says he doesn’t want anymore. The first won’t hear of it.

“Have a mushroom, here these are good, have one it’s a black mushroom,” the first man insists.

“No, thanks, really, thanks. I don’t want one.” The second man replies.

“No really have one, try it it’s good, it looks like a black mushroom but it’s actually algae, it’s algae it’s not a mushroom, you’ll see, here have one, it’s a mushroom,” he presses. 

The second man declines in every polite way he knows how. The first man is repeating himself again now, and it seems the second has subdued himself a bit and begun to realize that his new friend is slightly odd. It’s as though the first man’s brain is running on loop and he’s not accustomed to the voice coming out of his mouth that publicizes the brain’s activity. He’s said “algae” and “mushroom” at least twenty times. The second man has declined just as many. The first man has spent so long trying to convince the first to try the mushroom that he’s stopped eating altogether and instead raised the box up towards the second man, shoving it in front of him with one hand and extending a mushroom with the other.

The second man doesn’t budge. He keeps a hand over his heart with his head tilted down slightly in gratitude and simply nods now, repeating a rapid fire, “thank you, no, really, really, thank you,” shaking his head from time to time. 

Suddenly, the first man changes techniques. He pulls the box back into his lap and puts the lid on it. In a quick motion he extends it back up. “Here, here take it, take the rest,” he says. “I don’t want anymore, I’ve had enough, I don’t want anymore, here.” 

The second man, surprised, jumps away and inch or two and insists he can’t, he won’t, he’s had enough, he’s full now, he doesn’t want it. 

The first continues to protest, interrupting and waving the box around, somewhat frantically now, insisting, persisting. He grabs the newspaper in the second man’s hands and places the box inside of it. He leaves traces of sauce on the paper as he folds its edges around the box that he’s now stretching out in front of the second man, yet again. He hasn’t stopped repeating, “I’m full, take it.” 

As the train slows to a stop, the second man shakes his head one last time and announces, “I’m getting off here.” The first man stays seated, but his hands try to follow the second out with the box, offering one last chance as the second man stumbles out of the train backwards before being swept away in the crowd. 

The first man places the box back on his knees and shakes his head furiously. “Il est chiant hein… t’es chiant !” he cries. “He’s so annoying… you’re annoying!” He calls after him and sighs, as though the two were old friends at dinner bickering over who’d get the bill, and he’d just lost. 

I got off at that station too and pushed my way out of the train behind the second man. He didn’t go far. 

The second man stepped out of the train and walked down the platform, wound around a few people, and stepped back into the train a few wagons down. Before the doors closed, he looked quietly back to the end wagon where the first man still sat before he turned to face the opposite direction, took a deep breath, and began his speech. “Bonsoir messieurs dames… je suis à la rue…” – “Good evening ladies and gentleman… I live on the street…” 

As I walked away, I couldn’t help but smile and shake my head; equal parts dumbfounded and bemused. In a the space of a few stops on the train, the cold anonymity of Paris had very suddenly evaporated. 

The woman realized the man she pushed had feelings and felt upset. He looked at her, right at her, bore into her with his eyes as he fussed, and she saw him, really looked at him, and apologized. As the man kept ranting, he suddenly saw himself, first making a scene and attracting the whole train’s attention, then in a stranger. 

For just a minute, that small metro car was no longer just a packed car of irritating – and irritated – strangers, but a train full of people. For just a second, we forgot to hide – our faces, our eyes, our curiosity and empathy. For just a moment, we were all humans again.