by Revel Arroway

Created on: September 08, 2009   Last Updated: May 28, 2010

Several Spanish Women III: "The train ride"

The three women were anxious to catch their train. The two younger women, Pilar and Eulalia, were quite good friends, saw each other every day, went shopping for the daily meals together, meeting on the corner of Segre and Virgili, Pilar with the large family (her mother, her six children, two boys and four girls and her husband) dragged a wheeled shopping cart and carried over her shoulder a canvas bag with the words "Pan del día" painted in red upon it; Eulalia had only her husband and a dull-witted daughter (who only last month had had an operation to remove a tumor behind her right ear, the scar looked as if someone had tried to remove the ear, the problems with this daughter seemed to multiply themselves each year passing) needed only her wicker shopping basket and her bread bag which she had made herself of blue fabric and which said nothing at all. The oldest of the three women was a neighbor lady who lived alone, her husband having passed away some sixteen years earlier, who never traveled alone, with whom the younger women often stopped and shared gossip; today they had invited her to go with them on their day-trip to Barcelona.

Because the trip was only for the day, they all had agreed to meet quite early at the train station to catch the 7.41 into the city. Their pueblo was only twenty-five kilometers from the city, yet only every third train stopped to pick up passengers and the next would then be at 11.01 and catching that one would mean they would lose half the day. They were anxious, even though all were present at 7.30, because they rarely had opportunity like this to travel out of their small world. Pilar's sister had agreed to pick the children up from school; Eulalia's daughter would be cared for by her father who had a free day from work; the oldest woman, Mercedes, had no one to worry about or to worry about her, except perhaps the alley cat she left scraps for outside her garden door, but she would be, they all would be, back by night fall and so puss would not go hungry even for one day.

They heard a whistle in the not so distant distance and stood up in the cool August morning, the sun not yet having warmed the bench they had been sitting upon, and moved to the edge of the platform, eagerness shining in their faces, anticipation causing their eyes to mist over as if remembering a friend who had died so many years ago.

The compartment they chose had only two girls and one young man in

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>