Port Hazing

F was on a train he’d never caught before. He was scared. He worried he wouldn’t make it in time. In his pocket he carried a little piece of brown serviette with ‘Port Hazing’ written on it. That’s where he had to get off. Port Hazing, Port Hazing. He couldn’t miss it. He wouldn’t. Everything had happened so quickly. He had no idea what time it must be. The tunnel they were in seemed to have no ending. How lucky there weren’t many people on the train. But the air was heavy anyway. Heavy with the indistinguishable independent smells that make up that unmistakable human fragrance, eau d’existence. One minute he felt he was about to be sick and the next the lulling rattle of the wagon wheels soothed him into an almost pleasant dumbness. ‘Next stop:’, he was suddenly brought back to his nervous state of consciousness. ‘Port Hazing’. That was him! He stood up but couldn’t move any closer to the door than he was. A million other passengers had apparently come out of nowhere and were also standing in the wagon. He could barely turn to look around. Men, women, teenagers and children stood everywhere. Where was the door? He couldn’t tell anymore. The wagon rattled on in the darkness of the tunnel. How long had he been asleep? Had he been asleep? He didn’t remember closing his eyes or dreaming. Where had they all come from? The wagon was slowing down. That was Port Hazing. He had to get off. Move!, he thought. The mass of passengers standing between him and the door appeared to be moving. He saw people actually getting off and yet there were still thousands of legs and hundreds of backs preventing him from moving at all. ‘Bip, bip, bip’. Shit. The doors closed. The wheels turned. The people and the signs behind the glass moved away and disappeared. Black reigned again outside the wagon windows. His lower jaw still hanging wide open in disbelief, he sat back down. He had missed it. The only thing he’d had to do was get off at the right station and he’d failed. He put his hands over his face. How stupid. ‘Next stop:’, he heard again. F uncovered his face, listened attentively. ‘Port Hazing’. What? It couldn’t be. He must’ve heard it wrong. ‘Excuse me’, he said to the lady sitting in front of him, ‘what’s the next stop, please?’ ‘They’ve just announced it.’ Charming. ‘Yes, I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch that, I'm sorry.’ He smiled. ‘Port Hazing.’ ‘Thank you very much.’ Automatic reply. Wait. He let go an awkward laugh. ‘Pardon me...’ ‘Yes?’, she was obviously cross by then. ‘It’s just that... Wasn’t Port Hazing the stop we just passed?’ ‘Yeah, so?’ ‘Well then how can the next stop also be Port Hazing?’ ‘What do you mean? Because it is! See there? It says ‘Next stop: Port Hazing’, so it is!’ She put on her headphones and opened a big newspaper he hadn’t noticed she was carrying. Jeez! You're annoyed alright, but there's no need to put on a show! But now he was more confused than before. Puzzled, even. Who would design a train line with two stops called exactly the same? Who was to know where to get off? But most of all, why did no one else seem to care? The train slowed down and an impossible number of passengers got off, making no visible difference to the crowd standing in the hallway. F didn’t even try to get off this time. He sighed, thinking he’d wait until he had a real chance of getting off the train, even if that meant getting to the end of the line and having to travel back to either of the two Port Hazings he'd missed. He wondered how long it had taken to build the tunnel they were in. He wondered how they would manage to send in any help if there ever was an accident in that tunnel. It probably was one of the longest tunnels in the country. He tried to remember whether he was at the front or at the back of the train. It seemed so long ago that he’d got on it that he couldn’t recall. ‘Next stop:’ This pause kept getting longer and longer, he thought. ‘Port’. No. ‘Ha...’. This just can’t be happening again. ‘zing.’ I’ve got to get off this thing right now. He sprang to his feet and began to make his way through the sweaty crowd. He elbowed, slid, excused himself and pushed, and then he looked around to see where the door was. It hadn’t moved any nearer. He felt trapped. He tried again. He forced his way through the other passengers. He was frowned upon, insulted, hit, and when he felt the train was stopping, he emerged from that strange sea of bags and napes and saw he was still more than ten meters away from the doors. He was starting to get tired, he was starting to despair. A third Port Hazing was vanishing in front of him and he would never reach it. His forehead was cold with sweat, his back was burning and his face was getting redder by the minute. Port Hazing, his friends, that morning, the fight, the sunlight, all of his principles, the very notion of politeness, civilization as a whole... Everything was spiriling and he was in the eye of that powerful, bewildering hurricane. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get any nearer to the doors. And then, he just knew. It dawned on him that he’d never get to Port Hazing. That was it. There was nothing beyond that wagon. There was nothing he could do to overtake the other people. Those people looked and behaved like people when he looked at each of them separately but they felt and moved like compact sand dunes when he tried to pass them. He understood now. He was alone. Done. It wouldn’t matter if he crumbled to his knees or if he joined that obstinate crowd. Nothing mattered anymore. Time, place, purpose – they didn’t mean anything on that train. F himself didn't mean anything.