A Meaningful Silenc

The train rocked gently and clattered on its track. They were headed toward the Bergamo airport, still many hours away, snaking through the mountains and lakes of southern Switzerland. Bergamo would be their last stop in Europe after a month long summer vacation they had embarked on with a group of friends and acquaintances from college, taking advantage of a student value package at a travel agency. They’d started the trip as friends of friends, having seen each other at parties but never sharing words beyond “what a nice place your friend has” or “do you know him,” referring to the drunk making a fool of himself, “what a train wreck”. Once they were in Europe they became closer, often finding each other at the trailing ends of their tour-guide led pack, exchanging sympathetic glances in response to insufferable/incomprehensible accents. This friendship developed quickly into something more. Over a bottle of cheap grocery store wine in Rome one night, while the others were out sightseeing at the spotlight lit cathedrals, their unspoken passions spilt over into physicality.

If you were to hear them talk, you would never expect the sort of affection they had for each other, they bickered often and occasionally bitterly, but there was a connection between them that made their words only a superficial dialogue over a wordless understanding. A main source of contention between them was on salad eating. He was constantly annoyed with how she drowned hers in absolutely unnecessary amounts of balsamic vinegar and olive oil. She would tease him about the way he compulsively tore of each piece of lettuce and tomato into bite sized fragments before he began to eat. Their constant dinnertime disagreements on this and topics from fashion to politics only tarnished over their powerful non-spoken relationship.

When it came time for the group to return, they opted to remain for a week by themselves. Few sentences were spoken then; there simply wasn’t the time or need for words. Now it was over, their week of blissful yet busy silence, and they were headed home, each to a different side of the continent.

As the train softly shook them side to side their eyes met, a glance that spoke of affection and need. A slight movement of his head further than the train induced swaying said enough. He arose and moved towards her.

Suddenly, where there should have been the train's soothing and rhythmic clacking there was an unendurable screech, a jolt, then an all too brief and yet frighteningly extended soaring motion before the noise that an only be suggested by *crunch*, then nothing.

When he came to, he found himself thrown clear from the train, lying about twenty feet up a steep hill rising from the shore of the lake below, where the body of the train was slowly sinking into water. He ran for it desperately and a small part of his mind felt surprised that there was no pain or injury after the accident. He flung himself into the water and pressed his eyes against the glass window, one of few in the compartment that had not been shattered. Much of the compartment's metal chassis was twisted and torn, in some places completely ripped away.

He saw her through the glass on the far side of the car and cried out wordlessly, pounding the flat of his hand against the window. He looked for a way into the compartment, a way to get to her and pull her to safety.

He then understood what she was doing still in the compartment, by then completely submerged in water. She was pulling at a mangled body, his body, trapped in the wreckage of two seats, grasping around its arms and shoulders. They were still firmly attached to his torso. The same could not be said for his head. Her movements became less and less frantic, then more methodical and jerky. As he watched his trunk come free from his legs he numbly fell away from the window, floating back to the shore. He stared unseeing at what he had been told long ago were stars.

When finally he looked around he saw she was lying on the bank next to him. Their eyes met. All that could be heard was the soft lapping of lakewater against the muddy shore; there was not even a breeze. A full moon rose over the waters, casting an unbroken column of light across the lake, illuminating the wreckage.

Neither said a word.