A arte de perder um comboio (The art of missing a train)
QECR C1443 palavras
I have missed exactly one train in my life that mattered, and I have been dining out on it ever since. The 07:42 to the coast left, as advertised, at 07:42. I arrived at 07:43, which under any humane system of justice ought to count as arriving. The train disagreed. It is one of the very few institutions in this country that do precisely what they promise, and I resent it deeply for choosing that particular morning to prove the point.
What follows is a short and violent period of grief. There is the sprint along the platform, performed for an audience of nobody, in which I explain to a departing rear window that I would have made it if physics had been arranged more generously. There is the standing still. There is the reading of the departures board three separate times, with the face of someone checking a lottery ticket that has already lost. And then the board says what it was always going to say: the next one is at 09:50, and the intervening two hours are mine.
This is the part nobody warns you about. Two hours is too much to waste and not nearly enough to go home, so it arrives like a gift I did not order and cannot send back. My first instinct is always to fill it. Out comes the laptop. I answer three emails that could comfortably have waited a decade. I design, in considerable detail, a system of alarms and safety margins that will guarantee this never happens again, and that I will have abandoned by Thursday afternoon.
Then, somewhere around the fortieth minute, the resistance gives way. I buy a coffee I do not need and drink it slowly, which in my case counts as a spiritual accomplishment. I watch a stranger argue with a vending machine and lose. I read an entire newspaper, including the weather at sea and a long column about tomatoes, and discover that I hold views on tomatoes. Nothing whatsoever happens. It is magnificent.
I would like to end with a lesson, since that is the shape these pieces are meant to take. The difficulty is that the lesson would have to be 'miss more trains', and I have tested it. Missing a train on purpose does not work at all; the hours stay stubbornly ordinary. They only open up when they are taken from you against your will, which makes the whole thing impossible to recommend and is, I suspect, the only reason it is worth anything. So I shall go on setting the alarms. And I shall go on, roughly twice a year, arriving at 07:43.
Palavras que talvez não conheças
- to dine out on somethingandar a contar sempre a mesma anedota
- as advertisedtal como estava anunciado
- to resentguardar rancor a
- griefluto, desgosto
- sprintcorrida curta a toda a velocidade
- departingque está a partir
- departures boardpainel das partidas
- interveningque fica pelo meio
- safety marginmargem de segurança
- to give wayceder, ir abaixo
- vending machinemáquina de venda automática
- to hold views onter opinião formada sobre
- stubbornlyteimosamente
Perguntas
Respondem-se com o texto à frente. Não é memória: é perceber.
What is ironic in the first paragraph?
The train did exactly what it had promised, and that is precisely the complaint — O comboio partiu às 07:42, «as advertised», ou seja, à tabela. A piada está na censura: guarda-se-lhe rancor por cumprir a palavra logo naquela manhã. Se o comboio tivesse partido com atraso, não haveria crónica.
The text makes it clear that running along the platform changed nothing.
True — Não o diz com essas palavras, mas deixa-o bem claro: a corrida faz-se «for an audience of nobody» e a explicação é dada a uma janela que já se afasta. Correr não serviu absolutamente de nada.
The system of alarms and safety margins will already have been abandoned by ___ afternoon.
Thursday — A piada está na data: o sistema que promete que isto não volte a acontecer ficará abandonado «by Thursday afternoon». A hipérbole não está no plano, mas no pouco que ele dura.
What is the point of the phrase 'three emails that could comfortably have waited a decade'?
The work was not urgent at all, and the exaggeration is the joke — «A decade» é uma hipérbole: ninguém acredita que uns emails esperem dez anos. O que se admite, sem o dizer, é que aquele trabalho não tinha pressa nenhuma e só servia para não ficar de braços cruzados.
Drinking a coffee slowly is jokingly presented as a personal achievement.
True — Textual: «which in my case counts as a spiritual accomplishment». É autoparódia: chamar «conquista espiritual» a beber um café devagar mede o pouco hábito que tem de não fazer nada.
Why is the lesson 'miss more trains' rejected at the end?
Because the two hours only work when they are imposed, so the advice cannot be followed — Di-lo e justifica-o: perder o comboio de propósito «does not work at all», porque as horas só se abrem quando te são tiradas «against your will». Por isso a crónica acaba por admitir que continuará a pôr alarmes.