Le Cadeau

by Patricia Silva

     It's 8:34 a.m. and I'm on the elevated platform, third car from the front, eyeing my Mondaine watch every other sixty seconds. Every minute that passes stiffens and widens that elasticity between transportation and punctuality. Are there riders on the N train who are ever punctual? An enviable virtue requiring Machiavellian compulsion. Mondaine was designed in Zurich and continues to be manufactured in Switzerland, where punctuality is a way of life. Everyone is on time. Unless you are a guest at a dinner party and arrive a customary 15 minutes late: le cadeau, as it implies a gift of time to your hosts. Looking up from the red hand on my cherished Mondaine, I wonder how to possibly convince my neurotic boss that my tardiness is actually a gift. Finally, the front of the N train curves around the bend, as the sun temporarily passes through a thick garland of clouds. Commuters group around the train doors, where they have learned to expect the doors to open. There's something simultaneously efficient and sad about this movement. Not only is it an empty movement, it is an empty movement multiplied by the number of participants. A hollow repetition without a proper name, tardiness its nearest substitute.

     Ten minutes later, Queens Plaza. I find myself between two passengers who have the most palpable hostility towards each other. Something must have happened before they were both holding onto the same pole, before they each had to make room for my hand while they strategically tried to top each other by claiming the highest place on the pole. The metal subway poles are more than merely prime real estate for germs and viruses, they are also a ladder for the ego to climb. Especially between antagonistic strangers. Why is a young woman with matching Cosa Bella undergarments crammed into a packed subway car, with no choice but to stand between two raging men at 8:47 in the morning? They are eyeing each other on and off. The impish green-eyed middle-aged business man to my right, nods in disapproval every chance their eyes meet. The preppy man who is wearing Ralph Lauren Polo and smells disturbingly of Scope mouthwash makes annoyed sighs and grunts in dismissal of the passenger facing him. An unavoidable tension in this equation, feels more like an inverted fraction with my body standing in for the multiplication sign between two factors and an outcome. Predictably, the men don't exchange words. The expletives take active form in their postures and glares, they dare not speak and insist on a silent attack. Rage simmers inside them as the train pulls into 59th street and for a  moment they are each distracted by the wrestling exit strategies of other passengers. When we start moving again, so do their faces. Their eyes look for the weakness in the other. Venom. My undergarments are red, the seconds hand on my Mondaine is red, and their rage is red. Suddenly, it feels like I am in Hell, a loop of red anger and aggression without resolution. When I arrive at my desk, there are two messages (pulsing red light) from my boss who does not acknowledge it but expresses a casual disdain towards my absence. When you work for an internet start-up, time has a distinct lack of flow. It flees and flickers. Like dog years, "internet time" has its own relative measurement. Each day is composed of compressed tasks and responsibilities, all created for maximum "keeping up." 

     Eight-thirty p.m. at 34th Street. Without having to rush towards an open seat, I choose carefully where to spend the next thirty minutes and pull a book out of my black Longchamp tote. It's instinctively very New York to read a book on the subway while keeping one's ears completely tuned to surroundings. New York is sensory overload. Energy in the streets, the winks of neon signs, the mere pace of the capitalist "rat race"…it all spills over. The mind is like a puddle, where this energy accumulates and evaporates. Barely one page into tonight's reading session and that familiar sound becomes closer and fuller from the next car. A melodious outpour swirls between the acid screeching of the train's turning. That voice, in a deep, accented English: "Good evening ladies and gentleman, your donation is greatly appreciated". He begins a languid Piaf tune that melts my muscle memory of sitting at a desk all day. I no longer feel like I am sitting down, I feel as though my body, now with room and air around me, has an ability to respond to the acoustics in the train car, a less lonely and far more invigorated train car. His arrival unexpected, his movements unapologetically conquer attention, and for approximately 15 minutes, the train car is animated. Pacified, ringing soul-full.  

     Eventually, I developed a habit of tipping the accordion player. As soon as I heard him approaching, I would immediately take out a piece of paper and write a quick thank you (sometimes; a confession), fold a one dollar bill into the paper and discreetly put it in his small square leather pouch which he wore diagonally across his chest, resting above his hip. For years, I did this, even without recognizing some of the songs he played, and privately frustrated when the train was too crowded for my reach to thank him as he passed. Saved in my tote for the next time, each note was eventually delivered. At most, I would see him every other day, and sometimes weeks would pass until I next saw him. It took a good year of commuting on the N to realize that he was in fact blind, instead of drunk. One evening, his wife trailed behind him, with a heavily worried expression as he played another lustrous melody. That night, he seemed rather drunk, and precariously unstoppable, playing the accordion with defiance and gusto on a bumpy train ride. The woman looked as though she was his wife, and guided him through the car, preventing him from falling over several times. She obviously cared very much. The next time that I saw him after this evening, he was making his way with a cane. 

     Only once did we acknowledge each other in the only way we could: as invisible strangers. Briefly. He entered the train car, hollowing out a path for music. My hands folded a bill into a piece of paper. When I dropped the paper into his purse, he stopped and turned in my direction. Neither one of us said anything, and I looked at one of his eyes, the one that was not completely closed, and we just stared, focal points crossing. A slight chill, pushed by embarrassment, made its way to the back of my neck. The white of his eye had bright red veins that end in a small circle near the brown iris. Just like the seconds hand in my watch, I thought. That space that flees. Not wasting any, he began a new tune and moved onto the next car. I haven't seen him in a very, very long time. Sometimes, when I take a seat on the N train, I think about him and wonder if I am late. Am I late for another performance, or are these the 15 I am given to prepare another thought?

     Patricia Silva is a photographer from Lisbon, now living in Astoria, Queens. She held a photography show in California in 2005. This essay was formerly titled, "The Accordionist."