What the Cab Window Shows in February

February on the second line is a lesson in darkness. I leave in it and I come back in it, and daylight happens somewhere behind my back, over the depot, while I am underground. By the fourth winter I stopped resenting this. The cab heater works if you are patient with it, which is a description of most good things.

The line runs above ground for part of its length, and that is where February actually shows itself: fences, low houses, a man shovelling his yard at six in the morning, a dog that has decided the snow is personal. I see that dog most mornings. He has never once looked up at the train.

The Ones Who Sleep

From the front cab I can see into the first car at every station. People sleep. A man in a grey coat sleeps standing, one hand through the strap, entirely at peace — and I carry him three stops past where he meant to go, and he will blame himself, not me. He is right to.

Half of Minsk sleeps for eleven minutes at a time, and I am the one who keeps the eleven minutes honest.

I am afraid of cold in a way I do not bother to defend. From October I wear wool next to the skin, and at the station where the doors open straight into the wind I have been known to pull my gloves back on between the platform and the tunnel. The passengers never see it. It is the only vanity I allow myself.

Braking Is the Whole Job

Anyone can make a train go. The work is stopping it in the right place, at the right second, without a jolt, so that a woman with a pram does not have to brace herself. There is a mark on the platform wall. The door handle should line up with it. Ten years, and I still look for it.

Precision is not a talent. It is what remains after you have done the boring thing four thousand times.

Going home I take the trolleybus, because I have had enough of tunnels. The flat is warm, the balcony is not, and the unfinished stool is exactly where I left it — the one appointment I keep badly and do not apologise for.

Tomorrow the alarm goes at 3:52. I will be up at 3:55. The tunnel will be there, dark and patient, and neither of us will be late; and I honestly would not know what to do with a life that let me sleep in.