Extra Fare to Mostar

For twenty-two years I have been punching tickets on the line from Sarajevo to Mostar, and in that time I have seen more love stories than all the women in my building have seen in all their TV series put together. Most of them begin in summer, when tourists with backpacks board the train in Sarajevo and photograph everything except the station, and they end on the platform in Mostar with a kiss and an exchange of numbers that nobody ever calls. This one of mine began in October, in the second car, over a single seat, and nobody in it had a backpack.

He got on in Sarajevo and got off in Jablanica. He worked at the power plant, in maintenance, carried a thermos that remembered the old country, and every morning did the crossword from the newspaper, in pencil, without an eraser. His name was Mirzet; I learned that from his monthly pass. She got on in Sarajevo and rode to the end, to Mostar, where she was restoring stone facades on Kujundžiluk with some company. She had a wool cap, hands cracked from lime, and always mandarins in her bag. Her name was Zana. That too from her monthly pass. My job has its advantages.

They both wanted the same place: the window seat on the river side, in the second car, first row behind the door. The first week, whoever came first got it. Mirzet started arriving twenty minutes before departure. Zana started arriving half an hour before. Then he brought coffee from the machine at the station and left it on the seat like a towel on a beach, and she carefully moved the coffee to the little table and sat down. They both asked me to decide. I said the ticket came without a reservation, ladies and gentlemen, and went off to the third car so they would not see my face.

They made peace on their own, somewhere around Tarčin, on the second Monday. I heard only the end. He sits by the window as far as Jablanica, she from Jablanica on. Pero, the engineer, when I told him about it over coffee in Mostar, said the man was a fool, because he had just handed the woman the whole canyon. From Jablanica to Mostar is the most beautiful part of the line: Grabovica, Drežnica, one tunnel after another, and the Neretva far below, green as if someone had painted it. Mirzet had never seen it from the train. What he got of the line was Bradina, the tunnel and the lake near Konjic, which is not nothing, but it is not the canyon either. Pero said fool. I said that in my line of work that is often the same thing as being in love.

In the afternoon everything repeated in reverse. Zana would get on in Mostar and sit in his seat, and he would get on in Jablanica, tired, with a hard hat clipped to his bag, and sit across from her. And she would tell him the canyon. Not like a tour guide, but like someone bringing news from a village he had never been to. "Today by Grabovica the water was the color of a mineral water bottle." "Today at Drežnica the fog stood halfway up the hill, and above it the sun, as if someone were holding a lid on it." "Today I saw a trout. I'm lying, I didn't, but the water was so clear I could have." He would listen and nod. He never said he would come and see. I walked by with my punch and slowed down.

In January snow fell on Ivan Sedlo, and the train stopped in front of the tunnel for an hour and ten minutes. People called home, grumbled and ate sandwiches. Mirzet opened his thermos, Zana peeled mandarins, and they gave me a cup too, because I was standing beside them as if I were checking tickets I had already checked. They talked about everything: about stone that must never be cleaned with sand under pressure, about turbines that sound different when the water is high, about how to make a good burek and who in Sarajevo lies about making one. Only about themselves they did not talk. Three months, and neither of them had asked for the other's phone number. Pero and I placed a bet on how long it would take. I said by my birthday in March. Pero said never.

In May Zana stopped coming. The first day Mirzet sat in his seat as far as Jablanica and stared at the crossword without filling in a single letter. The third day he asked Pero on the platform whether something had happened on the line. The seventh day he sat across the aisle, as if the window seat were no longer his. The eighth day he asked me. He asked the way men ask about a woman, as if he were interested in the timetable: whether there had perhaps been some change among the passengers for Mostar.

I had carried the envelope in the pocket of my uniform for eight days. Zana had given it to me on her last morning, on the platform in Mostar, and said: for the man with the crossword, if he asks. If he doesn't ask, throw it away. When I asked her why she did not give it to him herself, she said she had waited seven months for him to ask for her number, and now she was not going to ask him. Because of a deadline, her company had rented rooms in Mostar for its workers for the last month, and she no longer commuted. I did not throw the envelope away, but I did not hand it over either. I waited for him to ask. In my job I have learned that a man who does not ask does not need a letter either. I gave it to him near Konjic.

He opened it right away, without hiding it from me, which was wise, because I would have seen anyway. Inside were one sentence and a phone number. I know the sentence by heart, because, I confess, I read it before he did, over coffee in Mostar, eight days earlier: You have never seen Drežnica. Mirzet looked at the paper for a long time. Then he took out his phone and made a call, but not to her. He called his boss at the power plant and said he would not be coming in today, that he had a fever. He did not have a fever. He had a ticket to Jablanica.

When we passed Jablanica, he came up to me with his wallet in his hand and asked for the extra fare to Mostar. I wrote out his ticket slowly, in better handwriting than usual, and said to him: finally. He did not ask what I meant by finally. He sat in Zana's seat, by the window, and for the first time saw what she had been telling him about for seven months. I watched him from the door of the car. By Grabovica the water was green. At Drežnica there was no fog. Mirzet was looking out the window, but I could tell from his face that he was not looking at the canyon, he was checking it, like a man reading a letter that someone has already read aloud to him once.

What happened in Mostar, I do not know. I stay on the train; that is the rule of my trade. I only know that two people boarded the afternoon train from Mostar and quarreled over the same window seat, with the difference that each of them was trying to make the other sit in it. Nobody won the bet, neither Pero nor I, and we were both glad.

Now they travel on Saturdays, and not for work. They sit in the second car, first row behind the door, and every time they start over: who gets the window. When I reach them, they hand me their tickets and both look at me, as if I were finally going to decide. "The ticket comes without a reservation, ladies and gentlemen," I say, and punch them both. Then I go off to the third car so they will not see my face.