The Tale of the Old Shrew & The Non-Priority Seat
I have a tendency to ramble, and time tonight is short, so I’ll get right to the point in case you don’t want to read much further: the odds of meeting the same stranger on a train in Osaka, even if the two of you knock off work at roughly the same time and get on the same train each day, are very long.
The odds of meeting the same rude, arrogant old crone twice in a row and have a carbon-copy reenactment of the same situation in such an outwardly polite society are even longer. However, I am here now, typing in a not entirely unpleasant haze of flu medication and medicinal sake, to tell you that it’s certainly possible – and that whatever the odds are of such an encounter happening a third time, if it does I plan to fight fire with fire and leave the good manners of a gentleman at the doors. Age may well come before beauty, and to my mind, women should be placed before men, but rudeness is exclusive to neither age nor gender and must be stamped out, vigilante style, no matter how cruel it may seem.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure that in Osaka, a city of 18 million people, the train system would be bigger and more regular than one the size of Melbourne's. The subway trains are roughly twice as long as Melbourne daytime trains, and come every five minutes regardless of time of day or destination. The carriages contain no seats, excluding some narrow benches along the walls. Trains are merely full during the ‘slack’ periods – eleven o’clock till four, and very late at night – at all other times people are packed in like dominoes with the large, open atriums around the doors stuffed with humans like clothes into a bursting suitcase, in any way they can fit.
To ensure this daily exodus is completed without too many murders, brawls and violent assaults, there is one hard-and-fast rule to train travel: Shut the Fuck Up, mind your business and if a 90yo woman with a hare lip and a peg leg stares hard at you for long enough, maybe consider giving up your six inches of bench space to her. Almost everyone obeys the first law – I haven’t heard a mobile ringtone on a train since I got here three months ago, let alone a raised voice. It’s also an easy one to conform to seeing as the majority of the seated fall into, or feign, deep slumber (a) to avoid the gaze of the hare-lipped grandma and (b) to keep themselves from reaching out to touch the man with the folded origami hair to see if it is real, and not a fatigue-induced hallucination.
But the second law, the peg-leg priority seat one, is sort of muttered as an afterthought with a distracted eye and an uncomfortable shuffling of feet. Sure, if the train is half full and there’s a bit of elbowroom to play with, your average salaryman in a non-walking-dead area might shuffle up a bit for granny and her walking frame, and maybe even bestow an indulgent nod in her direction. Come 9.30pm, though, after a shitty 12hr day, in the obscene stench and heat of an overpacked train, anyone under the age of 80 not wheeling a dialysis machine aboard is going have to hang off a hand strap, if they can reach, like the rest of us. A seat, apparently, is much too precious a possession to merely give away to the first wrinkly who hangs about like a bad smell.
Seeing as the consensus seems to sway against the existence of altruism, then I admit performing a selfless act of kindness does make me feel kind of nice. I try to remember to open doors for ladies, I usually treat the elders with whom I am not happily familiar with a certain amount of deference. So what? I don’t know why I do it. I guess it makes me feel good that someone else feels good. A warm glow all round, chaps.
Politeness and civility is the one stick I cling to in the flood of cynicism, doubt and fatalism that has swamped me since adulthood arrived, grinning crookedly, with pack of cigarettes in its breast pocket and bottle in its hand. And so, I give up my (non-priority) seat on the train, a little red-faced and expecting nothing more than a brief wink of gratitude from the sore-legged granny to warm my own aching shanks for the duration of my 50-minute ride to work through the inky drear of the subway.
My guide for what constitutes a ‘priority passenger' (ie, anyone who needs a seat more than me) has been modified as the severity of my commute has made itself felt. At first, a ‘priority’ was anyone older than me by a decade or so. Then, anyone a decade older with some form of disability, ie, gammy leg, bung eye, large bags of shopping etc. As the pain bit deeper into my lower back during my second month, a decade older with a serious injury, ie spear through the leg, hatchet in the base of the skull. After my first chiropractic appointment and the rationalization that I, too, had paid way more than $100 for my monthly ticket – any female with hatchet, spear, wheelchair and bags of shopping.
In practice, though, the comparative comfort of my bench is stolen away when confronted by the tired, lined face of a middle-aged woman – especially in Japan, where if she was returning from work, would be on her way home to cook dinner, clean the house, and attend to her husband’s every wish. Their faces strike a sympathetic chord and I’m up and down like a fiddler’s elbow.
So it was, in the depths of flu-induced doze last week, I focused my eyes on a pair of wooden-style sandals under socked feet. My eyes traveled upwards, taking in an expensive silk kimono and luxuriant fur cloak and then to the face of a woman in her late fifties, her face set in an admirable mask against the apparent pain of her footwear. I stood automatically, pushing aside the crowd leaning over me and earning scowls from the two salarymen beside me on the seat, both in their 30s and seemingly hale of limb, to allow the lady to sit. During the transition from me, sitting and nursing the nausea of flu to me standing, fighting back the vomit, our eyes met. In mine were, I hoped, a mixture of sympathy for the misfortune of her shoes and a manful brushing-aside of my own clear need for a seat. Which was located, as I say, in a free-for-all, non-priority area. In hers I saw not blankness, but irritation. Irritation! As if at my insolence for not shooting out of my seat immediately, like I had smouldering stake of bamboo shoved up my arse the very moment she first set foot upon the subway platform, bodily defended her realm from the bloodthirsty mob, then ushered her to her rightful spot on the bench using aircraft light batons.
No, she did not thank me. I didn't expect it, nor want it. But a ghost of a smile? A slight nod of the head, if only to acknowledge the transaction? No. My reward for chivalry when her countrymen would offer her none was at at worst contempt, and at best, serene indifference.
For the remaining 40 minutes of my trip, I studied the woman, looking for clues. I was baffled. Being ignored I could accept, but being coolly dismissed like a serf that spilled the brandy at supper? Why did she (a) naturally assume the foreigner would give away his paid-for, non-priority seat to a non-priority passenger when there was about 30 other seats, occupied by healthy Japanese men all bound by the glorious national code of respect for the elderly, who could have done the same thing? And (b), was it so hard – assuming the foreign dog has no rights at all and this sort of thing is expected – to at least acknowledge something, some form of social interaction, had taken place?
I vowed henceforth to follow my friend Shane’s system for giving up a seat.
‘They have to be pretty fucking old,’ he said.
Today, I met her again. Me, dozing, keeping half an eye out for the 90yo matriarch with the club foot, but satisfied enough by the unmoving, solid slab of bodies around me to allow a little sleep. I go 30 stops, enough pain to allow a bit of zone-out. Then, the Kimono Woman materializes out of fucking nowhere. Same kimono, same dead animal cloak, same timber plank shoes – obviously the perfect choice for the post-restauraunt-shift commute. A bag, change of comfortable shoes for the walk home, all new-fangled concepts, obviously. On reflex, I rise, awkwardly gathering book, iPod and bag, pressing against the wall of businessmen and she slips artfully into the nice warm gap I’d won fair and square from the pallid prick with the coinslot eyes and sharp elbows and the slumbering, overweight programmer with the helpless lines on his face.
I bowed to her.
I fucking bowed! I mean, it wasn't a huge, elaborate sweeping-the-peacock-feather-hat-off-the-head bow; more a polite, encouraging nod. Hello, yes? Despite my surgical mask to protect my fellow commuters from my contagious germs, I knew she knew me. Same round-eye, same kind gesture. And she fucking shafted me. Cold, stone blanked me: no nod of thanks or hint of a smile from that wintry face, just look a like I kicked her in the shins on her way down onto my comfy seat.
She settled herself down like a hen on a nest. Her lips were stretched like a tarp in a gale covering big, protrubent teeth and were cut at the steely end with strict red lipstick. I tried for a while to decide which fish mouth they reminded me of, toyed with the parrotfish, and settled on the piranha.
Her hair was coiffed in a fetid little swirl of red-dyed tragedy like a blob of ice cream on a tombstone. Neat lips pursed over those snaggle teeth she was trying so hard to hide, hands folded in her lap like she was sitting on the Emperor's throne. The rudeness was so breathtaking I chuckled, but it turned into a cough, and after the mild fit had subsided, she waited the precise amount of time to convey the full power of the insult, opened her prim little purse and produced a surgery mask, which she wearily clipped onto her face. I had coughed, I was wearing a mask AND had my hand over my mouth. But apparently you can’t be too careful with whitey germs, especially those from a softhearted sucker that gives you their seat for the second time in a row, when not a single other person would.
I spent the rest of the trip fondly imagining violent mishaps as she stepped off the train, refreshed from her comfortable sleep. Her wooden thong catching in the gap between the train and the platform – her terrified screams and the seas of people surging past indifferently... then a crow swooping down and flapping about with its beak clacking trying to rip the spray of baby’s breath from her sad primped pile of hair. As the end of the line drew near, I toyed with the idea of bending down and saying, close into her ear ‘you're welcome'.
But of course, I didn’t. Even if I never see the insolent preening gorgon again, I won’t ever forget her articulation of the atmosphere that lies just a scratch away from the surface of the passengers’ faces on the subway trains of Osaka. Foreigner, we do not suffer you easily. I don’t regret giving up my seat for someone older than me. That hasn’t changed.
But thanks to you, lady, the age limit just got upped. At least until I’ve remembered that not all people in your age group are bigoted old witches like you.
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