Gnostics on a Train

It’s no fun being on the outside. I may scoff at the lodge brother’s sword and cocked hat, but deep down I’m jealous of him, because, deep down, like everybody else I’m a snob. I often imagine myself on a train where a man comes up to me, grasps my hand in a uniquely significant way, and makes a remark which sounds casual to everybody in the car but me. “I’m going east,” he says. (Or sometimes he says, “I’m going west.” It varies.) We look at one another narrowly, and then, as I murmur, “I am, too,” I am suddenly flooded with a warm comradely feeling, with a sense of belonging to a special group which everybody in the train would like to belong to but can’t. In fact, their inability to join our society gives me particular pleasure. But, then, just as we are about to begin a carefully coded conversation, the happy scene vanishes and I find myself back in the cold, indifferent world where I am just like everybody else. I suppose the difficulty is that I have never been quite able to dream up a suitable code.

Not long ago, I took a real train trip, hoping against hope that something would happen. And something did. Not that anybody came uptometo tell me what direction he was traveling in. It worked rather the other way around. At the end of the coach, in two seats facing each other, sat four people, three young men and a young woman. They were talking loudly and animatedly, and my heart skipped a beat when, as I listened, I realized that they were using a code. With the thought that fate had surely brought me to the verge of a special fulfillment, I got out of my seat and walked to the back of the coach until I stood looking down at them.

MO

About the Author

Marvin R. O’Connell

Featured Tags

It’s no fun being on the outside. I may scoff at the lodge brother’s sword and cocked hat, but deep down I’m jealous of him, because, deep down, like everybody else I’m a snob. I often imagine myself on a train where a man comes up to me, grasps my hand in a uniquely significant way, and makes a remark which sounds casual to everybody in the car but me. “I’m going east,” he says. (Or sometimes he says, “I’m going west.” It varies.) We look at one another narrowly, and then, as I murmur, “I am, too,” I am suddenly flooded with a warm comradely feeling, with a sense of belonging to a special group which everybody in the train would like to belong to but can’t. In fact, their inability to join our society gives me particular pleasure. But, then, just as we are about to begin a carefully coded conversation, the happy scene vanishes and I find myself back in the cold, indifferent world where I am just like everybody else. I suppose the difficulty is that I have never been quite able to dream up a suitable code.

Not long ago, I took a real train trip, hoping against hope that something would happen. And something did. Not that anybody came uptometo tell me what direction he was traveling in. It worked rather the other way around. At the end of the coach, in two seats facing each other, sat four people, three young men and a young woman. They were talking loudly and animatedly, and my heart skipped a beat when, as I listened, I realized that they were using a code. With the thought that fate had surely brought me to the verge of a special fulfillment, I got out of my seat and walked to the back of the coach until I stood looking down at them.