B2-39 · The Last Train to Brno

The Last Train to Brno

The 22:46 to Brno was late, of course. Klára sat on a cold bench at Prague's main station with her backpack between her feet and her phone at four percent. She had just failed her driving test for the second time, and she had spent the afternoon walking around the city so that she would not have to tell anyone.

When the train finally arrived, the carriage was almost empty. She chose a compartment with only one passenger: an old man in a gray coat who was holding a paper bag of apricots on his knees as carefully as if it had been a bird.

"Is this seat free?" she asked.

"Every seat is free after ten o'clock," he said, and smiled. "That is the only advantage of being old and traveling late."

For a while, neither of them spoke. The lights of the suburbs slid past the window and then disappeared, and there was only the dark and their two reflections in the glass. The old man offered her an apricot. She was about to refuse, but she was hungry, so she took one.

"From my garden," he said. "The last ones this year. I'm taking them to my granddaughter. She doesn't know I'm coming."

"A surprise?"

"In a way." He turned an apricot slowly in his fingers. "We haven't spoken for two years. A stupid argument. I said something I shouldn't have said, and she said something she shouldn't have said, and then we were both too proud to call. You know how it is."

Klára did know. She thought of her father, who had promised to teach her to drive and had instead moved to Ostrava with a woman she had met exactly once. She hadn't answered his last three messages.

"What if she doesn't want to see you?" she asked, and immediately regretted it.

But the old man only nodded. "Then she will tell me, and I will go home, and at least I will know. For two years I have been waiting for the perfect moment. Yesterday I realized that at my age, the perfect moment is a train ticket and a bag of apricots."

Somewhere after Kolín, the conductor came, checked their tickets and left. The old man fell asleep with his head against the window. Klára looked at her phone. Three percent. She opened her messages, found her father's name and looked at it for a long time.

I failed my driving test again, she typed. Then she deleted it. Then she typed it again and added: Maybe you could still teach me. If you have time.

Her finger hovered over the screen. Only when the train braked hard at Havlíčkův Brod did she press "send" – partly by accident, she would later tell herself. The phone vibrated once and died.

When the train reached Brno, it was almost one in the morning. The old man woke up, looked out of the window and suddenly seemed very small.

"Would you like me to walk with you?" Klára asked. She surprised herself.

He hesitated, then shook his head. "No. Some journeys you have to finish yourself." He pressed the last two apricots into her hand. "For courage," he said. "Yours, not mine."

She watched him walk slowly along the platform, holding the paper bag, until he turned the corner and was gone. She never learned his name, or whether his granddaughter opened the door.

At home, she plugged in her phone and waited for it to turn on. There was one new message. It was only two words long, but she read it five times.

Saturday? Dad.