Spring. The final bell has rung. The schoolchildren are having their graduation ceremony. For some reason, I need to be there, so I am hanging around among them. A stranger among her own. The event is over, the students have finished socializing, and everyone heads for the school gates. It is getting dark. Behind us, the teachers are seeing us off. They are crying because the children are not yet ready for adult life, but already want to throw themselves into all sorts of excesses. I am merely an observer among them. Everyone is heading to the bus stop.
I walk with the crowd. The wind lifts me into the air and carries me like an umbrella, because I am wearing only a thin dress, whose skirt billows out like a huge bell. I control the wind with the power of my mind and fly to the bus stop. I choose the sunny side of the street because I love the sun. The city is unfamiliar to me, but I have been to this stop before. Only once. That time, I was in this city for a day, happened to come to this stop, and it was evening then too. I happened to get on a bus, and it happened to take me to the railway station. And there happened to be a train there to my hometown, which I boarded and took home.
So now I know that a bus from this stop goes to the railway station, from where I can get home. But I don't know the number of the bus that goes to the station. The shadows grow longer, and it gets colder outside. I deliberately brought a warm coat and the timetable because I knew this would happen, but I left everything at the school. If I don't leave now, at least for somewhere, I don't know where I'll spend the night in an unfamiliar city, without a bag or belongings, in the cold. A bus pulls up to the stop, and I get on, thinking that perhaps I will have to ride around in circles, even until tomorrow, but at least I will be warm and won't freeze. The bus is packed, and it is impossible to tell through the window where we are going. And what difference does it make? I still don't know where to go. I only know that I need the railway station. I ask the young man standing nearby which bus number I need to take to make it to the station. A train is leaving from there for home, to my hometown, soon. He says something indistinctly; I ask again, but still can't understand him. My anxiety and inner tension grow, as does my sense of helplessness and awareness of it. I try to describe the place I need—the station—in words. I left the timetable and the exact names at school:
“I need something like that railway station,” I say, pointing out the window. “Like this one, only mine—the one the train to my city leaves from.”
The young man says:
“Then get off. This is yours.”
“Oh, that's the one!”
Time is running out. If I don't find my train and get on it, I won't leave until the next day.
Signs... Direction boards... I try to read them, but can't make anything out; nothing makes sense..... A white train stands under steam, sleek and modern. Its route number is 1035. I remember the number because my house number is 35, and the neighbor's cow has a tag like that in its ear.
People, bustle. White trains. Buses. Platforms. Stops. A universal transport hub where city buses and long-distance trains intersect. It is drizzling. Everything is white and gray.
A ticket window. Cashiers.
“Which one goes to my city?” I ask.
“Over there,” the cashier nods.
“Where? I don't understand!” I think, Why are they all so hard to understand here?
“Over there,” the cashier nods again, more kindly this time, so that I understand exactly where.
“I see it! I understand! Wait, don't dispatch the train.”
But the cashier's hand is already pressing the train's start button. How can this be?!
“Wait, don't send it!” I shout.
I thought she was on my side, that she would understand how badly I needed to get home. Otherwise I would freeze in a strange city without a map or belongings.....
Then the cashier says:
“The driver has canceled the departure. Run!”
I run, but while I am trying to figure out where to enter, all the doors close right in front of my nose and the train starts moving.
“Stop! You were supposed to wait for me! The driver...”
But the train is already moving. I grab the handle of the nearest little window. There is nowhere to put my foot. There is some kind of recess; it will do. This is my train, after all. I can get home. I realize I will have to travel the entire way outside in the cold, holding on to the little-window handles, and grip them even more tightly.
“Actually, you can go inside,” the cashier girl says calmly from behind me.
The little window I am clinging to is narrow, but even this invitation is a blessing to me. I will squeeze through it at any cost!
Clinging to the side, I yank at one little window, then another. The train picks up speed, but remains right there.
I see a door. A door is surely wider than a little window. I pull it toward me, but the paneling cracks and comes off, and I nearly fall backward with a piece of it in my hand. I want to get home so badly that, miraculously keeping my foot in the recess, I pull at a second door, then a third, and... Finally I enter the vestibule, right behind the driver. Phew..... The last carriage, the last door...... Or the first.....?!
“Hi, guys, I'm going to ride with you.”
Four men are sitting on the vestibule floor around a disassembled device resembling a chainsaw. They smile.
“Why don't you sit down? There's a little green chair over there. Are you planning to stand the whole way?!” one of them says. (God, how kind they are, I think.) But I am already happy just to be inside, with solid ground under my feet. This is my train and it is going home—why worry about standing? I'll stand... I'm inside, not outside....
I turn to close the three doors behind me, but they have to be closed from the outside. There is no handle on the inside. The train has gathered speed, but I see the ticket window and the cashier in the same place again.
“Will you close it?” I ask the cashier girl.
“I will. Oh, what am I going to do with you?!” she grumbles.
She slowly leaves the booth and stretches a honey blanket over the door so that it will stick shut and not open, saying sternly:
“Now tell me, your (classroom/crossing/line/step) guardian angel: didn’t God reveal Himself in your day today?”
She looks into my eyes for a long time, calling for an honest answer.
I can't remember the word that described what kind of angel she was, but I understood that she was not personally protecting me, but those who were traveling along the routes served by her trains and buses....
Inside me there is frantic speed, although the train has not yet started, but is already rushing forward.
“He did,” I mumble, and begin to realize it. I remember the evening: how I made it onto that bus, how I got off exactly at my station, how I made it onto this train home, and how I managed to enter the vestibule.
“He did!” I proclaim loudly and confidently. “I was thinking about Him every minute!” I add softly and tenderly, smiling as tears well up in my eyes......
“Well, off you go,” says the cashier, who is also an underground guardian angel, waving goodbye and firmly closing the honey-covered door from the outside.... The train really begins to move.... We travel forward, and I am in the vestibule of the first carriage, directly behind the driver. The ticket booth is left behind... I am going home, reflecting on how God revealed Himself.....