It’s a cold Friday night in February and I’ve decided to spend the evening on my own at the cinema.
On the metro I find myself sitting opposite a man who is obviously homeless. He has an old battered shopping trolley with a canvas bag hooked over the handles. Leaning forwards, elbows on knees, he is eating his dinner in the warmth and comfort of the train. I suspect that, with no place to call home, the ride from Cerny Most to Zlicin provides a much needed hour of relief from the cold of winter evening.
Dinner is a bread roll and a tub of salad dip – some kind of fish and mayonnaise thing. His hands are black with dirt, his stubby fingernails are even blacker and though his hands don’t look arthritic in that knobbly, painful way, he doesn’t seem to be able to make much of a grip. His fingers are short and thick and unbending and I imagine that they feel like your fingers do when your hands are really, really cold. Both the tub and the bread roll are balanced in his curled left palm as he scoops out the contents with a grubby looking fork that he holds in his right hand. Every now and again he balances the fork in the tub so he can grab the bread and take a bite. I can’t really see his face, as he is looking down concentrating on his food, but I can tell that he is chewing and chewing, making the most of every mouthful.
Inevitably, the fork over-balances and the tub tips from his hand, landing on the floor underneath the seat. We both see it happening, but his stiff hands can’t catch it in time. My heart sinks for him. If that’s his food for the night, gone, he’ll stay hungry. He pauses for a minute, then bends down and reaches under the seat and picks up the tub. I am relieved; it landed the right way up, most of the contents still in its package. He shakes his head and starts to eat again, but he’s looking down between his legs to the spot where the tub fell. I can’t see what he’s looking at because the shopping trolley is set between me and him. I can’t see but I know, from the way he keeps looking and keeps shaking his head, what is going to happen next. I hold my breath, try to restrain a cringe – as he reaches down with his fork and scoops up a blob of fishy mayonnaise from the train floor and pops it into his mouth. He continues carefully chewing and chewing then bends down once more to recover the last of the spilled food.
At Florenc, the train comes to a jerking halt and this time the bread rolls from his open palm across the stretch of floor between us. Instinctively, I move to pick it up for him but even before my muscles respond to the thought, I envision a potential awkward moment in which he politely accepts the bread but is unwilling to eat it because I’ve touched it or because it is dirty. In the same moment I recognise the absurdity of this idea, considering that his hands are black with grime and he’s just eaten mayonnaise scraped from the floor. He reaches the bread before I do anyway, shaking his head again, perhaps at the injustice or the inconvenience of not having a dining table to eat at.
The fork handle, which is made of a delicately turned hardwood, is now covered in mayonnaise, making his dirty hands sticky. He carefully wipes them on his calves. His trousers are so shiny with dirt that it is impossible to tell what colour or fabric they once were. He takes a second forkful and again wipes his hands on his trousers. After the third time he stops to inspect the fork and appears to make the connection between his sticky fingers and the mayonnaise covered handle. He carefully scrapes off the mayonnaise from the handle with his stiff black fingers and then, very slowly, licks them clean. He finishes his bread roll, opens the grubby canvas bag and fishes around inside, retrieving more bread. Before he closes the bag, I see what looks like two grey box files in there and I wonder what he keeps in them.
I’ve been sitting watching him for ten minutes now, while people get on and off at each stop. I notice those who head for the empty seat to the left of the man, look at him and change their mind, choosing to stand instead. To his right is a middle-aged couple. The husband is carrying a casserole dish wrapped in a carrier bag which I guess is their contribution to this evening’s dinner party. They are well-dressed, sophisticated and look awkward and uncomfortable at having found themselves sitting next to this dirty, dishevelled stranger. Still, they are too polite to move seats. I wonder if they are thinking, even briefly, of offering the contents of the casserole dish to this person less fortunate than themselves. I imagine myself giving him a big, hot bowl of stew or soup; my favourite comfort foods on cold evenings. I wish I had a pack of baby wipes with me so I could offer him one to clean the mayonnaise from his hands.
I’m trying not to stare, but I’m fascinated. He hasn’t once looked up and I suppose that he has developed a mechanism to cut out the stares and the sickened looks he must attract all the time. I look around at the other people on the train and they are either pretending they haven’t seen him or are looking at him with revulsion etched onto their faces. I think they are being mean. I think ‘there but for the grace of God….’
I wonder how I would be if I was homeless. I’m certain I would want to find some public toilets somewhere with soap and warm water and clean towels. I imagine the feeling of ingrained grime and wring my hands in an unconscious mime of washing.
I try to imagine what unlucky twist of fate could bring me so low as to eat food scraped from the floor of a metro train, but I can’t. I’m pretty certain that everything that makes me ‘me’ - my upbringing, my genetic inheritance, the social environment I was born into, destined me to become something similar to this woman with newly-cut hair, wrapped in a warm coat on her way to a cinema in Prague city centre. Certainly I made decisions that brought me here, but I’m also sure I’m not capable of making decisions that would lead me to this same place with dirty hands and nowhere to sleep tonight. He probably isn’t much older than me.
The film was good. I’m walking out of the cinema into the golden lights of Obecni Dum. I love it here, Namesti Republiky, at night. It has all the glitz and glamour and excitement that I associate with city life. Entering the Metro reminds me of the homeless man and I wonder where he is now, while I’m heading home to my warm flat and a cold beer.
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