In the underground
No. 5, February 2003
For some reason, there is a myth among our people about the absolute uniqueness of the domestic metro. The most wonderful, the most convenient, and the most beautiful. And in the West – only a monstrous beast, dirt and stench. Does this myth correspond to reality?
Not wanting to throw stones at my own (o)city, I must note that even “they” have something we can learn from, despite all the excesses of developed capitalism. But the point is not even where it is better or worse. The example of another is both sweet and pleasant to us.
First of all, I want to categorically declare my love for this mode of transport, examples of which I was lucky to observe in five countries, including my native one (here I will only talk about three). The metro is like a bath: you dive in – and you are gone, immersed and forgotten: you sit, reading a book. Trams, trolleybuses, buses, and minibus vans have not gone far from the capricious stagecoach of the cowboy era. And although they are not threatened by hordes of Comanches, new problems have arisen: traffic jams, pushing and shoving, theft inside the car, spasmodic schedules worsened by frequent bad weather “above.” All this is absent in the metro – just as any riffraff with red armbands is originally absent here.
However, a couple of years ago my friend conducted an experiment underground: he pretended to be a controller and demanded to show tickets. What started then! Many nervously rushed around, not understanding the joke; some cursed nervously, and some habitually prepared to run away…
And in Germany, they do not joke about such things: indeed, good fellows with handcuffs can come in and call the “fare dodger” to account. In the week I spent in Berlin two years ago, I saw them, no lie, once – and in the neighboring car. (And from whom, pray tell, did the little friend Moritz Blaitroy, a valiant German mafioso, run away – so much so that he even threw a bag of money to fate?) You know, it disciplines: you carry the cherished ticket in your breast pocket like a party card. By the way, it is convenient: you can pay for a day – the so-called Tageskarte, for half a day, for an hour, for two – starting from the time punched by the composting machine on the platform. You punch it yourself, the main thing is not to get confused by the mosaic of keys – the natives taught me.
Meanwhile, it was not always like this. In 1928, visiting the same Berlin, Ostap Vyshnya noted with amazement: “You go down the steps underground, take a ticket, electric trains run up – and ride wherever you want, even to the edge of Berlin for 20 pfennigs. You can… ride all day because no one checks your tickets there.” Today, a similar situation is characteristic of the Paris metro, where the fare is paid upon entry using a bluish card passed through the turnstile slot. There is something erotic in the composting process: the slot swallows the ticket, which pops out the other end in a fleeting diagonal… The passage is free, please!
True, abroad you will not find marble halls or mosaic chambers in places meant to serve spatial transit. Palaces are given other territories. However, Western metro is by no means alien to the element of the marvelous – it was about it that Cortázar composed his phantasmagorias, here young Luc Besson found oceans of passion (now rollers have come out – and are legal). And Remizov habitually saw devilry in Paris: “I hurry to the metro. To Opera, the car is empty. Then people come in – the last train. And I see, in the corner under the brake in the most uncomfortable place, ‘they themselves’ from the Magic Shop. And all the way quietly, only waving their tails in time with the wheels.”
I cannot boast of similar visions, but a touch of peculiarity fell to my share as well. For example, a group of elderly blacks dancing briskly in the middle of the car to hot melodies from a tape recorder they brought themselves. How did the spectators react? With loud, prolonged applause. How did the amateur performers react? Calmly got off at the next station, not waiting for anyone’s coins, because they danced not for profit. And on the neighboring line – the action takes place in Berlin – I noticed a pair of charming zombies: he, an albino, she, a long-haired diva-offended – both engrossed in reading Knut Hamsun’s “Hunger”… with Yaroshenko’s “Student” on the cover. As for Paris, newspapers are preferred there.
Western metro is not necessarily a haven of high beauty, but almost always a zone of undeniable freedom. Starting with the arrangement of seats: ours are like stove-benches, on which aunts of all kinds sit scattered like on window seats, all keenly watching those opposite. In Paris-Berlin, passengers sit not along but across the walls, in small portions of the human flow. Sit, isolate yourself, immerse yourself to the brim. In France, the chairs are folding, in Germany – ordinary. But decorated with all sorts of Matisse-like patterns: purple-crimson ribbon-butterflies on an equally delicate background. The glass, by the way, is shamelessly scratched with graffiti, but no one dares to touch what is lower. Finally – aesthetics!
Would you like – a portrait of a punk with a multicolored crest, which turned out to be a lizard? Or – the anthracite arabesque of Laetitia Casta, who is all in fur – according to the fashion season? We recently got advertisements framing the tracks, earlier they decorated our escalators, hiding their ridiculous resemblance to the inside of a wooden barrel. And, of course, they do not define the appearance of the Ukrainian metro today. What will happen next – time will tell.
Freedom, which began in Europe on the barricades, continued in the metro. I cannot keep silent about one obvious advantage of the Western underground compared to ours: they spare others’ ears. How many times, going on business or just like that, your humble servant became a victim of shameless sound terror from hawkers offering everyone gathered their – necessarily “magnificent”! – goods, be it coloring books, batteries, or children’s balloons, or even flexible, snake-like ballpoint pens. Lord, but I want to read… My head is splitting from a hangover… What’s the point: listen to the noisy speech, open your wallet. And it’s somehow shameful to cover your ears.
Paris: a grimy woman of Eastern nationality persistently pokes her grimy palm under my nose, quietly humming something. Leave me alone, old woman, I am in sorrow… Berlin: at the train stop, a languid bum coos. He rejects pfennigs with a proud gesture, agreeing only to Deutsche marks. I give one for diligence. In the car – not a sound, only the speaker quietly meows: “Ha-ak-she Ma-akt” (this is near Museum Island). In Paris, no one announces anything to anyone, nor appeals to mercy for “children, women, elderly citizens.” Sit and watch, don’t yawn.
By the way, to get off at the required station also requires some initiative. No one will simply open the doors for you – neither Gauls nor Teutons. You get up yourself, pull the lever (option: press the dark button). Cézanne (Paul), open up. It worked!..
The French metro, however, is similar to the Ukrainian one in layout principle – vertical. That is, one line above another, and the next one may go sideways. To transfer to some lines, you need to compost another ticket separately, but that is if you went the wrong way and it makes sense to return.
In Germany, several, sometimes up to five or six trains depart from one metro platform in different directions. Here the horizontal of the time factor triumphs. Lines do not so much intersect as overlay. The required number is linked to the hour and minute, not the boarding place. Made a mistake (it happened to me too) – the devil took you instead of Lichtenberg in the east to some empty steppe in the north of the city… Good heavens!
Therefore, the Berlin metro map resembles a coil of multi-core multicolored cable. But its general outlines resemble a credit card. Paris: a chaotic yet elegant tangle of 14 threads, above – like the tentacles of a languid spider sprawled on the two banks of the Seine. Kyiv: a slightly sloppy and cheerful knot of three cords. If you can for a minute imagine wandering among three pines, it is quite difficult – among three co… excuse me, lines.
Therefore, our boot-city is cozily trampled and also cheerful. Every city has its character and rights.Link
