The School of Loneliness

We arrived in that city long before dawn, my father, me, and the creaky brass-bound steamer trunk festooned with tattered labels: NARVA, MEYER LINE, HONG KONG FREIGHT.

He dragged it open-mouthed, with a look of annoyed amazement so characteristic I was reassured. Once I tried to move it myself. I could budge it an inch, or so I told myself. We hired a porter in faded-red epaulettes and a cap with a grotesquely bent vizor. I waited for my father s shame and the cuffed red pants to ignite each other; for the sigh, the excessive tip, another in a system of forced partings.