Night Train to Lisbon

I am reading a fascinating book.* A respected college lecturer, expert in ancient languages, fluent in many tongues, reliable, trusted professional colleague of many years' standing is in crisis. One day he walks out of his old life, leaves his briefcase full of books on the table of the lecture room and disappears. At that moment he exchanges certainties for uncertainties, security for adventure, respect and adulation for humble anonymity. Why?

A fleeting encounter with a Portuguese woman on a bridge in Bern, a chance introduction to a book of wisdom in a language he now needs to learn open up new possibilities. In the space of a few life-changing hours he is thrust into a new culture, a new language and a new mindset and finds himself on a bewildering quest for those parts of his being that have never been realised. What might I have been if I had not followed this particular path in my youth? What could I have become if I had turned another way? Who would I have been if I could have seen my reflection in the eyes of a different set of peopl? Where did all those other abandoned parts of me go? The night train to Lisbon provides a time and a space for him to consider these questions.

Identity, such a fragile thing: such a precarious concept. Mundus imagines himself as others see him. Do they see what he sees? His students, his fellow academics... how do they see him? His wife, what does she see? "Am I boring?" he asks her. The Portuguese author he is now pursuing through the streets of Lisbon, because he is entranced by the wisdom of his book, describes a disturbing experience in his own life. Peering through the window of a department store, he finds his vision obstructed by his own reflection in the glass. As he gazes into the window at this representation of himself another man stands behind him, lighting up a cigarette and staring at the reflection of the man in front of him. The author is paralysed by the sudden thought 'what does he see?' How can he understand the disparity between the outer and the inner self. Who am I? Am I what I see or what others see? How reliable is what a man sees? Does he see reality or does he see a modified image, a reflection of his own self, his limited knowledge, his prejudices, his desires and dislikes in the object of his gaze? Does what he sees tell us something of the nature of the one whom he sees or only truths about the beholder? Reflections of reflections... concepts of being...

Life is not so fixed as it seems, perhaps, nor identity so sure. Maybe it does us all good sometimes to take the night train to Lisbon and re-examine our own possibilities.Perhaps we can recapture something that has been lost, take a new turn, experience something fresh and new. Who knows what we could become.

*  Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier