The dour peasant woman on the train (Florence-Rome, Italy)

The train from Florence to Rome was a late morning one.  Again, I had a window seat in a 6-seater compartment.  By my seat was a cup/can holder — the type with a hole in it to hold the cup/can, and which could be tilted up against the wall to let one in/out of one’s seat — with an opened can of cola sitting in it.  Next to me was a peasant woman, all weather-beaten and unsmiling.  As I approached my seat, she retrieved her cola, which had a tissue paper placed over it to keep off the dust.  I pulled the holder down after I sat down, and indicated to her that she could leave her can there for the rest of the time. 

An hour later, people went off to the restaurant car and came back with food.  A painful dig of her elbow in my upper arm and a gruff grunt made me look round to find her shoving a salami roll towards my face.

It was probably because of the earlier spontaneous gesture of kindness on my part that prompted her to offer me one of the two rolls she’d taken out of her bag.  She must’ve interpreted my not going to the restaurant car as my not being able to afford it.  I said, “No, grazie.”  More digging and grunting.  It was easier for me to accept, I felt, or I’d be nursing bruises for the rest of the week.

Both the salami and the roll turned out to be extremely chewy, and I’m a delicate eater at all times anyway, so it took me ages to get through it.  She’d wolfed hers down in half a second, and sat patiently waiting for me to finish mine, before reaching over to the cola can, wiping the mouth with the tissue, and offering it to me with more digging and grunting.  This time I managed to convince her with my “No, grazie,” and she then started to drink from it.  Absolutely impeccable manners: she wiped the mouth of the can first, and she offered it to me first, although I was much younger (at 27).  I was very touched.  Manners and breeding have nothing to do with class or formal education, as I always say.

Within a few minutes, I’d fallen asleep to the gentle rocking of the train.  I was woken up by another round of digging and grunting, and opened my eyes to find the train was stationary.  The time was 5pm.  The woman said, “Roma!  Roma!” I shot up because of the urgency in her voice, grabbed my bag and jumped off the train.  And not a moment too soon, for the train promptly left the station.  It’d been sitting there for a while then.  I saw on the destination plaque of the departing train: “Napoli”.  It was a Naples-bound train!  If the woman hadn’t woken me up, guessing correctly that it was Rome I wanted, or just hazarding a guess anyway, I’d have gone all the way to Naples, which was another five hours away, and I’d then miss my plane to London.  Another guardian angel in my life.

It occurred to me later that if the peasant woman was going to be on the train for another five hours, the salami roll she’d offered me was most likely her dinner.