METRO

29/04/2018 12:01

métro

February 2012

When you start the conquest of a city, the first big obstacle that you have to overcome – you, virginal stranger – has 5 letters: metro …

A violent draft drives me to the glazed doors dancing in the contact of thousands of hands pushing it. First door, second door, and the wind is still pursuing me. I give my 2 hrvinas saying « odin » (one) to the cashier. She is wearing a particularly aerial blond perm, which holds no secrets to women in here. No need to precise that I would like a metro ticket. And she throws me a small and blue token through the opening of her office. It reminds me of the tokens for carrousels in funfairs of my childhood. I put this « transportation ticket » in the machine, I push the turnstile and I am ready to go to the underground depths of Kyiv. Descent time: 3 minutes and 16 seconds. Never-ending escalators… It is better not to be in a rush. Quietly, everyone is waiting during this infernal descent. Two old ladies are chatting and disturb a hurry guy – and a brave one – who tries to manage the slope. In the other side, I see briefly a teenager, sitting in the stairs: he is watching a movie on a small laptop, waiting patiently during the ascent. Another time, while going back up, I saw cleaning women in front of me, wiping conscientiously the already shining banister with a rag. I am thinking of the metro in Paris … Its smell of piss, its ridiculous escalators – when there are escalators … - its banisters always dirty that I always delicately grasp when I am wearing high-heels.

I read Wikipedia: the metro in Kyiv is one of the deepest ever built. Who knows why? « Most of the metro stations in the Ex-USSR are real palaces », and Kyiv followed the rule.

Finally, I've arrived, 100 meters underground. I check sign boards: platform on the right? Or platform on the left? I decipher the name of a metro station that I know; it will be the platform on the right. Click, click, click, my heels are clicking the sparkling marble floor of the metro station. And this sound finds an echo in and out of tune chorus made by plenty of Ukrainians' heels – most of them higher and thinner than mine. In the other side of the rail, there are heavy letters in bronze fixed on the wall composing the name of metro stations. Sometimes written in Ukrainian, sometimes written in Russian. An unexpected gust of wind and a distant rumble that comes closer announce the imminent arrival of the train. My coat is flying, my hairs too, and the old blue train opens its doors in front of me. A line of people appears: we let people go out, and then push to get in. A man reading a newspaper and a girl stand up to let a seat to the two old ladies of the escalators. Violently, the train starts, straggling standing passengers, announces the next stop, grumbles loudly, violently brakes, then stops again. A flow of people goes out, another one goes in, they push me without caution. I stand next to the doors. A woman pushes me (again) asking if I get off at the next stop. Another woman, a big one, finds a way between a grandmother and her grandson. Everybody has to be ready for the next stop, to leap out from the train. Without any choice, I get off the train when it stops.

A dense crowd, in a hurry, is darkening the central hall of the metro station to rush to the escalators. Click, click, click, the high-heels are dancing, shaking in and out round-shouldered people who are slowly and painfully moving: they don’t have to rush anymore. The purring of the escalators invites us to ride it. The 100 meters ascent can start. I do my shopping list mentally. A modest sound of violins wakes me up. I cross a loudspeaker: they put the « Viennese waltz » mix tape. I guess there are only two mix tapes in the metro: Viennese waltz and Andalusian guitar. Well, those are the nicknames I made for them. I start dreaming that suddenly all the passengers leave their drowsiness and start dancing with this invisible orchestra. Another gust of wind forces me to button up my coat. I leave the carrousel, I push the heavy doors slamming at the pace of a distant sound of violins. And finally, I get out of the metro. Click, click, click.

Claire Counilh