I believe this to be true: there is a magic in strangers. These mysterious beings have far more potential than the flesh-and-blood people we actually know. That dark-haired man at the airport picking through the NASCAR monthlies at the news vendor could be the next in line for the Swedish throne. Who knows? Or he could be the money man for Al Quaeda on his way to New York to assemble the funding needed for the definitive conquest of western Europe. Or maybe a high school social studies teacher from St. Louis come east for a quick visit with his mother who has been hounding him since last August to come see her. I know which identity I would prefer and which one is most likely but, most importantly, not which one is true.
People we don't know before we encounter them as part of a known group don't really qualify as strangers because right off the bat we know something about them. We may only know that they are members of the Baptist Curling and Garden Club, or friends with our old classmate, Adelaide, or take courses in renaissance poetry, but this is enough to assure us that this new untested person is probably not an ax murderer or a Columbian drug lord, since such people would not be present in these groups. A true card-carrying stranger is one about whom we know absolutely nothing beyond what our eyes tell us.
Any one of the plodding throng in the airport concourse could be a saint or a genius, a monster or a villain, while people who are actually known to us, with few exceptions, are merely humdrum. They may be comforting or abrasive, considerate or clever or dull as ditch water, they may complain or burp or slurp their soup, they may laugh at the wrong things and tell us we are wonderful, but for all their faults and virtues they lack the immense possibility of strangers.
I was jostling down a wide crowded sidewalk in New York once, scanning the oncoming throng for any signs of psycopaths, cutpurses, or gang rapists, which are known to prevail in such places, when I spotted a woman through the mobs. She had unremarkable clothes and no discernible make-up and was the most beautiful human being I had ever seen. She was tall and graceful and had a soft brown face that could launch a thousand ships. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I wanted to stop her and stare, but she saw me gawking, lowered her eyes and was gone. Now, in reality, she might well have had the voice of Marje Simpson, robbed poor boxes, and beat her children, but she will live forever in my mind as a perfect being, a goddess.
Then there was the young man at the Calgary airport. He seemed to be part of a group of university students headed for the slopes. The girls giggled and pushed to impress the boys with their light-hearted wit, while the boys romped and pushed and pretended they didn’t notice the girls. Meanwhile, my young man just stood waiting for the plane, neither a part of nor apart from the others. He possessed a massive dignity and self-possession that most politicians can only dream of. I imagine him transfixing crowds with speeches of great conviction and wisdom, stepping up to the podium to accept his Nobel prize, moving confidently through the board rooms of the nation solving intractable problems and settling labor disputes. Actually he probably sells pre-owned cars during the day and relaxes in his undershirt with a brew in the evening, but I'll never know.
Once I was travelling by train through Europe. The trip included a stopover somewhere and my understanding was that I would have to move from the car I was on to another car on the same train when we stopped since the car I was in was going somewhere else. Either that or I would have to change trains entirely. I wasn't exactly sure.
The carriage was one of those quaint arrangements favored by foreigners where you got to sit in a compartment with up to 7 other people with their bundles and boxes threatening to spring from the overhead rack into the startled faces of the other occupants. We were just about to pull out, and we were all casting optimistic glances at one another, thinking that we might get away with fully occupied rather than jam packed when the door slid open and a large businessman stepped in and stared at a too-small small gap among the passengers. Hoping that he would go somewhere else, the people next to this gap stood their ground until he headed right for them, kicking aside baskets and umbrellas on the floor. Then he rearranged the overhead rack to make room for his suitcase and sat.
Now we were moving, everybody had made themselves as comfortable as possible in the suddenly diminished space. After a minute or so the Interloper burrowed unto his jacket and came up with a big black cigar about the size, shape, and aroma of a dog turd, which he lit, with much puffing and cloud formation. In our tiny crowded compartment with all the windows closed. Happily I was sitting right next to one of the windows, and opened it as far as it would go, while some of the others glared daggers at the completely oblivious monster of depravity. The unruffled Interloper announced that he was sensitive to draughts and demanded that it be closed, ignoring the daggers, and so we rattled our way through rolling fields, picturesque woodlands and distant mountains, trying not to inhale.
At last we approached our destination. People started gathering up their coats and packages. I groped out my ticket to see if I could make sense of the instructions and laid plans to find an anglophone somewhere to tell me where the next train, should it not be this one, left from.
As I was gathering up my luggage the Interloper said something in German, of which I understand 3 words on a good day. I made a Gallic sort of “Dunno, sorry” gesture and edged toward the door. Then he snatched my ticket and was out the door and onto the platform. I picked up the pace and set off after him wondering if I should scream for help, hit him with my purse, grab him by the collar and what? It soon became clear that he was headed for a ticket window with a huge line. He stormed up to the front of the line, shoving aside all the people who had been standing there since lunch time and shoved my ticket through the bars barking commands or noisy explanations or something. It is really hard to find a suitable reaction when you have not the least faint clue what is happening so I just stood among the hostile customers clutching my luggage with the alert intelligent expression of a squirrel wrapped up in an anaconda.
Soon the fracas at the ticket window ended and my guy came out with a different ticket. He had discovered that as long as he had my ticket I would follow him anywhere like an imprinted duckling, so off we went at a great rate of knots past ticket windows, food kiosks, many platforms, finally turning down one of them until there was a conductor. Now he said a lot of things in German, he pointed to me, to the ticket, to the train, and then he was gone. The conductor helped me get my luggage onto the train, found me a seat, and in about 10 seconds, this new train had left the station. This final leg of my trip was long enough to reflect upon this bizarre interlude. I realized at last that this appalling loud, aggressive man with his disgusting cigar and complete disregard for his fellow passengers must have got a glimpse of my ticket with its final destination and, being familiar with this route, had known that there was a tight connection and for no reason beyond pure untainted kindness had done what would have taken me the rest of the week to do to get me on the right train headed in the right direction with seconds to spare.
What it comes down to is that a stranger is a sort of larval form, since it seems true that the transition from unknown to known necessarily involves some sort of transformation. My savior on the train morphed from mystery to brute in a matter of seconds. But then underwent a backflip and there he was applying for sainthood within a very short time. Most people make the transition invisibly. They start out essentially invisible, and slowly assume shape and name and then there they are, unique and startling, and we wonder why we can’t remember our first meeting.
My husband was the flip side of this. I noticed him immediately, tall, dark and handsome. This aura clung to him right up until we were married. This somehow triggered the transformation, which continued through a couple of years of squabbling and whining, and now, years later, all I can remember is the intestinal gas.
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