A short story

In the few times I travelled to São Paulo, I always felt quite intimidated by the frenectic pace of those human swarms, the noise of countless lives coming across each other, the enormous buildings leaning over me. Walking by the streets among the busy workers felt like an impersonal, programmed action as I was just one more in the crowd. Almost everyone seemed to have so many things in their heads that I was terrified of accidentally bumping into one of them, awakening a beast from a deep and yet fragile state of self-immersion.

One day, I had to go to the city center and so I took the subway, which surprisingly was quite empty, sat next to the window and kept looking outside while we moved smoothly. After a few stations, a couple came in holding funny-looking box and a guitar case and I thought they would play a song, but instead they kept standing near the door talking quietly. I was still hoping they’d soon start performing so I continued observing, trying to send telepathic signals for them to cheer up that drowsy morning.

Then he began unzipping the case — I straightened myself up and stared even more intently— and she opened the box, which turned out to have a tambourine inside. Moments later, the cozy acoustic songs filled up the air and brightened the surroundings with joyful rhythms and lyrics. I kept admiring the performancers a bit more until they realized and that awkward half-second eye contact happened. Naturally, I looked away. Then closed my eyes for a second and went back to observing the landscape, but we had to dive into the underground shortly after. For some time, I tried fought my desire to glance at them again, although I knew I wouldn’t last long.

Eventually, I looked. And they smiled. Such wholehearted smiles I corresponded immediately, which is something I don’t usually do, or at least not so sincerely. I had to leave a few stations later, but listening to their music for the rest of the journey was amazingly soothing.

I like to think about this occasion as a brief moment of empathy between strangers in an overall indifferent environment, as an apparently effortless action by them that was the reason of a comforted heart for me. I might be just embellishing something that happens everyday and actually has no intention or meaning, but ever since that morning it’s had a special place in my mind.