i was on the train and the man beside me started talking to me - not conversation, you understand, but a soft, monotonous stream of - i'm not sure what - he was almost chanting, without waiting for a response, and yet it was all somehow definitely directed at me, he was all the time looking at me intently and smiling - in a solicitous way. i was slightly irritated at being interrupted and kept from my book, but there was also slight fear – if i asked him to leave me alone, or moved away, would it be unspeakably rude of me? he had begun with hello and i had acknowledged him with by turning to him and smiling, so that there was, willy-nilly, some kind of social contract between us, and i could not break it now. now i was afraid to look up - that is - to look at the picture we made, reflected in the glass opposite, because i knew what a ridiculous picture we did make: he, turned towards me, leaning forward, murmuring at me as if a conversation was going on in earnest; my face half-tilted towards him, acknowledging the link between us, but all that time sitting there stiffly, unanswering, frozen with an open book still in hand, half-hypnotised, the wedding guest who could not choose but hear. there were several more stations to go and almost all of them were on my bus route – i could say this is my stop good bye and make a civil and inconspicuous escape, get out and get on a bus instead. on the other hand I thought if he were to follow me off the train i’d rather have a home to head to immediately. i did not want to find myself in a "situation." perhaps he were not quite well in the mind - but then again it's just this unthinking complacency of those of us who call ourselves normal that allows us to automatically attribute such deviance in others from what might be called conventional behaviour (and all else that we cannot understand) to their being not-right-in-the-head. and even if it were true in some cases it is still important that more than mere pity - but civility and ordinary human respect were accorded them. ( and suddenly remembering several springbreaks ago, in new york, i was walking from a bus stop back to addy's, and a man - who had leaned against a wall and leered at me, called out for the time - only it felt more like heckling, and i was afraid of him and started walking faster, whereupon he came swaggering after me, yelling, hey, i asked you a question, lady! so i stopped and turned around and looked at my watch and said very calmly, it’s 20 past 10. and he said, quite civilly, thank you, and went away down the street in the opposite direction. and i was left feeling as if i had committed a real breach of courtesy, and wondering whether, perhaps, if I had answered him at first, perhaps he would have gone away, but instead i let my prejudices get ahead of me - and let myself be afraid of him.) so that i kept sitting there, listening to the strange man i didn't want to listen to, answering him with slight nods when his voice questioned me, unable to move, half-afraid, and half-puzzled, until he got off the train before me.