Recursion

In Montreal, I lived next to the bus station.

When you’re broke, you’re never far from a bus station, a Dollarama, and a thousand mice.

There’s something universal about bus stations. Wherever you go there are these interstitial spaces and they all bleed into one another. But the Montreal Greyhound terminal still stands out in my memory, for whatever reason. In the basement, people slept in the hallways. And there was always someone masturbating into one of the urinals. And a steady stream of panhandlers made the rounds upstairs, telling their stories to queued commuters.

One evening I talked to a man, in his mid 40s, who didn’t speak a word of French. He’d clearly slept in his clothes but, otherwise, he didn’t look homeless. “Last night I was mugged, beaten up. They took all my money. I just need a few more bucks to afford a ticket back home. I’m from Toronto. I just want to go home.“

And he looked like he’d been beaten, too. His face was a mess of open wounds, dried blood, fresh bruises.

One eye was swollen shut.

I can’t remember if I said much to him. I think I gave him a few dollars. I’m sure I wouldn’t have had much spare cash in my pockets back in those days. He thanked me and moved along to the next weary passenger.

A few months later I saw this man again.

“I’m on my way home. Trying to get back to Toronto. I was mugged last night. They beat me up, took my money. I just need a few bucks for the ticket. I just want to go home.“

And, again, he looked like he’d been beaten. The gashes on his face were fresh. There were new bruises. New bloodstains on his shirt collar.

The man, his battered face, stayed with me for a while.

Did he get in a lot of bar fights and take to the bus station the morning after?

Was he throttling his face against a wall somewhere, in service of this story?

I came to think of this man like a character from one of Beckett’s plays. I imagined that each day he woke on the street, head throbbing, pulled himself out the gutter, and begged for enough money to buy his passage away from this place. And, each night, having just barely made enough for the ticket, he was beset upon by a gang of men who beat him, robbed him, and left him bleeding in the gutter, ready to begin the cycle anew.