I studied the painting – I was trying to comprehend the immensity of its socioeconomic implications through its simple portrayal of a downtrodden family.  It was a brilliant idea.  My eyes darted around the painting, scrutinizing its minute details.  And then suddenly, I saw it – the mysterious eyes of the grandmother.  My eyes locked onto hers and were fixated – I couldn’t look away.  What could she tell me?  Was there anything I needed to know?  As I continued to gaze into her eyes, I felt I was falling into a trance.  I felt something tugging at me from the painting.  At first, I resisted.  I fought and I fought, but the pull was just too strong.  I acquiesced and was transported into the painting, and I felt my present form wither away as I took on a new persona – a nineteenth-century French peasant.

Can you hear it?  No, not the screeching of the rails.  No, not the incessant chatter of nonsense.  No, not the crying children.  Can you hear it?  Can you hear the silent cries of everyone in this carriage?  The excruciating anguish of being ripped away from our livelihoods?  The racing heartbeats that fail to anticipate what awaits us in Paris?  Everyone has heard the rumors.  Have you?  No?  Well, let me tell you.

The few who came back to the village told us what to expect.  Life is completely unrecognizable, they say.  There is no wheat to plant, no time to sleep, no air to breathe.  Nothing is green – everything is a dull, depressing gray.  Filth runs through the streets – rats and fleas as numerous as every stalk of wheat we’d ever seen.  The fog there is a permanent fixture – and it is not an ordinary morning mist.  It is a heavy, darker haze – a fog that chokes you and makes your eyes water.  People work 20 hours a day, six days a week – but not planting or harvesting.  They work mindless and physically demanding jobs in factories where they file in every day at dawn and do the same repetitive task for years.  Children start working in factories from the day they’re able to aptly use their arms to the day they take their last breath.  Families live in small, cramped quarters – it is not unheard of to hear about three families sharing a single room.  Many dozens of families have perished in the flames of neglect.  Strange illnesses we’ve never had back home take the lives of hundreds of people every day – some say it’s a curse from God for leaving the fields.  But what else are we to do?

Cheaper grain comes in from elsewhere – no matter how hard we worked, we were not able to eke out a living.  And yet, instead of helping us, the damn government still wanted us to surrender our crops to finance their ridiculous wars and to pack off our children to fight for the “Empire!”  Well, to hell with the Empire!  Why can’t the bourgeoisie just use the money they roll around in like filthy pigs?  Why can’t they send their own sons to God-knows-where to die for France?  It’s their fault we have to go live in hell!  If only Robespierre were here – he’d put the guillotine to good use!  But alas, we live in a time in which the rich get richer and we get poorer – and they say it’s only getting worse.  There is nothing we can do.

I remember how wonderfully carefree my existence was when I was a young boy.  Every spring I helped  my papa plant wheat and every autumn I helped him harvest it.  I used to peel potatoes for supper every evening with my little brother – we’d compete and try to outdo each other.  We ended up accidentally cutting ourselves sometimes, but it was never anything serious, and we always had a lot of fun.  On Sunday mornings we would all go to mass – albeit none of us understood what the priest said since he only gave the mass in Latin.  But we went anyway because that’s what we were supposed to do and we would never want to go against the current.  We were good people.

Sunday afternoons were the best.  After mass, my friends and I would chase each other down by the creek and we would explore the woods.  We would look for frogs and snakes.  I used to take the frogs I found home with me to raise them – but they never lasted very long.  I never took the snakes home, because I was afraid of them, but I still got a thrill out of finding them with my friends.  We’d also look for wild blackberries to eat – and then we’d giggle at each other’s black tongues and we’d all pretend to be snakes and we would hiss at other animals.

But those days are long gone.  Now hell is about to set in.  I’m scared.  Mama and grandmama still haven’t heard back from my papa, who left to Paris a year ago.  I hope he’s okay.  My little brother and I miss papa.  I know he misses us too.  And I know he wants to meet our baby sister – his only daughter.  Wait, I think we’re almost there.  The train is slowing down and I see –

My daydream was promptly interrupted by a security guard who informed me that the museum would be closing in ten minutes. I resumed my actual form and took one last hard look at the painting.  “Almost all of us are also in the third-class carriage,” I said, addressing the grandmother, sotto voce.  “There is no longer a second-class carriage.  There is no middle.  There are only those in the front and those in the back.  And we’re in the back.”