When Heusinger von Waldegg designed the corridor/compartment layout of the European passenger railcar he managed to institute a legacy of perennial vexation against me qua American, qua New-Worlder. I board at Reggio di Calabria, having read on a park bench much of the afternoon. Seeking a seat, I find a new crop of glares behind each successive door. Compelling webs of resistance are stitched of the following: dialect, family ties, tenuous impromptu sleeping-arrangements against vinyl upholstery. I choose not to push through such thickets. The corridor is comfortable to me; its anonymity, its window-lined narrowness. But I block passage.