The box

They met in the wagon. It wasn't very crowded, but the moment their eyes met she felt she wanted to stay next to him. They'd be neighbors with a good conversation to share along ride. It would take more than four hours to get to the big city from their small village lost in the mountains. Luckily this time, she felt those hours wouldn't be polite chit-chat about the weather. After exchanging hellos, pleasantries and names he was still a bit shy and she asked first what took him to the city that day.
He seemed lost for a few seconds and seemed to struggle putting some order in his ideas. She turned her eyes to the landscape in the window while waiting for an answer. He closed his eyes to focus; he knew the answer very well, but it was not easy to put it into words.

It was more than four years since he had last been in this train.
His aunt had lived in the big city and he used to visit every other Saturday. She had a small house there but spent the better part of that year in the hospital, with breathing problems. The doctors could not figure out what it was. All tests did not reveal anything wrong, but sometimes she'd suffocate in her sleep. To make it through the night she had to stay tied to artificial lungs.
She used to spend her days tied to the television, her only endeavours outside were during his visits. They'd go in the courtyard enjoying the warm days of spring and sharing stories. It wasn't easy at first, they didn't know each other very well. Her brother, the young man's brother, disappeared when he was only a few months old. And his mother kept him away from her. She took him to meet her when he was five. But the visit brought back painful memories and the following visits got shorter and shorter and more and more far apart. It was hard for the mother to carry on, but she did because the aunt was the boy's only relative beside her; if something were to happen to her, she'd be his only family.
When mother went away the visits stopped. When he grew up he did not know how to reach her, she had moved to the big city and left no address.

She wrote him from the hospital. It was their first contact in twenty years. He was saddened to see her old and sick but also eager to finally find out more about the father that was never mentioned at home. His only memories of him were a few pictures he found hidden in a drawer under other papers. But now he'd come every fortnight to visit her and hear more stories about his dad.

And as hard to believe as it was, quite a story it was. His father had been working for the government. Officially, he was a diplomat. But in reality he was almost like a spy, going on secret missions to remote parts of the world. He couldn't talk much about his work and what he did in his travels. But beside the few bits he could reveal he'd tell his sister stories about the places he'd been to and the things he's seen. And now she'd tell the same stories to her nephew. Together they'd spend days following his footsteps in mysterious capitals on far-away continents, hoping he'd still be alive somewhere in this wide world and imagining what he'd look like when he comes back home.

But he did not return and time was passing by. The warm days of spring and then summer turned to gray autumn, and as the stories were nearing the end so was the aunt. It was getting increasingly difficult for her to speak the entire day even though the days were much shorter now. She'd need to stay more and more connected to the breathing apparatus. The days spend together turned to mere hours and then stopped completely. She was no longer in a state to receive visitors. Shortly afterwards, the young man received a second letter from the hospital, but the hand-writing was different.
He went there one last time to sort the last things remaining after her. There wasn't much left, her house and things were sold to pay for the hospital bills and cremation. He was given the few money left, along with a letter and a small box, both addressed to him. In that letter the aunt said goodbye and explained the box was from his father and it would tell his last story.

He spent long hours until he could open it, hoping it would be an answer to his father's mysterious disappearance. He did open it eventually and it overwhelmed the aunt's stories and even his vivid imagination...

His mind slowly returned to the present and the train, still not sure how to put all this in words that would make sense to his companion. He led a lonely life since that moment and never talked about it to anyone. The four years that had passed since still didn't make it easier for him to talk.
Indeed, that small box gave him the answer to his life-long questions about his father, but took away everything else. It isolated him even further from society; shortly after that, he parted ways with his small social circle and banal life and moved to that small village in the mountains, avoiding any human contact.
It was as hard as ever to share his secret with a stranger. How could he expect anyone to understand his story, particularly the unexpected ending? He knew every little detail and it was still hard for him to believe, this was the most exciting and dramatic thing that has ever happened to him. But in a way, he felt excited to share. It was his first chance in many years to get back among other people, to no longer be alone with this burden. At last, he decided: it was now or never. He opened eyes slowly and muttered "I'm going there to buy a drill for ceramic tiles". Then, as he took out a book from his waistcoat he continued just for himself: "Nosy bitch, don't you have games on your phone or something?"