Eventually I got up to use the bathroom. The carriage was full of sleeping bodies curled up under coats and blankets. Couples huddled together, their faces almost touching, and I saw a woman feeding a tiny baby, the only other person awake in the whole coach. It's not often, in the privileged West at least, that one finds oneself in a room full of sleepers. Hospitals, boarding schools, homeless shelters: none of them places I much frequented. There was something almost eerie about it, like those Henry Moore drawing of people sheltering in the stations of the London Underground during the Blitz. They lie in rows and could be sleeping, though their boneless immobility makes one wonder if the platform hasn't been turned into an impromptu mortuary.
