Chiune Sugihara gazes through the train window at the stone-grey platform, crowded with groups of people and only just visible through the haze of train smoke and rain. Hardly anyone is sitting on the platform’s benches of chipped wood with rusting wrought-iron legs; this is not a place to relax. He watches people bid farewell to their loved ones with swift, tight embraces that wrinkle jackets and dislodge hats – quickly readjusted by fastidious mothers. Everywhere, tears are lost among the drizzling raindrops.
As people board the train, Chiune thinks the scene could be an impressionist painting. The soupy mist and water smear the expressions of the people gathering at the train windows, continuing the farewell ritual with their loved ones and friends on the platform. Armed Soviet guards peer at faces as they patrol the station, eager to flex their authority after the USSR took over Lithuania some weeks back. The travellers are yearning for this town of Kaunas, even though they haven’t left yet, remnants of fresh soil tended the day before still wedged under their fingernails. He closes his eyes, overwhelmed by the emotions on display, feeling out of place.
Though he knows he stands out with his neat, crisp attire and his obvious Japanese heritage, what makes him feel other is the way he cannot imagine displaying such brazen, genuine, moving feelings.
‘They’re so grateful,’ he says to his wife, Yukiko, as he looks back out the window. He sits down, bows his head, tries to breathe. To anyone else in the carriage, he would simply look to be deep in thought, but his wife correctly reads it as distress. She reaches out, laying her gloved hand over his. He allows himself to reach up and touch her face before composing himself.
Across from him, their three young sons chat excitedly, full of adventure and curiosity about their destination. He smiles at them and glances back through the window to see a boy staring at him from the platform. He is a teenager, perhaps fourteen, filled with innocence, beaming with hope: not yet a man, but on the verge. The boy pushes his thick, dark hair away from his eyes as the wind plays havoc with it, and suddenly Chiune recognises him. Michael Margolin. Michael accompanied his father to the Japanese embassy only days earlier. The father – Chiune doesn’t remember the elder Margolin’s name – scolded Michael several times for flicking his hair away from his eyes, just like that. The reprimand had no real heat, Chiune remembers; it was simply the exasperated affection of a parent, to which he could relate.
Chiune locks eyes with Michael, gives him a small smile through the window, willing Michael to understand: Yes, I remember you. Michael’s face breaks into a smile of his own. He gestures at the window. Chiune opens it as the train begins to lumber away from the station…
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