The power of strangers

"I confess that I was completely bewildered by the conversation which I had with this extraordinary man. I am afraid that I am even yet hardly in a state to report it in such a way that it will affect others as it did me. Very likely the effect was largely due to the candour and friendliness with which an entire stranger laid himself open to."

 

In this way, Thomas Mann opens his short story "Disillusionment" - a chance meeting of two men in Venice and the confessions made by "the stranger" that all the main events in his life have led to feelings of disappointment, a sort of is-that-all there-is response to life, love, fire and death.  If you haven't read the story, listen to the incomparable Peggy Lee singing her version of it. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCRZZC-DH7M

 

In the 1970s I was working as a teacher near Venice and, to support my low income, I took on a number of private lessons in my apartment. These students included a prominent local lawyer, doctors, architects, a number of housewives and a Carabinieri colonel who had been in Sicily fighting the Mafia. I don't recall their level of English. I do recall the downward glances, the awkward silences, the moist eyes that accompanied a number of confessions made to me in my role of "stranger," that is, the person  who had no context in which to digest these stories of accidental death by shooting, broken marriages, affairs, doubts about career choices, drug-addled children, medical conditions and sexual preferences.  The confessor knew he or she would probably never see me again after the lessons. Consequently, they were comfortable and would, literally, tell me anything.  It was not only my apartment in which fleeting relationships ended in confessions.  

 

Back in those days, flights to the UK were out of my pocket-range and the only real option was the train from Venice to London. The train presented huge advantages to the writer and traveller. The greatest advantage was that clattering through the darkness was accompanied by wine-fueled talk with fellow travellers. These transitory encounters resulted in stories and revelations that sat nicely with the possibility of adventure or even danger that was out of sight and round the next unseen-but-felt curve. 

 

It seems to me that we could all benefit from the ephemeral social bonds offered by the stranger. How many marriages and friendships might have been saved by talking through problems with passing acquaintances? What right do we have to expect our partners to fulfil every possible function of a relationship or to offer objective advice?  

 

Let me ask you a question. What would you confess to were you in a position to talk freely and openly with a stranger you would never meet again?