Sixty-one say yes and twenty-six do not answer

Previously: Olalla, ticket inspector on the 803, called the eighty-seven people who signed in 1998. Twenty-six numbers no longer exist. Fermín will open the doors on the 31st.

Three nights left. At 23:40, in the office of Ribadeña station, Casilda Trigo, the stationmaster, pushed the running sheets aside and laid the 1998 list on the table: two stapled sheets with eighty-seven names in blue ballpoint.

Olalla Berruezo, ticket inspector on the 803, had spent two nights calling from the office landline. From her mobile they hung up before her second sentence. She had learned to say it all straight through, in the same order: her name, the train, the date, and that she was not selling anything.

"Give me the number," said Casilda. "Sixty-one." "Sixty-one what?" "Sixty-one who are coming. The other twenty-six are the numbers that no longer exist."

Casilda uncapped a red marker and started marking. One circle per yes. It took less time than either of them expected.

"Nobody said no?" "Nobody. Three asked whether they had to pay anything. One asked whether he could bring his granddaughter."

On the list the names come with the village beside them and no address: Ermua del Río, Villaseca de la Vía, Corrales, Puente Alcor. Olalla had been noting what they told her in the margin, in smaller and smaller handwriting.

Amancio Robles, number 12, a retired blacksmith of eighty-four, said he has carried the ticket in his wallet since ninety-eight and that the edges have gone soft from taking it out so often. He added that they need not save him a seat, he travels standing.

Number 33, Elisa Prado, a vet, has lived in Alicante for twelve years. She said she leaves on the morning of the 30th and that it is eight hundred kilometres.

At number 51 a woman answered who was not on the list. It was the daughter. She said her father died in January, that she keeps the ticket in a frame on the sideboard, and asked whether it still counted. Olalla said yes before she had thought about it.

"That makes sixty-two," said Casilda. "That one I wrote down separately."

Puri Berruezo, a retired seamstress and Olalla's mother, came in with her coat on and an oilcloth notebook. She had made the calls to the four villages up the line because people pick up for her on the first ring.

"Corrales is eleven and all eleven are coming," she said. "The trouble is that at twelve minutes past midnight nobody can get them out of the house. They are talking about putting on two cars and doing two runs." "That is their business, mother." "That is my business. I am signature number four."

Casilda counted the red circles aloud, in tens, and when she finished she stood the marker upright on the table.

"Sixty-one. With eighty-seven signatures and twenty-eight years in between, sixty-one is a lot."

She got up and went to the ticket-window computer, the sales one, which had been on since seven in the morning without anyone touching it.

"I will make you the sixty-one tickets now and on the 31st there is nothing for anyone to argue about."

She typed the line code. The screen returned a two-line notice.

"Casilda." "Wait."

She tried it by train number. Then by origin station. Then by typing the date in by hand, slowly, just in case.

"It will not take the 31st." "What do you mean, it will not take it?"

Casilda turned the screen so Olalla could read it from the other side of the table.

"Sales on this line closed on the 15th, the same day they published the track removal. From here you cannot issue a ticket for the 803, not for the 31st, not for the 26th, not for the day after tomorrow. They came to take the hall machine away on the 18th and I signed the delivery note myself." "Then on the app." "On the app this line does not appear. It is off the map."

Olalla sat looking at the two stapled sheets and the sixty-one red circles.

"And the 1998 tickets?"

Casilda took a while to answer, because the answer struck her as ugly the moment she thought it.

"They are on a fare that was cancelled when the line closed. Collector's paper. If someone boards on the 31st with that and Serafín Mardones, the head of service, turns up, what is on board is sixty-one people with no valid ticket and an inspector who let them on. And the disciplinary file that reaches you that day already has your name written on it."

Outside, on platform two, the 803 began making its usual noise before pulling away. Fermín Aizpún, the driver, was waiting with the window down and his elbow out.

"Sixty-one tickets that cannot be printed," said Casilda, and laid her open hand on the two sheets. "You tell me what they board with."