The Visit

“Our last remaining pleasure: watching trains go by.”

A group of the men from Guellen are gathered at the train station where Claire will soon arrive. Although one of the men has made a welcome banner, they are there to watch the trains. They know the names of each of the express trains that rush by, several of which used to stop in Guellen. Now, even most of the commuter trains don’t stop there. By no longer stopping, the transit system is recognizing that Guellen is not worth visiting, and it’s also limiting the townspeople’s options for getting out, acknowledging that they are too poor to travel. Watching trains seems like a rather dull pleasure, but for the townspeople, it equates to dreaming about participating in the world.

“The country’s booming and Guellen has the Sunshine Foundry. But Guellen goes bankrupt.”

The Bailiff, who is in town to repossess whatever he can find to settle the town’s debts, expresses the anomaly of Guellen’s poor fortune, finding it hard to believe that the town is really too poor to pay when the rest of the country is thriving. But no one, even the Mayor, seems to have any idea why their perfectly good foundry is dark and the townspeople unemployed. According to the Mayor, none of the citizens pay taxes.