More than a hundred people may be crammed into a single car, so tightly that there is scarcely room to breathe, and no one ever smiles. Stone-faced they all stand there, clinging to overhead bars as the train rounds a curve, some of them grasping small children, some of them engrossed in the morning paper, others simply staring as they posessively clutch their briefcases or bookbags against their chests. The main concern is that WE GET WHERE WE ARE GOING, and beyond that there is no other care. Expression of all emotion is stifled, snuffed out, in the hot darkness of the underground train system where thousands of people meet every day, but never meet each other's eyes.

Ocasionaly, there comes an interruption in these joyless, silent rides. Occasionally, there comes a beggar, standing dirty and unshaven at one end of the car, crying out hoarsely: "A very pleasant afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I come here to seek the small favor of your help. I am in desperate need of money. I have not been able to find work, and I have four small children. My wife is very sick...."

And yet, even as this pitiful man pleads with us, we deliberately look away. We cannot hear, cannot see, cannot feel. As the beggar finishes his forlorn speech and makes his slow walk with outstretched palm to the other end of the car, we instinctively turn our faces aside and grip our pocketbooks a little closer.

But today something different happened on the Metro.

I had been lucky enough to grab an empty seat, and was concentrating hard on the magazine in my lap in order to block out my surroundings. The car was unusually full, with the crowd pressing in so close I could feel at least four separate people breathing. But I was in an uncharitable mood, and never looked up at any of them, for fear that one of them might be a little old lady who would torture my conscience till I gave her my seat. I too had become one of the hardened METRO RIDERS, a sullen statue selfishly guarding my desirable seet and refusing to lift my eyes.

But then there was a sudden jostling and murmer among the crowd. A bearded young man propelled a still younger woman with long limp hair and a jean jacket through the maze of people. Somehow the great sea of humanity parted for them and they lurched forward, together, in my direction. I immediately knew what they wanted: my seat. No way! I was on my way home from a long, mind-boggling day of classes, and if anyone deserved to sit down, I did. I hastily turned my eyes back to the article I was reading, shutting the young couple out of my sight.

Vauguely I was aware that a man a few seats down from me had risen to his feet and stepped aside as the couple approached. I looked up again in time to see the girl sink down into the vacated seat as if all the energy had drained from her body.

Curious now, I watched them out of the corner of my eye: the protecting man, the helpless young woman. He stood very close to her, hovering over her, leaning in so that his body sheltered her from the crowd. His face was drawn and anxious; in him there was emotion, fervent emotion. But the girl wore only a frozen mask of pain, cold white like death.

Slumped in the seat, she clung to him as though she were drowning; she buried her face in his stomach. I was her lips moving silently against his shirt and wondered if she was praying.

I don't know. I will never know. Through its twisting underground tunnels the train rumbled on, unheeding, and all around us people continued to read or to start--and they too were unheeding. But I sat there and I wondered, and the seat that I had jealously, silently refused to give them seemed now to scorch me.

They left before I ever reached my stop. The man nearly carried her off the train. Her eyes were closed; his mouth was a tight line. They left, and so many people never cared, never gave them a second thought. But they remained with me long after I watched the doors close behind them. What had been wrong with them? Were they in some kind of trouble? Was the woman very ill, or maybe pregnant? Were they brother and sister? Husband and wife? Lovers? Where would they go? What would they do?

It is easy, so terribly easy, to stop caring in a city of four million. It often seems the easiest way, to stop looking into the faces, to stop troubling myself about the problems of so unfathomably many others. Every day I encounter thousands of people, and every day I build up my careful, protecting wall against them. This is THE CITY, I tell myself. It is dangerous to wear my feelings on my face here as I would at home. It is ridiculous to try to make any kind of human contact here.

And so I walk by with unseeing eyes as the unkempt children of 6 or 7 years approach with yearning faces and upturned palms. And the man with his chin sunk mournfully on his chest, bearing a placard with the words, "Tengo hambre" (I am hungry) as he sits in the alley; I no longer see him, either.

"How can I?" I ask myself. I will go crazy long before June arrives if I continue to worry about every single person with needs or pains in Barcelona! So I stay behind my wall; I wear my "Metro mask," as my American friends and I bitterly joke. And I tell myself that this is the only way I can survive here, the only way I can fit into this strange new life. I must become one of the cold, heedless masses.

So why is it that I stillretain this picture of the frightened yet bravely determined man, and the young woman with hollow eyes looking trustfully up to his? Why do they haunt me? And why didn't I have the grace, or the guts, to give them my seat first?

Living in a monstrous and sometimes merciless city like Barcelona has hardened me already. This realization broke over me only today, during that ride home on the Metro, and it scared me. Now I see that there is much more to being and exchange student in Spain for nine months than simply learning the language and getting over the culture shock.

I must learn to love four million people! I must learn to look at that river of faces in the streets as unique, alive individuals like myself. Maybe, eventually, I will even smile at someone on the Metro.