Beautiful Machine

by PW Cooper

  He strokes her hair. “Alright,” he said. He wipes his nose on the back of his sleeve. “Alright, I'll keep quiet.” He pushes his face into her hair and he shuts his eyes and he is silent inside his pain.

  There are two old men sitting in front of you. You cannot see their faces. They speak in low voices. “Do you have any idea where they're taking us?” the first man says.

  The second man answers. “Not for sure. I've heard rumors but...”

  “You never believed any of them?”

  “No. I never did.”

  “And now?”

  “I'm still not sure. I hope to God they were exaggerated.”

  “Somehow that does not seem likely.”

  “When did it get this bad?”

  “When we started losing the war. Somebody has to be blamed.”

  “Is it going that poorly?”

  “I was in the Ministry of State before this all started. It's far worse than they're letting on to the papers. We're being pushed back on every front. Look there. You can see it right out your window. The enemy is very close now. It won't be long before they reach the big cities.”

  The old man looks. “My God...” he says.

  You press your nose against the glass. At first you don't see anything. The world is quiet and dark. Then there is a soft flare of light, far far in the distance. A flash like a match being struck. Then another, and another. Bursts of light that make the distant hills glow. There is a fire there, far away, burning behind the hills.

  The War.

  You've heard about the war only in whispers and rumor. The headmistress didn't allow anybody to talk about it, and since newspapers were not allowed at school none of your classmates knew very much. Sometimes a girl would receive a letter from an older brother on the front, she would read it and cry and you would wonder what could be inside those words. Your own brother is too young still to fight. You wish that they hadn't ever sent you away. You don't care about the danger, at least you would be with them. Anywhere but on this train.

  You wonder if they have been hurt, if they've had a bomb dropped on them. You shut your eyes tight. Do not panic.

  Your head droops down, lulled by the rumble of the train. The bombs are so far away, just a fireworks show in the distance. You hold yourself tight against the chill.

  Somebody screams. Your body tenses, your eyes open. A woman is screaming. You can see her standing in the aisle, mouth horribly wide and screaming wordlessly, a scream that seems to crack the world.

  “Sit down! Sit down and shut up!” The sharp-faced guard barks like a trained dog.

  The woman comes down the aisle towards you, stumbling and tripping. The guards move in. You cower in your seat. You will not look. You will not watch. You stare at the floor.

  But you cannot stop from hearing it. You cannot stop from feeling it as it happens.

  The shadow of the soldier sways on the floor below you, cast there by the dim lights which run along the ceiling.

  The woman's shadow clutches uselessly at his, fighting to get past. “Please, I'm not supposed to be here! This is wrong. I'm not supposed to be here. You have to let me past! I have to go.” And her voice is empty, quiet and reasonable and empty.

  You hear the guard's horrible laugh. “Get back in your fucking seat, you goddamn –.”

  He says the word.

  You remember that word. You don't know what it means, but you have heard it used before. Some kids shouted it after your father one day, children hardly older than you. His face got very cold and hard and he grabbed your arm tight and he propelled you down the road, walking so fast that you could hardly keep up. When the boys were far out of sight you asked him what it meant, that word. “It's something that they call people like us,” he said. His face seemed carved from stone.

  “People like us?” you asked him. “What's wrong with us?”

  He seemed so angry. Was he angry at you? You didn't think so. “Nothing's wrong with us,” he said. “Nothing. Some people just... don't like people who are different.”

  You tried very hard to understand. “We're different?” you asked.

  Another time, somebody at school said the word to your brother, called him a dirty –. Your brother attacked the other boy. He got detention for a month, and the other boy only had to apologize even though he'd started it. You asked your brother why he hadn't just walked away like papa did. Your brother wiped the blood off his lip and he said that sometimes you couldn't just walk away.

  The woman in the aisle is crying. The sharp-faced guard laughs. There is a horrible crack, a sort of wet crunching sound. Then another. Then another. The guard pushes the woman down into the seat beside you. You feel the weight of her pressing against your side. There is no more crying.

  The guard walks back to the rear of the car.

  You stare straight ahead. You can see the old men through the slit between their seats. They are staring at the woman. “Oh my God...” one of them says. Then he looks at you. “My God... just a child. Don't look, child, don't look. How old are you, child?”

  Your voice is very still. “Eleven,” you say.

  “My God,” he says once more, and then again: “Don't look.”

  But you cannot help it. You cannot help but look.

  The woman isn't a woman, not really. She's hardly older than you, sixteen or seventeen maybe. Half a girl still. Her long curling hair sweeps luxuriantly about her face. She wears dark purple lipstick. Her coat is some sort of fur; it looks very expensive. Her fingernails are painted red.

  The girl's face is broken. The whole right side seems to have collapsed in on itself. The skull is shattered, the eye pulverized. You can see the horrid white flicker of broken bone in the bloody mess. Her mouth is open, drooling red saliva. She doesn't move except to twitch and quiver. Her remaining eye rolls wearily in the socket, searching for something.

  You bite down on your hand to stop from crying out. You bite so hard that the coppery taste of blood fills your mouth. You look away, but you cannot keep the image of from your mind. You try to look out the window, but all you can see there is her reflection behind you, gaping and broken. You squeeze your eyes shut. Do not panic.

  The two old men are looking through the crack. “We must get off this train,” one of them whispers.

  * * *

  An hour passes, and the broken girl ceases to breathe.

  They take her away, dragging the limp thing between them like a sack of bones. The smell of her remains.

  Eventually, a kind of silence. Faint snores. The soft murmur of sleep. The moon is bright in the sky outside. Even the soldiers seem to relax, letting their eyes go half-lidded. They sleep in shifts, first one and then the other.

  You do not sleep.

  The man Jamil with the broken teeth, he does not sleep either. He is looking at you. You look back and he smiles. His smile is bloody and terrible; he hides it behind his hand when he sees your horror.

  “Can't you sleep, girl?” he lisps softly.

  You shake your head. You do not think that you will ever be able to sleep again.

  “Me neither.”

  You ask him why. Your voice is so very small. He makes no response; you assume that he did not hear you. You are about to repeat the question when he answers:

  “My mother used to say that we went to another world in our sleep. A dreaming world where everybody you loved was alive again...” He smiles again, a wild eerie smile, “I'm afraid to sleep, afraid that this is not a dream. That it is real and not some nightmare...” He shuts his eyes. “I'm sorry. Ignore me, you shouldn't be thinking about these things.”

  “Do you know where they're taking us?” you ask.

  He looks at you. “Just sleep, girl. Where does it matter? We're dead anyway.” He starts to laugh at this, and covers his broken mouth with both his hands. The woman beside him moves in her sleep; she wraps her arms about him and he goes silent at once, clutching to her and staring at nothing, staring like a blind man.
>
  You look back out the window. There is a town out there in the night, closer and closer. The lights of the houses flicker by, snatches of illumination in an overwhelming darkness. The world outside does not look real. There are shadows crawling like black dogs in the cobbled streets of that nameless village. The train rushes past a little station without stopping and the town fades in the distance, fewer and fewer houses until there are none. Only the starry wilds. You press your cheek hard against the window, trying to look back towards the lights. If only you were inside one of those houses right now, your mother tucking you into a warm bed. To be safe and warm. Your mother smelling of clean laundry and spices. Her flour-dusted hands. Her round face beaming. Her arms wrapping around you. Your mother sang to you every night. Her voice was so sweet, like something not of this world. When you were in her arms you shut your eyes and just listened to the music of her voice, just felt the warmth of her body.

  You shiver. You draw your knees up under your chin and you start to cry. You cannot stop the tears, the fierce sobs. You struggle to breathe. You feel as though you are drowning in your own tears, and you cannot stop.

  “Quiet!” the sharp-faced guard snaps. The sound of his voice only makes you cry harder.

  Your eyes are wide with terror. Your breath comes in desperate little gasps. You tell yourself that you must stop crying, that you must not panic or you will end up like that other girl, that older girl they dragged out like a piece of meat.

  The man Jamil with the broken mouth leans over towards your seat. His eyes are wide. “Stop!” he hisses, “You have to stop. Please, please! It's alright, it's alright. Just stop crying!” The girl in his arms wakes. She stares at you, trembling and unable to speak. Her lips move silently, mouthing one word over and over again so clearly that you could almost believe she was actually speaking it: “No, no, no, no, no, no.”

  The sharp-faced guard is coming towards you. His boots clomp on the threadbare carpet. The train is rocking so much, you feel that it would shake itself off the track if you moved even a single muscle. You feel yourself tensing, your fingers digging into the cushioned armrests. Your breath is choking in your throat.

  The old men sitting ahead of you have turned around. Their panicked eyes flicker in the gap between their seats. “Girl, girl!” they say, voices thick with sleepy fear.

  “Stop that fucking noise!” the guard snarls. He is very close now. Only a few steps away.

  The train shrieks on the track. The whistle screams. Is the train going to hit something? You're sure that it will crash.

  You try to hold your breath, you bite wildly at the soft flesh of your arms, trying to stop the sound. You cannot stop, you have lost all control. You shove your whole fist almost into your mouth but it will not stop the noise.

  “Please, let me go to her!” It is the voice of a woman, the old woman from the train platform. Asima, the man called her. “She's only a child, she's frightened.”

  The sharp-faced guard is standing over you now. You cannot look, but you think that his eyes must be red as a devil's and smoldering in their sockets. His teeth slavering like a wolf's open jaws. You feel hot and wet down there and you realize that your bladder has let go. Steaming urine runs off the edge of the seat in a warm cascade.

  The guard sees it and he cries out with disgust and he reaches towards you.

  “Burton!” An unfamiliar voice. The guard with the beard and the drooping features. He is awake, talking to his sharp-faced companion. “Let the old woman handle it. I don't want to deal with another corpse.”

  Your eyes flicker, rolling wildly. You see the sharp-faced guard, Burton, sneering down at you. The old woman is coming slowly down the length of the car. She holds the seats to either side of her to keep upright. She sits beside you.

  Burton laughs softly. “Fine,” he says, mutter soaked with horrible reluctance. He looks at the old woman. “Don't let me hear her mewling again, or I'll take care of you both.” And he leaves you.

  She wraps her arms around you. “There there.” Her murmurs like clear-running water. “There's nothing to cry about, child, nothing at all. Oh, poor thing.” She unwraps the shawl from about her shoulders and starts to mop up around your seat. The acrid stench is heavy around you; it fills you with shame. Still, you feel a little better now. Your ragged breath isn't so loud anymore.

  The old woman waves for the bearded guard. He approaches, his face dull.

  “This poor girl needs to use the washroom. There is a washroom on the train, isn't there?”

  The guard nods. He hesitates.

  She laughs harshly. “Are you so afraid of us?”

  He stares at her, finally jerking his head back towards the next car. He says, “Come on. This way.”

  Your face burns with shame as you are led past all those strange people. They are all watching you. They look at you sadly. You stare down at the floor and let the woman lead you. Her hands are very soft and warm, their texture like wrinkled paper. Your damp tights cling to your thighs like another skin.

  The soldier takes you to the door at the far end of the car. For a horrible moment you think that he is going to throw you off the train. Your fingers bite into the old woman's soft hand. “Toilet's in the next car,” the soldier says, his voice thick and sullen.

  The old woman nods her head.

  The soldier stares at her. His eyes are gray, his face jowly and long. A very strange look crosses his face, something like understanding flickering deep in the gray of his eyes. “I'm Rudy,” he says, “Uh... Rudolph Harris.” He blushes, “I mean, Private Harris.” He looks down at his boots. “It's this way, Ma'am. Just across.”

  And he opens the door. The night roars in, cold and black. There is a round window in the door of the next car like a chrome eye gazing sightlessly back. The gap between the cars yawns and sighs. The slats of the track rush by in an invisible blur. You think that you might die here.

  He leads you across to the bathroom and tells you to hurry. He locks you both inside.

  There is a little window in the bathroom, a little sink and a little toilet. There are trees outside the window, crooked black limbs reaching angrily for the sky. You stand in the narrow room, swaying.

  The old woman looks down at you. “What's your name, child?”

  You just shake your head.

  “No name?”

  All you can think of is the dead man beside the platform, of the dead girl in the seat next to you. You wonder what their names were.

  “Is there something I can call you?”

  “I don't know.” Your voice is soft.

  “May I call you Ahlem?” she asks. As she speaks the old woman is removing your clothes. Her old fingers work skillfully at the buttons, the hooks, the zippers, the clasps. The clothing comes slowly away and is piled in the sink.

  You nod. “Whose name is it?”

  Her eyes do not meet yours. “My daughter's.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Gone,” she says, and pulls your shirt up over your head. “My name is Asima.” She wrings out her shawl in the sink, running cold water over it.

  The old woman kneels down before you and clasps your naked hands in her own. “I will keep you safe, Ahlem. Do you understand?”

  You nod.

  She wipes the tears from your cheeks. “There now. That's a good girl. It's going to be alright, understand?”

  “How do you know?” you ask, very quietly.

  She smiles sadly. “I just know, darling.” She gives the clothing in a sink a perfunctory rinse and gathers them wrung out in her arms. Her own coat she takes off and wraps about your shoulders. “Wear this until your clothes are dry.”

  You thank her. Just as you are about to leave the little bathroom, a thought comes to mind, a thought so pressing and simple that you feel you cannot wait any longer to give it voice. “Misses Asima?”

  She looks at you. “Yes?”

  “Why are they doing this?”

  She stares at you. She
says nothing.

  You sit on the toilet. It is cold against your bare skin.

  “Are you alone, child?” she asks you.

  “They're taking me to meet my parents,” you say. The words feel heavy and sick in your mouth.

  Asima shuts her eyes. “Oh, child. I hope not.”

  Private Harris leads you back to the car. Just before you step over the gap between the cars you look up. The trees above are webbed over the train like a fragile cocoon, interlaced fingers reaching. They look very old. The trees to the left are a ghostly white color, birch, maybe. The trees to the right side of the train are dark as pitch, so dark they can only be seen in the night gloom as blank spaces against a star-washed atmosphere. The white fingers cling to the black, writhed together like lost brothers embracing. They have been growing back towards each other ever since the cruel path of the railway was cut through the wood.

  Private Harris slumps to his post. Private Burton watches you with glittering eyes.

  Asima sits beside you; she gathers you in her arms. You look out the window of the train. There is a long low lake outside. The train moves along the shore. Moonlight glistens on the velvety black surface. You can see a family of ducks floating on the water, bobbing down for morsels of food. The grass on the far shore shivers.

  Asima wraps her arms around you.

  “Would you like me to tell you a story, Ahlem?”

  For a moment you are confused. Who is she talking to? Is this your new name? You nod.

  “I used to tell stories to my daughter. To help her sleep.”

  You curl up against her. “Tell me the story, grandmother.”

  She kisses the top of your head. “Alright.”

  As she tells her story you find your gaze returning to the lake. The smooth dark surface is rippling like an enormous swath of black silk. The train groaning.

  A little while later, someone begins to pray.

  * * *

  The mother looked down at her child. Sickly girl dying in a hospital bed. If only there was something she could say to change it. Can't a mother save her little girl? Can't she die in her place? The mother reached down to hold her daughter's hand. Such soft skin, so pure. Untouched. That little girl would never know what it was like to be in love, to be held and loved. She would never be scarred by love. The mother began to cry. The girl did not cry, but replied with those wracking coughs, those ragged throat-tearing coughs. The mother bit down on her tongue very hard, hard enough almost to bite clean through. It seemed right to her that there was blood in her own mouth as she bent to wipe the crimson spatters off her daughter's hands and chin. She stroked the little girl's hair. The child was sweating and weak, her pulse faint, her eyes moving in their sockets too fast and then too slow. Her breathing shallow and strained. The little girl's body breaking down.