As she took the long trail bordering the beach, and the houses dropped behind her, the grey of the sky seemed to blend with the ground. That, and some low patches of fog, made her feel as if she were walking into a bank of clouds.
the remarkable beauty of the candled rooms—so like a religious place, a sanctuary, mortuary—the triple deck porcelain pearl bracelet around the still wrist—the artificial flowers against the pale neck—the feathers—the satiny chestnut dress, with piled hat and matching ribbon—like a display case, as beautiful as any flower bed—
There were a few leafless trees in this part of the cove: tall, white, thin, bowed like old ladies, their stiff strands of hair frozen and weighted earthward by the snow.
The shadow of hair all flying in a tangle—and I can testify that I smell flowers under the ground—
*I tell you I smell chrysanthemums—
Suddenly she grew rigid, as if violated by the cold. She jerked open her eyes; she was in his long, dark arms. He rubbed his chin, startling, against her cheek in an almost animalistic gesture. Then he showed his long teeth, his full mouth …
—my love’s teeth are white geese—
Then they were moving, quickly, the landscape jiggling by her. She realized he had taken her up in his arms and was now carrying her as he ran. It astonished her … such strength. His heavy odor began to rise; expecting to be offended, she was not, but was excited. She let go of her fear. She began to giggle. She laughed out loud. They were going faster and faster, so fast she thought he must have mounted the horse with her, and her so groggy she hadn’t known it. But the movement wasn’t that of a horse, and she was held so she couldn’t look down.
My world turns so rapidly—how can I have the stable land to walk on? Perchance I must learn to dance on a small square of it?
She laughed again. He turned his face to her this time, and again made that stretching of the mouth she took to be a smile. Of course! She was sure of it.
“Why do you laugh?” he asked.
“Oh … well.” She chuckled again. “Actually nothing … no, let’s say I was wondering about mermaids, especially mermaids in winter. How do you suppose they manage with the inlets and northern seas all iced over?”
He made a sound much like a bark, which she took to be a reciprocation of her own laughter. Then he gestured to the cove. She could vaguely make out a large crack in the ice; it hadn’t been there a few days ago. “They work their way … from beneath. Otherwise”—he moved his arm sweepingly—“they stay beneath, in their homes …”
Her sea man turned his head forward again, angling it into the wind, and they went faster and faster down the shore. Her skin prickled, blood stirred in its deepest, stillest wells. She thought of John, and wondered why things weren’t like this with him. There should be an excitement between lovers, a higher energy, an intensity. She had never had anything like that with John. But perhaps she could do something about that. She’d never had a lover, but suddenly she was convinced she held the key. The stranger filled her with sudden power. She felt she could do anything. She could be the active one now … the thunder in her ears drowned out all thought.
The dogs barking—made me think of a duck filled with bells—the cracked amberglass of my feet memorable for some reason—
Somewhere between striving for a goal and accomplishing a routine comes a moment of pure beginning—where within the world does this happen?
Reay was buying blouses, the delicate one making her feel like a perfume phial, the orange dress she wore reminding her of quilts from childhood, the undies she once had. Or that baby sweater in violet—buy that? Hood too. Made her feel like the sugar plum fairy. She could put cinnamon in the pockets. She finished and strolled to the library, where she wrote:
I felt like a magic dwarf in the store—my speckled lantern socks unmatched when I tried on the rose—slit, tight cold skin—Ha!
Last night making love to John—so delicate, the light tickle, sensation as of a feather—I thought I’d pass out—ah, feeling so warm—as the poets said, such a gentle death—
Also, babe, you have as much height as depth—
Reay went back to the cove early in the afternoon this time, wearing her new outfit, her notebook in hand. She brushed the snow off one of the logs and sat down. Her excitement building, she began to write:
—the fire in my sea man’s eyes—it’s deadly!—his approval so important to me that I don’t—I’m not sure what this is I’m feeling—the excitement when he held me!—John’s so nice, but—
She could feel his breathing behind her, the rise of his animal smell. She climbed to her feet and began to turn, arms outstretched to embrace him.
The jet horse snorted at her loudly, then nuzzled her roughly with its nose. It whinnied. It coughed. Fire in its eyes. Hot, fetid breath.
Reay put her arms around it and stroked the mane.
And before she knew it she was off, dragged up onto its back, her hair flying, bones already aching, eyes tearing from the icy blasts suddenly racing in from the white-encased sea.
She tried to scream but could not, could not even whimper. The cold air silenced her, took her breath away.
She was smelling the perfume of flowers, thinking strangely of old, decrepit mermaids, when the horse leapt out on the ice, and as the ice began to break she could feel the change beneath her: the jaws shortening, the back falling, the cold greeting of those blue transparent eyes.
And as her sea man embraced her, she thought back to her notebook lying now on the snow-covered shore, the pages turning open to the winter wind, when he exposed his long white teeth, and she could think of no more images, so overcome was she with thunder.
I am so unsure of myself—certain only that I have a very tender youthful imagination—and a great sense of being assaulted by fate—
—chrysanthemums dark in glass bowls underground—
Escape on a Train
“That town is burning down,” Carter says to the stranger sitting across from him.
But the stranger seems not to have heard him. He pulls the spread of newspaper even closer to his face, as if wanting to give his closest scrutiny to some account of murder and mayhem. Or perhaps it’s because the train rocks and bucks so severely the stranger has to grip his newspaper all the tighter, drawing it closer to his face. Carter was never very good at physics, but he thinks that’s what might occur. He studies the whiteness of the stranger’s knuckles against the outside of the paper, trying to gauge by this whiteness just how many foot-pounds of pressure the stranger must be applying. At any moment, Carter expects to see the paper split in half from the forces being applied to each end. But then, luckily, the stranger has selected a tabloid-style paper to read, which Carter imagines must be somewhat sturdier than the larger size. So perhaps the stranger’s reading matter is safe after all.
“That town? Outside the window? The one the train is passing? It appears to be burning down.”
Still no answer. Carter gazes out the window, wondering at the length of time that has elapsed since the burning town first appeared in the train window, puzzled that the train still has not completely passed it. It makes little sense to him, since the town is small (soon to be even smaller) and the train, he is told, moving very fast.
Of course, the train doesn’t appear to be moving all that quickly, at least from where he’s sitting. He vaguely remembers that there are a number of physical laws specifically concerning moving trains and their relationships to those observers on the train and those observers off the train, say, watching the whole thing—the fire, in this case—from a grassy knoll nearby. But Carter can remember the specifics of none of them. Perhaps there’s even a law concerning the relationship of a moving train to the burning town it is attempting to pass—and seemingly unable to pass with any speed—and the observer on the train attempting to interest a stranger into also becoming an observer. He wonders how the concept of “witnessing” figures into this physical equation. Also the c
oncepts of “responsibility” and “guilt”.
Outside the train window the small town—just a few buildings isolated out on the prairie where only a train might pass—continues to burn. Carter presses his nose against the glass and imagines he can feel the intense heat on the other side, outside the confines of this swiftly moving train. The small town continues to burn and suddenly he is in pain and when he removes his nose from the glass a small patch of skin from the tip remains, adhering to the hot pane.
Even though the town is some distance away he can observe what is happening there with remarkable detail. An old-fashioned red fire engine is moving between the burning buildings, dragging its ancient canvas hose which is also on fire. Carter thinks the age of the fire equipment would be a problem in any case and now the hose is on fire, and the engine is in fact aiding the spread of the fire by dragging this burning hose through the streets. He wonders if anyone has warned the driver. On closer examination he observes that the man behind the wheel in the open cab, the man in the yellow slicker and black fireman’s helmet, is also on fire, his torso and head and upraised arms a long tapering flame like that of a candle.
And yet he knows this is impossible. He knows one cannot possibly see such detail from a moving train. It is that lack of connection, of specific, closely-observed detail, he suspects, which makes travel by rail so attractive in the first place.
Here and there Carter can see open windows like dark mouths and hollow eye sockets within the flaming structures, and burning human beings —women, men, small children—transfixed in these dark openings, their own mouths and eye sockets opening wide with darkness. And it is all impossible, he thinks. Such observations from a moving train are impossible. Such pain must surely be impossible. Suddenly he wishes the train would go faster, much much faster so that it might pull away from the town.
“There are children, children burning up in that town,” he insists, staring at the stranger’s raised newspaper. On the exposed front page there are articles concerning murder, earthquakes, and arson. The headline reads: FATHER ABANDONS FAMILY: THREE FEARED DEAD. In exasperation, Carter grabs the man’s left hand and pulls it down, separating the stranger from his paper. “Can’t you see? That town’s on fire! People, children are dying!”
The stranger glances out the window, then shrugs. “We’re on the train,” he says. “There’s nothing we can do.” Then, amazingly, the stranger grins.
Carter stares at the man. Then he touches the hot glass, pulling it away before his fingers can burn. “Children are burning like cotton! Their faces melting like a cheap plastic doll’s!”
The stranger puts his paper full of murder and mayhem aside. “That’s very unfortunate,” he says. “But we’re on the train, you see, moving past the town. The town remains still, an immobile location. It’s physically impossible for us to do anything to help those people.”
“But they’ll die!”
“They’re already dead,” the stranger says. “There’s nothing for us to do. We’re on the train, they’re on the land, the still, unmoving land. We’re removed from them by sheer speed.” And again the stranger grins, as if in the pleasure of his explanation.
Carter stares at the man. “And by time, too, I suppose.”
The stranger nods. “Precisely.”
“Because speed and time are somehow related,” Carter continues. “I was never good in physics, but I believe that’s true. Time and speed are related. On the train we’re removed from them by time, and speed.”
“And state of mind,” the grinning stranger says. “For the people in the town are wrapped up in their present, workaday lives. We are living on the train, in the future, or towards a future, on a train headed for a destination. Their world could not be more separate from ours.”
“So we have no responsibility towards them,” Carter says.
“None whatsoever,” the stranger replies. “It’s simple physics.”
It takes a long time for the town to burn to the ground, but not so long, Carter imagines, relative to the average train schedule. The window is still warm to the touch for hours after the town has been reduced to embers.
That night Carter finds it difficult to sleep on the train. The irregular clicking of the rails, the rocking of the sleeping car, the periodic tappings at his window probe into and irritate his sleep. The window tappings are particularly bothersome. Each time he hears them he rises out of the seats which have been converted into a bed and goes to the glass, pressing his face to the glass first on one side and then the other in order to look as far as possible down the length of the train. He sees nothing. He speculates on possible causes: gravel thrown up by the wheels, the slap of branches which have not been trimmed back, grit carried by the wind. The window tappings continue all night long, but he never sees anything. In the morning he discovers hundreds of round, slightly greasy spots on the glass.
There is but one empty seat in the dining car, across from the stranger from the day before.
“May I?” Carter asks, gesturing towards the seat.
“Of course,” the stranger replies. “Feeling better than yesterday?”
Carter studies the menu. “Mostly. Some … trouble sleeping. That’s all, though.”
“Glad to hear it.” The stranger grins, absentmindedly taps the folded newspaper on the table. Carter wonders if he has already read it, or if he is now feeling anxious to read it. He hopes the man has already read the paper; he doesn’t think he could stand it if the man picked up a paper again. He isn’t sure why.
Carter can just make out the small headlines showing on the folded portion: MAN KILLS WIFE, CHILDREN, SELF and PLANE FEARED LOST and HUNDREDS DIE IN FIRE. He turns to the train window. Out in a field is an impossible vision: a man in overalls is beating a young boy—his son?—with a piece of timber.
“So, are you married?” The stranger speaks so quietly Carter at first isn’t sure the man has actually spoken, or if he’s imagined the question.
“Yes … yes I am.” Outside the train, the man in overalls raises the timber higher with each swing as he beats the boy.
“Children?”
“Two. A boy five, a girl eleven.” Is that correct? Suddenly Carter isn’t so sure. Outside the train, the little boy’s mouth stretches wider and wider in silent agony.
“But they’re not travelling with you?”
Carter stares at the man, trying to measure his expression. “Why would you ask me such a question?”
“Just being friendly,” the stranger says.
“You think I don’t care? You think I’m like those fathers you read about in that damn paper of yours!”
“Just being friendly,” the man says again, seemingly unaffected by Carter’s outburst.
“You should save your worries for kids like him.” Carter gestures towards the violent scene being enacted outside the window.
They both stare at the boy and his father. The boy’s mouth now stretches impossibly far in his attempt to adequately express his pain. “Most unfortunate,” the stranger says.
“We have to do something,” Carter says. “Here we are sitting comfortably in our speeding train, and a child is being beaten. We have to do something.”
“But I explained all this yesterday,” the stranger says. “We’re on the train, removed from that child by time and speed. There’s nothing we can do.” And again, the stranger grins.
“There must be something we can do,” Carter says.
“Nothing. Relax. There’s nothing either of us can do.”
“That boy’ll be destroyed. If not physically, certainly mentally …”
“That’s his present. We live in the future, on the train. We cannot reach him.”
Carter slumps back in his chair. “This was supposed to be relaxing. Like a vacation.”
“Then enjoy yourself,” the grinning stranger says. “You’re riding the most modern of passenger trains. Shattering time and distance. The old life is gone—this is your new life, your de
stiny.”
After the stranger leaves, Carter puts his ear against the glass pane. He can hear the boy’s screams fading in the distance. And yet he knows it is impossible to hear such sounds from a moving train.
When night comes he sleeps no better. The rails click and the cars rock, and a tapping that begins at dusk continues through the night. The train passes through open countryside with only a few houses, scattered here and there, but in each house at least one window glows with light. And behind each glowing window Carter knows there is some happiness he cannot share, or perhaps some tragedy he cannot prevent.
A face rises suddenly into the glass, glowing like one of those distant windows. Carter stares hard at this face, but once he realizes that it is his son’s face, it disappears, swept away by the wind created by the fast moving train.
“Somebody has to save him,” Carter mumbles aloud. But he is on a speeding train, and can do nothing.
Night passes, and then the day, and then night comes around again. He sees the grinning stranger now and then: in the dining car, the lounge, passing through on his way somewhere else. He’s afraid to speak to him: afraid of all the questions, the too-easy, yet perfect, excuses. In the landscape outside his train window the impossible occurs: murders are committed, avalanches bury skiers, children are abandoned and ignored, houses burn down. And there is nothing he can do. It is impossible for him to do anything. He has made his escape on the train; their lives could not be more separate. He has left his responsibilities behind on the station platform.
Night passes to day again and the tappings continue at his window. He wonders if they merely want to gain his attention, or if they in fact want to escape their present situation and board the train.
Eventually it seems as if it is the train standing still, and the land, the people enacting their little dramas, rushing past, flooding his senses, leaving him behind.
Absent Company Page 11
