Railway
My mother once said that railways were like veins, pumping the life blood of the country, connecting each to every other part.
There was one railroad into and out of our town. For most of the week the sleek steel lay docile, buried in its nest of stones, collecting rust and leaves. Children chased each other around the tracks, playing cops and robbers, running and screaming from the ghost of the train so vivid in their imaginations. Schoolboys rode their new bicycles between the tracks, gleefully racing the trip home. For the ambitious few, the railroad was a singular thread tethering skyscrapers and sharp business suits from beyond the horizon to their dreams.
But once a week, a faint rumble would crescendo to a roaring chud-chud followed by a screeching din would shake the foundations of every house. Then, like cuckoo birds in the clock, doors would fly open and its occupants flung to the station. Wives who had bade farewell to hearty husbands now embraced old men, parents embraced children tearfully, then took in their arms their grandchildren with adoring faces. Then there were the people who had departed rich in their years, whose relics relatives clutched with trembling hands wrapped in yellowed envelopes.
*********
Train trips to the past always yielded dusty pictures.
We’d sit there, on the tracks, she’d pointed into the distance, and I would follow the tracks with my eyes until the faint lined faded into the fog. We dreamt of parties, marble halls and flutes of sparkling champagne. She would describe to me her first time at the Opera, the handsome Italian at her elbow, and how she’d been moved to tears at the tragic death of the heroine, all encased with an elegant sweep of her arm. I’d prance around in rich furs, digressing scuttling clerks to action. Then we’d burst into a fit of giggles, fall back on to the carpet of autumn leaves and watch our breaths mingle in the crisp air. There would be a period of silence, as we were each lost in our own dreams and merely enjoyed the feeling of our shoulders pressed together. Then night would fall, the dew would settle and chillier weather would pursue us back into our separate homes.
I could never remember it any way else.
*********
Maggi’s elegant writing befitted her artistic disposition. It curled in loops and dashed in long, drawn strokes; it coaxed the eyes to dance across a page. But beautiful as it may be, for someone who has scanned printed page for more than two decades, it was difficult to read. The words blurred together with the rhythmic sway of the train, and the carefully constructed choreography tripped over itself in my watering eyes. It was no use; I put down the letter and contemplated it from afar. It was old, sent many years ago, just before she’d found a husband and gotten married and, well, life went on. I wondered if she would appreciate me keeping it for all of these years, and wondered if she too, had a little tin box where knick-knacks of the past still resided in respectable demeanor. Maggi had also sent me a picture with that letter, now a bit yellowed despite my best of efforts.
There inside the battered tin box was one more relic of Maggi. One white porcelain swan, its neck eternally entwined with an invisible twin. Maggi had been entranced by the pair of swans as soon as she had spotted it in an antique brick-a-brack store not far from Central Station. By that time, the trains strung like pearls upon the silver tracks had ceased to awe us, and Maggi had taken in the swans as a reminder of the peace of home. Then, we were two girls pursuing the dreams still vivid in our hearts, and we’d left, hand in hand, stepped upon that train, and left our home in the dust. The capillary to our town soon joined with others rushing in the same directions, we pulsated with excitement as we watched the lines come together, all together in this single massive city that just had to be the heart. And where better to find heart that within one?
I imagined the landscape fleeing past the window to be as familiar as they once were.
********
People grow apart. It is only natural. But what is most important is to never forget the good times.
We’d rented a flat together at first. It was a one roomed, dinghy thing with a creaky window and a leaky roof. The pipes pumped out noxious fumes and the kitchen was infested with insects. But we got by, telling stories to each other under the covers of one bed, reading to each other and baking. Maggi could bake, and she did so often. I’d gone back to visit there once. Time had overlooked that ancient flat; everything was exactly where it was, perhaps a little dustier, and I could almost still here Maggi’s humming from the kitchen. I couldn’t affirm the lingering aroma of muffin scenting the room was only the creation of my imagination. The flat Maggi rented next was much more suitable. It had that French furniture she’d always loved, all floral patterns and wooden enamel. I moved into a neat studio next to the train line. The rent was cheap, and the passing of trains in the night soothed me. Each of us was irrevocably drawn towards what had left the most sizeable impression in our lives.
Night was swallowing evening. The impending conclusion to my trip saddens me a little.
*******
A bustle of activity precedes the halt of the train. A hundred hands reach above to pull down fifty parcels and cases, of thirty different styles. A hundred feet pull fifty bodies stiffly towards the aisle, marching down and out into the chilly night. I lingered awhile, staring out at my own reflection extending from the window, my eyes groping the darkness. I could see nothing of my home town. Deciding the view would be better from the outside, I unwillingly joined the queue.
A woman stood, hands in coat pockets, at the carriage door. Curly blonde hair. Slight, small. Curved cheek wrapped in woolen scarf. A glimpse of her sent a jolt of recognition through my mind. Eyes wide, my fingers groped for the yellowed photograph. I followed her out. No, there could be no mistaking it. Maggi.
‘Maggi! Wait!’
The woman turned and swept her surrounding for a familiar face, warily puzzled. By this time, I was less than ten meters away from her. For a moment, our eyes met, and there we held each other’s gazes. She took a few hesitant steps forward, words hanging heavy on her lips.
‘Hi, umm…was it you who just called my name?’
Not a single hint of recognition lit her features. My smile slid. Maggi stared and waited.
‘No, no…no’
