The Small Heart of Things by Hoffman Julian;Williams Terry Tempest;

Author:Hoffman, Julian;Williams, Terry Tempest;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

I took a break from reading The Emigrants while the train crossed the southern plains of Romania. Opening the door to my cabin, I stepped into a corridor of bright windows. The sun was draining from the western sky, laying a last wash of ochre light over the flatlands. Scattered oil derricks rose and fell into the distance, and the grasslands spilled away like the sands of Morecambe Bay. I watched the landscape slip by, my thoughts wrapped up in Nabokov’s ghostly appearances and the way the man on the hill still walked ahead of me despite the distance of so many years.

Arms clasped me suddenly about the waist while I stood at the open window, cinching me tight. A rollicking laughter fluttered somewhere by my ear, and I felt a trembling fear rise within. But I swung round in panic to meet the face of a friend. For a few seconds the two of us stood rooted, smiling idiotically at each other until I’d regained my calm. Then we embraced deeply.

Vasillis is Siberian, a wandering writer and painter who’d lived for some time in a village in Prespa. From time to time we’d share a drink at a taverna or chat along the lakeshore where he liked to jog. But we hadn’t seen each other for a few years, and when our excitement finally settled down I asked him if he’d just boarded the train. “No, I’ve been on since Thessaloníki,” he said.

“In which carriage?”

“This one. That’s my cabin there.” Vasillis turned to point to the sleeping compartment next to mine. “Why? Where’s yours?” he asked. I smiled and pointed to the adjacent berth, and then we laughed and embraced again in the rolling, sunset corridor.

Like me, Vasillis was traveling to Bucharest, but only long enough to change trains for the Black Sea coast. It was already dark when we pulled in, and he had barely minutes to catch his connection. Watching him dash madly down the corridor, and then weave through the convening crowds, I realized how easily we might have missed one another. If either of our destinations had been earlier in the day we would have stepped off without knowing. Had we emerged from our cabins at alternative times, or waited on the steps by the carriage doors to gain a few precious seconds on our fellow passengers, we would never have understood how closely our paths had crossed. Human lives must be filled with such near misses.

I took a last look in our cabins before leaving, and couldn’t help noticing how the spaces were arranged differently. Vasillis’s cabin was the mirror image of mine next door, so that our beds were in fact pushed together, separated by only a thin, simple wall. While the train had coursed the dark countryside we had slept as near as lovers, oblivious and dreaming, lost to our own secret worlds.

I stepped down from the train. The brakes hissed and water dripped to the oily tracks. Engineers tapped the wheels with metal rods, listening for the sound that would reveal a crack.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.