Song for Night

A Train Is Forearms Back and Forth Like Pistons

This village, nothing more than an old water stop for the train, is no more. All that I see is the rubble of some huts. There is only one standing — roofless, but humped there in the night, its protruding sticks and poles and crumbling earthen body give it the look of an elephant’s skeleton. I pause by it, leaning against a pole. This trek of mine is getting more and more ridiculous, I think. I am mostly moving from one scene of past trauma to another, the distances between them, though vast, have collapsed to the span of a thought, and my platoon is ever elusive. I am thoroughly confused, but my desire — which is larger than my need to find my platoon, yet wrapped into it — is relentless in propelling me forward. I look at my watch. Ten minutes, it says. Ten minutes to or after, I cannot tell. Nor the hour; still, there is reassurance in looking at it.

I came here from the river, from that gruesome scene of brimstone, because while making my way through the forest, I heard the whistle of a train. If I can hitch a ride it should make my progress faster. But now that I am here I wonder if it is the right decision. Around me, darkness covers everything in a thick blanket of peppercorns. Occasionally the wind moves a cloud and the moon spills silver over the black. That’s how I see the slow snake of the train approaching. By the time it reaches me, I am crouched by the track. The train moves slowly and it is easy to get a foothold and pull myself up. The cargo car I am now hunched in is empty, but I can smell straw and animals. Through the open door I can see more villages as we pass: huts crouching into the ground; orchards flowering in sweet scents; ponds; the river again; forests; more huts; a town with electricity, the neon somehow vulgar in light of the war, the music blaring in apologetic spurts; a straggly line of refugees walking, hugging the tree line, heading for some still distant hope.

The train begins to slow and pulls to a stop in a deserted station. Dawn is just ripping night’s fabric, stars dropping as dew. A flickering storm lantern sways gently from the station-master’s quarters, its light already diffused by the birthing sun. I know I have to get off here.

In the fragile sunlight, a woman is standing on the platform, scrutinizing the train. Her head jerks every time a door opens, but she turns away when she sees me and makes the sign of the cross. I cannot speak, and with her back turned she cannot see me sign, so I have no way of reassuring her. Something in the way she stands reminds me of myself, always searching for something.

I step from the platform onto the dusty road littered with tank carcasses like an elephant graveyard. When I turn back to look at the station, by some trick of the light the train has rusted over, the station fallen into ruin, and the bombed-out track coiled in on itself like spaghetti and covered in vegetation that crawls everywhere in a rush of green. I know it can’t be true though, I just came from there.

Mirages are common here, I think, shaking it off.