Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

Sergei Lebedev

is it past midnight, is it far to sunrise—you can feel the night flow through you, but at night in the swamp time seems paralyzed, frozen, without light. The window of the booth by the crossing was lit, of course, but it was the dead light of a f luorescent bulb, and I had walked for such a long time in the dark that I had come to think of myself as a swamp monster, dragging water grasses behind me; I was almost afraid of the light, afraid that I had turned into darkness, that I had caught it like a cold, and now if someone turned a lamp on me, I would dribble out the door like dirty water; I felt hot, I shivered, as if I had swallowed something slimy and disgusting along with the swamp air and the drops of rain.

A woman was on duty; it was after three in the morning, the work train came at five. I don’t remember how she looked: she must have merged with her job, coming out to the trains night and day, checking if the brakes were sparking, flashing in the driver’s eye as a figure in a raincoat or padded jacket, existing in mutual indifference—the train goes so fast that you couldn’t make out the friendly wave and sometimes it was the horn that reminded her that she was visible; she let me in, sat me near the stove and went off to the corner of the tiny room to the heavy, bursting wooden barrel. There was so much joy in her movement, a foretaste of care for me, that I followed her: What was in the barrel? She picked up the warped and darkened lid, covered

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