Adelaide
On the Sunday bench at the station I could see in grandpa's expression how he still remembered the first time he saw one. He had told on many occasions the story of so many years ago, when he was young and still lived in the desert. Upon looking at it in the dawn he had stood there static and terrified, faced with the mirrored vision of the worm of death, the metallic monster that in front of his eyes went through the devastated moor of Augusta. During the fleeting chilling sweat which came to him later he had the horrifying sight of people gobbled up whole inside the iron snake, exhaling smoke through the nostrils, leaving a black breath of death in its passing and he heard just its thunderous shrieking of madness and the track track of the ground it stepped on. Already before, when he went out hunting with the tribe, grandpa and everyone had seen the gleaming bars, perfectly parallel which kept on for so many distance, up to the forbidden territories of the white man. The gullible believed that it was only an invention of the humans who had just arrived, but the skeptical were infinitely convinced that it was a sound divine sign. Now, before the vision of the incomprehensible being, grandpa had doubted the possibility of its earthly creation.
It was right at that moment that the unreal object started squeaking with a fussy persistence, stopping exactly on time in front of the meddler dune which was precisely upon the railroad and hindered the course of the journey. Then it happened that from the feverish wild animal now tamed came up an illusion of the desert, the girl with Dutch linen dress and brooches of a hundred-year-old grandma. Her round face and the eyes of a lost lamb gave her a haughty displeased appearance. Behind her came a bony plain youth, with an angular face, but the same eyes of her sister, with the brilliant longing of the always intrepid. Later, from the sides of that ancestral whale of the sand went out all kinds of people dressed up like the ostriches of the desert of nothingness.
Grandpa had stood watching and after some minutes, seeing that the strangers had civilized customs, he approached to wish them peace. The little girl was the first one who saw him, and ignoring the warnings about the native savages, she came to him. Grandpa stretched his hand indicating her face to touch her and the girl simply bit his finger. He moved back a step and asked her in an ancient aborigine dialect --What are you doing? To which the girl replied with a perfect intuition, -I wanted to taste coffee without milk.
The little girl said they were heading to Alice and then revealed that she and her brother came from the frost groundwater territory of Alberta, but yearned to know the irresistible southern continent from which Captain Cook had told about. They had finally arrived and were now living in Adelaide with her disgraceful aunt Babs. The girl explained now to grandpa that the train wasn't a terrible serpent god, but a wonderful technological advance. At that time the chubby assistants of the conductor had taken out the forced shovels to eliminate the yellow mountain which prevented them from reaching their destination. The girl's brother could finally help, but only after a long session of persuasive rhetoric given to the conductor about his jovial strength and his unconditional self-denial.
On the night of the first day, the girl and grandpa lay down together to watch the stars above and when they fell asleep their dreams got inevitably entwined. This way they woke up hugged and radiant. One of the chambermaids of the train saw them and later warned the girl in whispers; -Look after you from the mad people of the desert, they aren't trustworthy.
By the days they were stranded in that sea of sand, the passengers of The Ghan had to bear all sorts of incidents, from having to hunt a pile of rabbits and eating them stale and salty the subsequent days, as far as having to tolerate the drowsy heat from the interior of the burning coaches.
Even so and somehow both children understood each other and wandered around together without worries. They even saw amazed on the sixth day since the train stopped the humble lonely graveyard next to the railroad, founded for the infected ones of typhoid fever, and how it turned in an instant into the smelly flooded marsh of floating bones due to the unexpected biblical monsoon.
Grandpa and the girl seemed to live in another place, where the stopped train didn't look like an obstacle towards the aim but an essential means. It was on the ninth day that the dune completely disappeared and the elegant ladies clapped with joy. But then the misfortune occurred.
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Adelaide Development Boom - September 2008by UrbanSG2,224 views
what is this????
hwhomieg 3 years ago
just a story i wrote.... it's pretty weird i know!
cuckoo61 3 years ago