Elephant Bangs Train (2 page)

'A banquet tonight!' shouted Count Musov, waving to the woodcutter and the poet. The poet nodded his head. The woodcutter stared out over the frozen field.

The feet of the beast were chopped off and loaded into Count Musov's sleigh, as the sun set behind the icy mountain range. The remaining fragments were left in the snow, unattended, except for small birds who searched the hair for ancient fleas.

Bulnovka and the poet walked towards the village.

'I'll not sit at his table,' said the woodcutter.

'My dear fellow,' said the poet, 'you must see the final curtain.'

The poet prevailed and that night a horse and sleigh were borrowed from the blacksmith. The two men set out for the castle, riding in silence across the glistening fields, past the dimly lit church where Father Petroyuv knelt alone.

Upon the altar, between two candles, was a piece of bone from the kneeling leg of the mammoth. 'O Ghost,' prayed the old priest, 'forgive us.' He ran his fingers along the bone, then removing his high stiff hat, leaned his grey head over and laid a kiss upon the cold smooth surface.

Fires burned in the Count's courtyard, and the air was filled with the shouts of men and the music of stringed instruments. Bulnovka and the poet were led into the main gallery to a huge table surrounded by guests and filled with jugs of vodka. The Count and his beloved Katerina Dupinovna sat at the head, and Musov raised his glass to greet the latest arrivals to his table.

'The hero of Solmuchkava!' toasted the Count, and those at the table cheered drunkenly as Bulnovka and the poet took their seats. Spirits were high; the transparent drink of fire had stoked every heart. 'Come, Bulnovka,' said the poet, clicking his glass against that of the woodcutter, who drained his cup with a sudden and startling ferociousness.

Count Musov stood, waved his hand in the air. Katerina Dupinovna clapped her small white hands. Silence fell in the room. 'We have a treat in store for us,' said the Count, eyes glazed with glory. 'I have opened the oldest wine. It is only fitting.' The Count's servants entered with a large cask. 'I am told,' he smiled, 'that in China they eat thousand-year-old eggs. Tonight Count Musov's guests shall dine on a beast—how old do you estimate it to be, Doctor?'

The Doctor rose precariously, supporting himself with one hand on the back of his chair. 'At least two thousand years,' he said drunkenly, and slid back down.

'At least two thousand years,' said the Count in a solemn echo, and gestured to his kitchen. The servants entered once again, bearing an enormous piece of meat on a silver platter, which they set in the middle of the long wooden table. 'I shall carve,' said the Count, and the plates of the guests, noble men and women from as far as Krasnoyar, were filled, each with a large red-running piece of the mammoth.

The Count, still standing, bowed his head.

'We thank Thee for this bountiful table,' he said, and stabbing a piece of meat on the end of his knife, held it in the air for a moment, then dropped it in his mouth.

The table burst into applause and the doctor rose in his seat. 'More ice!' he shouted, waving his glass. He fell back in his chair, laughing to himself. He'd watched the cook's men beating the meat with mallets.

The poet disliked the flesh of any beast or fish, but tonight he was gripped by a dark hunger. He laid a piece of the ancient meat on his tongue, and chewed into it.

The woodcutter stared at his plate, unable to recall the song he'd sung in the moonlight.

'A most incredible meal,' said the Count, slicing through the roast with his ivory-handled knife.

'Superb, my darling,' said his wife, nibbling with little white teeth. Upstairs, the maids were braiding her a wig of hair from the mammoth.

'We have indeed been blessed,' said the doctor, laying his hand in the lap of the young woman beside him, who seemed not to notice it had landed there, so professional were the good doctor's learned fingers. 'More ice, my dear?' he asked, dropping a glistening chunk into the young lady's glass, followed by more of the clear, inflaming potion. Vodka, thought the doctor, his brain reeling, is a supernatural drink.

The poet's eyes were closed. His arms were pressed back in his chair and he had surrendered. The primeval meat was in him now, and his soul was dancing.

Count Musov chewed heroically on the rubbery flesh. What a beast! And herds of them once, with their ivory bayonets. A sudden surge of power raced through his body, thrilling him, and then suddenly, his head felt heavy, as if it were made of stone.

'You look as if you'd swallowed the thousand-year-old egg, my dear,' said his wife with a smile, sucking the meaty juices off her fingers.

The three musicians plucked out the mood from their corner of the hall. They'd eaten and drunk and now they pursued the mammoth's ghost, constructing chords they'd never known before, weaving dark songs to capture her.

Alexei Bulnovka pushed back his plate, stood, and walking to the head of the table, contemplated driving the ivory-handled knife of Count Musov into his own heart, then considered driving it into Count Musov.

'Well, woodcutter, what is it?' joked the Count. 'Is there some trophy you would like, the tail, perhaps?'

Bulnovka turned and walked out of the hall, as the beautiful Katerina Dupinovna burst into laughter.

'These men of the fields,' Count Musov explained to his guests, 'they're made of ice.'

The poet sank in his chair, down past broken temples, and the scattered pots of civilization, down past the tribes of men, and down, until all trace of humanity was eclipsed and there was only the trumpeting of beasts, and all belonged to them, and still he hurtled down, through the gates of dawn.

'Delicious, delicious,' said the doctor, laying his head on his plate and closing his eyes to rest in the primal gravy.

The woodcutter walked in the snow, breathing in the cold crystal of the night. His steps carried him to the rear of the castle, to a room lit by the glow of several lamps, in which the head of the mastodon sat, like an icon.

He entered the room, wherein was working a taxi-dermist from Poplova who'd arrived that afternoon. The massive head rested on a table, tusks curling in the lamplight, and the old man was painting the skin of its head with translucent fluid. He saluted Bulnovka, and lifting the lip of the mastodon, pointed inside.

'Buttercups,' he said, and extracted a small yellow flower from the great row of teeth.

Marie

M
ARIE
C
OBBINSKI
picked up her dress. We could see her legs, Ducky Doodle, Ralph Jenkins, and me. A summer wind blew through the room. Paper birds flapped on the window. Life was sweet, we were young, teacher was in the hall.

'Ya, ya!' yelled Ducky Doodle. 'Last day in second grade!'

The meadow tossed its perfume. A serpent danced in the sunlit grass. The earth was turning.

'I wore my tap shoes today,' said Marie. Intoxicated, we stared at her knees.
      

'Higher, please,' said Ralph Jenkins.

Marie rose from her seat and stood before us in the aisle, blonde, beautiful, if a bit too full in the nose. She smiled shyly, tugged her dress up higher. Open-mouthed, we stared. The class was sailing airplanes. We were hidden in delight, beside the papier-mâché mountain in the corner.

'Show us your panties, Marie,' suggested Ralph
Jenkins. Ducky Doodle drummed on his head. I said, 'Oh, Marie.'

Swept up in our admiration, she twirled in the sunlight, as a flower opened inside her, and the wind dived in the window, beguiling her. Unable to resist, she showed her panties.

Our souls reeled. The distant ages wheeled into view. Ducky the Jester stood on his hands. Ralph Jenkins wiggled his ears. Our princess skipped down the aisle, holding up her dress with two fingers. The lilac bush beat
on the windowpane. How nice her black two-shoes
tapped.

'More panties!' yelled Ralph, wet-mouthed, calling the toast.

Over the seven hills of the valley came the summer goddess, trailing her veils. Marie bent over, threw her dress up from behind.

Her panties were as white as Christ's linen, pure as the summer, filled with promises, sweet, untouched by vacationing boys. We buzzed around her, drawn by her delicate essence, her petalling prepubescence. She danced, we sang, teacher was forever down the hall, splashing in the fountain.

The clock ticked and jumped. We had the answer. It was Marie Cobbinski, Ducky Doodle, Ralph Jenkins, and me. We cut the moorings, sailed away, out of the classroom and into the air. There, in the sky, the trapeze: I am swung from it, she catches me, we hang, suspended. I gaze into the face of love, uncertain if I am Ralph, or Ducky, or me, when suddenly, we are upended. The high wire is broken, the team is falling.

'What is going on in this room?'

Marie's eyes crossed, she bit her lip.

Standing in the doorway was the teacher, a musty old bird of gloom, eggs petrified inside her. Cackling, she ran to her perch in front of the room.

Ducky and I wheeled in front of Marie. She pulled down her dress. Teacher didn't see the panties, she was scratching in her nest. 'Marie Cobbinski, get to your seat immediately!' she said, and charged down the aisle with a ruler.

Marie ran to her seat. We stood frozen beneath the beak of the hoarfrost bird. 'How dare you!' she shrieked, snapping Ducky Doodle by the braces. 'Hey, hey,' was all he could say. 'How dare you interrupt this class with your—' She smacked Doodle on the head. '—antics! Now
sit
,' she said, and catapulted him down the aisle.

She turned to me. There were the little people in the village under the mountain, working with their rakes and shovels. 'Who do you think
you
are?' she asked.

'Nobody,' I said.

'That's right,' she said. 'Hold out your hands!'

The ruler came down. There was a fire in my palms. I looked up. Taking my head in her claw, she clamped me in my seat.

Ralph Jenkins stood alone, wet-mouthed and surprised
. The class laughed. Ralph was a dumbbell. He'd catch hell.

Head trembling, she went for him, past the open window. The wind caught her hair, waved it aloft. 'Oh,' she said, touching her bald spot. 'Why do you torment me?'

She sailed towards Ralph, a Chinese dragon kite, red-faced and terrible, flapping her horny tail. 'I'll teach you,' she said. Ralph ran to the window, tried to fly, it was too late. He searched the sky, hoping to jump the room, but the summer goddess was playing with other boys in the valley, boys on the loose and miles away. The magic was ended. The dragon kite descended like a goblin from the moon.

Beating her bony wings, she nested on him, pressing his head into her ribs, burying him in her paper gown. He was doomed, he was going under. He tried to save himself. He yelled the secret.

'Marie Cobbinski showed her panties!'

The earth stopped, the wind died, the dragon kite collapsed into an old woman. Far away in the next county, the summer goddess shuddered, fell to the grass.

'Yeah, yeah!' screamed Ralph Jenkins, unable to bear the silence he'd created with the enormity of his curse.

I looked at Marie. Her head was down. She was crying. The class was laughing. They would sing,
we saw your panties
.

'Marie, I'm ashamed of you,' said the teacher. She walked slowly to the front of the room, climbed wearily on to her perch. So this is how it ends, she thought. This is how they leave me.

Follow the Eagle

J
OHNNY
E
AGLE
climbed on to his 750-cubic-centimetre Arupa motorcycle and roared out of the Navaho Indian Reservation, followed by the Mexican, Domingo, on a rattling Japanese cycle stolen from a Colorado U law student.

Up the morning highway they rode towards the Colorado River, half-drunk and full-crazy in the sunlight, Eagle's slouch hat brim bent in the wind, Domingo's long black moustaches trailing in the air.

Yes, thought Eagle, wheeling easy over the flat land, yes, indeed. And they came to Navaho Canyon where they shut down their bikes. Mist from the winding river far below rose up through the scarred plateau and the air was still.

Eagle and Domingo wheeled their bikes slowly to the edge of the Canyon. Domingo got off and threw a stone across the gorge. It struck the far wall, bounced, echoed, fell away in silence.

'Long way to the other side, man,' he said, looking at Eagle.

Eagle said nothing, sat on his bike, staring across the gaping crack in the earth.

Domingo threw another stone, which cleared the gap, kicking up a little cloud of dust on top of the other cliff. 'How fast you got to go—hunnert, hunnert twenty-five?'

Eagle spit into the canyon and tromped the starter of his bike.

'When you goin', man?' shouted Domingo over the roar.

'Tomorrow!'

That night was a party for Johnny Eagle on the Reservation.
He danced with Red Wing in the long house, pressed her up against a corner. Medicine Man came by, gave Eagle a cougar tooth. 'I been talkin' to it, Eagle,' he said.

'Thanks, man,' said Eagle and he put it around his neck and took Red Wing back to his shack, held her on the falling porch in the moonlight, looked at the moon over her shoulder.

She lay on his broken bed, hair undone on his ragged pillow, her buckskin jacket on the floor. Through the open window came music from the party, guitar strings and a drum head and Domingo singing

Uncle John have everything he need

'Don't go tomorrow,' said Red Wing, unbuttoning Eagle's cowboy shirt.

'Gitchimanito is watchin' out for me, baby,' said Eagle, and he mounted her, riding bareback, up the draw, slow, to the drumbeat. His eyes were closed but he saw her tears, like silver beads, and he rode faster and shot his arrow through the moon.

'Oh, Johnny,' she moaned, quivering beneath him, 'don't go,' and he felt her falling away, down the waving darkness.

They lay, looking out through the window. He hung the cat's tooth around her neck. 'Stay with me,' she said, holding him till dawn, and he rose up while she was sleeping. The Reservation was grey, the shacks crouching in the dawn light.