Elephant Bangs Train
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Authors: William Kotzwinkle
Elephant Bangs Train
William Kotzwinkle
CORGI BOOKS
A DIVISION OF TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS LTD
WILLIAM KOTZWINKLE is a former department store Santa Claus who has taken leave of his senses to write a remarkable series of short stories. His imaginative command of character and atmosphere is astonishing. In a few lines we are deep in the world of an Indian mahout, or a Siberian peasant, or a mountie in Edwardian Canada; and the more day-to-day stories of childhood are full of deprecating humour and sly, appealing humility. His world is peopled with legendary figures from all times and places—including St. John Noonday who lied to men, women, animals, inanimate objects, 'was master of the small lie of little consequence; was proficient in the long convoluted lie in which vast systems of falsehood spiralled, minutely detailed, leading nowhere'; and Wood Flower, living in a narrow cobbled lane beside Yellow River, whose 'walk was perfect, having been trained in the school of Han Tan; her eyebrows, green slivered moons, rose above the magic pools of her eyes, in which both dragon and kissing fish swam.'
ELEPHANT BANGS TRAIN
A CORGI BOOK 0
5
52 10941 X
First published in Great Britain by Faber & Faber Ltd.
P
RINTING
H
ISTORY
Faber edition published 1971
Corgi edition published 1979
Copyright © 1969, 1970, 1971 by William Kotzwinkle
Corgi Books are published by Transworld Publishers Ltd.,
Century House, 61-63 Uxbridge Road, Ealing, London, W5 5SA
Made and printed in Great Britain by
Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press), Ltd., Bungay, Suffolk.
Marie
first appeared in
New Orleans Review
, Spring 1969
Turning Point
first appeared in
Armadillo
, Autumn 1970
Follow the Eagle
first appeared in
Redbook
, April 1971
Lines from 'Long Tall Sally' by E. Johnson and R. Penniman are reprinted by permission of the publisher
Copyright © 1965 by Venice Music, Inc.
CONTENTS
Stroke of Good
Luck:
A True Nurse Romance
For Elizabeth
with thanks to Bob Shiarella
'Somewhere there was once a Flower, a Stone, a Crystal, a Queen, a King, a Palace, a Lover and his Beloved, and this was long ago, on an Island somewhere in the ocean five thousand years ago . . . Such is Love, the Mystic Flower of the soul. This is the Centre, the Self . . .'
Jung to Miguel Serrano
A Record of Two Friendships
A Most Incredible Meal
I
N
1843, a Siberian woodcutter, Alexei Bulnovka, while walking homeward in the moonlight, noticed a deep shadow in a mountain of ice. The wind howled, stinging and freezing his face. He'd been thinking of a fire, food and his bed, but dropping to his hands and knees, he crawled along the frozen hillside, trying to determine the nature and size of the dark shape within it.
The moon was nearly full. The woodcutter swung his axe. Three strokes were enough to crack the ice. Bulnovka knelt and reached into the opening with his bare hand. His fingers touched coarse stiff hair. He scraped away the clinging ice until he uncovered beneath the hair, a toe, large as a fist, hard as stone.
He looked around the frozen hill, caught in a cold wave of fear that iced his spirit. Yet as in that terrible moment when a great tree is falling, he felt a surging joy.
He began to chop. The ice broke, slid away. He uncovered a foot, enormous, with the stone toenails of a giant. Whose foot, he dared not imagine. He knew only that he had to free the creature from its icy grave.
He struck with his axe, again and again, and soon his body was drenched with sweat. He was a powerful man, his blows were shattering; yet his limbs were like twigs compared to the hairy leg which was slowly revealed beneath his strokes, a leg like the trunk of a hundred-year-oak. With woodcutter's precision, he aimed his axe so that it fragmented the ice, but did not wound the flesh frozen beneath.
The night passed on, but he'd lost track of time. He'd been a steady fellow, quiet and unfulfilled. Now he was intoxicated with discovery, and all that he had ever been, boy, young man, husband and father, seemed to culminate in this task of liberation.
He did not tire as he worked, but like the sculptor, quickly learned the technique of making those blows which fracture deep cavities in stone, and huge slides of ice fell away with echoing cracks.
He cut steps and mounted upward on the ice, chopping through to the creature's haunches, which were big as oxen. His joy was great, he made songs.
What were the courts of the Czar compared to this, the hidden treasure? He strode across the glistening ledge of ice, striking boldly. What were troops, and horses, compared to this, the gigantus?
A massive chunk of ice fell away and there, staring coldly at him, was an eye, shining in the moonlight like a jewel. Removing his glove, he touched the small frozen pupil. Like all men, he'd nourished the idea of a miracle, but now he knew, his companion was dead. The eye was open; the expression, a mournful one, was still there, but the great spirit had fled. Alexei Bulnovka was alone.
He continued chopping, and slowly the top of the head appeared, a terrific mass of bone and flesh, covered by a shaggy mane. He stood upon it in the falling snow, facing the eastern sky, and knew his first moment of doubt. Might it not be better to let the snow reclaim its prisoner? The beast, whatever it was, was dead, preserved like a precious saint. Who was he to disturb its sleep?
He staggered down the icy staircase he'd constructed, and looked into the beady frozen eye. He longed to see the face of this creature. Decisively, he struck a blow between and just below the eyes, parting the ice around a long protuberance, like a giant's arm.
He looked up at the sky, questioning the stars. He struck again. The side of his axe collided with something hard, like bone. Knocking away the ice, he saw that it was not a bone, but a long curling tooth, like the Saracen sword, and then he knew he'd found the grandfather of elephants and he chopped with fury through the night.
As the grey morning came, Alexei Bulnovka's axe had revealed the head, forequarters, and mid-section of the beast. The mastodon stood erect, except for the right front leg, which was bent, as if in kneeling. Bulnovka knelt beside it, resting his feverish head against the frozen flesh.
A dream he had as a child erupted in his mind—he'd been walking across a frozen lake and seen below, frozen in the ice, a diamond. Here was that diamond, he realized, risen from the waters of time, and he wept, knowing that this night had been, after all, the one moment of his life.
The work Alexei Bulnovka had performed alone in the night became public property with the dawn. As when the grave of the Redeemer was opened and the flame of his rising body touched every heart, so the lifting of the icy shroud was seen in a dream by the oldest woman of nearby Solmuchkava, as the sleepy village awakened restlessly to its most glorious dawn.
Barking dogs led the way to the mastodon and the men of the village followed with their axes, along with the women and old Petroyuv the priest, who sprinkled holy water on the beast and gave Alexei Bulnovka the sacred host in the snow. In a few hours the carcass was fully loosed from its glacial sarcophagus and was claimed by Count Ivan Fyodorvich Musov, whose team of superb black horses was dwarfed in the shadow of the mastodon.
Count Musov was, momentarily, speechless, and walked quietly around the great beast, slapping lightly once with his whip the kneeling leg.
News of Count Musov's find was quickly carried to the city of Svobodny, where, within the following hour, a train for Solmuchkava was boarded by Rushov, a physician of the Czar, and Nyam Gogoli, a wandering poet who convinced the conductor that in the interest of Russian literature he should be allowed to ride for free to the site of the primeval grave.
Doctor and poet arrived at the grave site by late afternoon, when makeshift tents and cook-stoves were dotting the ice, and the men of the village were in counsel with Count Musov about the removal of the body.
Seeing the beast, Gogoli the poet was seized by vertigo,
as if he'd been hurled from a mountain of the moon
. Rushov the physician declared the mastodon to be a female and suggested to Count Musov that it be removed to Moscow. But how could it be moved? There was no railroad car big enough to handle her, and now that her snowsuit had been removed, she would soon begin to melt.
However, the mastodon was still frozen solid and stood unwavering in the snow, eyes staring out over the once-silent tundra, which was now filled with spectators.
The logistics of movement were grappled with by Count Musov and the village men. The hero of the night, Alexei Bulnovka, could not be consulted, as he lay inside a tent, covered in blankets brought by the women, who watched over his deep and dreamless sleep.
There was no team of horses strong enough to draw the mastodon over the fifteen miles to Count Musov's castle, not if every horse in Solmuchkava were harnessed to her carcass. The only way of moving her was in pieces. So the question was, which piece?
Ultimately, the head was decided upon, because of the fine-tooled ivory which Count Musov envisioned in his main gallery. The physician of the Czar instructed the men as to where the easiest cutting would be, and as night fell the woodsmen took their axes to the great neck and in the flickering firelight began to chop away, to no avail. The flesh was harder than Russian oak.
Saws were brought and manned by teams in the moonlight, but progress was pitiably slow. Finally, it was decided among the men that they should wait until the thawing of the beast had begun. The workmen retired to the village for the night; Count Musov and the Czar's physician rode off to the castle. Still sleeping, Alexei Bulnovka was carried home on a sled, pulled by Gogoli the poet. The woodcutter was attended through the night by his wife and daughter, who sat up over a glowing samovar; the poet dropped off to sleep in a chair, into dreams of a tropical rain forest, where stampeded the pachyderms of paradise.
Dawn came once again on the ancient hulk, bathing her in sunlight. The village teams returned, as did the Count, and his wife, the beautiful Katerina Dupinovna, who'd been given a thorough examination that morning, following her bath, by the physician of the Czar, who declared her pulse to be normal, in spite of the excitement.
The woodcutter and the poet had been first to arrive, and now stood watching the industry of the men. The work was proceeding satisfactorily, as drops of blood could be seen on the neck of the mastodon where the sabre-toothed saws were cutting through the hide, now softer and more yielding.
'I was a fool,' said Bulnovka, cursing himself.
'You held her in the moonlight,' said the poet.
At noon the spinal column was cracked, and the tendons of the neck severed. The ice was bathed in blood, and the great head dropped off. The ivory tusks rested in the snow like the runners of a sleigh. A horse was hitched to each one and over the ice field the head rode, eyes open, towards the castle of Count Musov.
'Might I suggest,' said the physician, indicating the flank of the beast, 'that you now carve steaks?'
The men of the village worked skilfully, cutting off great hunks of flesh, which were then salted, wrapped, and taken immediately to the castle. The Count was not ungenerous. Each man received a cut of meat larger than his own torso, as did Father Petroyuv for himself and his housekeeper.
In the afternoon, under the mournful gaze of Alexei Bulnovka, the kneeling leg collapsed and the mastodon tumbled over, as the workmen leapt from their posts, and bloody axes flew in the air.