Читать книгу A Train through Time - Elizabeth Farnsworth - Страница 12

I heard the voice of Judge Guzmán: “So the cranium is here?” I must have left the mixing room door open.

Stepping over a protective barrier and brushing plants aside, I kneeled in front of Tik-tok and hugged him. Then, time did something I can’t explain. I felt a jolt, like electricity, and saw myself as the girl who had loved the Oz books half a century before.

That girl asked, “What sent you on a path through death and destruction?”

Minutes passed. Memories flashed through my mind like film in a projector.

A green snake, thin as a pencil, rising from an altar in Cambodia.

A plain wooden file drawer with 3 x 5 cards for each of the desaparecidos in Chile. Randomly, I take out a card and read the name—Jorge Müller, a friend.

A man on a bridge across the Euphrates, haloed by the setting sun.

We finished the mix at Skywalker Ranch, and The Judge and the General screened successfully in festivals and on public television. After that, still haunted by the child’s question, I began to fit memories together, like bones from an exhumation.

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Topeka—Winter 1953

I woke up in the dark that morning as the whooshing sound drew near and prayed that whatever it was would stay outside.

I had seen it once—a dark shape hovering above the bed, bellowing—whooooshhh whooooshhh. When I told Mother, she called it the “monkey with a motor on its tail.”

“Nothing to fear,” she said.

I tried to call for help, but fright stole my voice away.

Suddenly—the ring of an alarm clock, and I was saved, at least on this morning. My father came in the room. “It’s time, Elizabeth. Today’s the day.”

I dressed in new blue jeans, grabbed my overnight bag and teddy bear, and waited at the top of the stairs. I had recently turned nine. My sister, Marcia, who was fifteen, and our dog, Cindy, had gone to an aunt’s house, where they would stay while my father and I were away.

I waited for several minutes before looking into my parents’ bedroom to see why Daddy hadn’t come. He stood in front of Mother’s dresser, staring at her hand mirror as if he’d never seen it before. Then he packed it under a sweater in his suitcase and turned and saw me waiting.

I could tell he didn’t want to leave. I couldn’t wait to go.

Outside, an icy wind almost knocked me down. My grandfather had arrived early—a familiar trait in our railroad family—to take us to the station. We drove across the flatness of Topeka, weaving through neighborhoods so dark that I could hardly see the houses, passed my sister’s high school with its brightly lit tower, and crossed the river on the Kansas Avenue Bridge. I waited for my father to tell a story about these places—he liked history—but neither he nor my grandfather spoke.

At the Union Pacific Station, our train, the Portland Rose, was late, and I sat on a wooden bench in the huge waiting room, watching people walk up and down, their voices echoing off the high walls. Somewhere down the track, a steam engine was switching cars—whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. The labored breathing sounded like the monster at home in the night.

A gust of wind shook windows behind me, and then—the deep rumble of a diesel engine. We walked outside and watched as it approached, brakes squealing, headlight probing the dark.

This train will take us to another world—like Dorothy’s tornado I thought.

A porter took our bags and showed us to our bedroom, which he called a compartment. He had made up the berths so we could go back to sleep. It was five o’clock in the morning.

As we pulled out of Topeka, my father said, “The locomotive has the power of more than a thousand horses.”

I imagined them pulling us across the prairie, my beloved home.

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Cambodia—1993

I take in the smells of Phnom Penh as we drive through dark streets—wood fires, river, rotting fish. We’re headed for a military base just outside of town, where we’ll catch an early-morning ride to Banteay Meanchey, a province bordering Thailand in the north. The helicopter, a Russian Mi-17, painted white with “UN” in black letters on both sides, is warming up on the tarmac when we arrive. We’ll leave at first light.

I’m excited about the trip but keep flashing back in my mind to Topeka (sorrel horse, hedge apples along a fence line), which means I’m more nervous than I thought.

Remnants of the Khmer Rouge still control some places we’re going. The group’s leaders signed a peace agreement and cooperated at first in the run-up to UN-sponsored elections, but now they’re trying to stop the vote. This is the largest UN nation-building operation to date, and many countries have contributed troops and equipment, including the chopper. But no head of state wants to take losses, so UN soldiers have been ordered to avoid confrontations with any of the warring parties, including Khmer Rouge guerrillas.

Cambodia feels different than when we were here for The NewsHour two years ago. Hope lies heavy around us like the pre-monsoon air.

We board the helicopter, and the Russian pilot takes off toward the rising sun, banks north and a little west, and crosses the junction of the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers, which are flowing slowly in these last weeks before monsoon rains begin. In the dim light, I can barely see the great lake fed by the Tonle Sap River, which now flows southeast but will reverse direction when the drenched Mekong backs up.

As the sun rises higher, I see jungle, water, and occasional towns. Then the pilot noses down the copter, and the towers of Angkor Wat shimmer in the early light. No one speaks as we circle. Someone cowers in a courtyard below. After three ever-wider passes, we fly northwest again. The pilot points to another helicopter, a white Mi-17, lying wrecked on the ground.

“Was it shot down?” I can’t decipher his answer over the engine’s noise.

A platoon of Dutch marines is waiting for us in Banteay Meanchey. They load cameraman John Knoop, soundman Jaime Kibben, an interpreter, and me into a Land Rover with a mounted, manned machine gun behind the driver. The marines form a three-vehicle convoy with us in the middle, and we drive northwest on a dirt road that has been mined by one of the competing Cambodian factions. John points to sandbags under our feet with a wry smile and begins to film. We head for villages where Khmer Rouge soldiers have threatened to kill anyone who votes in the elections for a constituent assembly, now two weeks away.

Thirty-six UN employees in Cambodia have died as a result of hostile actions.

After about an hour, the convoy stops, and we walk single file down a narrow path to a cliff overlooking a deep and verdant valley, a place where the competing Cambodian factions have not yet denuded a large forest. Using binoculars, the soldiers check for signs of cutting, because the UN has placed an embargo on timber exports to block a source of income for the warring groups. In this place, at least, a green canopy stretches for miles before us, undisturbed in the hot, midday light.

On the way back to rejoin the convoy, a sergeant warns us again to stay on the narrow path; the surrounding area has been mined—by whom he doesn’t say. We stop to reconnoiter an open-air temple—a thatched roof sheltering a large statue of Buddha surrounded by unlit candles. In the shadow of the Buddha, a snake hisses and uncoils, rising thin and scaly green. None of us knows what kind of snake it is. A sergeant steps between me and the snake, and I nod my thanks.

The memory repeats like a stuck tape. The snake rises. The Dutch sergeant moves to my side. Again and again.

The convoy travels farther along the mined road and then turns toward one of the threatened villages. We pass huts and a warehouse where Khmer Rouge soldiers in ragged uniforms are loading bags of rice onto a truck. Are they stealing it? One raises his Kalashnikov and aims it at our car. He looks about sixteen. As we pass, he lowers the weapon and laughs.