Desert Train

The train slowed and stopped along a wide stretch of velvety silence, naked and vulnerable in the ice cold night. A full kilometre and more of carriages and wagons were strung out between the double engine up front and the carriage that Rask was in at the tail end, and no accurate account for the unscheduled halt was ever going to travel back that far from the driver, only rumour. It was the coldest, deepest part of the night and Rask hadn’t been asleep: the other passengers had been. They kept on sleeping for a while until their collective subconscious registered that the gentle rolling of the train had tailed off along with the distant chug of the engines that had been pulling them across the desert since early morning; their hypnotized bodies could not sustain sleep unaided. People began to emerge crossly into the cold night from the jumble of blankets and baskets that were littered all about the carriage, their eyes gritty and sore in the dim light that was feebly leaching out from behind the stained, murky globes on the ceiling. They took a while to re-orient themselves before fixing their tired confusion on the quest for someone they could blame. The silence began to fill out first with rumbles and then with shrieks of confused discontent. Babies cried.

Rask pulled his blanket about his shoulders and went to the door for a closer look at the night and the desert. The solid metal plate was heavy and stiff to open. It fitted snugly into the side of the carriage like a slab of dressed marble dropped neatly into paving around a grave. He struggled to swing it out and away from the train. When the handle finally turned and the door shifted, he was left standing alone on the edge of the chaos of growing anger behind him. In front of him a wilderness appeared that called for his trust; an invisible platform to walk out onto, a new world. The disturbance reaching to him from behind quickly faded as he gazed into the pitiless grandeur of the night that stretched away and always in every direction. The busyness in the carriage soon began to settle as the night came through the open door to establish its rule. Anger turned to resignation and people willed themselves to sleep away the unexpected, forever unexplained delay.

Rask leapt lightly from where he stood by the enormous door onto the ground which dropped away sharply from the tracks. Only away from a station platform could anyone appreciate the size of those carriages and how far off the ground they travel. The night was cold and confident. There were no clouds in the sky to wrap warmth tightly into the earth, but there was a great heat coming off the train; it had rolled tirelessly over the desert through the scorching day, soaking in heat, storing it in tons of metal to be released later in the chill of the desert night. Around Rask was nothing, at least nothing significant that eyes could see. No station, no town or village, no solitary house, no animal or tree, only great clumps of rock and the beaten-down earth. He walked around for a while, staying within the stretch of faint light that seeped from behind the shuttered windows of the closest carriages. He walked farther from the train and from the influence of its heat and light.

 He walked deeper into the dark silence until a crop of rock isolated him from the life of the train, away from the light and heat and low moans it gave off, away from the smell of hot metal, dirt and spent fuel that hung in the air. Soon he was alone on the earth. The desert became a welter of wilderness and exposure. There was nowhere to hide. All the laws that hold life together became unwritten, unheard of and pointless beyond that clump of rock that sheltered Rask from men’s desire for control and freed him into the bonds and dictates of distance and night and the star-prickled ether of the sky.

Rask sensed a call to participate in the terrible unity of splendour and majesty that furnished out the night; the option to remain a passive and appreciative observer was not his, but the sky, although close, remained distant and untouchable. He longed for connection with the stars and the grace-packed emptiness, to draw its attention to his love and longing and limitation. He wanted to express the need to be recognised. He took off his clothes, scattering them on the ground and stood with arms reaching up but with no gift to offer, bringing no tribute other than himself in all his weakness and inadequacy, shockingly unashamed. The night was black, but sheets of light began to fall directly onto Rask and under that liquid, searching light his pale body became brown like the sand he had come from, though separate from it, more significant. The desert was made for this moment; it had been made for Rask. This open corner had been created to be the dull but necessary backdrop against which the splendour of invisible light poured in and through him. This was a moment reserved for those who know that they have nothing to give, those who know that they are spiritually bankrupt.

A cry from Rask’s ragged soul rang out through his body into the night. A blood-soaked torment of anguish radiated in silent waves into the depths of the universe. He was a beacon in the desert to warn and to guide, but invisible to souls dulled with pride and talent and capability, hidden in mist from wealth and wisdom. Rask fell to his knees and touched the cold, warm earth with his face, smelling the dryness and the death of the generations that had decayed into it. Blood cruelly spilled over the centuries by marauding invaders was mixed in time with the sweat of brutalised labourers who laid the tracks for the trains, and the violence and memory of suffering tried to drag Rask away from the light.

He wrestled some unseen presence that held onto him. He felt pierced through by the swords of oppressors and bathed, almost drowned in the tears of the poor. He struggled; he overcame. He drew himself up on his feet, spent and weakened, sore and wounded. Slowly he straightened, bringing up in his bleeding hands fistfuls of loose, dry earth that he poured over his head. He let the wispy grains and the time-smoothed stones run down his body like water. The victims of the ages caught in the desert earth cried out through him as they slipped down over his skin. They troubled the night sky in one final anguished squeal, begging for recognition and justice before tumbling down onto the jagged rocks, quietened now that their wounds had been bathed in the light and love focused on Rask’s body. Grace came flooding from beyond the stars, travelling unseen and changing things, bringing heat to frozen spirits.

Exhausted and spent, Rask lay back on the earth and let his eyes fall shut, absorbing the last warm rays of the passing presence that had started to fade. Sleep began to weigh heavily on his tormented, satisfied body, but the shrill blast of the train’s whistle called out in the chill night air. Rask struggled to his feet and grabbed his clothes that were lying scattered around in the dust, bundling them into the blanket, and ran bare-foot over the stony ground to the tracks and the slowly-moving train.