the return by train

 

Father Avellana was named Genebrando and came from a humble family of farmers from Medina del Campo, or so it was said. They had given him that nickname due to his dark complexion and his shaved, round head, which remained inclined over a black-covered book while swaying gently to the rhythm of the train's clattering.

The station was on the outskirts of the town, and upon arrival, they got off the truck. The driver said a quick goodbye and left.

On the walls of the lobby, inside the station, there were large murals of peasants, representing Galician men and women, strong and corpulent, oblivious to the famine and misery of the land. It was disconcerting to understand what reason they could have for taking the train and leaving their homes. The father approached the ticket window queue, and when it was his turn, he pulled out his old leather wallet from a pocket in his cassock and requested two tickets: one for an adult and another at a reduced price for a child. After receiving the change and the tickets that came out through the window, they went out to the platform. The sun still showed its reluctance, hiding behind the clouds. Although the day was progressing, the morning remained cold and misty. They sat on one of the empty benches on the platform to wait.

On one of the tracks, a train awaited while water was loaded into its black locomotive, which occasionally released steam with a loud whistle under its imposing black belly, showing its impatience. On the platform, men with wooden suitcases, accompanied by their wives or family members, said their goodbyes, many of them heading to distant destinations. Some solitary travelers, impatient for their train's arrival, wandered back and forth along the station.

After a while, the train they were going to travel in entered the station platform and stopped with a sharp squeal of its huge iron wheels on the tracks. The wagon doors opened, and travelers who had reached their destination began to disembark with their belongings, while those departing waited to board.

Sisa and Father Avellana gathered their things and headed to one of the train cars. At the entrance to the car, people crowded in front of the door saying their goodbyes to their family members before departing. They passed through them and boarded the train. Once inside, they walked along the narrow aisle of the car, squeezed among people looking out the windows either to talk to someone outside or to observe another station in their journey, until they found an empty compartment and entered. Father placed Sisa's suitcase on the luggage rack above the rubber seats in the train compartment, and then they sat down.

Sisa let his feet hang while sitting on the bluish-gray rubber.

"Passengers on the train!" - was heard from outside, followed by a whistle. Travelers taking advantage of the last minutes by the car door, saying their goodbyes to their family members, hurried to board. The locomotive began to puff, releasing long jets of steam from the sides, and the cars, after a few tense seconds, started moving. Suddenly, everything came to life: people on the platform seemed to be running, the bookstore where newspapers were sold, the canteen, the station entrance door, the village houses... in the end, only a few iron rails were left behind by the locomotive as it moved away, leaving one world to enter another where Sisa's mother awaited him.

Turning his gaze back inside the car, Sisa noticed that a tab of blue paper protruded among the pages of one of his notebooks, which he kept in a leather bundle. He pulled it, and in his hand was a rectangle of blue paper: it was the ticket awarded at the school festival, which had wanted a mocking fate that he couldn't find to claim his prize. Ah... he sighed sadly. He held it up in the air, extending his right arm to show it to the world. Father Avellana raised his eyes from the book to look at Sisa. Seeing the number, 101 in black ink on the ticket, he understood what it was. He shrugged and returned to his reading.

Time, with its seconds in the form of pines, flowed through the window glass of the train compartment while, as the train passed, a silent and changing world displayed its semblances in the form of landscapes.

Sisa raised his ticket even higher, as a sign of triumph for having found it, albeit late, and placed it in front of the ceiling lamp that remained hidden behind it, as if a rectangular planet eclipsed the sun. For a moment, he contemplated the bluish eclipse of the paper under the light of the electric star on the train's ceiling until his hand turned to lower slowly, simulating with the ticket the glide of a propeller plane starting its descent from the sky.

He was the aviator making the plane spin in the air to chase the enemy plane with the bullets from his machine guns. Fiuuuuuu. Ta, ta, ta, ta, ta... He would have stood up if it weren't for the father's gaze, who again raised his eyes with a reproachful look. He turned towards the corner of the car and continued more quickly. - Tatattatatatata. The enemy plane, accurately hit by his bullets, began its nosedive in a somersault of smoke, while he, driving his blue rectangle, began his ascent to return to the sky.

The town was oppressed by its exploiters, and Sisa, who had realized it in his child's heart, spun in the air with his plane to chase with the bullets from his machine guns the enemies and the evildoers who robbed the humble and hardworking people. - Tatatttta, tatatatatta...

Once the enemies of the town were defeated, with one or two passes, the plane flew over the liberated fields, and the people, taking advantage of that unexpected moment in their lives when they ceased to be slaves, wiped their foreheads with their sweat-soaked handkerchiefs. Then, with their sweat-soaked handkerchiefs, they saluted the sky to their heroic aviator.

mvf.

Previously, this story was about the train journey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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