Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,80
girl had skin the colour of flour and hair like a Brillo pad. Every minute or so she would take a deep breath, wipe her cheeks, and say brightly, “We’ll get to go to the seaside!” or “The Fairweathers have kittens!” and then immediately dissolve back into sobs. Behind her was a little boy, barely old enough to stand, clutching a bottle of milk in the centre of the aisle. Someone bumped into him; he rocked back and forth on his heels like an inflatable clown and toppled in slow motion onto his bottom. The milk spilled down his front. The boy’s mouth opened, wider and wider, like a pupil dilating; it hit the end of its reach and he started to howl. An adolescent girl who had been put in charge of the carriage jumped to her feet. “Oh shoot,” she said. “You little rascals! Everyone into their seats!” She clapped her hands together. She picked the milk-soaked toddler up, struggling under his weight and trying to console him, but seemed at a loss when faced with the wet vest. A moment later she had put the crying child back on the floor and was flipping through a Film Fun magazine.
Pepik took a seat next to a fat boy whose cheeks looked like apples. The train had not yet started to move but the other boy had already taken out his lunch bag, had unfolded the newspaper wrapping, and was scarfing down chlebíčky. The girl in charge of the carriage had her face buried in her leather bag and was taking out its contents item by item. A comb, a bar of dark chocolate. She unfolded a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles, placed them on her nose, and turned towards the window—looking not at her parents on the platform but at her own reflection in the glass.
Pepik wanted to take his sweater off—he was so hot—but it got tangled in the leather strap of his rucksack and he struggled, sweat pouring off him. His arm was stuck behind his back, and he twisted his torso and thought hard about the snake that could wiggle its way out of anything. His arm came free. When he turned back to sit down, the boy with the fat cheeks had taken his seat. “What’s in your lunch?”
“Nothing,” Pepik said. He drew his own brown paper bag protectively towards his stomach. The boy made a lunge for it; Pepik turned quickly, and his head reeled. The sound of his heart beating behind his eyes was the sound of a thousand stallions galloping through the Black Forest at night. He needed to get off the train. It came over him suddenly and urgently. It was as if his father’s words were water behind a blockage in a pipe: they burst through all at once. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.
He didn’t want to!
He put his rucksack down on the floor and the fat boy stuck his hand in and came out with one of the crabapples. Pepik didn’t stop. He pushed his way past two older boys who were making fart jokes in German and squiggled up under a wall of girls. When he came up, he was right in front of the window. The platform was packed with crying faces but he saw Marta immediately, her long, dark curls and dimple. She didn’t even need to smile: the dimple was always there. Pepik’s eyes locked on her like the clasp on his valise.
Marta was scanning the length of the train, looking for him too.
Pepik started screaming. It was a wordless scream, a blast of pure sound, and only after several seconds did the individual words begin to assert themselves, flinging out in every direction like silver balls in a pinball machine. “No! I don’t want to! I don’t want to go!” he shouted. “Tata, I don’t want to go, come and get me, I don’t want to, I don’t want to goooooo!” The words flew through the air, over the crowd, and pinged on the station floor unnoticed. His parents still couldn’t see him. Behind Pepik came an adult voice telling the children to move away from the windows and sit down so the train could start moving. Pepik had wedged himself halfway out of the train: the edge of the sill was digging into his stomach. The words kept coming, one after another: “Mamenka! Tata! I want to stay here with you! I want to, I want, Tata .