Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas - Maya Angelou [85]
My friends and I nestled down, anxious for the train to move. We were chatting when a noise alerted us. We looked up to see Mr. Julian standing in the doorway of the compartment, holding a small package.
“Mistress Maya?” Tears trickled down his face. “Mistress Maya, I am wishing you joy happiness and wictory” With that emotional outcry he threw the package in my lap, slammed the door and leaped off the train.
Lillian asked, “That was Mr. Julian?”
Ethel said unbelievingly, “No, surely not?”
Barbara Ann asked, “But when was he a swimming champion?”
Martha shifted her small head and said, “He looks like he'd have a hard time floating across a bathtub.”
Before I could retort, his face was at the window. He waved his hands in a beckoning motion and the train began to move slowly. Mr. Julian kept up with our window for a while, but as the train gained momentum his face and all the other faces of those left behind began to slide from our view. In a few minutes we were in open country, looking out on lonely farmhouses and sullen fields.
Ned Wright pulled the door open and offered a bottle of slivovitz.
“Here we are, me darlings. Long gone and away. Tito can keep his Yugoslavia. I am meant to sit under sunny skies and sing. What the hell are you crying for, Maya?”
Ethel said it couldn't be for Mr. Julian. “Did you see him?”
Martha laughed, “He looked like a mile of country road in the winter in North Carolina.”
I said, “But he persevered. And he was nice. I mean, he never failed to call and he had to get up very early to be at the station before we left. I admire that in anyone.”
Ethel asked, “Would you like to go back to Belgrade?”
I didn't have to choose an answer. I said, “No. Pass me the slivovitz!”
The train sped all day through the glowering provinces and we took our meals in an old dining car which smelled like our last hotel. Some of the cast took naps or wrote letters home. We played games of rise and fly bid whist in our compartment with all the passion of addicted gamblers. When the gray afternoon finally surrendered to night, a porter made our beds and we slept.
I awakened to find Martha and Ethel chittering like crickets. The sunlight came boldly through the windows and their faces were lit with a gaiety I hadn't seen for weeks.
“Maya, girl, you're going to sleep all day? Look out the window.” Martha edged over and made room for me. The countryside had changed. In one night we had passed from bleak winter to spring. Cows grazed on abundant green foliage and the farmhouses were painted in so many vivid colors the scene resembled a large Matisse painting.
Grownups, smiling broadly, waved at the train, and children bounced, laughing their excitement. The picture touched me so violently that I was startled, and in an instant I realized that I had not seen giddy children since Venice. The Parisian youngsters were so neat in dress and manner they might have been family ornaments created and maintained to adorn. The children I saw in Yugoslavia appeared sensible and level-headed without the buoyancy of childhood. Here were children I could understand. Although their voices didn't carry over the distance and through our windowpane, I was certain they were shouting, yelling and screaming, and I was just as certain that the mothers were saying “Be quiet,” “Stop that” and “Hush.”
I got up and excused myself. The longing for my own son threatened to engulf me. As I walked down the corridor, controlling the emotional deluge that swelled in my mind, I passed compartments where other members of the company sat close to their windows, absorbed.
We caught brief glimpses of the white buildings and green hills of Athens, then boarded buses which were to take us to the port city of Piraeus.