On the Train: Martha Tennent - Translator's Note
… no, no, just like I was telling you, I’ve never been able to sleep on the train, I get kind of drowsy, but I can always hear the creaking of wheels and wood and besides, with all the wobbling and jerking, I’m afraid to go to the toilet and it scares me that the train might send me spinning against the wall and knock me cold and if nobody has a need for hours, nobody’s going to hear me even if I holler and at my age they’d find me dead and I don’t want to die without the taking of Our Lord. All of us could be struck down by accident, but it’d be mighty sad to die doomed and me, I don’t like fire, and the one in hell, judging from what they say, must be one of the fiercest.
They thirsty? Poor creatures, sure they’re thirsty. With their half-open beaks, their crests all sad-like—but I can’t help them any. The day after tomorrow they’ll be dead and roasted ‘cause it’s Santa Maria and at my gentleman’s house they’re going to have them a big party ‘cause, besides being the senyora’s Saint’s Day, the oldest daughter—she looks like a Virgin on one of them religious cards—well she’s going to make her debut. You going to remember to let me know when we get to Barcelona? I can’t read, not one letter, my son now he knew how to read like he was a gentleman’s son, but he died from something in the chest and he wasn’t even twenty years old. My husband, he told me, “Don’t cry; now he doesn’t have to be a soldier.” ’Cause we used to live right in Barcelona, I don’t remember the name of the street now, but it was near the Estació de França. My husband was a baker and well thought of, and working with flour isn’t something disgusting. I used to always tell him—Virgin Mary, and now it has to rain and these poor little creatures are like to be dying on me of thirst, with this sultry weather, look at them nice and fat, that’s how I raise them, no lice, co-coc, co-coc, poor little things, if I could only collect a bit of water for them. You see, they used to run free all day. And I always try to keep their feet all dry and . . .
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