Story 5. The road to the Sun

 
"Since childhood, I had a passion for railways. Perhaps because my father was a railway worker… If it were possible, I would have settled in a corner of any goods wagon and travelled with it," wrote Paustovsky.
 
I fully share these dreams of his. Perhaps because my father was also, to some extent, a railway worker. Everything connected with railways still seems alluring and shrouded in mystery to me. The intertwining of wires and the shining rails disappearing into infinity, the blue semaphore lights, trains covered in the dust of unknown lands, and especially the smell of coal smoke – the smell of distant travels and unrealised hopes. And there is nothing more appealing to me than getting on a long-distance train and going somewhere. It doesn't matter where, as long as the journey is long.
 
What could be more desirable than, curled up on the soft seat in the cosy depths of a compartment, sitting motionless for hours, gazing out the window, blissfully sipping very hot, very sweet tea with a sliver of lemon, thin as ice, from prehistoric cut-glass tumblers in elegant, filigree glass holders? And all the while, outside the window, cars, houses, bridges, boys on bicycles, and small, quiet railway stations flash merrily by, racing the train. As you move away from the capital, the buildings become lower and more squat, the wide, noisy highways give way to narrow streets and country roads, and small clusters of trees gradually turn into dense, lush forests.
 
But it wasn't always like this. As a child, I was afraid of railways. Everything frightened me – from the sheer size of the trains to the sudden, steel-jawed clang of the points. We lived near the station and often walked home along the railway tracks. I would try to get past this dangerous section as quickly as possible, before a train rushing towards us could appear in the distance. Because the moment I saw one, I would fall into a kind of strange trance – I'd stop dead and stare, mesmerised, as it rapidly approached. And when the train thundered past with a deafening roar, its heavy, lumbering carriages vibrating and its powerful springs creaking, I would feel, with a mixture of terror and delight, as if some mighty force was trying to pull me right under its wheels.
 
But even more frightening was the thought of being inside such a rumbling steel monster. I was sure that once I got inside, it would surely snatch me away from my parents and abandon me somewhere at the ends of the earth, where no one could ever find me. These were the real nightmares of my childhood. So, every time our family went on holiday to the seaside by train, I would be very nervous and would absolutely refuse to get off the carriage at the stops to buy something tasty. And I would do my best to talk Mum and Dad out of it. For some reason, I thought that as soon as we got off, the train would immediately leave, taking all our things with it. My parents, of course, laughed at my quirks, but Mum would always stay with me in the compartment anyway. After much persuasion, I would reluctantly agree to let Dad get off for a short while to buy some fizzy drink or pies from the station. Dad would jump out at the stop, race over to the food stalls, buy all sorts of goodies, and fly back like a bullet. And although in all our numerous trips we never once missed the train, I periodically had the same recurring nightmare – that my parents had somehow lost me at some abandoned, dark, and desolate station.
 
But despite all these fears, one of the brightest impressions of my childhood is connected precisely with the railway. I must have been about four years old at the time. My parents, deciding I was a big girl now, decided to take me to the seaside for the first time. I had never been so far from home before, and I only knew what the sea was like from Yuri Antonov's song "The Sea".
 
It was May, but by then all the tickets for passenger trains had already been sold out. It was decided we would go on a mail train with one of Dad's colleagues. Although Dad was a foreman on the mail trains for the Kazan Railway, he mostly travelled to Irkutsk or Barnaul, not to the Black Sea. I don't remember the beginning of this trip very well. I only remember a huge, half-empty, dark carriage with tiny, barred windows, and a small, cramped little compartment in the corner of the carriage with a narrow bunk and a massive metal wardrobe covered in dull green paint. When the train braked sharply, one of the wardrobe doors would fly open with a deafening clang, slam hard against the compartment door, and then slam shut just as deafeningly.
 
I didn't like it in the compartment, so I spent most of my time in the empty, gloomy space of the carriage. The train would often stop and wait for long periods between stations for a semaphore signal. Then Dad and his friends would slide aside the heavy wooden partition separating the inside of the carriage from the outside world, and everyone would sit down right on the metal floor at the edge of the open doorway, dangling their legs, laughing, and listening to music for a long time. My parents were great music lovers and always carried a bulky reel-to-reel tape recorder with them everywhere. Our whole life was accompanied by the soundtrack of whichever pop group was popular at the time, and was coloured by one musical mood or another.
 
The memory I want to tell you about is forever coloured in my mind by the "cosmic" music of the French group "Space". It was truly delightful and extraordinary music. My favourite was the track "Magic fly". Its gentle melody, combined with the otherworldly sounds of the synthesiser, created in my imagination the sensation of flying through countless starry worlds and spaces.
 
As soon as my parents played it, everything around me would instantly be transformed. As if from cosmic heights, I would look down at the world, and this world, illuminated by the melody of "Space", was inexpressibly and beautifully.
 
And then one day, the train stopped for a long time in the steppe. As far as the horizon, there was nothing around but reddish, sun-scorched, low-growing grass. I was sitting on the floor at the edge of the carriage, looking at the tiny pebbles on the embankment opposite. A warm breeze lazily stirred my closely cropped hair. It was the end of the day. The sun had already tinted the shadows in reddish-purple tones. I asked Mum to play my favourite music. While she was fiddling with the tape, the train quietly started to move. I realised this when the embankment of the adjacent railway line began to slowly grow larger, until it blocked out the entire horizon. Probably the train was turning, because suddenly, my whole field of vision was flooded with a bright orange light, and then I saw It – an enormous, half-sky, blazing crimson-red ball of the setting sun. From somewhere in the distance came the familiar sounds of "Magic fly". Time dissolved. In the whole world, there remained only the Sun, the railway, and me.
 
It's hard to say how long this vision lasted. An incomparable delight filled my entire childish being. Never in my life, neither before nor after, have I ever experienced anything like it. Since then, the setting sun always evokes glimmers of that unearthly state in me. Its rays transform the entire world around, just like the enchanting sounds of music. When the magic of the orange light touches the tired faces of people or the rough walls of houses, they flare up, ignite with an inner light, and for that brief moment, everything becomes what it truly is – wondrous, continuously changing, and never to be repeated again.