Cradock Station

Robert Berold

I've been put here with limited resources. I carried my bag all this way. I hear my father's voice saying no use to man or beast.

I have been sitting in the cockpit of my brain, my body lumbering on behind. No wonder the pain extends everywhere. The wind riffles through the glass. I am left believing nobody and nothing.

That day I assembled my writing, my porcupine quills, all my photographs, the life that shimmers through my body. Just the letters of the alphabet arranged on the page, and the next thing I smile or weep. I picked up my double bass and carried it, my dog Max walking behind me. That was the extent of my performance.

The train is parked at Cradock station, lots of ironwork, steel and painted wood, huge fat rivets, all dripping with rain. I think of my friend the violinist, who had the courage to play in the street, busking, for money.

The angels speak, the dogs speak, the trees speak, language that we cannot hear. And Ike and Isabella sang – "money here, money there, for hard times, a cool drink, our home on a rock, our Joburg home".

I didn't mean to be here. The wall divided that room from the other room, that other house, the neighbours with their little lamps. I just wanted all the walls to dissolve, to collapse like the walls of Jericho.

A previous version published on Donga

LitNet: 20 December 2005

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