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We got on together.
I hadn't known you for very long but the connection was stronger than anything I had ever felt or have since. You practically sat on top of me for the first few miles. The edges of your lips turned upwards permanently as if you were always at the verge of a laugh. You interlaced my fingers with yours and held on like you would be ripped away if your grip loosened for even a second.
Slender fingers holding so tightly that they were becoming red. You were excited to to be riding with me, about where we were going and all the things we would do when we got there. I would see you peer out of the corner of your eye, then lean over to brush your soft cheek against my budding stubble.
Kissing and gently biting my lips insatiably. The suns rays coming in at an angle and lighting up your perfect smile and dimple. I had to remind you we were in public. I was lost in your blonde curls and the incense of your neck. I had fallen incredibly hard and so fast that my face hurt from smiling and my heart beat with vibrations I had never known. Not even a whiff of anxiety or neurosis. Some of the best memories of my life, as fleeting as they turned out to be.
I yawned and you put your finger in my mouth. Maybe it was and maybe it is. The waiter came and informed us that a thing called "the bar car" existed. We both jumped at the idea. I didn't exactly notice at the time, during our excitement, but that's when the train started going faster and everything out the windows began to blur. The bar car was a wild ride and we took advantage of our lo'cal. All kinds of fine wine, liquors and illicit substances were available. We tried them all. You were beautiful, your laugh infecting everyone around you, I was charming and held a captive audience.
It was a dark, loud and glorious blur. We were the life of the party and it chugged on till dawn. We woke up in our seats, disheveled and discombobulated. It was dark out already. Did we sleep through the entire day? The train was slowing down, maybe approaching a station.
Read stories and poems in English to improve your language level. I was therefore intrigued by the number of poems that tell or suggest a story. It is difficult to handle narrative effectively in 16 lines of verse, but it.
The party was amazing but we were certainly paying the price for the black out. You moved over to the seat across from me to have some more space and lay down. I saw myself in the reflection. My hat, charm and smile from the night before had vanished. I must have left them in the bar car the night before. You had changed, beauty uninterrupted but different somehow. I couldn't put my finger on it. Like you couldn't hear me or didn't want to. I decided to let you be. I got up to use the bathroom and thought I would go look for my scattered belongings.
Maybe I could find a scrap of leftover dignity while you rested. I inquired to the conductor who directed me to the bartender in the bar car. He hadn't changed a bit, somehow untouched and unaffected by last nights antics that had effected me so dramatically. Same black suspenders and white pressed shirt with impeccably slicked hair. I asked him what happened and if I had an open tab. While slowly polishing a rocks glass he looked up and made eye contact for a split second before looking away.
In the end we all end up paying one way or another". I still don't know what he meant by that or if he knew. I asked him if he found my hat and he said he would check the camera. We walked in to a small back room, while he was reviewing the tape, over his shoulder I noticed a tragedy. I was going on to a group of new friends on one side of the bar, they were hanging on my words and I was eagerly explaining whatever nonsense they were drooling over. You were in the corner wearing that red dress I love, with your hair up in a tight bun. A few curls had escaped and brushed your high cheekbones, a thin line of pearls dancing delicately across your perfectly symmetrical collar.
You were stunning and inebriated, swaying with each bump and motion of the train. A man wearing my hat put his hand on your side to keep you from swaying over and then he left it there. I took a sharp breath. It looked like you put your hand on his hand to move it but then it stayed and you both swayed together. As the air left my lungs and the blood drained out of my face I watched your lips touch the strangers. A small piece of my soul slipped away forever. I couldn't watch any further. When I asked the bartender how long it went on he fidgeted for a moment and uncomfortably muttered "quite some time".
I never found my hat or the other part of me that left that day. I walked to the back, as far away from you as I could get, in utter disbelief.
I thought to myself. I mourned the loss of the you as I knew you yesterday, quietly and to myself. There were a few passengers back there so I had to pull together relatively quickly. After gaining some composure I knew it was time to get off. I knew we could never get back to yesterday morning though I would have said or done anything to do so. The train had stopped. I went back to my seat and you were sleeping.
Only in the sound can you hear it move, the veins in the blood of the body that is no more. Slender fingers holding so tightly that they were becoming red. Daniel Karlin on how it was difficult to get close to Kipling. When the train stopped I thought for sure you would reconsider but you didn't. Fortuitous or otherwise, it highlights the falling rhythm of each line. I took a sharp breath. Its defiant, guiltless, Sugar-sated eyes are dry; fearless, but unblinking still.
I took my coat and gathered my things. The conductor looked at me confused as to why I would leave something so magnificent, I assume he had no idea what had transpired. I walked to the rear of the car and slid the door open slower than required. I stepped to the stairs and put one foot down on the step and the other on the ground. I stopped, rooted with my hand on the railing, lingering between two very different paths.
I knew that it was time to get off, I knew this was the sensible thing to do, that I couldn't get past this offense regardless of how I had felt earlier the day before. The whistle screamed from the locomotive. The conductor looked at me and shook his head, I'm not sure if he was trying to tell me to stay or go but a decision had to be made. The train lurched forward and I watched as the station slip away slowly. I sat in between the cars for a while and watched the ocean and birds.
With a heavy heart and shoes I walked back to my seat. The bartender had told you. You didn't mean do do it, didn't realize what you were doing and thought it was me. He was wearing my hat and the whole world was blurry and dark. Self anguish mixed with alcohol was dripping from your pores. I knew you didn't mean it and were drunk, but could I ever forgive you or trust you again?
I loved you still. I caught a glimpse of my reflection, a weaker version of myself looked back. The charming, confident man from the bar car the day before had been replaced. Something was off but not enough for anyone else to notice, just enough to know a change has happened. The train started to pick up speed again as we distanced ourselves from the station. I second guessed my decision to stay but I didn't look back.
I found the man with my hat and punished him with a few blows in the dark. I never got the hat back. The engineer announced that we would be going through a tunnel soon and to turn on our lights and keep our hands in the windows. It would be dark. We stayed away from the bar car for a while but the draw was irresistible.
After a few hours we were there again but you never left my side. I was looking for you but you would disappear and not answer me when I called you name. The tunnel went deeper and darker and I didn't know where you were and I suspected you liked it that way. The train began to slow down again as we exited the tunnel. I finally found you back at our seat, you had moved one row away from me. I asked you to come back, tried to hold your hands but you pulled away with vehemence. When I came back from the bathroom you had moved another row farther.
I knew I was losing you. I begged you to return but you told me calmly that it was time for you to get off. Your mind was made. You were going to catch another train at the next station.
When the train stopped I thought for sure you would reconsider but you didn't. Didn't even give it a thought. You just grabbed your coat and hat with one big bag under your arm. You kissed me on the cheek like a french stranger and were off. Going somewhere else on a different train. I rode the rails for quite some time by myself , many people getting on and getting off, passing me by.
I often thought I could smell you but when I breathed deeper it was always gone. A ghost dancing on the edge of my senses. A young girl in a headband got on the train. She was listening to headphones and dancing to herself as she bobbed along. She sat down in the seat next to me flashing a smile. She had a wedding ring on and I dismissed her immediately. She didn't move from the seat or stop glancing my way. Eventually she confessed that she wanted to talk. I told her I wasn't interested but she persisted.
I hadn't talked to anyone on the train for quite some time and after some more mild persistence, I gave in. We had a lot in common. We were both riding alone, desperately wanted attention and were thrilled to receive some. After a few laughs she slid her hand in to mine and interlaced her fingers.
I left it there. It was warm, comforting and wrong. She was married but I had been riding alone so long it felt good to have some company. She stayed and we talked. She was broken and I had a knack for fixing things. Trees and rocks were a blur of green and grey. The engineer must be trying to make up for lost time I thought to myself. The girl was asleep with her head on my lap. I looked down at her hand and the rings were gone.
I woke her briefly to ask where they went. She could of sold them, I said, but she said she just wanted them gone so she could be mine and fell back to sleep. All of a sudden I couldn't breath. This train was roaring down the tracks, the once gentle click clack had become a loud hum.
This girl in my lap who had just gotten on the train wanted to stay. I considered her for a while as she looked up at me with big blue eyes, shining and wet, like a puppy in the shelter, terrified of rejection and desperate to be adopted. At the peak of the mountain, just when the train began to even out, you waltzed back in to the car with a champagne flute in one hand and your bag in the other. I don't know when or where you got back on, must have been a few stations ago when I stopped looking for you.
Maybe you were wearing a disguise, who knows what you had been up to while you were gone. I'm not sure how long you were away but it was quite some time. That you had been through something was obvious, a new wrinkle had formed on your brow and you're once confident stride had changed to a cautious stroll. What actually happened out there I don't know. I never asked and I don't want answers.
You looked at me and smiled. The storyteller has always been a figure of magic, and the circle a magic figure. He is on a liner sailing from Southampton to Cape Town in South Africa, where the Kipling family had taken to spending the winter. Rudyard Kipling is a supreme master of the short story in English and a poet of brilliant gifts. In this new edition, Professor Daniel Karlin addresses the controversial political engagement of Kipling's art, and the sources of its imaginative power.
The young Rudyard Kipling was born in British India in His idyllic childhood in India was shattered when his parents decided to take him away to England aged five, and leave him in the hands of a brutally strict landlady. This experience scars him for life, but also feeds his writing. The India of Kipling's birth [1: Daniel Karlin describes the trauma in Kipling's early childhood and how it affected his relationship with his family [5: Kipling's return to India and his early career as a journalist.
Daniel Karlin on Kipling's huge volume of work. What sort of a man was Rudyard Kipling? Daniel Karlin on how it was difficult to get close to Kipling. Daniel Karlin outlines his criteria for what to include and what to leave out in the book. He also reveals his favourite story and reads his favourite poem. To listen to the interview in full, the complete audio guide can be downloaded here. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.