Chapter One: Death
It was a ludicrous idea, but man is hardly a sensible animal.
The idea belonged to one of the least sensible of these creations called men named Jonathan Haven. He was born at a time when his people were living highly on the sweat and tears of others. At a time when the Earth was tilting on a line that separated the old from the new, and the new was an awesome and terrifying age of marvels.
However Jonathan was a man of the small details. The things that made life unique from any other existence there is. He did not lay awake at night contemplating the distant hum of machinery as they scarped into history changing it forever, or the cries of native people at the lost of their land to his leaders, nor the politics that dictated a sort of detached parental authority to these victims. He did not even care what the young princess had worn at the latest gala, though he had thought briefly it was a lovely dress. No not sensible enough at all to look beyond the amiable view of the countryside his bedroom window provided.
Instead he dreamt every night of a woman. A woman whose embraces he had never known, whose lips and thighs he had never felt. In fact she did not know him more than in passing. But he probably knew more about her than she knew about herself. He knew she liked peppermint and pickles, and that her favorite color was red though it clashed horribly with her blonde hair. He had identified the shade of her green eyes to be the same as the unopened bud of a rose.
He also knew she was a very unhappy young woman, however even through hours of observation he could not figure out why. She lived with her uncle, an upright minister who was neither too lax nor too harsh with his flock. They had a modest home but they were well provided for and well respected in the community. Still she sat with dead eyes as her uncle monotoned at the services. With the same eyes she greeted the parishioners to the church, spoke to her friends with, and saw the world with. How bleak and filthy the Earth must look to those eyes.
Once, he had shyly inquired of the minister where she had come. He was told she had come to live with him because her parents could no longer afford her upkeep. Yes that would be a stinging blow to anyone’s well being, but those eyes, those eyes the same color of an unopened rosebud spoke of something so much deeper.
So he had pursued her, her and her uncle when the man had been called by an old friend to help with the opening of a youth hostel in his native Italy. He had traveled far from his small village in Yorkshire, across the channel, across the verdant countryside of France, and now to the precarious route by train through the Alps.
Why? Why must he be so infatuated with this one woman? He did not know, he supposed it was because he loved her. What other emotion could it be that drove this young carpenter apprentice to spend his meager savings on a cross country journey so that he would not lose sight of this unmatchable woman? And what other emotion could it be but that of shame that kept him from approaching her even now? Shame the he was such a coward, shame the he really now had nothing to offer her, shame that he was really such an idiot as to do something as stupid as this. The shame that he should have been a man and told her how he felt the moment he first saw her at the train station when she had arrived.
Even his ten year old sister Rosalind had seen the foolishness in his plan, only too happy to give her advice along with stalwart sense his father tried to talk into him. He remembered how the tiny girl had come to sit next to him in the woodshed after his father was done tongue lashing him. How precious she was! With her dark honey hair in long pigtails and in a soiled blue dress from her daily exertions she was the perfect example of what girlhood she be, innocent yet free. It broke his heart almost as much to lose the blonde haired woman as it would to lose his sister.
“And what will you do when you reach Italy?” she asked.
“I shall find another carpenter to apprentice myself to of course.”
“What if they don’t have a carpenter?”
“They certainly have carpenters in Como, it is a large city, Gilbert said so.”
The young girl wrinkled her freckled nose, “Gilbert doesn’t know everything.”
“He knows more than you or I, he still goes to school.” Jonathan pointed out.
Rosalind grunted, than came and sat on the log he sat on and leaned on him. “If you want, I’ll tell Ms. Tether how you feel.”
Jonathan felt the blood drain out of his face at the very suggestion, kindly as it was meant. “No, I will…when the time is right.”
Rosalind looked at him solemnly, “That could be a very long time.”
“I know.”
“I think it is stupid to wait.” She said in a huff and stomped out of the woodshed, as disgusted with him as their father and Gilbert. Yet he had gone on anyway, like the fool he was.
He looked out the train window and only found the reflection of a dark haired and sallow faced young man, himself. This love was eating away at him and how it showed in the peak features of his face. He looked down the aisle at the first class car where his desire and her uncle were housed. Apparently this friend of Minister Tether was rather well off to afford such a luxury. Jonathan put his hands together, took them apart, tried to read the bible Gilbert had given them on his leaving, but he was too nervous for it. One thought kept playing in his mind, “I think it is stupid to wait.”
How many more days until Como? He did not know, he knew no Italian, or French, the woman next to him had been asleep since they left the station in Bern. It seemed rude to get up and harangue everyone in the car to see if anyone spoke English or could understand his pidgin attempts at Italian. The car suddenly swayed, taking a turn too fast, and the woman was jolted awake by making contact with Jonathan’s shoulder. “Excuse-moi”, she muttered and turned her head and was asleep again.
Jonathan held up his arm to darken the window to see better in the fading light of the twilight. The train was going rather fast, were they behind schedule? The landscape whirled by at an alarming speed for such a large machine, there was also the light snow falling. However the view from his window was all he had, and he sat back, certain the engineer knew what he was doing. Nevertheless something inside of him, something small, sparked into life. It is the fragment in us all that tells us when it is time to act, when time is coming to an end.
Almost unconsciously he clumsily moved past his fellow passenger as she muttered some angry French at him for rousing her. Yes its stupid to wait, time’s the one thing we’re all running out of. Do it now, do it now, before you shrink into a little coward again, he steeled himself with these thoughts. It had all come down to this moment, this moment where he would finally declare his love for the despondent girl, and perhaps for once see joy in her eyes. Yes! Yes! That was it! That was what he wanted, to just see her happy, to see those dead eyes become alive. That was what this journey was about, that was what his mission in life was, to make Josephine Tether happy, to feel joy as humans should. He would pursue that goal until it was fulfilled. Galvanized he walked into the first class car, and realized he had no idea which room was theirs.
Determined not to lose his nerve he began to press an ear to each door listening for the familiar tempo of the English language. However he found it not as welcoming as he would have hoped. It would seem Josephine was quarrelling with her uncle.
“No, I will not do it, ever again.” she said, her melodious voice cut with an undertone of warning.
“You don’t have a choice girl, you have no where else to go, and no one else to serve by myself.”
“I will not serve anyone anymore, once we come to Como, I am leaving you.” Her voice was steady, with no emotional undercurrent to mar its owner’s obvious need to prevail.
“Then you shall fare no better than any other runaway, you’ll be a whore within two months, and then we shall see who needs who.” His voice carried the same deadpan tone. What kind of beings were these to have such a scandalous conversation but deliver it with all the emotion of a false prayer at a church service?
“No, it’ll be you who is sorry, because I doubt you could hold such control over someone who was not dependent on you. You’re too old and ugly to seduce another girl.” The tension that had filled the room like steam snapped with an almost audible sound echoed by the sound of a hand hitting a human face. It was at this point that Jonathan had endured enough slander on his beloved in silence. He opened the door to find a recoiled Josephine with her uncle looming over her like a hungry snake.
“Stop it at once!” he barked at the old man. The minister turned on him with a look he had seen on no other human being before. It was a look of pure malice, animalistic in its hatred. The train groaned and rocked on the tracks, sending Jonathan to fall on the floor with the minister landing at his feet. Then he felt it, he felt the train falling.
His window had not told him that the engineer had been steered onto the wrong set of tracks through multiple mistakes, onto the track with a bridge that had collapsed last year under the winter’s snow. He did not know that the engineer had desperately tried to stop the train and the rocking had been the emergency brakes grating into place. However every breath had been drawn in at the same moment, everyone on the train knew, it was too late, far too late. As the train fell to its death, Jonathan could only look at Josephine, tears streaming down her face, utterly terrified.
I’ll protect you, he vowed as his body was dragged down to the front of the car as the train fell, and then, there was nothing.