Meatloaf in Manhattan Read Online Free PDF

the tiny baby boy on her back is already cultivating amazing feats of mind and imagination. He cannot speak, yet he memorises the numbers of all the trains, the order in which they arrive and leave the station. He knows that the black and white flag means stop and the green means go. He traces the exact space in the air where the steam from the locomotive engine evaporates and he recognises each and every bird in the eaves from their song and the markings on their wings. While his mother thrusts her wares through the open windows of departing trains, he peers over her shoulder and checks the colour of the ladies’ scarves. He has calculated which colours buy and which refuse. Blue is best and red is worst.
    As soon as he can walk Ny totters along the platform and holds out his hand the way his mother has shown him. He’s already closely observed how the beggars look. The empty eyes, the hangdog expression, the sunken cheeks. He copies exactly, right down to the lopsided angle of the mouth. His tiny wastrel act brings him many coins from waiting travellers. He hands the money to his mother; she smiles, and his heart feels warm and happy. At night when they sit together in their shack he watches the moths buzz around the lantern that hangs by the door. In the depths of his growing mind he recalls and recounts the patterns on their wings, unknowingly cataloguing species and genus. At night, as his mother sleeps, the wonder and minutiae of the world keeps him wide awake and peculiarly aware.
    But all is to change one rain-sodden night as he and his mother wait for the last train to depart for Ho Chi Minh City. All the other hawkers have left as the engine shunts into motion. But Chi runs alongside the slow moving train in the hope of a final sale. One man (in a bad-luck red hat) takes the small bundle through the open window of the rear carriage and then chuckles when she asks for payment. Chi carries on running, hand outstretched, pleading with the man, who laughs in her face. Ny runs alongside his mother, wishing she knew that red is the worst colour to sell to. And then she slips, tripping her son in the process. In her last of so many selfless acts, she turns to Ny as she falls and pushes him backwards, propelling him away from the edge of the platform and the huge wheels of the train.
    A voluminous belch of steam envelopes the scene. When it clears Ny can see the last carriage disappear around the bend at the end of the station. He sits alone. The rain is pouring, his knee is bleeding from his fall. Beside him, floating in a puddle, is the last of his mother’s packets of rice. He shuffles forward and looks down onto the tracks. There is debris and water, a dead rat and a baby’s rattle, but no sign of his mother. Did she, he thinks, jump onto the train at the last moment to get the money from the man in the bad-luck hat? The train is long gone, not even the sound of a horn or a hoot. Ny picks up the parcel and begins to nibble at the banana leaf. All night long he sits in the rain waiting for his mother to return.
    When the next day dawns, Old Man Luc opens up his flower stall on platform Number One. He fills buckets with fresh water from the tap by the shelter and artistically arranges the lotus, kumquat, flowering peach and hoa mai. Then he sits on his stool to greet the passengers and to entice waiting families to buy a special bouquet for a distant relative arriving from the countryside. He hears the whistle from the night train from Hanoi and looks up to see the old locomotive shunt into the station. It is then he notices Miss Chi’s boy alone and asleep on the platform. Slowly, for his back troubles him, Old Man Luc makes his way to where the boy is curled in a ball. As he gets close he sees the boy is shivering and that his face is covered in a sheen of sweat.
    â€˜Here!’ he calls to a porter, ‘five thousand dong for your help.’ Luc gently holds the hand of the semi-conscious boy