・Kaoruko
On the other side of the river, they could see a large, lush woods, its branches were full of ripe, bright red round fruit.
In the middle of the woods stands a higher triangle signal, and from within the woods, an indescribably beautiful sound mixed with orchestral bells and xylophones was flowing with the wind, as if it was melting and staining.
The young man was horrified and shook his body.
As he listened to the music, a bright field or rug of yellow or light green seemed to spread out around him, and dewdrops, like white wax, and seemed to graze the face of the sun.
"Well, that crow." The girl called Kaoru next to Campanella shouted.
"It's not a crow. They're all magpies." Giovanni laughed again because Campanella casually shouted out to scold again.
The girl looked embarrassed. There were many, many black birds perched in rows.
They were in the pale light of the riverbed, catching the faint glow of the river.
"Magpies. Because the hair on the back of the head is a little extended." The young man said as he interceded.
The triangle signal in the blue forest out there were now completely in front of the train.
At that moment, a hymn of the familiar [about 2 characters blank] number came from farther back on the train.
It seemed that a large number of people were singing it.
The young man quickly turned pale and was about to go there for a moment, but then he thought again and sat down.
Kaoruko covered her face with a handkerchief.
Even Giovanni's nose felt a little strange.
But the song was sung out by more and more people, and it became clearer and stronger.
Involuntarily, Giovanni and Campanella started to sing along.
And the blue forest of white olives, glittering in the background across the invisible Milky Way, was gradually moving backward.
And the sound of the suspicious musical instruments coming from there became more faint in the the sound of train and wind.
"Oh, there are peacocks."
"Yes, there are many." The girl replied.
The peacocks was sometimes briefly glowing pale above the forest, which had become smaller and smaller, which now looked like another green-colored seashell buttons.
Giovanni saw the reflection of light as the peacock spread and closed its wings.
"That's right, I heard the peacock's voice just now." Campanella said to Kaoruko.
"Yes, there were about thirty peacocks. It was all peacocks that sounded like harps." The girl replied.
Giovanni suddenly felt an indescribable feeling of sadness.
He was about to say with a scary look on his face, "Come on, Campanella. Let's spring down from here and play."
The river parted in two.
In the middle of the dark island was a tall, tall scaffold, on which stood a man dressed in loose clothing and a red hat.
He was holding a red and blue flag in each hand and looking up into the sky, signaling.
As Giovanni watched, the man kept waving the red flag, but suddenly he lowered the red flag and hid it behind him, raising the blue flag higher.
He shook them vigorously as if he was a conductor of an orchestra.
Then there was a crashing sound like rain in the air and something massive flew like a shotgun bullet across the river.
Giovanni involuntarily pulled himself halfway out of the window and looked up.
Tens of thousands of tiny birds were passing under the beautiful, beautiful, bellflower-colored sky, in pairs and pairs, each singing loudly and hurriedly.
"Birds are flying." Giovanni said outside the window.
"Let's see." Campanella also looked out the window.
Then the loosely dressed man on the scaffold suddenly raised a red flag and swung it around like a madman.
Then the flock of birds stopped passing and at the same time there was a crushing sound downstream and then a moment of silence.
But then the red-hatted traffic signalman was waving a blue flag again and shouting.
"Now pass, wading birds, now pass, wading birds." They could hear his voice clearly.
And with it, another flock of tens of thousands of birds were flying straight in the sky.
The girl peeked out of the window in the middle windows from which their faces were, and looked up at the sky, her beautiful cheeks glowing.
"Well, there are so many of these birds. Oh, the sky is so beautiful."
The girl tried to speak to Giovanni, but he was looking up silently, thinking she was being cheeky.
The girl let out a small sigh of relief and returned to her seat with a hush.
Campanella was looking at the map, his face pulled back from the window in a pitying manner.
"I wonder if he's teaching the birds." The girl asked softly to Campanella.
"He's signaling to the wading birds. It's probably because of the signal smoke coming from somewhere." Campanella replied a little dazedly.
Then the room went silent.
Giovanni wanted to pull his head back, but it was hard to keep his face in the light, so he endured and stood there whistling.
(Why am I so sad? I need to have a better and bigger heart.
Far out in the distance on that shore, I see a small blue fire that looks like smoke.
It is really calm and cold. I look at that well, and it calms me down.)
Giovanni looked in the direction, holding his hot and sore head in his hands.
(Oh, who would really go anywhere with me?
Even Campanella is having a good time with such a girl and it's really painful for me.)
Giovanni's eyes were filled with tears again and Milky Way just looked vaguely white, as if it's gone far away.
Then the train gradually left the river and passed over the cliff.
The black cliff on the other side of the river also rose higher and higher as they moved downstream.
Then he glanced at a big corn tree.
Its leaves were curled up in a circle, and underneath the leaves were large beautiful green bracts that were already spitting out red hairs and pearly fruit was glimpsed.
They gradually increased in number and now lined up between the cliff and the railroad tracks.
Giovanni involuntarily pulled his face out of the window and looked out the window on the opposite side.
Toward the edge of the horizon of the beautiful sky field, its big corn trees were planted almost everywhere.
From the tips of its magnificent shrunken leaves swaying in the wind, a full of dew like diamonds that had taken in a lot of sunlight during the day, was glistening reds and greens.
"That's corn." Campanella said to Giovanni.
But Giovanni couldn't recover his bad feeling, so he just looked at the field and replied curtly, "So it is."
Just then the train grew slower and slower as it passed a series of signals and lights of point-switch, and stopped at a small stop.
The pale clock in front of it showed the exact second hour, and its pendulum was ticking correctly in the silent, still field with no wind and no train moving.
And just like through the ticking of the pendulum, a faint, faint melody was flowing like a thread from the far, far field.
"It's the New World Symphony." Big sister said softly, looking at him as if she were talking to herself.
In the room, everyone, including that tall young man in black, was having a gentle dream.
(Why can't I be more pleasant in such a quiet good place? Why am I so lonely?
But Campanella was so awful, riding the train with me and talking to that girl all the time.
It's really painful for me.)
Giovanni was again staring out the window with his hands half-hiding his face in the opposite direction.
A transparent glassy whistle sounded and the train moved quietly, and Campanella also whistled lonely Star Travel.
"Yes, yes, it's a terrible plateau around here." In the back, he heard a voice of old man talking briskly who seemed to be awake now.
"Even corn can't grow unless you drill a hole a half meter deep in the ground with a stick and sow it there."
"Is that so? Isn't it far to the river?"
"Yes, yes, it's from 600 to 1,800 meter to the river. It's like a terrible canyon."
Giovanni thought to himself, "Well, isn't this the plateau of Colorado?"
Campanella was still whistling lonely, and the girl was looking in the direction that Giovanni was looking, with a complexion like a silk-wrapped apple.
Suddenly there was no more corn and a huge black field opened up.
The New World Symphony finally came out clearly from the edge of horizon.
In the midst of the black field, an Indian with white bird feathers on his head, many stones on his arms and chest, and holding a small bow with arrows, came chasing the train at full speed.
"Oh, it's an Indian. The Indian. Look."
The young man in black also woke up. Giovanni and Campanella stood up too.
"He's coming running. Oh, he's coming running. He's chasing."
"No, he's not chasing a train. He's hunting or dancing."
The young man said, standing with his hands in his pockets, as if he had forgotten where he was.
The Indian was half dancing.
There seemed to be a more economical and serious way to run.
Suddenly its clearly white feathers leaning forward, and the Indian stopped and quickly shot the arrow by the bow into the air.
From there a crane wobbled down and fell into the Indian's outstretched hands as he ran again.
The Indian happily stood up and laughed.
The shadow of the person watching them with the crane became smaller and farther away.
Two glittering insulators on a telegraph pole passed away, and there were a woods of corn again.
Looking at the window on this side, he saw that the train was running on a really higher cliff face, and a river was flowing brightly and wide at the bottom of the valley.
"Yes, we're going downhill from here. It's not easy, because this time we're going down to the surface of the water all at once.
Because of this slope, the train will never come over here. It's getting faster and faster." The voice of an old man was heard.
The train was going down and down.
When the train came to the edge of the cliff, they could see brightly the river below.
Giovanni began to feel more and more cheerful.
When the train passed in front of a small hut and a lone child stood in front of it, looking at it, he yelled out.
The train went on and on.
People in the room were clinging tightly to their bench, falling backwards halfway.
Giovanni couldn't help but laugh with Campanella.
Already Milky Way was flowing right beside the train, glittering, as if it had been flowing violently.
Here and there, light red flowers of fringed pink were blooming.
The train was running slowly, as if it had finally calmed down.
There were flags with the shape of a star and a pickaxe over there and on this side of the river.
"What kind of flag is that?" Giovanni finally spoke up.
"I don't know, it's not even on the map. There's an iron boat."
"Yes."
"I thought they were going to build a bridge." The girl said.
"Oh, that's an army engineer's flag. They are doing bridge-building exercises. But we can't see the soldiers."
At that moment, a little downstream, near the opposite shore, the invisible water of Milky Way glistened and surged upward like a pillar of water and there was a sharp sound.
"It's a blasting, blasting." Campanella danced with joy.
The pillar of water disappeared from view and a big salmon or trout salmon, with its glistening white belly, was thrown into the air and dropped back into the water in a circle.
Giovanni felt so light that he wanted to jump up and down already, and said.
"It's a battalion of engineers in the sky. Trout and others have splashed around like this. I've never had such a fun trip. It's nice."
"If we saw that trout up close, it would be about this big. There's a lot of fish in this water."
"I wonder if there are small fish too." The girl was caught in the middle of a conversation and said.
"There must be. There are big ones, so there must be little ones too. But it was so far away that we didn't see a small one."
Giovanni was in a good mood and replied to the girl, laughing with joy.
"That's the palace of the twin stars." The boy suddenly pointed out the window and shouted.
The two palaces, which looked like they were made of small crystal, stood side by side on a low hill to the right.
"What is the palace of the twin stars?"
"I've heard about it many times before from my mother. It's a small crystal palace, and there are two of them, so it must be true."
"What do you mean? What did the twins do?"
"I know. The twins went out to play in the field and had a quarrel with each other."
"That's not true. You know, on the shore of Milky Way, Mother told, ......"
"And then the comet came, saying 'gii gii fuu gii gii fuu'."
"No, Taa-chan, that's not true. That's the other story."
"So I wonder if he's blowing his whistle right now."
"He went to the sea."
"Can't go. He's already out of the water of sea."
"Yeah. I know, I'll tell you the story."
- To return to table of contents of Night on the Galactic Railroad
In the middle of the woods stands a higher triangle signal, and from within the woods, an indescribably beautiful sound mixed with orchestral bells and xylophones was flowing with the wind, as if it was melting and staining.
The young man was horrified and shook his body.
As he listened to the music, a bright field or rug of yellow or light green seemed to spread out around him, and dewdrops, like white wax, and seemed to graze the face of the sun.
"Well, that crow." The girl called Kaoru next to Campanella shouted.
"It's not a crow. They're all magpies." Giovanni laughed again because Campanella casually shouted out to scold again.
The girl looked embarrassed. There were many, many black birds perched in rows.
They were in the pale light of the riverbed, catching the faint glow of the river.
"Magpies. Because the hair on the back of the head is a little extended." The young man said as he interceded.
The triangle signal in the blue forest out there were now completely in front of the train.
At that moment, a hymn of the familiar [about 2 characters blank] number came from farther back on the train.
It seemed that a large number of people were singing it.
The young man quickly turned pale and was about to go there for a moment, but then he thought again and sat down.
Kaoruko covered her face with a handkerchief.
Even Giovanni's nose felt a little strange.
But the song was sung out by more and more people, and it became clearer and stronger.
Involuntarily, Giovanni and Campanella started to sing along.
And the blue forest of white olives, glittering in the background across the invisible Milky Way, was gradually moving backward.
And the sound of the suspicious musical instruments coming from there became more faint in the the sound of train and wind.
"Oh, there are peacocks."
"Yes, there are many." The girl replied.
The peacocks was sometimes briefly glowing pale above the forest, which had become smaller and smaller, which now looked like another green-colored seashell buttons.
Giovanni saw the reflection of light as the peacock spread and closed its wings.
"That's right, I heard the peacock's voice just now." Campanella said to Kaoruko.
"Yes, there were about thirty peacocks. It was all peacocks that sounded like harps." The girl replied.
Giovanni suddenly felt an indescribable feeling of sadness.
He was about to say with a scary look on his face, "Come on, Campanella. Let's spring down from here and play."
The river parted in two.
In the middle of the dark island was a tall, tall scaffold, on which stood a man dressed in loose clothing and a red hat.
He was holding a red and blue flag in each hand and looking up into the sky, signaling.
As Giovanni watched, the man kept waving the red flag, but suddenly he lowered the red flag and hid it behind him, raising the blue flag higher.
He shook them vigorously as if he was a conductor of an orchestra.
Then there was a crashing sound like rain in the air and something massive flew like a shotgun bullet across the river.
Giovanni involuntarily pulled himself halfway out of the window and looked up.
Tens of thousands of tiny birds were passing under the beautiful, beautiful, bellflower-colored sky, in pairs and pairs, each singing loudly and hurriedly.
"Birds are flying." Giovanni said outside the window.
"Let's see." Campanella also looked out the window.
Then the loosely dressed man on the scaffold suddenly raised a red flag and swung it around like a madman.
Then the flock of birds stopped passing and at the same time there was a crushing sound downstream and then a moment of silence.
But then the red-hatted traffic signalman was waving a blue flag again and shouting.
"Now pass, wading birds, now pass, wading birds." They could hear his voice clearly.
And with it, another flock of tens of thousands of birds were flying straight in the sky.
The girl peeked out of the window in the middle windows from which their faces were, and looked up at the sky, her beautiful cheeks glowing.
"Well, there are so many of these birds. Oh, the sky is so beautiful."
The girl tried to speak to Giovanni, but he was looking up silently, thinking she was being cheeky.
The girl let out a small sigh of relief and returned to her seat with a hush.
Campanella was looking at the map, his face pulled back from the window in a pitying manner.
"I wonder if he's teaching the birds." The girl asked softly to Campanella.
"He's signaling to the wading birds. It's probably because of the signal smoke coming from somewhere." Campanella replied a little dazedly.
Then the room went silent.
Giovanni wanted to pull his head back, but it was hard to keep his face in the light, so he endured and stood there whistling.
(Why am I so sad? I need to have a better and bigger heart.
Far out in the distance on that shore, I see a small blue fire that looks like smoke.
It is really calm and cold. I look at that well, and it calms me down.)
Giovanni looked in the direction, holding his hot and sore head in his hands.
(Oh, who would really go anywhere with me?
Even Campanella is having a good time with such a girl and it's really painful for me.)
Giovanni's eyes were filled with tears again and Milky Way just looked vaguely white, as if it's gone far away.
Then the train gradually left the river and passed over the cliff.
The black cliff on the other side of the river also rose higher and higher as they moved downstream.
Then he glanced at a big corn tree.
Its leaves were curled up in a circle, and underneath the leaves were large beautiful green bracts that were already spitting out red hairs and pearly fruit was glimpsed.
They gradually increased in number and now lined up between the cliff and the railroad tracks.
Giovanni involuntarily pulled his face out of the window and looked out the window on the opposite side.
Toward the edge of the horizon of the beautiful sky field, its big corn trees were planted almost everywhere.
From the tips of its magnificent shrunken leaves swaying in the wind, a full of dew like diamonds that had taken in a lot of sunlight during the day, was glistening reds and greens.
"That's corn." Campanella said to Giovanni.
But Giovanni couldn't recover his bad feeling, so he just looked at the field and replied curtly, "So it is."
Just then the train grew slower and slower as it passed a series of signals and lights of point-switch, and stopped at a small stop.
The pale clock in front of it showed the exact second hour, and its pendulum was ticking correctly in the silent, still field with no wind and no train moving.
And just like through the ticking of the pendulum, a faint, faint melody was flowing like a thread from the far, far field.
"It's the New World Symphony." Big sister said softly, looking at him as if she were talking to herself.
In the room, everyone, including that tall young man in black, was having a gentle dream.
(Why can't I be more pleasant in such a quiet good place? Why am I so lonely?
But Campanella was so awful, riding the train with me and talking to that girl all the time.
It's really painful for me.)
Giovanni was again staring out the window with his hands half-hiding his face in the opposite direction.
A transparent glassy whistle sounded and the train moved quietly, and Campanella also whistled lonely Star Travel.
"Yes, yes, it's a terrible plateau around here." In the back, he heard a voice of old man talking briskly who seemed to be awake now.
"Even corn can't grow unless you drill a hole a half meter deep in the ground with a stick and sow it there."
"Is that so? Isn't it far to the river?"
"Yes, yes, it's from 600 to 1,800 meter to the river. It's like a terrible canyon."
Giovanni thought to himself, "Well, isn't this the plateau of Colorado?"
Campanella was still whistling lonely, and the girl was looking in the direction that Giovanni was looking, with a complexion like a silk-wrapped apple.
Suddenly there was no more corn and a huge black field opened up.
The New World Symphony finally came out clearly from the edge of horizon.
In the midst of the black field, an Indian with white bird feathers on his head, many stones on his arms and chest, and holding a small bow with arrows, came chasing the train at full speed.
"Oh, it's an Indian. The Indian. Look."
The young man in black also woke up. Giovanni and Campanella stood up too.
"He's coming running. Oh, he's coming running. He's chasing."
"No, he's not chasing a train. He's hunting or dancing."
The young man said, standing with his hands in his pockets, as if he had forgotten where he was.
The Indian was half dancing.
There seemed to be a more economical and serious way to run.
Suddenly its clearly white feathers leaning forward, and the Indian stopped and quickly shot the arrow by the bow into the air.
From there a crane wobbled down and fell into the Indian's outstretched hands as he ran again.
The Indian happily stood up and laughed.
The shadow of the person watching them with the crane became smaller and farther away.
Two glittering insulators on a telegraph pole passed away, and there were a woods of corn again.
Looking at the window on this side, he saw that the train was running on a really higher cliff face, and a river was flowing brightly and wide at the bottom of the valley.
"Yes, we're going downhill from here. It's not easy, because this time we're going down to the surface of the water all at once.
Because of this slope, the train will never come over here. It's getting faster and faster." The voice of an old man was heard.
The train was going down and down.
When the train came to the edge of the cliff, they could see brightly the river below.
Giovanni began to feel more and more cheerful.
When the train passed in front of a small hut and a lone child stood in front of it, looking at it, he yelled out.
The train went on and on.
People in the room were clinging tightly to their bench, falling backwards halfway.
Giovanni couldn't help but laugh with Campanella.
Already Milky Way was flowing right beside the train, glittering, as if it had been flowing violently.
Here and there, light red flowers of fringed pink were blooming.
The train was running slowly, as if it had finally calmed down.
There were flags with the shape of a star and a pickaxe over there and on this side of the river.
"What kind of flag is that?" Giovanni finally spoke up.
"I don't know, it's not even on the map. There's an iron boat."
"Yes."
"I thought they were going to build a bridge." The girl said.
"Oh, that's an army engineer's flag. They are doing bridge-building exercises. But we can't see the soldiers."
At that moment, a little downstream, near the opposite shore, the invisible water of Milky Way glistened and surged upward like a pillar of water and there was a sharp sound.
"It's a blasting, blasting." Campanella danced with joy.
The pillar of water disappeared from view and a big salmon or trout salmon, with its glistening white belly, was thrown into the air and dropped back into the water in a circle.
Giovanni felt so light that he wanted to jump up and down already, and said.
"It's a battalion of engineers in the sky. Trout and others have splashed around like this. I've never had such a fun trip. It's nice."
"If we saw that trout up close, it would be about this big. There's a lot of fish in this water."
"I wonder if there are small fish too." The girl was caught in the middle of a conversation and said.
"There must be. There are big ones, so there must be little ones too. But it was so far away that we didn't see a small one."
Giovanni was in a good mood and replied to the girl, laughing with joy.
"That's the palace of the twin stars." The boy suddenly pointed out the window and shouted.
The two palaces, which looked like they were made of small crystal, stood side by side on a low hill to the right.
"What is the palace of the twin stars?"
"I've heard about it many times before from my mother. It's a small crystal palace, and there are two of them, so it must be true."
"What do you mean? What did the twins do?"
"I know. The twins went out to play in the field and had a quarrel with each other."
"That's not true. You know, on the shore of Milky Way, Mother told, ......"
"And then the comet came, saying 'gii gii fuu gii gii fuu'."
"No, Taa-chan, that's not true. That's the other story."
"So I wonder if he's blowing his whistle right now."
"He went to the sea."
"Can't go. He's already out of the water of sea."
"Yeah. I know, I'll tell you the story."
- To return to table of contents of Night on the Galactic Railroad