Soumchi Read Free Page B

whistled, coach wheels clicked busily along the tracks, barriers went up and came down again, signal lights flashed intermittently at crossings and switches; freight trains and passenger trains, exchanging hoots of greeting, passed or overtook each other on parallel rails—magic upon magic, enchantment on enchantment.
    "This," said Also with a slight disdain, "this I got as a present from my godfather, Maestro Enrico. He's Viceroy of Venezuela now." I was silent with awe.
    But in my heart I was thinking:
    Lord God Almighty. King of the Universe.
    "As far as I am concerned," added Aldo with indifference, "the whole thing's pretty boring. Not to say a waste of time. Myself, I'd rather play my violin than play with toys these days. So you might as well have it. If you still play with toys, that is,"
    "Hallelujah, Hallelujah," my soul sang within my breast. But I still said nothing.
    "Of course"—Aldo grew more precise—"of course, I don't mean as a present. As a swap In exchange for your bicycle. Do you agree?"
    Wow, I thought to myself. Wow. And how. But out loud, I said, "O.K. Done. Why not?"
    "And of course," went on Aldo immediately, "of course I don't mean the whole thing. Just one section of it in exchange for your bike; one engine, that is, five carriages and three meters of circular track. After all, your bike doesn't have a crossbar. What I'm going to do now is fetch a blank contract from Father's drawer, and if you haven't had second thoughts and changed your mind—which you still have a perfect right to do—we can sign it there and then and shake hands on it. In the meantime, you may start choosing the amount of track and the number of carriages that we agreed, plus your one engine—one of the small ones of course, not the large. I'll be back in a minute.
Ciao.
"
    But I was not listening any more, I couldn't hear anything except my own heart galloping away inside my breast and bellowing out: "Shoe—shoe—shoe—shoe—shoey-shoe" (which was a nonsense song absolutely everyone was singing in those days).
    In a minute the contract had been signed and I had left the Castelnuovos' house, bursting out into Zephania Street like a train out of a tunnel, carrying carefully in front of me a shoe box gift-wrapped and tied up with blue ribbon. To judge by the light and the coolness of the air, it was half an hour or so till dusk and suppertime. I would set out the railway, I thought, in the wild and untamed landscape of our garden. I would dig a winding river, I thought, and fill it with water and make the railway cross it on a bridge. I'd raise hills and scoop out valleys, run a tunnel beneath the hanging roots of the fig tree and from there my new railway would erupt into the wilderness itself, into the barren Sahara and beyond, up to the source of the River Zambezi in the land of Obangi-Shari, through deserts and impenetrable forests where no white man had ever set foot.

Your Money or Your Life

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in which
we confront an old enemy, a hitter and cunning foe, who will stop at nothing. To avoid unnecessary bloodshed, we are obliged to fight our way through a thicket of intrigue and even to tame a young wild beast.
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    To judge from the fading light and cooler air, night and suppertime were approaching fast. At the comer of Jonah Street I stopped for a moment to read a new inscription on the wall. Two mornings ago it had been empty, but here now in black paint was a fierce slogan against the British and David Ben-Gurion, It was such a silly, irritating slogan in fact, even the spelling mistake seemed shocking.
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British go hom

Get out Ben Gurion
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    I identified its author immediately. Goel. For this was no slogan from the Underground, This had to be the work of Goel Germanski himself. Having determined which, I took out a notebook and pencil and started to copy the inscription down. I need to make a note of everything like that, since I am going to be a poet when I grow up.
    I