Elephant Bangs Train by William Kotzwinkle Read Free Book Online Page B

climbed slowly down the trellis to the ground.
    Spring came; Adria went out to enjoy the gentle wind blowing on the hills. The sun was climbing behind La Spina. For a moment it seemed to balance on the crest of a hill, and out of the glaring disc stepped a figure, walking down the wooded path alongside the estate.
    At first, Adria thought he was dancing, then she saw a hapless spastic, whose walk was that of a tangled puppet, manipulated by a fiend. He was a shrunken wretch, and carried a small seabag on his shoulders. His arms seemed hidden somewhere up behind his back, but then Adria saw he had no arms at all, only little hands, like flippers, growing out of his shoulders. He wore a sailor's blue watch cap, and as he walked, whistled through fish-lips, a senseless tune.
    Agog, Adria feasted her eyes on famine. The little man's head was off-centre, permanently turned several degrees to the right, so that he appeared to walk sideways in drunken fandango. He flopped by her, but she could not see his face, for his neck was buckled towards the other side of the path.
    Circling gulls jeered at him. What did he care, he was born in a bone warp. Below were the olive trees, ahead the horizon, his goal the waterfront, for he was a wharf rat, and hung like flotsam by docks and piers, crouching for a bone from the ship's mess, hoping to be shanghaied and drowned. His chest was collapsed; hunf-tweet he breathed and flung himself on, past the villa, making to go forward his monstrousness, snort, snort.
    Adria manoeuvred in front of him. The sun was behind her dragon gown and her luxurious curves were apparent. The wharf rat's miserable left eye was focused up the road, but his right was obliquely upon her; pure symmetry terrified him, and he steered his wreck past her, averting his gazes.
    'Please,' said Adria, and stepping around him, looked into his face. It was a gargoyle, with temples bloated like a hammerhead shark; he had no eyebrows and his nose was a baboon's. His skin was sick and prickly as a plucked chicken. In human traffic, he was a monster. What archetype inspired his existence, to what class of being he was avatar of beauty, cannot be known by a groping mortal. Yet something in Adria responded, some frimpish bugle in her own spirit blew at the sight of the fluke, for she groped his rope belt, trying to detain His Monstrosity for lunch at La Spina.
    The little ugliness struggled up the path, dragging her behind him. His twisted legs were strong, but his wind was short, and he weakened.
    'Come with me,' said Adria, 'I'll give you something to eat,' and she manoeuvred him into the flower gardens of La Spina, down the stone walkway, to the marble pool given her in a moment of supreme indiscretion by United States Senator Sparrow Bowlwater, who had attempted to snorkel her at a health spa. The pool was shaped like a cowboy boot; the stupefied spastic sat on the toe, barking for air.
    'Darling,' said Adria, massaging the muscles of his neck, a sailor's nightmare of knots.
    He looked at her suspiciously out of the corner of his toad-eye, then pointed to his reflection in the water.
    'Yes, beloved,' said Adria. She fingered the buttons on his ragged middy blouse, and finally removed it, unveiling a lizard-scale skin with odd clumps of hair and the duck-like flappers which grew out of each shoulder.
    'May I get comfortable?' asked Adria, and removed her gown, pressing a breast into his fin-fingers. He fondled it abstractly. She encircled him from behind with her legs but in her passion went too far, and the duck-man tumbled forward into the pool. He flapped his fins for a moment, then sank.
    Adria dived after him. He sat on the bottom, a hideous blowfish, bubbles rising from his mouth. She clutched his belt and brought him to the surface, shoving him on to the patio where he lay, flopping.
    She applied pressure to his warped seachest. Gasping, he opened his eyes.
    'Yes, darling, you need air,' said Adria, and with some difficulty