VII. The Northern Cross and the Pliocene Coast

by Kenji Miyazawa

"Will Mother forgive me?"

Suddenly, Campanella said, as if making up his mind, stammering slightly and coughing.

Giovanni remained silently lost in thought, thinking, (Yes, my mother is somewhere around that orange triangular marker visible in the distance, and she's thinking of me right now.)

"If Mother would truly be happy, I would do anything. But what exactly would be Mother's greatest happiness?" Campanella seemed to be desperately holding back tears.

"Your mother hasn't done anything terrible, has she?" Giovanni exclaimed in surprise.

"I don't know. But I think anyone who does something truly good is the happiest. So, I think Mother will forgive me." Campanella seemed to have truly made up his mind about something.

At that moment, the inside of the train car suddenly became bright white. Looking out, they saw water flowing silently and formlessly over the dazzling riverbed of the Milky Way, which seemed to gather all beauty, like diamonds and dewdrops on grass. In the middle of that flow, a single island with a faint, pale halo appeared. On the flat top of that island stood a magnificent white cross, which one might say was cast from frozen Arctic clouds, crowned with a clear golden halo, standing quietly and eternally.

"Hallelujah, Hallelujah," voices rose from both front and back. Looking back, they saw that all the travelers in the car were standing upright, their kimono folds hanging straight, holding black Bibles to their chests or wearing crystal rosaries, each person modestly clasping their hands together and praying towards it. Involuntarily, both of them stood up straight. Campanella's cheeks glowed beautifully, like ripe apples.

And the island and the cross gradually moved further back.

The opposite bank also glowed faintly and smokily with a pale light, and occasionally, the pampas grass seemed to sway in the wind, its silver shimmering like smoke, as if someone had breathed on it. Also, the numerous gentian flowers, appearing and disappearing among the grass, seemed like gentle foxfires.

That too was only for a brief moment; the space between the river and the train was blocked by a line of pampas grass, and the island of swans appeared twice behind them, but it quickly became distant and small, like a picture, and then the pampas grass rustled, and finally, it completely disappeared from view. Behind Giovanni, a tall, black-veiled Catholic nun, who had boarded at some point, sat with her perfectly round green eyes fixed straight down, appearing to devoutly listen to some words or voice being conveyed from that direction. The travelers quietly returned to their seats, and the two of them, with a new feeling akin to profound sadness, casually discussed it in different words.

"It'll be Swan Station soon, won't it?"

"Ah, we'll arrive exactly at eleven."

Already, the green light of a signal and a faintly white pole flashed past the window, and then a dim light in front of a switch, as faint as a sulfur flame, passed below the window. The train gradually slowed down, and soon, a row of platform lights appeared beautifully and regularly, growing larger and spreading. The two stopped precisely in front of the large clock at Swan Station.

On the fresh autumn clock face, two blue-baked steel hands clearly pointed to eleven o'clock. Everyone disembarked at once, and the train car became empty.

"[Twenty-minute stop]" was written below the clock.

"Shall we get off too?" Giovanni said.

"Let's get off." The two of them jumped up at once, rushed out the door, and ran toward the ticket gate. However, at the ticket gate, there was only one bright purplish electric light on, and no one was there. Looking around, there was no sign of a station master or anyone resembling a redcap.

The two emerged into a small plaza in front of the station, surrounded by ginkgo trees that looked like crystal craftsmanship.

From there, a wide road stretched straight into the blue glow of the Milky Way.

Not a single person who had gotten off earlier was visible; they had all disappeared. As the two walked side by side along the white road, their shadows extended in many directions, like the shadows of two pillars in a room with windows on all four sides, or like the spokes of two wheels. Soon, they arrived at the beautiful riverbed they had seen from the train.

Campanella took a pinch of the beautiful sand, spread it on his palm, and, rubbing it with his fingers, said dreamily,

"This sand is all crystal. There's a small fire burning inside."

"That's right," Giovanni vaguely replied, wondering where he had learned such a thing.

All the pebbles on the riverbed were transparent, indeed crystals, topazes, some showing crumpled folds, and corundums emitting a pale blue, mist-like light from their edges. Giovanni ran to the shore and dipped his hands in the water. However, the mysterious water of the Milky Way was even more transparent than hydrogen. Yet, it was certainly flowing, as the parts of their wrists submerged in the water appeared to float slightly with a mercury-like sheen, and the waves created by bumping against their wrists emitted a beautiful phosphorescence, appearing to flicker and burn.

Looking upstream, beneath a cliff covered in pampas grass, a flat white rock, like a sports field, stretched along the river. There, five or six small figures seemed to be digging or burying something, standing and crouching, and occasionally a tool would flash brightly.

"Let's go!" the two exclaimed almost simultaneously, and ran in that direction. At the entrance to the white rock stood a smooth ceramic sign that read "Pliocene Coast," and here and there along the shore beyond, thin iron railings were installed, and beautiful wooden benches were placed.

"Oh, there's something strange," Campanella said, stopping curiously and picking up a long, slender, black, pointed, walnut-like object from the rock.

"This is a walnut. Look, there are many. They didn't just wash up, they're embedded in the rock."

"This walnut is big. It's twice the size. Not damaged at all."

"Let's hurry over there. They must be digging for something."

Holding the jagged black walnuts, the two approached the area they had seen earlier. On the shore to their left, waves gently rolled in and out like lightning, and on the cliff to their right, pampas grass plumes adorned with silver and seashells swayed.

As they got closer, they saw a tall, severely nearsighted man, who appeared to be a scholar, busily writing in a notebook while enthusiastically giving instructions to three assistants who were swinging pickaxes and using shovels.

"Use your shovels, your shovels, so you don't break that protrusion there. Oh, dig a little further away. No, no, why are you doing it so roughly?"

They saw a large, pale beast's bone lying in the soft white rock, more than half excavated. Upon closer inspection, about ten square rocks with hoofed footprints were neatly cut out and numbered around it.

“Are you here for a tour?” The person who seemed to be a scholar, with his glasses glinting, asked us while looking our way.

“There were many walnuts, weren’t there? Those are about 1.2 million years old. They’re quite new. This place was a coast 1.2 million years ago, after the Tertiary period, and seashells come out from below. Where the river flows now, saltwater used to ebb and flow. This beast is called a Bos, an ancestor of today’s cattle, and there used to be many of them.”

“Are you going to make a specimen?”

“No, it’s needed for proof. From our perspective, this is a thick, magnificent stratum, and there’s various evidence that it was formed 1.2 million years ago. But the question is whether it looks like this stratum even from a different perspective than ours, or if the wind, water, and sky appear empty. Do you understand? But hey, don’t dig there with a shovel. Ribs should be buried right beneath that, shouldn’t they?”

The scholar hurried away.

“It’s time. Let’s go,” Campanella said, comparing the map and his wristwatch.

“Ah, then we will take our leave,” Giovanni said, bowing politely to the scholar.

“Is that so? Well then, goodbye.” The scholar, looking busy again, began supervising, walking around here and there.

The two ran hard on the white rock, trying not to miss the train. And they truly ran like the wind. They didn’t get out of breath, nor did their knees get hot.

Giovanni thought that if he could run this fast, he could run all over the world.

Then the two passed through the previous riverbed, the lights of the ticket gate gradually grew larger, and soon they were sitting in their original compartment seats, looking out the window at the direction they had come from.