Beyond the Station Lies the Sea
Page 6
And me? thinks Cosmos. What about me?
He thinks about the money still hidden under his shirt.
“You wait,” says the Queen to Cosmos, and walks the others to the door.
When she comes back, Cosmos has abandoned all hope. Silently, he lays the money down on the table and stands up.
“Sit down!” orders the Queen. “You still want to go to the sea?”
Cosmos nods.
“What do you intend to do there?”
Cosmos points to the big painting.
“A stand like that. Cosmos’s Cold Drinks. But only with Niner! He’s my partner, after all.”
The Queen smiles.
“Forget your partner. He’s still too young. He needs his mother, not a drink stand. And he’s still got a lot to learn. The boy’s got to go to school. With or without an angel, he’d never make it.”
“But . . .” says Cosmos, “he wants to go to the sea.”
“And he will,” counters the Queen. “He’ll come and visit you in the summer, when school’s out. He’ll come to your stand and drink some juice.”
“But I haven’t got a stand. That was all just a dream. I’ll never make it alone,” says Cosmos.
“You’re right,” says the Queen. “You’ll never make it alone.”
She pauses.
“But what if I were your partner? A stand on the beach like that is well worth the investment. People are thirsty when the sun is out. It’s a solid business. And I’ll certainly need someone to sell the drinks. You understand, I couldn’t do that myself.”
Cosmos is dizzy. He jumps up, sits down again, and then jumps up once more. And the little dog named Brutus springs up and down along with him.
The Queen of Caracas holds out her hand. “Do we have a deal?”
Cosmos shakes on it.
“Deal,” he cries. “Absolutely!”
THERE ARE GOOD DAYS, too.
On the good days, Cosmos and Niner sit on a dune, facing the sea. They feed the gulls. The great big waves are crested with foam. And the air tastes salty and the sky is blue and behind them, where the sky and the sea meet on the horizon, the sun sets, falling into the water like a huge glowing orange. And down below, on the beach, a little white dog is barking at the waves. His name is Brutus and he has a blue ribbon tied around his neck.
Sometimes we just gotta get away.
Anywhere it’s summer.
To the south . . . maybe.
To the sea . . . maybe.
Off we go and it smells like sun and wind.
Off we go and it smells like fish and tar and brine.
Off we go and the swallows are seagulls.
We turn the corner.
There’s the station.
And beyond the station,
We know for sure,
Beyond the station lies the sea.
Acknowledgments
NO BOOK WRITES ITSELF. And that’s why I would like to thank everyone who helped turn the notion of the guardian angel into a book.
I would especially like to thank two theater people from Munich, George Podt and Dagmar Schmidt, who gave me a roof over my head and a home for my thoughts for an entire summer; my editor Uwe-Michael Gutzschahn, who has always trusted in my storytelling; and not least, my first reader, Herbert Jansen, who always wanted to know what happened next and so wrung it out of me page by page.
Westerwinkel, March 2001
About the Author and Translator
JUTTA RICHTER has written more than twenty books for young readers, and has won several awards, including the German Youth Literature Award, the Herman Hesse Prize for her body of work, and the Pied Piper’s Prize of Hamelyn. In 2008, The Cat, Or, How I Lost Eternity, her second book with Milkweed Editions, was named a Batchelder Honor Book by the American Library Association. She lives in a castle in Münsterland, Germany, and also in Lucca, Tuscany.
ANNA BRAILOVSKY is a widely published translator. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Also by Jutta Richter
THE CAT
OR, HOW I LOST ETERNITY
Translated from the German by Anna Brailovsky
Every morning on her way to school, Christine encounters an old white cat. The cat can talk and she explains the ways of the world. But can Christine really believe everything the cat says?
“Untimely in the way of a Grimm fairy tale recast by Franz Kafka, The Cat is quite unlike any other work of fabulist fiction that I have read. Clearly, Jutta Richter is a distinctive writer.”—Joyce Carol Oates
For more information on Jutta Richter’s other books for young readers, please call 1-800-520-6455 or visit Milkweed Editions at www.milkweed.org.
MILKWEED EDITIONS
Founded in 1979, Milkweed Editions is one of the largest independent, nonprofit literary publishers in the United States. Milkweed publishes with the intention of making a humane impact on society, in the belief that literature can transform the human heart and spirit.
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Milkweed Editions’s translation of Beyond the Station Lies the Sea was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut that is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
MILKWEED EDITIONS, a nonprofit publisher, gratefully acknowledges sustaining support from Anonymous; Emilie and Henry Buchwald; the Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation; the Dougherty Family Foundation; the Ecolab Foundation; the General Mills Foundation; the Claire Giannini Fund; John and Joanne Gordon; William and Jeanne Grandy; the Jerome Foundation; Constance and Daniel Kunin; the Lerner Foundation; Sanders and Tasha Marvin; the McKnight Foundation; Mid-Continent Engineering; the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; Kelly Morrison and John Willoughby; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Navarre Corporation; Ann and Doug Ness; Ellen Sturgis; the Target Foundation; the James R. Thorpe Foundation; the Travelers Foundation; Moira and John Turner; Joanne and Phil Von Blon; Kathleen and Bill Wanner; and the W. M. Foundation.
Interior design by Connie Kuhnz, BookMobile Design and Publishing Services
Typeset in Adobe Gramond Pro
Printed on acid-free Glatfelter paper
by Friesens Corporation
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
© Carl Hanser Verlag München Wien 2001
© 2009, English translation by Anna Brailovsky
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Suite 300, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55415.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Richter, Jutta, 1955–
[Unter dem Bahnhof liegt das Meer. English]
p. cm.
Summary: Trying to get to the beach where it is warm, two homeless boys enlist the aid of a rich woman who gives them money in exchange for a guardian angel.
eISBN : 978-1-571-31866-4
[1. Homeless persons—Fiction. 2. Guardian angels—Fiction.]
I. Brailovsky, Anna. II. Title.
PZ7.R41544Be 2009
[Fic]—dc22
2009018135
This book is printe
d on acid-free paper.