The Train from Rhodesia

The Train from Rhodesia Summary | Detailed Summary

In the opening of The Train from Rhodesia, the author introduces a train station at an unnamed stop, where artists and merchants wait anxiously for tourists to arrive. A stationmaster walks out of his brick train station and straightens his serge uniform. The vendors, who are native to this region, prepare for the arrival of tourists. The stationmaster's barefoot children wander out of their grey mud hut. Chickens, dogs, and small children walk alongside the track. The heavy heat casts a reflection on the station. Thick sand flies through the air. The stationmaster's wife sits on her veranda, behind a mesh curtain, with a sheep carcass dangling above her head.

The approaching train is heard in the distance. The track flares out to let the old train come creaking into the station. Artists move animatedly up and down the length of the train, crouching and springing in an exhibit the author compares to "performing animals." These performers create a fantasy atmosphere which draws the tourists forward. Tourists exit the train and examine merchant goods at the station. A young woman points out a lion that is carved from wood with the details burned into it. The vendor, an old man, holds the lion up and smiles at his customer. The woman's husband examines the lion as well, pointing out its mane of real fur.

From the train, tourists shout, "How much?" Children with nothing to sell ask the passengers to give them pennies. Dogs are drawn to the smell of cooked meat and onions coming from the dining cart, and saunter over to sit beneath this section of the train. In the dining car, passengers sit two by two, drinking beer. A native man walks past the guard's van where the stationmaster's children are buying two loaves of bread for their mother. He continues to the engine where the stationmaster and driver are talking. He calls out to the two men jokingly and they turn to him and laugh. At the same time, the two children run back with the bread, through the iron gate of their home, and up the path through the garden where nothing ever grows.

Some of the passengers go back to the train to fetch money or collect travel companions to look at the vendor's products. The travelers on the train look like caged animals cut off from the outside. A girl throws the chocolate that she's just bought out to the dogs but the hens snatch it up first.

The woman examining the lion sculpture with her husband tells him to leave the item because it's too expensive. Her husband continues to barter with the vendor while she goes back on the train to sit down. She looks out the window to the opposite side of the track. There is nothing there, just sand and bush. She thinks of the carved lion and smiles. Then thinking of all the other strange items they bought on their trip, she wonders where these things will go once they are home and what the purchases will mean once they are back in reality. Even the presence of her new husband feels like something that belongs to the fantasy of the trip.

A bell rings, indicating that the train is ready to depart. The last passengers get back on the train. The stationmaster's wife looks out at the train from under the hanging carcass. The train starts slowly, while natives run alongside, trying to negotiate final sales. The old native shouts his last offer to the woman's husband, reducing the lion by almost a third. The husband fumbles through his pocket. He throws the money to the vendor and the merchant throws the lion into the train through the window.

The small children wave at the departing tourists and dogs watch the train go. The stationmaster walks slowly back to his chalet. The old native who sold the lion stands smiling with his hand open as his earnings sit in his palm. The last section of the train pulls out of the station.

Inside the train, the young woman's husband shakes his head with laughter and triumph as he shows his wife the lion and tells her what he paid for it. She looks at the lion wryly. "How could you?" she questions her husband. He sees the dismay in her face and asks her what's wrong. She asks him why he didn't just pay the original price if he wanted it so badly. He explains that he bought the lion for her because she said she wanted it. She throws the lion on the seat and stares out the window, holding her face in her hands. A feeling of shame creeps over her at how little they paid. She feels sick and weary; a familiar feeling that she had hoped would disappear once she got married. In the past, she thought the feeling was caused by being single and belonging only to herself. She sits on the train, not wanting to move, speak, or look at anything because she does not want to associate things here with negative feelings later. The woman's husband sits with his hands dropped between his legs, and the lion has fallen on its side in the corner of the seat.