Freelalatiana - Conceptrice et Rédactrice


Lalatiana Rakotomamonjy

Brand Content Conceptor


lalatiana at papango.net
M: + 33 (6) 63 74 93 76

You are here: Nouvelles - Contes News item
News item

Type : Nouvelle
Auteure : Lalatiana Rakotomamonjy
Date de creation : 1997

Thursday morning. What a beautiful day for an ordinary day. Nobody’s in the train, no rush, nothing. The train is on the platform. Another station, other people. The carriage car is almost empty. Almost…

A man is sitting there, alone, looking somewhere through the window, a walkman on his head. Maybe he is thirty, or maybe not. He just looks like an ordinary man with a walkman, in a train. A woman is entering. Maybe she’s also thirty. She carries under her left arm a heavy shopping bag and under the right one a lovely two-year old baby. She’s a lovely darling, like so many babies. They go and sit at the same level as the man but on the other side of the corridor. He doesn’t even pay attention to them. Then enters another woman, an old one, just old. She sits slowly in front of the mother.
The train is leaving again.

The pretty baby goes here and there. Here, next to the man. He just smiles, she’s so charming. There, next to the old woman. “Your daughter is so cute. And she looks so intelligent for her age. Peep-bo !”. Nanny likes to play with her. Such a lovely baby. So fragile also. She can fall down and break her little neck at any time. The three people don’t want that to happen. Every one is on the qui vive. But she won’t fall… Even if the man is ready to take her if she stumbles, even if the old lady tells her to stay next to her, even if the mother doesn’t put her eyes on anything else except on her daughter. Good fellows.

The train is now slowing its movement, it is arriving at another station. The man gets up and stands next to the doors waiting for them to open. The mother is preparing her things. “Oh ! You’re leaving here ? So am I”, says granny. Mother is occupied with her things. She’s happy, grandma is there to take care of Baby.
The four of them are in front of the doors. They are opening.

Suddenly, the old lady takes the child and starts running. Run, Grandma ! Run ! The mother is screaming ! It is ear splitting the ears of the man who just realises what has happened. He’s going to catch her, of course. Grandma is still running. She runs so slowly (a baby is heavy for an old woman who is running) that the man, after about twenty meters, catches up to her. He takes the baby violently from this silly woman’s hands. Slowly, he comes back to mummy. She smiles again, she breathes again. She opens her hands. She starts crying now. She nearly lost her baby. It is enough to drive her mad, it’s true. There are few meters between them now. Only few meters and baby is in mummy’s arms again.

But the man starts running. He goes beyond the woman and she still doesn’t understand. Something was turning wrong but what ? He runs so fast that she doesn’t even realise what was happening. Her head is spinning and she doesn’t see that they disappeared and are far away now. She only hears the fence closing behind her and the ordinary ugly sound of an ordinary train which is leaving.

back