Bhowani Junction

by John Masters

  Pater twirled a small wheel under his hand to shorten his cut-off. The exhaust settled down to a steady tramp, two beats a second—whoof-whoof-whoof-whoof-whoof. I could see a section of the boiler through the little forward window. The boiler was long and black and had three stainless steel bands round it between the front of the firebox and the back of the smokebox. The engine had a short thick funnel. The smoke and steam jerked up in exact time with the trampling beat. The boiler, the bands like steel girths, searched like a huge animal for its way among the maze of rails. Out in front of us the rails stretched like a hundred tangled snakes between the yards and the Loco Sheds, but we found our own path under the gantries. The sun had put out all the green and red eyes, so that the signals were like a page of semaphore for us to read, their drunken arms giving us the message. It was a book I had learned to read without being taught, the way I had learned English and Hindustani. I muttered the messages of the signals to myself, hugging myself with pleaure to be here, even in a sari, and not there in the gurdwara: Branch Line Crossover, clear. Up Yard Approach, clear—that was interlocked with the next one—Up Loco Shed, clear. Up Repair Shop Junction, clear. Up Yard Exit Junction, clear. In banks and rows and separate stands the arms fell back.

  Number 4 Collett Road passed by. Our little house sat quietly there in its semi-detached compound behind the straggly hedge. Then there was nothing but the tramp, tramp, tramp of the engine, then a level crossing, and tongas waiting, and lorries waiting behind the gates, and fifty men and women waiting.

  Pater opened the regulator a little wider and spun the small wheel. The engine beat changed from a tramp to a hurried, less forceful breathing. My own breathing eased with the engine’s. I felt that my nerves and muscles were slowly relaxing and settling back into old, well-worn places, and it was the jerk and heave of the footplate under my feet that was doing it.

  Mothi opened the firebox door. Tamoo stood braced against the violet, near-white glare and threw in his first shovel loads to the full extent of the six-foot handle—two at the far back of the fire, one right, one left. Then with a short overarm twist of his wrist he let the coal fall off the shovel just inside the opening.

  We passed Minoli Up Home signal. It was clear. As soon as he had seen it Mothi had nodded across to Pater. Hunched in his corner, Pater had nodded back.

  In Minoli station we threw out the key for the section from Bhowani to Minoli, and picked up the one from Minoli to Babrotha. It was all done at speed, a projecting arm on the engine side whipping the new key off a post beside the line.

  Minoli, Babrotha, Bijai. The sun beat down on the cab roof, and my head began to ache.

  Khajaura, and Pater turned his little wheel, and the beat shortened and quickened as the train flung down the bank to the Karode bridge. Then we slowed heavily and rode out on to the bridge. All the time the engine hunted like a dog, swinging its nose from side to side as it rushed forward. This was the bridge someone had tried to blow up, or pretended to try to blow up, the night the ammunition train was looted. K. P. Roy. The wheels of the train made a long clamour, sometimes almost a tune, under the arched steel girders. The river was very low and small in its wide bed.

  Mothi opened the firebox door. I shielded my eyes with my hand.

  Karode. Pater heaved up the regulator again and lengthened his cut-off, and the exhaust dropped back into the same deep thunderous tramp as when we had started from Bhowani. The sides of the cutting rose in slabs of reddish jagged rock. Yellow grass clung in the crevices, and there were jackal holes level with the cab, so that I could see into them a little way, and some bright small yellow flowers there on the thorn bushes.

  The engine had taken me away from the five Loved Ones, but now it was beginning to punish me. The hollow thunder and the ceaseless pound and heave began to pull me apart. I had never been on an express, never been more than ten miles in the cab of any engine. I should not have come here for this test, so overwrought and frightened and tired. I began to be sure that some great catastrophe was coming to meet us, or lying in wait for us, some point of explosion that would bury the five Loved Ones and the sari and my weeks of nervous effort. It would be appalling, but it would have to come, as a sort of expiation.

  Pater yelled, ‘Now we have up grades, but easier than this, all the way to Mayni. Twenty-three-miles.’ Gradually but definitely our speed increased until we were going steadily uphill at about thirty-five or forty miles an hour.

  Pater settled back and lit his pipe. He sat like a sack on the jump seat, jolting heedlessly with the engine.

  Pipalkhera Up Distant—on! Pater put up his hand, and the whistle screamed. Half a mile ahead the notched yellow arm of the signal nodded down. The firebox glared open.

  My mouth dropped open. My head throbbed. I waited for the explosion, the derailment, the catastrophe. We ran shrieking through Pipalkhera. The Stationmaster stood on the platform with a flag, and there was a coolie asleep under a small tree, two dogs fighting on glaring yellow sand, the shadowed bars of the water tower across the tracks, our wheels hitting the points with a quick stammering thud-thud, and a cow in the field on the right—and out. Pipalkhera Up Starter, and we ran away into the reeling plain.

  Lidhganj.

  I looked ahead. The line ran straight, like an arrow, racing forward from under the boiler down the centre of the right of way. Now low jungle lay grey in the heat on either side. Pater passed round tea. We emptied the thermos, and Mothi made more. Colonel Savage lit a cheroot. I watched the line ahead. There would be a break in the shining ribbon. I would have a second after I saw it to gather myself for what was going to happen.

  Taklana.

  The line tilted more steeply up, winding to the left, round to the right, round to the left. On the banked rails the engine leaned over the bushes and groaned and clanked, and the pipes drummed, and all the faces of the dials were steady, and the water gauges were steady. The steel plate that covers the join between the engine and tender slid backward and forward, right and left, under my feet. Mothi opened the firebox door, and I covered my eyes. I saw nothing, but I heard, and by then I knew it by heart—the long throws, the scoop and heave of coal from the forward part of the tender, the rustle under the roar as the coal fell, a short heave, and again, and the long shovel scraping on the footplate with a ringing note like a bell. The firebox doors slammed and shut out the suck and roar of the fire. I heard the heavy gurgle of the water swaying in the tender behind me—four thousand gallons. I heard the hiss of the small hose, and, ‘Pardon, miss-sahiba.’ I moved my feet, and Tamoo hosed down the footplate and squirted the coal in the tender. Shiny black chips lay in the shallow water. Steam rose, but in a minute the footplate was again dry and dusty. My feet were burning. I had left my shoes outside the gurdwara. Tamoo scrambled up on to the tender and shovelled coal down from the back to the front. Then he ran down the slope of coal and grabbed up the long-handled firing shovel. Mothi lifted his arm, and the firebox door clanged open.

  Savage was shouting something across to me. Unwillingly I opened my eyes to the searing-white, heaving furnace. Savage shouted, ‘I said it would be worth being derailed for this.’

  We ran through Mayni. A goods train standing on the passing line made a long clattering blur as we hurried by. Now we had two lines—one up, one down—all the way through Mayni Tunnel and into Shahpur. Pater pointed forward with the stem of his pipe. ‘Mayni Tunnel. One and a half miles, and climbing all the way. It will be hot.’

  Savage stood up and stretched unsteadily. He said, ‘Hot? What do you call it now? It must be a hundred and thirty in this cab.’ Pater chuckled and nodded. The sun was low now on the right, but it had been a burning afternoon, and always the furnace flaming thirstily there by our feet.

  The sides of the Mayni cutting climbed higher, became more red, more rocky. They climbed above the sun, and there was shade down on the line, but the heat did not get any less. Pater held down the whistle-cord for a long five-second blast. The mouth of the May
ni Tunnel gaped wide and black and suddenly swallowed us.

  At once it was dark, and our world and our train vanished in the shouting of the exhaust, though I knew the headlight was on. But I could not breathe. I could not breathe. The air was too hot to breathe. The firebox door clanged, and I held my eyes open and for a fraction of a second saw blue shorts, a bare and hairy leg, the brown face and the perspiration pouring down and the drops sizzling on the steel plate. Then the heaving white fire swallowed it all. The air hurt my nostrils, bored into my eyes, burned in the back of my throat. I opened my mouth wide. Suffocating, I jumped to my feet. Savage’s blue eyes hung in front of me; his face was dead white in the fierce glare, and his mouth was open. His hand fell on my arm, his fingers dug into the flesh above my elbow. His eyes were amazed, then I saw angry fear, then plain anger, and with a huge effort he sucked in a breath. As though we had only one brain between us, I breathed with him. The fierce light dulled, the long shovel clanked and flew over the face of the fire. Gritty smoke beat back in heavy violent pulses from the tunnel roof, and the smoke was red hot. I closed my eyes again and sat still, breathing the air slowly and painfully, shutting my ears against the terrible, enlarged clanging of the engine. This was the catastrophe that I had been waiting for. My mind was gone, surrendered to the heat. The will that kept me here and made me breathe was not my own. Savage’s hand pressed on my bare arm, telling me when to breathe. Without it, I would have jumped over the side.

  But I was safe. I opened my eyes and made myself breathe. Savage relaxed his grip, but his hand still lay, weightless, in the crook of my elbow.

  We climbed up through the yelling darkness. As a test I made myself pick out, from all the clanging and grinding and shrieking of steel, the slow whoof, whoof, whoof of the blast. Each beat threw a pattern of light on to the roof of the tunnel.

  The boiler burst out into daylight, and the air was ice cold. I stood up, trembling, to let it play over me. I was soaked in perspiration, and the clammy sari was clinging to my body. Savage went slowly back to his own side.

  Pater ran one finger across his forehead and down each cheek, dashing a river of perspiration to the footplate. He said, ‘It is always hot coming up, Colonel—because of the cut-off being high and the regulator open. One hundred and sixty-seven degrees; a fellow took the temperature once in there in his cab. But that was three o’clock in the afternoon, with a coal train. Now we are over the top, and there is Shahpur.’

  The fish-tailed distant signal was on. Pater closed the regulator with a heave. The steam pressure rose quickly. The safety valve lifted with a pop, and steam hissed out and blew back in a thick cloud over the cab roof. Pater opened his vacuum brake ejector slightly and closed it again. The engine heaved, the brakes sighed, the wheels sang a slower tune.

  I saw the platform: Up Home, clear; Up Starter, on. Pater eased the brakes on. All down the train the wheels sang louder and slower. The platform swung out to meet our buffer beam, missed, and slid by. The wheels set up a low, quiet scream. That died, and with a last heave the footplate was still. The steam rose in a tall straight column from the safety valve; the smoke gathered in a grey pall above the boiler.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I turned my head slowly because my neck hurt. I heard the bustle and murmur of people, sounds which grew louder as my mind focused on them. There were other people in the world then, and there was my Pater standing on the platform beside the engine, a long-nosed oilcan in his hand. I saw him bend over the connecting-rod and touch the back of his other hand to the ends of the axles. The water tower, white-painted, stood high over the station buildings on its steel stilts. I read the name painted in huge black letters on it: SHAHPUR. Colonel Savage had gone.

  I climbed carefully down to the platform. The engine had beaten me all over my body with rubber and steel rods. I went to my father and asked, ‘Where is Colonel Savage?’ I ought to ask Savage for leave. He had been nice not to make a fuss in Bhowani in front of Pater.

  Pater looked up, a drip from the oilcan falling on his trousers. He said, ‘Didn’t you see? You must have been in a daze, girl. He went back to his compartment. He said he’d see you in Bhowani.’ He looked at me with concern, his eyes screwed up. I understood so well now the reason for that habitual tightening round the eyes. My own eyes were half closed, and I did not want ever to open them wide again. There was too much light if you did. ‘Are you all right, girl?’ Pater asked anxiously. ‘Was it too much for you, then?’

  I said, ‘No, Pater. I’m all right. It was hot in the tunnel though, wasn’t it?’

  He said, ‘It is always hot in the Mayni Tunnel on up trains. Look, you had better be going. Tell Jimmy Rovira I am sorry not to see them. It has been a long time. You have got a compartment? The train is full.’

  I said, ‘Yes. Thanks for letting me come on the footplate. It was wonderful.’

  He said, ‘Don’t thank me, Victoria. It was the colonel’s doing. He is a fine gentleman. We would make a good driver out of him if he ever wants to leave the military department. You tell him that. Yes, you tell him that!’ He chuckled delightedly. Then he said, ‘And Victoria, I can’t tell you how pleased I am about the other thing. It would have been all wrong. But there, you found that out for yourself.’ He bent over the piston-rod and ran his eye along the heavy grease-shining steel of the guide bars.

  I walked down the platform, threading slowly through the crowd. Dogs searched under the train for scraps. One had only three legs. There were always plenty of those—dogs that had not learned while they were puppies when to move out from under the wheels. I had not had time to reserve a place in the train, and I wondered why I had told Pater otherwise. I walked down the train, looking in at all the windows. The third-class passengers, jammed into their long, uncompartmented carriages, stared back at me without curiosity. Showers of peanut shells flew out of the windows, and occasional sharp jets of betel juice added to the spattered red stains on the stone. All the second-class compartments were full of prosperous Indians or British warrant officers. As an Army officer I could travel first class for second-class fare, but I didn’t have the proper forms.

  I found an Anglo-Indian family of three in a second-class four-berth compartment. I did not know them. I hesitated in front of the compartment because I had been up and down, and except for this the train was full up. The husband stood in the doorway and said, ‘Don’t come in here. Our little girl has the whooping cough. You will never get a wink of deep.’ He spoke in Hindustani with no attempt at sympathy or politeness. His little girl looked very well. There were black stains on my sari, and my feet were dirty and sore.

  Absolute exhaustion hung very close over me. I had to sit down soon, or I would fall down. I started to walk back up the train.

  A voice said close to my ear, ‘Did you run away in such a hurry that you forgot to book a place?’

  Colonel Savage was sitting in a cane chair by the open window of a first-class coupé. Beyond him I saw Birkhe putting out a hairbrush and a comb and a bottle of whisky on the little table. The top berth was folded up and the bathroom door open. A round plaster covered part of Birkhe’s forehead near his eye. Savage had taken off his boots and socks and opened his bush shirt. A Penguin book lay open in his lap. His face was clean and newly washed. Beads of fresh perspiration were forming to run down the clean face, and his hands and fingernails were clean.

  I said shortly, ‘Yes, sir.’

  He said, ‘Come in here.’

  I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. I muttered, ‘I can’t do that, sir.’ The weaving footplate was under my feet. I saw the breathing fire and heard the bell-dang of the long-handled shovel and felt myself rolling where I stood.

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ he said. ‘Come in. You can hardly stand.’

  My palms were slippery wet. I could find Mr Glover, the conductor, and ask him to get me into the train somewhere. But that meant more walking about, more searching. I wanted just to stand there and cry. Mr Glover’s p
ea-whistle blew peremptorily from somewhere miles away. The hubbub on the platform rose to a continuous, unfrightened shriek.

  Savage put down his book, came to the door, opened it, and stepped down. He took my arm and helped me up into the compartment and pulled the door shut bebind him. The engine whistle blew. Mr Glover’s whistle blew. I stood in the narrow space between the lower berth and the wall, looking down at the brilliant blue-spangled border of my sari. Why had I ever put that on? How long ago had they given me sugar and water to drink and stirred up my insides with a two-bladed dagger?

  The platform noise rose sharply, and the train jerked and began to move. I sat down suddenly, my knees turned to milk. A man clasping a hot chupatti, throwing it from one hand to the other, ran furiously alongside the train, shouting, ‘Open the door, brother.’ He disappeared. Birkhe had disappeared. Savage had disappeared.

  I heard the tinkle of running water, and Savage came out of the tiny bathroom. He stood over me, holding with one hand to the edge of the upturned upper berth, swaying to the lilt of the train as it picked up speed. He said, ‘Get in there and have a shower now. I’ve left all my things. The towel’s a bit wet. Here.’

  He gave me his hand, pulled me up, and pushed me into the bathroom. I locked the door carefully, testing it twice, and began to undress.

  I took off my sari and looked down unbelievingly at myself in panties, girdle, and brassiere. What had I put a girdle on for? As a last line of defiance, to prove to my skin that I was not really a Sikh? It had left ribbed lines on my behind, and it was soaked with perspiration. I washed out my pants and then leaned over the basin and closed my eyes, pressing my forehead against the cold mirror in futile exasperation, because I had remembered that I had no others. The day was not ended even yet. I had no place to sleep until I got to the Roviras’, God knew when. I opened the window and hung the pants out to dry in the wind, jamming them under the glass, then turned to the shower.