Disoriented as he was, it took a few minutes before
Phulboni realized that the rail, which had come so vividly alive under his hands a short while ago, was now absolutely still, motionless. He knew that rail tracks carry the sound of trains for miles, in either direction. It was only a short while since the train had passed over the siding: it could not be more than a mile away. He put his ear to the rail and listened carefully. The only sound he heard was the pattering of raindrops falling on metal. Then one of his hands touched some weeds growing over the tracks. He began to run his hands frantically along the rail in both directions. He discovered that the undergrowth that he had seen earlier that day, growing over the tracks, showed no signs of having been disturbed by the passage of a train.
Phulboni was frightened now, more than he had ever been in his life, frightened in a way that left his brain numb, his vision blurred. He was standing on the rail, looking around in a daze, when he saw the red light again. It was about a hundred yards away and it was coming slowly towards him.
Phulboni greeted it with a shout of relief: 'Masterji, masterji, I'm right here…'
The shout went unacknowledged but the lantern began to move a little faster. As he stood there watching the light Phulboni's head cleared a little; he peered at the lantern, trying to catch a glimpse of the face behind it. He could see nothing; the face remained wrapped in darkness.
Phulboni turned and ran. He ran faster than he had ever run, gasping for breath, fighting to keep his footing on the slippery tracks. He glanced over his shoulder once and saw the lantern running after him, closing the gap. He ran still faster, pushing himself on, moaning in terror.
Then he saw the signal-room taking shape in front of him, looming out of the darkness. He flung one last glance over his shoulder. The lantern was no more than a few paces behind him now; a hand clearly visible upon the steel handle.
With one final, desperate effort Phulboni flung himself at the signal-room and stumbled through the doorway. The gun was where he had left it, beside the bed. He snatched it up and turned, aiming the barrel at the door.
He was fumbling with the safety catch when the lantern appeared in the doorway. It stepped in and began to approach him; a hand appeared, bathed in the red light of the lantern. The face was still in darkness but suddenly that inhuman voice rang through the room again. It said just that one word, 'Laakhan'.
And then Phulboni fired, point-blank, into the window of the lantern. The report of the gun filled the room like dynamite exploding in a cave: the recoil of the barrel caught the writer on the chin and knocked him hard against the bed.
Chapter 39
THE NEXT THING Phulboni knew, it was dawn and he was staring into the stationmaster's grinning face. He was no longer in the signal-room: it was dawn and he was outside, lying on his back on something soft.
'I told the-one-who-is-at-home,' said the stationmaster. 'I told her, "You'll see there's no need to worry, he'll be all right.'"
Phulboni closed his eyes. Such was his relief at finding himself unharmed and safe that his whole body went limp.
'I had such a time pulling you out of there, sahib,' the stationmaster said. 'You would think that huge frame of yours is made of brass. I had to pull and pull and pulclass="underline" all on my own too. But I said to myself, "Budhhu Dubey, whatever happens you have to get him out of this terrible place; even if you hurt your own back. As long as he's inside here; there's no hope for him. You have to get him out.'"
'What happened?' asked Phulboni. 'Where was I when you found me?'
'I came as early as I could,' the stationmaster said. 'The-one-who-is-at-home woke me while it was still dark and said, "Go now, and see if the poor man is all right." I came hurrying as quickly as I could. I found you lying on the floor with your gun across your body. At first I thought you were dead: but then I found you breathing so I pulled you out.'
'And the lantern?' said Phulboni. 'I fired at it: did you see any glass in the signal-room?'
The stationmaster frowned: 'Which lantern?'
'The signal lantern, ' said Phulboni. 'The one that was in the room yesterday.'
'It was in the same place,' said the stationmaster. 'All polished and clean: no one ever touches it. It's always like that, always in the same place: always clean, never any dust on it.'
The stationmaster fanned Phulboni's face vigorously with a banana leaf. 'This station is a terrible place,' he said. 'No one in any of the villages around here comes within a mile of this station after dark. You couldn't make them come if you gave them all the gold that is hoarded in the heavens. I tried to tell you but you wouldn't listen.'
'I'll listen now,' said Phulboni. 'I want to know what happened.'
The stationmaster sighed. 'I don't know what to tell you,' he said. 'A big sahib like yourself. I can only tell you what people say in these parts: simple village people like myself… '
Phulboni, listening with his eyes closed, ran his hand over his forehead. 'What is it that people say?' he said. 'I want to know.'
And then as luck would have it, one of his hands, reaching back brushed against a rail, a length of cold, vibrating steel. He opened his eyes, and found himself gazing at an uninterrupted view of leaves and trees, outlined against a rosy dawn sky. There was no sign of the stationmaster or anybody else. He looked around and discovered that he was lying on the siding, across the tracks, on a mattress. Hesitantly'he stretched out his arm and touched the rail.
And then once again Phulboni threw himself off the tracks. But this time he managed to halt his fall so that he was just inches away when the train went hurtling over the siding, over the mattress that he had just been lying on, tearing it to shreds. This time the train was all too reaclass="underline" he saw the horrified faces of the stokers and engineers as the train thundered past; he heard the screech of its brakes and the shriek of its whistle.
He scrambled up the siding and began to run. He caught up with the train a mile or so away where it had finally ground to a halt.
The stokers and engineers were examining the points and switches, trying to work out how the tracks had been switched. Incomprehensible, said the Anglo-Indian chief engineer; that siding hadn't been used in decades, the mechanism had been dismantled years ago. The train had almost been derailed, it was a miracle that it hadn't, with all the debris on those rusty, overgrown tracks.
So Phulboni said to the chief engineer: 'Maybe the stationmaster pulled the switch by mistake?'
The chief engineer was a grizzled old veteran. He gave Phulboni an odd smile and said: 'There hasn't been a stationmaster at Renupur for more than thirty years.'
Then the guard appeared, obsequious as ever, and led Phulboni to an empty first class carriage. Later, when the train had started off towards Darbhanga, he sidled up and whispered in the writer's ear: 'You were lucky; at least you are still alive.'
'Why?' Phulboni demanded. 'Have there been others who…?'
'The year I first began this job,' the guard said, 'in '94, there was another who was not so fortunate: he died there – in just that way, lying on the rails, at dawn. The corpse was so mangled that they never discovered exactly who it was, but it was rumoured that he was a foreigner.'
He gave Phulboni a melancholy smile. 'No one ever goes near that station at night,' he said.
'Why didn't you tell me this before?' said Phulboni.
'I tried to,' said the guard, with a crooked smile. 'But you would not have believed me. You would have laughed and said, "These villagers, their heads are full of fantasies and superstitions." Everyone knows that for city men like you such warnings always have the opposite effect.'
Acknowledging the truth of this Phulboni apologized and asked the guard to sit and recount everything he knew.
For many years, the guard said, the signal-room had been home to a young lad called Laakhan. The boy had drifted in from somewhere up the line soon after the station was first built. He was a stray, orphaned by famine, with a thin, wasted body and a deformed hand. The signal-room was empty then, because no railway employee would agree to live in such a lonely, isolated place. So Laakhan made it his home. The guards and stokers who passed through taught him how to use a signal lamp and work the switches. He made himself useful to the railways and they let him stay.