BY SRINIVAS

The long, sinuous line lay poised for its flight into the midnight darkness. Subconsciously the travellers’ minds registered the clang of the warning bell. Doors were slamming, late-comers were struggling into tight Compartments, and the guard was nonchalantly fingering the knob of his light with one eye on the clock. The platform was hushing down and the good-byes were gradually dying into a minor key.

Mohan stood leaning negligently against the window of his first-class compartment and was contemptuously surveying the scurrying figures, mentally labelling them ‘ants’ for their feverish activity. A Wilde-inspired Beardsley figure of a being with fin-de-siecle outlook, he was out of his time and temper, and his perspective of life was coloured by ample money and leisure. An aristocratic hauteur and austerity which deprecated the modern hurry made his movement slow and contemplative, dignified and deliberate. Wrapt in the coiled dreams of smoke, he was waiting for the time to get into his compartment and prepare himself for the night.

He was slightly annoyed when an excited voice hailed him. He turned with a touch of asperity and coldness and stared into a pair of eyes, full of puppy friendliness. “Hullo, Mohan,” the Puppy Eyes poured out in excited gasps, “I say, I am jolly glad you are travelling by this train….I want you to do me a favour.”

“Money?” thought Mohan.

“My sister is traveling alone in that compartment. If it is possible...will you just look after her...that is if she wants something...Kamala is her name...You see, she is going to join her husband...He is at Madura, you know...come along...I will introduce you.” Words poured out in tumbled heaps and telescoped into each other as Puppy Eyes dragged Mohan along the platform. And Mohan suffered in silence.

A girl, about twenty, was sitting on the seat trying to lull a small baby to sleep. Puppy Eyes called her and introduced Mohan, “one of my best friends, you know. If you want anything, he is over there.” The girl raised her head and looked at Mohan. The diamond in her nose-ring flashed militantly in the half light. She turned to her baby. Mohan walked back to his compartment after briefly acknowledging the introduction. Puppy-Eyes beamed happily.

The girl turned on him with fierce eyes. “How dare you introduce you friend to me? Do you think I am so cheap that I shouted meet this Mohan?...He, with his reputation.…” she went on.

Puppy Eyes was bewildered, then contrite. “I say, I am sorry and all that, you know. Never thought of his reputation...”

“Yes,” jeered his sister. “As usual you think too late. That modern Casanova. Well, you can tell him from me that I don’t want his help. I can manage, thank you. Let him not come near me. I will scream.…” The whistle cut shrilly across Kamala’s acrid talk, and the train moved. Her words get lost in the gargantuan vibrations. “Good-bye,” cried out Puppy Eyes with relief. He quickly glanced into Mohan’s compartment as it went past him. Mohan was reclining with a book. The train gathered speed, and the station gradually sank back into its usual somnolence.

Kamala turned and looked at the other lady-traveller who was puffing away, exerting to unroll her hold-all bed. “You are travelling far”, the girl asked, hoping she was, so that Mohan might not surprise and violate her chaste aloneness.

“H’mphh,” the other lady grunted. She turned and asked with a forbidding stare, “You asked something?”

“Yes. Are you travelling far?”

“No. I am going up to Villipuram only.” The lady gingerly poured her bulk into the narrow bunk, and with a sigh of sensual satisfaction snuggled into the huge pillows.

Kamala was suddenly afraid. “Only up to Villipuram,” her mind echoed. Only a hundred miles. And then she would be alone, all alone, in this compartment for any libertine to walk in and molest her. She was surrounded by many people, but she would be cut off into a corner by the rushing express and its noise. And she had heard about this Mohan. Oh, yes, she had heard plenty, from all her friends–the reputation of this man, whose passionate eyes were supposed to bore deep into any girl and make her feel naked and quivering. Suppose he insinuated himself into the compartment on the plea of helping her...and then...oh, God, she would die first...She could scream...she would kill herself.

Sharply the baby cried. She gathered him to her arms and kissed him wildly, passionately. Tears sprang unbidden to her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Scared by this burst of unwanted frenzy and affection, the baby screamed all the more, for he did not know that his mother was feeling a violated, dishonoured woman. Maddening screams rose above the din of the rattling express. The other lady shouted: “Why do you let the baby cry like that? Have you no regard for the others?”

The girl stopped her frenzied petting. She became aware that she was still whole, untainted. She quietened the baby by baring her breast to his greedy mouth. Stealthily she wiped away the tears and hushed the child to sleep.

After Villipuram, she thought, she would bolt all the windows and the doors. She would keep awake in the darkness so that he would not creep in unobserved. She would defend herself. Suddenly a doubt grew and crystallised within her. What about the lavatory? She got up and went in to see. Satisfied that not even a dog could get in, she went back to her berth and lay down. She fell into an uneasy doze and dreamt of a gigantic Mohan with enormous arms chasing her down the train. She jumped off and ran into the fields and woods. But no, he was after her, pursuing her relentlessly. His arms grew and grew, and she could feel his hot breath on her neck. No, no, no. She stumbled and ran, dropping her baby, but he was there. With a huge laughter, he closed in on her, and she screamed. She woke up, her face bathed in perspiration, and found that the engine was screaming for entry into a station.

The other passenger was sitting up, her bed neatly rolled up, her baggage laid out.

“Are we–are we approaching Villipuram?” the girl asked with dry lips. The other woman nodded.

Oh, God, Villipuram. She sat up, alert and tense. It is only after Villipuram that the villain will try. She will be prepared.

The train slid into a stand-still with grinding brakes, and the other woman got off. Immediately Kamala bolted all the windows and the doors and put off the lights. With a rapidly beating heart she crouched on her berth. Well, let him come let him come. She would show him.

There was a knock on the door–rapid, imperious knocks. “Go away, go away”. She shouted. “I won’t open the door. If you force yourself in, I will kill you...I will scream the place down.”

Knocks became more urgent, more insistent.

“No, no, no,” the girl cried out, and the baby set up a wail. She snatched him up in the darkness and stood, agitated and afraid.

The knocks continued, and a woman’s voice was heard: “Mr. Guard, the passenger won’t open the door.”

Weak with relief, Kamala switched on the light and unbolted the door. But deep down, in the disreputable unconscious, there was a thrill of disappointment, a pang of regret–for her preparations to defend her honour were in vain.

A woman passenger came in: a sweet, old lady. She looked at the girl and said, “Why didn’t you open the door earlier?”

The girl almost sobbed in her anti-climactic reaction. “I was asleep,” she lamely lied.

“Well, you must be a very deep sleeper,” the lady commented dryly.

The guard peeped in. There was a clutch of fear at the girl’s heart as a male head thrust itself inside the door.

“Everything all right, madam?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you,” the lady said, and the head withdrew.

Feeling utterly exhausted and unnerved by the ghosts she herself had created, Kamala sank back on her seat. She unbolted a window and looked out. The platform was a mass of humanity in its eternal movement to be elsewhere.

And the girl took a sly peep at Mohan’s compartment. The windows were dark.

She became indignant.

“My brother trusts me in his care. And, fat lot he worries.” He had never come once to inquire whether she needed anything. Why, she could have been robbed, murdered: ‘a lonely defenceless girl travelling alone with her baby.’ Suppose he was snuggling deep in his bed, snoring away like a pig.

She suddenly remembered that she had always a contempt for her brother’s feeble-mindedness. He could not be trusted. Here, his sister was travelling with a baby, and he had to go and pick up an ill-mannered lout to look after her comforts. Just like him, she thought viciously. And banged the window down.

The old lady asked: “Shall I put out the light?”

Almost rudely, the girl snapped: “Oh yes.”

She lay by the baby, and the night deepened down the many weary miles to Madura.

Kamala was up betimes, and the glimmering dawn bared its freshness to her drowsy eyes. She asked her things and got ready for her destination. The baby was fed and again rocked to sleep. The old lady was gently snoring, the dawn light painting her repose with a ghostly luminence. In the morning light, the phantasms of the night had melted away. She laughed at herself as she recalled the terrors of the night. She swore to herself that she would not in future yield to such wild imagination. Feeling cool and controlled, she drank coffee at Dindigul, and looked forward to Madura.

Her husband was at the station to receive her. She got out of the pain and stood on the platform with the baby, while her husband fussed in and out of the compartment directing the porter.

She turned and saw Mohan, clad in silks, outside his compartment, talking to a lovely girl, while an obsequious servant was carrying breakfast into the train. She gazed disapprovingly at the girl who had obviously come to meet him with breakfast. The girl was dainty and cool and rich. She was laughing at some sally, revealing beautiful teeth. A pang of jealousy shot through Kamala. Mohan, who was grinning, turned his head accidentally and saw Kamala. There was no glint of recognition in his eyes, not even a tremor that he knew her.

She felt outraged. “The unmannered lout,” she mocked within herself, “Pretending not to know me. Why only last night my brother introduced him to me. I, suppose he thinks he is superior. All right, let him be snotty. Who cares! He and that...”

The husband cut in. “Is this all the luggage?”

She turned on him and snapped: “For God’s sake leave me alone...you and your fussy chatter...Yes, there is some more in the luggage van.’

The husband raised urprised eyes, and moved to the luggage van. “She must be tired out by the journey and the baby,” he thought.

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