It is, I have learned, easy to misjudge the momentum of things in the dark. The train did not seem to be travelling at any great velocity, but contact with the ground soon disabused me of that particular notion. I landed badly and at speed, promptly lost my footing and tumbled head first down a gravel bank until a fortuitously placed peepul tree broke my momentum.
Pain, the likes of which I have seldom experienced, even at the hands of the Budge Budge constabulary, convulsed through me. My instinct was to lie there, but if the two officers had followed me off the train, there was a risk that I might just die there. I had to start moving. An electric jolt shot through my arms as I hauled myself up. I looked towards the bank and peered into the darkness. For a long moment I saw nothing. Then in the distance, as my eyes adjusted, the hulking outline of the Bombay Mail became clearer, the lights of its compartments visible several hundred yards down the track. I breathed a sigh of relief, which died in my throat and turned to horror as it dawned on me that the damn thing was not moving. My stomach turned over. The third-class passengers were getting restless. I could see several, silhouetted against the light and peering through the window bars, wondering what was going on.
The sound of muffled voices carried over on the air. Shouts. I reached for my revolver and a cold dread descended as I realised it was no longer in my pocket. I’d lost it, somewhere between the jump from the train and my final resting place at the foot of the tree. There was no time to look for it. I had to move, to get away as quickly as possible. I had no shoes, no notion of where I was, or in which direction I should run, but I decided it did not matter, as long as it was away from my pursuers.
Setting off silently through the screen of trees, I limped away from the tracks and the dim lights of the shacks and godowns of what I presumed were the outskirts of Howrah.
Behind me my pursuers were fanning out. I thanked the goddess. In the dark, I was but a needle in a haystack and the further I moved from the train, the greater the area they would have to search. I kept running till my lungs burned and my feet bled and then collapsed among the foliage. For a full minute I could hear nothing over the sound of my own laboured breathing and pounding heart. Then, as the blood settled and my wits returned, I concentrated, trying to catch any noise on the wind. I waited and whispered pleas to Maa Durga and Maa Kali with a degree of fervour which my prayers seldom entailed. The sound of voices began to recede, and minutes later came the agitated whistle of the train. I dropped my head to the ground in relief and remained there for some time. I decided that lying low was still the safest option. Simply because the train was leaving did not mean that my pursuers were aboard it. They might still be out here, waiting for me. Most of all though, I simply hadn’t the energy to move.
I cannot say how long I lay there, but a crescent moon was overhead by the time I reopened my eyes. It took a moment to remember where I was and what had transpired, and then I wished I had not woken at all. I rose unsteadily and tried to ascertain my bearings. The muscles of my legs were stiff, and the flesh of the soles of my feet, cut ragged. In the distance, a few lights flickered, and I made for them, driven by the logic that where there were lamps there were houses, and where there were houses there were generally roads.
Sure enough the light came from hurricane lamps hanging from a series of shacks beside a lotus-covered pūkūr and a dirt road. The question was whether to turn left or right. It was not that I was unsure as to which direction led back to Calcutta – that was obvious from the glow of flames upon the horizon. The question was more fundamental: What was I to do now? Gulmohamed was gone, and I was a fugitive. Returning to Calcutta entailed the risk of capture by my colleagues, a trial and a hangman’s noose. But where else was I to go? If I had any chance of survival, it was in proving that Gulmohamed, and not I, had killed Mukherjee, and to do that, I realised, I needed Sam. So with resignation I started walking, east, back towards the city – my city; the city of my birth, my youth, my life; the city now aflame; each of its burning districts like wounds upon my soul.