No, it could not have been human. There was a rumbling sound. They listened again. Of course, it was a rumble; it was a train. Its puffing became clearer and clearer. Then they saw the outlines of the engine and the train itself. It had no lights. There was not even a headlight on the engine. Sparks flew out of the engine funnel like fireworks. As the train came over the bridge, cormorants flew silently down the river and terns flew up with shrill cries. The train came to a halt at Mano Majra station. It was from Pakistan.

‘There are no lights on the train.’

‘The engine did not whistle.’

‘It is like a ghost.’

‘In the name of the Lord do not talk like this,’ said the lambardar. ‘It may be a goods train. It must have been the siren you heard. These new American engines wail like someone being murdered.’

‘No, Lambardara, we heard the sound more than an hour ago; and again the same one before the train come on,’ replied one of the villagers.

‘You cannot hear it any more. The train is not making any noise now.’

From across the railway line, where some days earlier over a thousand dead bodies had been burned, a jackal sent up a long plaintive howl. A pack joined him. The men shuddered.

‘Must have been the jackals. They sound like women crying when somebody dies,’ said the lambardar.

‘No, no,’ protested the other ‘No, it was a human voice as clear as you are talking to me now.’

They sat and listened and watched strange indistinguishable forms floating on the floodwaters. The moon went down. After a brief period of darkness the eastern horizon turned gray. Long lines of bats flew across noiselessly. Crows began to caw in their sleep. The shrill cry of a koel came bursting through a clump of trees and all the world was awake.

The clouds had rolled away to the north. Slowly the sun came up and flooded the rain-soaked plain with a dazzling orange brilliance; everything glistened in the sunlight. The river had risen further. Its turbid water carried carts with the bloated carcasses of bulls still yoked to them. Horses rolled from side to side as if they were scratching their backs. There were also men and women with their clothes clinging to their bodies; little children sleeping on their bellies with their arms clutching the water and their tiny buttocks dipping in and out. The sky was soon full of kites and vultures. They flew down and landed on the floating carcasses. They pecked till the corpses themselves rolled over and shooed them off with hands which rose stiffly into the air and splashed back into the water.

‘Some villages must have been flooded at night,’ said the lambardar gravely.

‘Who yokes bulls to carts at night?’ asked one of his companions.

‘Yes, that is true. Why should the bullocks be yoked?’