The Eye of the Horse - Jamila Gavin

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. . slipping . . . the ground was slipping away from beneath his feet. The clerk clutched his heart and then his head. The whole world became dark and began to spin around him as if out of control . . . it was a past betrayed . . . a future lost . . . what would happen . . . what would become of them? All that slaughter . . . destruction . . . and a terrible sickness of the soul . . . who could heal the wounds? Who could save them now? What revenge would God take for the death of a saint? Slipping . . . slipping . . . there was nothing solid for his feet to stand on.

      The clerk crumpled to the ground, his arms clutched around his head as if waiting to be sucked away into oblivion.

      In his distraught mind, he wandered through beautiful gardens of ornamental lakes and perfumed fountains; down shaded avenues of cypresses; into fruit groves and walled gardens, where flowering bushes were bursting with colour and profusion. They were gardens of order and peace created out of a jungle of danger and chaos. Yet a voice whispered in his brain. Beware! Beware the beast that lurks; the enemy disguised as a friend; the serpent coiled among the boughs of the tree in the garden of Eden, waiting for Eve; beware the Judas seeking out Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane to embrace him with the kiss of betrayal; Ravana, king of the demons disguised as a holy man; the devil who has gained access into the inner sanctuary.

      But it was too late for warnings. In a garden in Delhi, an assassin lurked among the shrubberies of Birla House. A man, pretending to be a disciple, waited for Gandhi.

      The Mahatma was still frail and impossibly thin after his long fast. Flanked by his faithful women followers, on whose shoulders he rested a hand for support, he walked trustingly to a prayer meeting. The assassin stepped forward. So close. As close as friends. He faced him, looked him in the eye, then shot him three times.

      ‘Hiya Ram, Ram, Ram!’ were the last words on the Mahatma’s dying breath.

      ‘The light has gone out of our world,’ wept the Prime Minister.

      Later that day the horse was seen again, galloping in a frenzy down the long white road. Some said a strange rider crouched on its back; some demented creature with wild hair flying – small as a child or a hunchback.

      But that night, the horse came again to the palace. Bublu heard its footfall on the terrace. Bublu moved with the silence of a hunter. This time, he would catch it. He heard its breath and saw its white shape gleaming in the darkness. It looked up. The horse saw him with glittering eye. It didn’t run away. Bublu held out a hand of friendship. ‘Come to me, my beauty! Don’t run away. Come to me, O wondrous one!’

      As he spoke, he moved closer and closer. Now he could feel its warm breath as he held his hand up to its nostrils. He stroked its nose and murmured lovingly to it. ‘Let’s be friends. Stay with me. I’ll feed you and groom you and ride you well. Stay, my beauty.’

      The horse stood stock-still. Then Bublu realised that, sheltering beneath the horse’s belly, protected between its four legs, crouched a creature with long wild hair. In the darkness, he couldn’t make out the face, but its eyes, like the eyes of a snake, stared at him, glittering and hypnotic.

      Bublu cried out loud with shock, but still the horse didn’t move.

      What had come to them? What was this creature? Was it a demon? Was the horse a bringer of bad luck? Bublu remembered the words of the old sadhu.

      He dared not move either towards the horse or back to his place by the fire. Instead, wrapping his sheet around him, Bublu sank down on his haunches, and stayed like that for the rest of the night, with his head sunk on to his arms.

       Train Tracks

      Jaspal leaned over the old metal bridge and looked down onto the railway tracks below. The shining metal slithered away like parallel serpents, till they reached a point in the distance where they merged as if one – but he knew that this was only an optical illusion.

      The sight of the tracks always gave him an intense feeling of excitement. Sometimes, when the sun was shining in a particular way, he could block from his view the grubby backs of those London houses and flats, with their grimy windows and straggles of grey washing hung out to dry. He could fix his eye on the patch of blue sky between the tenements, and imagine he was back in India. For a while, he could try and forget the pain which sat in his stomach like a hard lump.

      Trains reminded him of his village back home in Deri. Beyond the mango and guava groves and between the fields of wheat, mustard seed and sugar cane, the railway track ran the length of the Punjab skyline.

      He and his best friend, Nazakhat, had loved trains. On many an afternoon after school, they would take the long way home so that they might get over to the track and walk on the rails. There was no chance of being run down by a train, as you could see as far as the horizon in each direction. Anyway, long before the train was in sight, you could feel the hum of its power beneath your feet. It was often the smoke they saw first, streaming a long trail in the sky, and then they would hear the piercing shriek of its whistle, which carried all the way to the village.

      Although there was no need for danger, they often created it.

      ‘Let’s see who’ll jump off first,’ Jaspal had shrieked to his friend, as the train came nearer. They had waited and waited, giggling and wobbling about with arms outstretched for balance, each on his rail. Jaspal was to leap off on one side, Nazakhat to the other. As the train bore down on them, the engine driver would often be leaning out of his cab swearing and cursing at them, shaking his fist and telling them to get out of the way. But they would just shake their fists back, mouthing unmentionable insults and then, at the last minute, fling themselves aside.

      Jaspal smiled at the memory. If only it was only the good times he remembered. But trains pounded through his dreams at night. Indian trains, filled with refugees, escaping from the mayhem which was caused when India was split into two to create Pakistan; when Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs set upon each other with vicious fury, and people were driven hither and thither. The shriek of the train whistle had been a scream of death; a scream of hatred and murder and massacre. He had seen it. The images would never go away, though he tried to forget. He tried to forget the day they fled from their village. He, his sister, his grandmother and mother set off for Bombay. His mother, Jhoti, had been saving small amounts of money each time Govind sent anything from England. She had this dream, this conviction, that they would be able to buy themselves tickets on a ship bound for England. ‘If your father won’t come to us, then we will go to him,’ Jhoti had declared. Such were the desperate times, everyone was rushing around trying to work out strategies for survival. There was no one to tell her whether or not she had enough money, what papers she would need or how she would get there. With thousands of others, she had simply set off for the nearest railway station.

      In the pandemonium of overcrowded platforms and trains packed with refugees, Jhoti and her children were separated from each other. The force of the crush swept Jaspal and Marvinder onto a train, which then moved off, carrying them helplessly away. Now he and his sister Marvinder were here in England while their mother and grandmother had been left behind to an unknown fate. The pain of those memories was too much to bear. Mostly, he kept them locked away in the dark recesses of his mind. Better, instead, to remember his games and his friends – especially, Nazakhat.

      There was a clicking sound of a signal being raised. A train must be coming. It would be the express bound for Bournemouth and the south coast. Jaspal felt the same old excitement. If only Nazakhat could see this. He pulled a notebook and pencil out of his pocket and heaved himself up onto the parapet, so that he could get a good view of the name and number of the engine. He could hear it now as it pounded nearer. A thrill of anticipation ran through him.

      Suddenly a voice yelled over the increasing roar. ‘Oi!’ Jaspal dropped down and turned. ‘Hey! Blackface! Bandage-head!’ Johnnie Cudlip stood on the other side of the road, leering at him. Although he was only a little older than Jaspal, he was a big boy for

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