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unnerving it made me flinch from the touch of Ray 's shoulder as if we
were enemies. We both jumped at his sudden cry . One dripping oar
pointed out a large object floating past , shrouded in a greenish
phosphorescence. " Finish! " The boatman nearly lost the oar as he
pantomimed a slashed throat , leering , hissing , " Food! " until we
looked closely enough to see the bird perched on the bloated corpse ,
feeding. The boatman made furious bobbing pecking motions with
his head , prodding us for some show of civilized shock or at least an
answering leer to thank him for this exotic picture . His gestures
promised the river would show us more if we studied it carefully. Ray
obligingly stuck his hand in. "Feel it ," he told me . "It ' s like gravy!"
Touching water, mouthed , my hand sank in the blood-film of the face
crooning at the train window .
I must have faded out . The first time I thought I opened my eyes
we were plunging at impossible speed toward two cavities of fire . Ray
grabbed me out of the middle of a fall, cold music in my ears . "You
were on your way overboard , one foot in the air- . " But the boatman
was calling , .. Look ,
sahib .
. . ,"
turning us on the point ofone oar, the
other arching out, like a compass defining a circle, the circle on fire ,
waves of blast-furnace heat hitting us through the creamy ooze of
smoke which left its scum hardening on my face like. hot tallow .
Egged on by Mosca , we looked past looking , hungry to catch and
contain every spasm of action on the stage of fires-pariah dogs
scrambling for stray scraps from the burning bodies; packs of children
in a fever , faces overflowing reflections, pin-wheels , flashes, shadows
on the move , dancing incarnations of the rhythms drone-dtummed by
a kindergarten Bolero band ; the technicians of the spectacle glorying
in the light of their conflagrations , fanning flames with tattered
shirttails and prodding corpses into embers as they shout down the
families of the dead over the cost of kindling, always with one miser's
eye on the gold of the fires . The tallest one wore the remains of an
American-style sport shirt. We were close enough "to see his smallpox
scars and every frayed thread in the rag- bandanna wrapped around his
brow .
Our guide made disparaging gestures at the two blazes in
progress , asking us to concentrate instead on the pyre which had not
yet been put to the torch . There we would see the sensation he had
promised . As if moving at his direction, the tall one looked suddenly
