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fire feeding through its contracting windows , each window beaming
clarity enough to pull my eyes out of my head , the schoolboy left
behind at the keyhole holding himself against the wind of the fire
with both hands . The black pig is being eaten by the clear-light tiger ,
but now that 1'm inside the tiger , none of these words or images
matter , no distractions , no separations , everything assimilated and
refined in one diamond-point of warm light. The corpse ' s last
explosion blows me back into the boat as something soars from the
trough of fire , dissolving in a rain of brightness over our heads , the
boatman recoiling , clearly visible for the first time , not the frictional
entrepreneur I imagined , but a feverish little man rowing us against
the flower-and-shroud-choked current , moving the oars as stiffly as
crutches.
He completely ignored us until we were our of his boat and it was
time to pay . We still felt too stunned
to
argue when he asked for more
than the price first quoted. He had chosen to deposit us in a
suspiciously desolate area much farther down the shore. Not that we
feared him . He was the one who seemed afraid , eyeing the money the
way a superstitious man might study an omen . We stood there , uneasy
together , watching him row back into the haze, head bowed under
lengthening tendrils of smoke from the pyres. Ray and I took furtive
side-glances at each other , like strangers . I had forgotten him in the
fire . It was embarrassing to see him so clearly . He seemed wizened and
frail , as if an old crook-backed Indian clerk had taken possession of his
body.
We were at the bottom of a series of ascending humps , a hole in
the topmost, possibly a passage back
to
the center of the city . Instead
of starting the climb , we sat down on either end of a broken spine
of earth , both distracted , trying to remember our friendship , neither
of us making a sound until Ray surprised me with a laugh ; something
warm and wet touched my shoulder. When I turned , I saw , head-on,
the great luminous moon-face of the cow, a black gleam of snout at my
shirt pocket , midnight eyes far apart in high , solemn orbit , speculating
on the possibility of eating my American passport , all the smells of the
day germinating in the heat of her breath. The cow swung its
ponderous, sage 's cranium away from me and moved toward Ray, who
was kneeling with his passport held aloft in both hands , intoning , "Oh
Mother Superior, oh mountain-backed , leper-cunted mother of moth-
