Stone Tablets

Chapter XI

If Margit had not wanted to go to the reception — after all, she had no compelling reason to go — she would have resisted their urgings and stayed with me, Istvan argued to himself as he walked out of his house alone. But since she has come to Delhi to stay, and the dean invited her, it’s only fitting that she go and mingle with the professors. In the evening I will have her all to myself. How long can a party like that last? She cannot be the first to rush out or they would say straightaway that she was shunning them. Well — an hour and a half. Two at the most.

Perhaps I could drop in on Nagar. Surely he is with the Russians; he was invited. That’s all right. I’ll wait. I like the barking of the teletype. I’ll look over the latest communiqués. I may just find out something. Nagar will tell me how it was at the Soviet embassy, because the correspondents will also be pressing the Russians for information about what is happening in Hungary.

The sixth of November; the thirty-ninth anniversary of the revolution. A coolish evening, with air like the taste of light wine when it leaves a sour bite of fermentation on the tongue. Wide lawns, leaf-sprinkled basins with sluggish fountains, cloying the eye with the melancholy of autumn. A yellowish-green sky with morbid veins of red. Now and then the falling of a heavy drop of dew. The music of the insects, now growing faint. Sometimes from far away, like a paltry imitation of it, the brief, importunate jingle of bicycle bells and the bleating of rickshaws with rattling motors. He walked along the edge of the road. He had left the car at home; he had nowhere to hurry to.

The day before yesterday the party at the ambassador’s residence had fallen flat. Bajcsy had unexpectedly arranged for the showing of a film about the experimental cultivation of rice in the floodplain of the Danube. This was a stratagem to preserve appearances. Such information from their country had a calming overtone, so he wanted to draw in members of the corps and a few guests and pretend that all was well, since they were devoting their attention to agrarian matters. He would take the occasion to listen to opinions, to scent out what the Western diplomatic missions were expecting from Nagy’s new government. “The gathering took place in a pleasant atmosphere”; that ought to be the tenor of the report for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Damn that party! Istvan winced. A thin line appeared at each end of his lips: the traces of a malicious smile. The ambassador, bickering with his wife, had shifted from one foot to the other; they had waited on the stairs; and no guests had arrived. On the tables stood bottles of Coca-Cola and mineral water, glasses filled with plum vodka and wine, and trays of hors d’oeuvres. The park was illuminated with strings of colored bulbs. There were long rows of empty garden chairs; a white stream of light beat on the screen, which looked like a partly opened shroud. The six people who had cared to come chatted in whispers as if they were in a funeral home.

A terrible day! The showing seemed a mockery. The guests trailed about like specters. From six in the morning cannon had been rumbling around Budapest. Istvan saw red fragments from distant firings swaying in clouds of November fog. Time and again the artillery boomed. The shattering of windowpanes on the sidewalk made a noise like high-pitched sobbing. Wet rust-colored leaves lay scattered in the park. There was an appeal from writers and a call from the Hungarian Red Cross to save the capital.

“If you would take a glass of fruit brandy, sir,” Ferenc urged, tilting his head. “It is a cool evening…” and a few timid guests took what he held out to them with his obliging air. Trojanowski was there, and the cultural attaché. The Poles did not disappoint them. The Yugoslavians came. So did the president of the Hungarian-Indian Friendship Society, a tall, wrinkled man with a brown cashmere shawl thrown over his head and arms in the manner of poor village women, and a representative of the ministry — a petty official, a person of no importance.

The French and English did not come. They were preoccupied with the Suez and had no interest in parties. The struggles for the canal continued. The Americans were boycotting the embassy because Kádár had called in the Russians. Beginning this morning, TASS’s bulletins had referred to the developments in Budapest as counterrevolution. If the Hungarian ambassador arranged the showing of a trivial film, it amounted to an endorsement of the Soviet intervention. The Russians and the Chinese did not come, for they did not know if the showing were a cover for something — a demonstration, perhaps. In a few days it would be known who the staff at the embassy were and which side they were on; better to wait, Istvan thought, smiling bitterly. How many times during the last week had the ambassador called the caretaker in and asked insistently if invitations to a reception at the Russian embassy had arrived? But the large envelopes with gold engraving were not to be seen. “Perhaps they have forgotten,” Ferenc said consolingly, though they both knew that such a lapse of memory would be a pretext.

Counterrevolution. The steep, narrow streets of Buda overrun with thundering tanks. They didn’t want to see us, he nodded to himself. They didn’t want our mournful faces marring the holiday. As yet they have no instructions as to how to conduct themselves toward us. Without guidelines from the ministry, even friendship is temporarily suspended.

Nagy had gone mad. He had renounced the Warsaw Pact and declared neutrality. The Russians know very well what that neutrality means. All the Western publications are triumphantly flaunting pictures of murdered communists. Cardinal Mindszenty openly called on the nation to fight. Neutrality…neutrality in relation to what? To socialism? To capitalism? With force of arms, with this revolution, to win — neutrality? A sword in the hand of a madman. The unstable “military balance” at this moment does not favor either side. The Russians are saying clearly: Whoever is not with us is against us. The power has slipped from Nagy’s hands. The wave has carried him away; the street has decided. And on the street the blind force of an armed crowd has exploded with festering hate and time-hardened resentment. That confounded Major Stowne, when I met him, tucked his riding whip under his arm and gripped my hand. “Congratulations!” he said. “At last you have decided to break out of the Red bag that was thrown over your heads.”

If that is what he thinks, and he has little to do with politics, what must be the Russians’ view? Why should they trust us? Why did Kádár disappear with four ministers on the eve of the attack? The West was saying, “Broken in prison, the man lost his nerve, dropped out of the game.” He absconded from Budapest. He is beyond the encircling Soviet armies now, in Szolnok. He is leveling accusations at Nagy. He is devising a new government. No doubt he is just beginning to fight — for the highest stake, for Hungary? Or for himself? To which side is he loyal? Time will tell.

In spite of himself he walked faster. Beyond him was an arch of heavy stone — the Arch of Triumph, a symbol of liberation, of the freedom for which his people, too, were striving. Angular knees rose high in parade step, gleaming from under plaid kilts. The last division of Scots marched away to the screech of bagpipes. His glance rapidly swept the wide vista of the avenue leading to the distant parliament building, its dark mass yellowed by the afterglow from the blue vault of the sky. Sacred cattle, their humps red with cinnabar, grazed on lawns; their brass bells started up their familiar rattle when the animals moved.

A wide peace, a drowsiness like that of a sleeping village, emanated from the most imposing artery of the city. Far away, like low stars, the lights of speeding automobiles were winking. Their glare sparkled on a vitreous piece of coral stuck on a cow’s horn by a devout hand. Istvan thought with a shudder: I am walking here, while my boys…At once, as if he had been carried home by magic, he saw eight-year-old Geza, saw the child push his head out above the sill of a broken window and watch with delight as innumerable orange and green beads cut through the sky over the park; they were firing machine guns with luminous ammunition.

“Move away,” he said in an undertone, as if his son could hear him. Dazed, he looked around the sky as it darkened above the enormous trees, looked at the long rows of glowing street lights. He could have sworn that a moment before he had been in Budapest. His head was still reeling. He paused, breathless, like one who has been pushed from a great height and still hears a ringing in his ears.

Two women with children bundled up passed by. He heard the jingle of bracelets and anklets and the soft singsong voices. They came out of the dusk, their red saris gleaming, and dissolved into the darkness under the trees.

He raised his head toward the sky, which was very remote. Only a few stars blinked unsteadily there. From the depths of his heart he pleaded, “Spare them for me. Hide them. Shield them. I so rarely beg You for anything.” The stars trembled lightly and blurred as a tear dimmed his vision.

He wanted, after all, to be free. His conscience seemed to remind him of a half-formed wish: if it were not for Ilona, you could…You said, I also have a right to be happy. It came to him with a shock: not at such a price.

Desperately he sought the proofs that he was not the worst of men, worthy only to be condemned and trampled underfoot. Like change in his pocket he carried a handful of merits, of constructive actions, but already he felt the enormity of his guilt. You had no time for me, a voice accused him. You demand that I concern Myself with you…

In front of him stood the dark building, like a gigantic tub reeking of tar, in which Krishan had been killed. He had not yet come here to remonstrate with the police about the woman they had arrested. And Mihaly had begged him so earnestly, had looked so trustingly into his eyes. Tomorrow, he vowed. Tomorrow. First thing in the morning.

Though it was not late, the streets were empty. The bracing chill had swept the Hindus off them. Only a seller of peanuts napped, crouching over his hot stove with his head covered by a paper bag with slits. Ashes reddened by a gust of air glimmered on his extended hand.

“Sahib,” he whined, “sahib, fresh, very tasty monkey nuts.”

Istvan bought as if fulfilling the mandate of the goodness he hoped to attain. The little pouch made from fronds warmed his fingers.

If my statement is not enough, I will ask Chandra for help. Poor Durga. Or perhaps it is better that they locked her up; he remembered the avaricious eyes of her caretaker and her cohorts, whose faces were hidden in the shadows. They promised gowns and trinkets and pushed girls toward ruin. She had lost the man she loved and her body had become useless, a vexing burden. She could dispense with it. She had lost Krishan; she had lost the world. With a leap into the fire that had absorbed the visible form of her beloved, she had made her choice: she had died.

Automobiles hurtled past. In the greenish glow of the streetlights he spied red jackets and gold braid: the officers of the president’s guard. Perhaps Khaterpalia himself had sped past him. Behind him came a huge black limousine with a small, hunched white figure; yes, it was Nehru, with his beautiful, gloomy daughter. He glanced at his watch. Ten after eight. The grand reception at the Russian embassy was just beginning.

Like a moth lured by a light he made his way toward the park, which was ablaze with the glow of headlights. The large building with its pillared front resembled an ancient temple. Two policemen in white gloves were urging the drivers of the arriving cars to keep them moving. The glow of hanging bulbs dusted the layered branches of trees whose lower trunks glittered with reflected light. Beds of salvia blazed scarlet. From a distance the tinkle of lively music could be heard, and the swelling din of guests eating and drinking.

Istvan stopped in the dusk. A group of onlookers covered with sheets of linen sat on the sidewalk, quivering in the chilly air, drinking in the unusual spectacle. Cars flowed in through the gate, bearing dignitaries over the crunching gravel toward the carpeted staircase. Other people alighted from taxis and walked with dignified steps, splashed with glare from the headlights of automobiles almost in gridlock. Women in saris threaded through with gold seemed to sail on streams of fragrance, sweet aromas of perfume and flowers. On their shoulders some wore fur stoles drooping low so as to reveal necks framed by gold collars sparkling with jewels.

On the grassy island opposite the gate a small, compact group of men in white were rhythmically shouting a slogan. No one hampered them. Istvan thought they were partisans of a new political order demonstrating in support of a revolution. There were about twenty Hindus. All at once he understood their chant and felt a pain so acute that it frightened him.

“Hands off Hungary! Hands off Hungary!”

An embassy official moved toward the wide-open gate — a tall, powerfully built man with a mane of blond hair. His navy blue suit was rather too large; his trousers fell in wrinkles onto his yellowish shoes. He exchanged a few words with the police, who called an officer over and pointed to the group of demonstrators. The officer threw up his hands in a gesture of powerlessness. The group’s shouts grew louder; guests alighting from their cars paused to listen before moving on quickly to the radiantly lit park with its holiday decor. They don’t want to spoil the festivities, he thought, and clenched his fist. What do they care about Budapest?

The embassy official returned with three Hindus. They carried, as if it were an unknown weapon, a black bullhorn with coils of cable, which they installed by the gate so that the device faced the dark street. A song spurted at high volume from the megaphone, surging with chords sung by choirs at full voice. The demonstrators opened their mouths, but their voices were lost. They stood for a moment more, conferring with each other, huddling together. At last they began to disperse listlessly, scattering into the dusk along the avenue.

He walked behind them. He wanted to know who they were and where they had come from. When he caught up with them and asked, they gathered around him in a friendly way, pressed his hand with cold fingers and exclaimed one after another:

“We are from the university!”

“Today we shouted catcalls at Nehru himself when he began saying that the attack on Hungary was justified.”

“He forgot why the English put him in jail.” Someone breathed the odor of spicy food and cheap cigarettes into Istvan’s face.

“Equivocator!”

“Defeatist!”

A slender boy hung on Istvan’s arm, entwining his fingers around his palm like a woman. Long, matted, frizzy locks of his hair brushed Istvan’s cheek as he whispered close to his ear, “Krishna Menon said before the United Nations that he could not approve the actions of the foreign armies, and called on the Russians to leave Hungary.”

“Nehru said the same thing only a few days ago,” declared another student with an angry, accusing air. “Nehru lost his nerve.”

“It is true that we are not a military power, but our strength is real. We must be the conscience of humanity.”

“How did Nehru explain this?” Terey asked. “He had to give you an answer, after all.”

“He said that the issue was complicated, that it was over our heads. That we are led by the impulses of our hearts and not by political acumen…That we should study, and leave politics to those older than ourselves,” they said, interrupting each other, full of indignation. Their sandals clattered on the damp asphalt; they walked briskly to keep warm in the chilly twilight.

“We had to attack him because he changed his opinion as if it were a banner. Then he admitted that he had only gotten the full reports today, and he said it was an act of courage for him to alter his assessment of the situation now that he knows a great deal more; that he has learned better than to rush to judgment about matters concerning which he has not thought deeply.”

“Then we began to whistle.”

“He called us a band of fools.”

“He is burned out.”

“He is afraid of the Russians and the Chinese.”

“He is in the pocket of the Russians,” they sniffed with sudden malice. “He has sold out for the steel mills they are building for us.”

“We agreed among ourselves that we would go and protest at the embassy. They wanted to give us five rupees each to go away.”

“And that fellow who wanted to pay us more to protest?”

“But what a beautiful car he had…”

“An American.”

“Not one of us took a rupee from him, either. We are independent.”

“We are young. We can afford to defend the truth for its own sake.”

They accompanied him to Nagar’s villa. They made an appointment to visit him at the embassy the next day, and asked for informational brochures. They wanted to sign on with the Hungarian-Indian Friendship Society. The boy who had held him so tenderly by the arm whispered, “And I would like to get a few Hungarian stamps, for I have a collection…”

Istvan was touched. Their impulses were so childlike, but they were sincere and full of zeal. “We are for socialism,” they assured him, seizing his hand in the darkness. “But violence is contemptible.”

He had hardly shut the gate when Trompette, bored with solitude, bounded out with a joyful bark. She tried to climb onto his chest and lick his face.

“Stop wiping your muddy paws on me.” He held her affectionately by the back of her neck, though she wriggled with delight in his presence and her pink tongue, like a slice of ham, quivered with readiness to kiss him in canine fashion.

“Mr. Nagar is not here.” The young Indian stepped out of the office with movements like a woman’s. With a gentle gesture he invited the counselor to come in for a rest if he liked.

“What is happening in Budapest?”

“The situation is under control.”

“That’s what I heard a week ago.”

“There is a new government. In the course of six hours the streets were cleared. Tanks demolished the barricades.”

“And what of the previous government?”

“They protested. They appealed to the conscience of Europe. But before it was aroused”—he spoke with a mocking, melancholy air—“the tanks rolled through to the parliament and the premier sought asylum in the Yugoslavian embassy.”

“And Mindszenty?” Terey saw that the secretary did not even know the name. “Well, the cardinal. The one who was let out of prison.”

“You have strange names, hard to pronounce or remember. He has taken refuge with the Americans. In Budapest there is a curfew. Meetings are prohibited. The military is disarmed.” He spread his hands in a sympathetic gesture. “After the Russian forces were called in, the West gave no help. Even diplomatic protests were very measured. The press has already turned its attention away from Hungary, Mr. Terey. It is not important to them,” he said emphatically.

“And what is important?”

“Suez. Incoming bulletins say the march of French and English units has been halted. Israel as well is prepared to withdraw its troops. They have gone lax; they have lost the momentum for battle. Khrushchev has won.” The Hindu seemed to pause and think, to remind himself of what he had heard. “They calculated that he would be drawn into an altercation in Hungary. In the meantime, he delivered one blow with a fist, then at once supported Egypt. He threatened to send weapons and volunteers, and that would have meant — war, a third world war. So what could the Americans do? Support the Arabs, for otherwise the Russians would have garnered all their sympathy. The French and English themselves were on the battlefield. The cat jumped at the mouse and found itself nose to nose with the watchdog, so it looked around to see which tree to run up in order to feel safe.”

His long eyelashes fluttered. He bustled around the hall preparing a drink for the counselor. Istvan thought of a woman who, in her husband’s absence, entertains a visitor and, finding herself at a loss, repeats opinions she has heard, stretching her mental horizons and wounding and intimidating without knowing what she has said.

Istvan sank between the cushions of the chair, gazing despondently at two slivers of wood in the fireplace that were bristling with little combs of flame. Suddenly everything became oppressive to him: the black head of the rhinoceros that Nagar had not shot, only bought. The room tricked out with hunting imagery for show. The purebred setter not trained for hunting. The French cuisine to efface the memory of years of hunger. The masks that hid the lonely, hounded man longing for peace and a comfortable life, a man who had been born on the cusp of three empires: the kaiser’s in Germany, the emperor’s in Austria, and the czar’s in Russia. A man who had been cut off from his native country, the religion of his childhood, and the memory of his murdered family, and for those losses had gained so little in exchange.

Perhaps even his homosexuality was a façade, an indulgence that eased him into a circle of refined snobs, of artists full of eccentricity and ennui. What do I hope to find here? he wondered, suddenly disconcerted. No; facts are facts; only commentary can change them to half-truths, quarter-truths, stuff them with sweet lies. I came here for bulletins, nothing more. Nagar gets them sooner than anyone else. And he likes me, so he does not withhold what for several hours is exclusively his property. Tomorrow I will hear the same facts on New Delhi radio; I will read them in the papers. They will grow old terribly quickly. Their significance will last for a little while, and in that hour — the hour when they astonish and dazzle us with the Hungarians’ extraordinary devotion to their cause — they will also leave us shocked by the forces that threatened them. The next day, after we have grown used to them, they simply are—they only add to the sum of our ineffective knowledge of life, of what is behind us. Of the past.

There is no way to overwhelm the opposing forces. A nation of twelve million, and it is only a chip in a game. Human life, the highest good, ten lives, a hundred thousand, have no significance…What can be done? How to help one’s own? Whose side to be on?

No. He shook his head as if answering a question put to him suddenly by someone else. I will not shoot at the Russians. They mobilized me then. I was in uniform. The gun barrel showed who the opponent was. I had no choice. It became clear that there was no compass unless you looked into your conscience, unless you acknowledged other people’s right to food and freedom. We wanted, after all, to save our country. And we returned from the war mutilated, written into the register of enemies, alongside those humanity judged to be criminals. They made us into…no. One must have the courage to say: we became, having paid with enormous sacrifices, with the ruin of our country, their partners.

Now, after this ill-fated uprising, what will become of us? The facts say that we rose up against those who had to subdue us in order to liberate us. And we had our chance in our hands. Do we still have it? Who has the nerve to speak of friendship again over freshly spilled blood? Friendship — Rakosi and Gerő were always declaiming about it, and they built prisons, they sowed hate. Who will stand before the nation after what has passed and say, “Trust me, I am a communist?”

Kádár will form a government? And what sort of person is he? On what grounds did he call in Soviet tanks against Hungarians, he, who is Hungarian himself? What was he trying to save? Today he has everyone against him except for a handful who think as he does — think that they will rescue Hungary, or what remains of it after the madness and slaughter. Can the nation believe him now that cannons have pled his case? The Russians cannot trust him, for he came out of prison. He was tortured. He had his brush with death. He had been falsely accused. He came out of that prison his comrades had built. He came out alive, but was his faith in socialism intact? Has he outlived the memory of the injustice he suffered? Perhaps he called in the Russians so as to have the opportunity to even accounts with his old tormentors at last. Now he will take revenge…Does he have within himself the greatness not to aggravate the situation, not to condemn but to unite, to support, to rebuild what has not been destroyed? How can the Russians trust him, since his country let him out of his cell? He is, above all, a Hungarian.

Istvan rested his head on his hands and gazed at the winking, dancing flames. The burnt wood burst and a handful of sparks shot into the dusky funnel of the chimney. The dog exhaled heavily, as if she shared his anguish.

If Kádár brought about the recent coup in order to seize power and square personal accounts, in a hundred years a crowd will drag his bones from the burial ground and throw them into the Danube. If he truly wishes to rescue Hungary, taking on himself the terrible burden of responsibility — of being an object of suspicion and hatred — the nation will not only pardon him but will number him among its heroes, whose names generations to come will utter with gratitude and adoration. The next few years will make it clear. Time wounds; time heals.

There were many crises in the government. He was left alone on the field — he and the Russians, who were watching him closely. Is it possible to know what he really wants?

One thing is certain: the third world war will not start because of us.

The Hindu appeared in the doorway. Tilting his frizzled head, he announced, “I have the latest information. In spite of the occupation of the Austrian border by the Soviet armies, around two hundred thousand have left Hungary, according to provisional estimates. The United States has convened a special commission that will place them in camps and expedite emigration from Europe.”

“Well, I have my answer.” Terey’s knuckles whitened. “The exodus is beginning. Kádár lost. We all lost.”

He stared at the winking flames that lent a red glow to the cavern of the fireplace. He seemed to see, from a great distance, Budapest ablaze. He stared until it hurt, until a dull feeling of strain came over him. At last he shook off these painful imaginings and said under his breath, “No. I don’t want this.”

The dog turned her spotted head toward him, awaiting commands. He had forgotten the Hindu, who stood leaning on the door frame.

“I won’t wait any longer. I’ll call from home. Goodbye.”

“Mr. Nagar will be inconsolable if I let you go.” The young man gave him a limp, narrow hand.

Fear tore at Istvan. He lifted the curls of tape from the floor. The information that had been milled through the telegraph concerned — already! — other countries. No sooner had the cannons gone quiet in Budapest than the world, it seemed, had lost interest in Hungary. The uprising had fallen into an abyss of silence. The eruptions of passion, the battles, the blood, the hasty tamping down of dirt on fresh graves, were slowly dissolving into memory.

He was in no mood to meet Nagar, with his irritating sprightliness — his jaunty exhilaration, like that of a surgeon who exclaims, “What a fine tumor, a beautiful growth!” Or a painter who is arrested by the shriveled face of a beggar and his varicolored rags in a stream of tropical light, and finds the lines and the juxtaposition of colors worthy of perpetuation.

He did not even notice when he found himself in front of the brightly lit garden of the Soviet embassy again. The party was ending; the guests had begun to stream away. A megaphone interrupted the music and called up automobiles that docilely, with a crunching of gravel, rolled toward the stairs. This was not the official closing, for the ambassador had not said his goodbyes to those who were departing and the music was still playing in the pavilion in the park. A few onlookers sat here and there, looking sleepily at the greenish fires of jewels, at gold chains like glittering serpents, and at the odd dress of European diplomats.

He stood on the opposite side of the street under a spreading tree, in a chilly deep twilight like frozen ink.

The cars moved out, cutting the darkness with their beams. For a split second they uncovered a little cluster of Hindus in the darkness…policemen’s white gloves…tree trunks. He blinked warily, anticipating the glare before it washed over him. He was standing still, blinded, when he felt cool fingers above his elbow and heard a familiar voice.

“I counted on meeting you here. But no one came from your embassy. A groundless demonstration. Since it already happened…”

“How did you spot me?”

Attorney Chandra smelled of Yardley. The Asian stamp of the man was camouflaged by his dinner jacket.

“There was no trick. I wanted to see you and you appeared to me in the glow of a headlight as if you were on stage. Are you waiting for someone? Can we walk around? I drank a little. They have good vodka. But the cold penetrates when one is standing still.”

“Let’s walk. I don’t know myself what brought me here,” Terey said candidly.

“I did.” The lawyer rubbed his hands together. “I thought of you all the time.”

They walked in the darkness, rather hearing than seeing each other. At long intervals they passed through lamplight that sprayed through overgrown branches. Then Terey could see the Hindu’s set lips and the gleam of his smooth, glossy hair.

“What is your connection to Khaterpalia’s wife, counselor?”

“There is none. Well, I know her,” Istvan answered, surprised.

“Is none — and was none? There is a difference.”

“I know her husband from the club. We are friends. I have seen them, as you know, from time to time.”

“She hates you,” Chandra said in a tone of absolute certainty. “Something must have happened. Think. Search your memory.”

“No. They are both friendly to me.”

“This morning I had an appointment with your ambassador. You were right: he is a sensible man, he knows something about business, and we will surely arrive at an understanding. She was there before me.”

“Madam Khaterpalia?”

“They were concluding a conversation. My presence did not hamper her; she considers me a partner of her husband’s. He has confided in me on difficult matters, and she knows that I manage to conceal them in the depths of my mind as in a well. Are you not curious as to what they were talking about?”

“Curious? Yes—” he stopped and turned toward Chandra. They were wading through the darkness, through the bitter smell of withering leaves.

“Evidently she was warning the ambassador that you want to be on the other side, that you would not return to Hungary. Is that true? Do not be afraid to tell me. Only I can help you.”

“I?” Istvan chuckled harshly, indignantly. “Rubbish! You must have misheard.”

“So I thought. Pity. You would have managed it. She said something about your plans to marry, your intimacy with the English.”

“Did she mention a name?”

“Well, but this has struck a nerve!” It seemed to Istvan that the attorney’s lips were half parted in a soundless, mocking smile. “In my presence, only Major Stowne’s…”

Istvan breathed easily. His jaws relaxed.

“That means nothing. A retiree. Of course I know him.”

“He was an officer of the Intelligence Service. Such service never ends; it is almost a calling,” Chandra remarked discreetly.

“I didn’t know. Stowne is a man of few words, though he is fond of drinking.”

“One must not trust appearances,” the lawyer admonished him gently. “If we walk confidently, it is because we do not know what traps are hidden around us.”

“Did she say anything about—” Terey began, then abruptly went silent. No! Chandra could not know about Margit.

“Well, speak up.”

Istvan moved easily like someone who wants to stretch his legs after a day’s work, to fill his lungs with cool evening air. With his steps he measured the silence that was lengthening, deepening between them. Chandra waited, then ventured as if to encourage him, “I do not know what she had said before my arrival, but you have an enemy in her. A dangerous one. She is not a docile Hindu. English blood…She is calculating. Well, will you tell me? No?”

Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen, he counted. Automobiles filled with party guests still in high spirits flew past them. Bright light washed over lawns wet with dew.

“Madam Khaterpalia ought not to be leaving home. She is expecting a little newcomer,” Chandra continued. “But perhaps it is more important to her to do someone harm. How have you offended her?”

Istvan shrugged. He wanted to forget the incident on her wedding night. He had pushed it aside; he had thought little of it for so long that it seemed insignificant to him, but it remained, like a festering splinter.

“I told you about the miraculous rescue of the dead brother of our mutual friend, the rajah. Surely you heard that the matter was successfully concluded. For all parties, the deceased as well. He lived for a few months a life that he had not known, which the gods had not given and will not give him. Pity you did not hear the negotiations. The father-in-law and the man’s own brother demanded my assurances that he would never return, for he was even ready to go out to his place of seclusion. Do you understand what their idea of assurance was — what could ease their minds once and for all? Delightful bargaining—” he laughed quietly. “And all for the good of the yet unborn child. How can one not believe in predestination? It will come into the world burdened with guilt, for Grace heard all that passed without a word of protest. She loves that little one. She prefers that it not be forced to share its wealth with anybody.”

“And you talk about this with complete freedom?” Istvan bridled. “You did this for them?”

“Impossible cases are my specialty. I did it, and I was remunerated. The rajah and rani, I must say, knew what they wanted; the honorarium they paid left them fully conscious that they were requiring me to violate the laws of God and, what is more difficult, the laws of man. Your holy book speaks of Cain. Nothing is new! Properly speaking, does humanity know any other kind of homicide? People ought to be brothers, but dress them differently, give them a stick with a varicolored rag on it, and they are ready to murder each other.

“What is happening in your country? Before they overran you with tanks, Hungarians were disemboweling Hungarians who had been hung by their feet from streetlights. What do you call it? A just verdict,” he sneered, “which makes a man fighting for freedom an executioner. If you were there, I wonder where you would find yourself: among those trampled on the pavement, or among those they hung because somebody didn’t fancy their faces or the identity card with the star? And what right do you have to judge and condemn me?”

He spoke with an ominous mildness, but Istvan felt that he was incensed. “Is it because I am frank with you and your friends are not, although they are a close-knit family and make up a most hospitable circle: the rajah, his father-in-law, and the charming rani Grace, full of expectation and absorbed in the fruit of her womb? You had best try to remember how you got off on the wrong foot with her. Then I will try to rectify matters.”

Istvan caught his breath. He felt as if he had been beaten about the face. And he could not strike back, for one does not fight with a reptile, one only kills it. Or shuns it, walks around it at a distance.

They walked in the darkness under a sky like a net knotted with glittering stars. They stepped in rhythm. He sensed that Chandra had told him about the matter of the dead brother to encourage him to make confessions of his own, to admit faults — to feel that in this moral twilight they were accomplices. Confess without absolution? The joy of the condemned that there are so many of them, the dense throng with despair biting into it like pincers.

Be careful: he is pumping you for information. He wants to trap you, an inner voice warned. In spite of himself he slowly formulated sentences, evading the disturbing truth.

“Did rani Grace say where I wanted to escape to?”

“Yes.” The blow fell. “It was difficult for us to believe; she chose a strange place for you. She seemed to overlook Paris and London. Do you want to escape to Australia?”

Istvan’s shoulders hunched as if he had been hit in the chest. He walked like an automaton.

“You wanted to know. Now you do. Well, you have heard the truth. Someone has given you away. Now you must beg for mercy.”

“Oh, God!” he barely breathed, but the other man, whose head was tilted toward him, caught it.

“You have remembered after all!” he said triumphantly. “Well, you must not take it all so seriously. You have only to say to me, Help me, and mean it, and I will do everything you wish. Or almost everything,” he corrected himself. “At any rate, I will surely help you. Not for nothing do they call me a philanthropist. There is no predicament with no way out; it is only necessary to make up one’s mind. To know what one wants. For oneself. You should think of yourself, of yourself exclusively. For no one loves us but ourselves. No one; you may be sure of that.”

They were walking amid the caustic smell of swirling smoke. From both sides of the path countless fires appeared, a few with sharp red tongues licking at the night. Others hardly glimmered pink from under cooling ashes. Now they saw bodies wrapped in sheets like grayish cocoons, lying like unborn infants with knees tucked up.

“What have we come upon?” Suddenly Terey was conscious that the lights of the city were far behind them. “Do they bury the dead here as well?”

“No. But it is natural to think so, though those people are still living. It is a cool night. They sleep by the fires. These are the homeless. The poor — beloved of God—‘Harijan.’ That is what Gandhi named them,” Chandra sneered.

They stood for a moment, gazing at the vast encampment. They heard the far-off crying of a baby and the snoring of the sleepers. Little flames seemed to whisper curses and bite hastily at the thorny branches and stalks that were scattered over gray ash. “A cold night.” Chandra shivered.

Istvan looked at him. In the low reflection of a fire his white shirt front, his jacket, and the gloves he had doggedly pulled on created the impression that he was disguised as a magician — that in a moment he would appear on the dais, cheap, not worth the price of the ticket, not even worth applauding.

“Let’s go back,” he agreed. Then, oblivious to his companion, he began to walk faster and faster, as if to escape.

At the Janpath Hotel the porter pointed to a key hanging on the board where the room numbers were displayed.

“Miss Ward returned only for a moment and went out again at once.”

Worried, he caught a taxi and ordered the driver to take him home.

The fusty interior of the cab reeked of sweat and cloying incense. He felt nauseated. The potbellied driver in a ragged sweater was brazenly holding a young boy by his left hand; the boy giggled ingratiatingly. Clattering and grinding, the old Ford moved ahead, permeated by a smell of burning oil. It seemed to Istvan that the two in the front seat were too preoccupied with each other to remember where they were taking him. He got out with relief and noticed a blur of yellow light in his living room. Beside the door the watchman, half awake, was stretching. The girl lay almost hidden in a corner of the veranda, curled up on a blanket.

He could not fit the key into the lock, though he tried to be quick so as not to disturb the lovers. His hands trembled.

Margit came to the door and they fell on each other with desperate eagerness, as if they were about to separate forever. They embraced silently, her forehead resting on his already rough cheek, while under his lips a crisp wave of hair darkened in the deep shadow. He felt the pressure of that dearest flesh now touching his — near, yielding. He felt his own heart. Through the coarse wool of her suit he found her familiar, warm body; he stroked it, clasped it with inexpressible tenderness. All the world lost its meaning. There were only the two of them, predestined for each other.

“Why didn’t you go to bed? You’ll stay here.”

“A telegram came for you,” she whispered, touching his cheek with her lips. He did not let her go.

“What’s in it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should have opened it. I have no secrets from you.”

“I opened it, but it was in Hungarian,” she breathed, holding him tightly. He quivered. Releasing himself, he went to the desk and shoved a creased slip of paper into the harsh glare of the lamp.

We are well stop do not worry dear stop peace here now stop Ilona.

His lips parted as if in a prayer of gratitude. They were alive. It had passed them by. He looked at the date: it had been sent the day before yesterday. He raised his head and was pained by Margit’s despairing look. He had been distant from her again. He had left her on the far side of a threshold she could not cross.

“All is well.” His smile was shadowed with anxiety. “They are alive.”

It seemed to him that she had expected something else. Her eyes were full of anguish. “Well,” she said. “You are calm.”

He embraced her, but he felt that she had gone stiff in his arms. The oneness between them, the overflowing adoration and surrender without reserve, were missing.

“You will stay?” It was a question, not an order.

She felt the difference keenly; she caught it, not with the ear, but through the pulse of the blood.

“As you like,” she answered sleepily. She went over to a chair, unfastened her tweed jacket, and began to undress. “Turn out the light.” She motioned with her head. “I thought I saw someone standing near the window.”

“The watchman. He wanted to be sure he could lie down and not go on making a show of guarding the house.”

“Take me home later,” she whispered, touching him to feel whether he had undressed. He took her in his arms. He trembled as he touched her firm, cool breasts, her slightly swelling belly. The distance between them dissolved.

“No…No…I want you by me when I wake. Before I open my eyes, I must know that you are here. Margit…”

All at once he wanted to confide his anxieties to her, to tell her about his conversation with Chandra and his premonition that a threat hung over them, but her nearness drove other thoughts away. He ran his fingers through her luxuriant hair as if it were spring grass. His hand traveled over her back as if it were a stone on the bank of a stream, warmed by the sun. He heard the soft murmur of her breath. It seemed to him that he was in a forest with treetops swaying in the wind. Again she was his whole world. What happiness, he thought, choking with gratitude — that I can love so intensely.

At the embassy the telegram from his wife made quite a stir. It was taken as confirmation that a general calm had ensued and that the destruction must not be farreaching, since the postal service was operating efficiently.

“If nothing happened at your house, as I was certain was the case, the Western press has outdone itself in magnifying the disturbances.” Ferenc gazed at the telegram. “All is well with my family, too. My mother and father live around the corner near Lenin Road and a few houses down.”

A trio had gathered: Istvan, Ferenc, and Judit. Istvan tried to penetrate Ferenc’s drawn, dogged look. His eyelids were dark with sleeplessness. He is worried, Istvan thought. For the first time he is showing anxiety about his parents. He has never spoken of them. It was as if he had given birth to himself and had himself to thank for everything.

“The boss is breathing more easily. In the night Kádár’s declaration came; he read as much of it as he wanted and walks around proud that he did not go off in a rush of adulation for Nagy. He repeated the same sentence to me three times, ‘Whoever demands the withdrawal of the Soviet armies knowingly or unknowingly proclaims himself a counterrevolutionary and impels the nation toward the loss of independence.’ I foresaw this. From the beginning this uprising stank of counterrevolution to me.”

“That means that he understood nothing.” Istvan looked Ferenc in the eye. “Either he didn’t hear or he didn’t want to know why the unrest began. He would have had to beat himself as penance.”

“You think that blood was not shed in vain?” Ferenc hesitated. “Certainly there were mistakes, but not such as to necessitate smashing all the machinery of government, disbanding the party. On whom is Kádár leaning now? On those who hid away at the crucial time and were not slaughtered by the crowd? Or on the rebels who shot at the Russians? I know one thing: there are too few of them to make a government.”

“You speak harshly.” Judit turned her head. “Something in that text must have nettled you.”

“Me?” Ferenc frowned. “I have a premonition that there will be an evening of the score, and how that will look you may see in any American newspaper with coverage of Budapest. It only takes a moment to hang someone, and then everyone can commiserate for as long as they like because it was a mistake.” He thrust a finger behind his collar and pushed as if the starched linen were pinching him.

“Don’t work yourself up. We are in India. In the meantime, things will sort themselves out at home,” Judit said.

“Radio Free Europe has thrown out a slogan, ‘Destroy the factories, sabotage the machines, so Russia will have no profit from your workshops.’ Nice, eh?” the secretary said pointedly. “I heard it myself.”

“Well, who is going to pay any attention to them? After all, the workers would be hurting themselves,” Istvan shrugged.

“As they did when they began to shoot,” Judit said dejectedly, “and they had reasons. There is nothing more tragic than for honest outbursts to be exploited by enemies and turned to our undoing. You can’t expect a mob to think; a mob is elemental. It praises, elevates, and destroys with equal ease.”

“Give me that declaration to read,” Istvan requested. “I am arguing when I haven’t seen it in black and white.”

“The boss is certainly learning it by heart, but go to the cryptographer. He will give you a copy,” said Ferenc. “It shows clearly that we were on the brink of a precipice. The plan of the West was that we would throw our force against the Russians, and that it would incite us, promise help, in the meantime accomplishing its goals with respect to the Suez. This is the logic of these events. I begin to understand Khrushchev’s haste. He had to have peace in Budapest. He seized the trump cards from the opponents who were trying to play the game at their own pace. He did not give them Hungary and he did not allow the Suez to be taken away from Nasser.”

They were sitting in the corridor on the second floor. The light fell on Judit’s luxuriant hair and worried face. Outside the window in the hot Indian autumn, spider webs sailed about. The gardener was raking away crisp leaves. Yellow butterflies flew over the scarlet salvia.

“What did you mean, ‘He did not give them Hungary’?” Terey challenged Ferenc. “Hungary is not a spoon to be tucked into the top of a boot! He didn’t give us away because we didn’t let ourselves be led away by the West, for our people don’t want magnates in the Csepel mills or hereditary owners on land that is parceled out. Socialism, whatever we make of it, is our own affair; it is indivisible from independence.”

Ferenc tilted his head slightly and looked at him with a barely perceptible smile. “You are quite the chess player,” he said, pushing out his lower lip. “So you like a new configuration of things…”

“Player? I’m sorry for you if you look at what is happening to us and see only a game, and our politicians as pawns on a chessboard. Damn it! Aren’t you Hungarians?”

“Perhaps you are going to start in again talking about how many books were published before the war and how many are published now, about the amateur ensembles and museums open to the public. I tell you: write a revolutionary’s notebook, not verse. Write, write and you’ll be running a newspaper — you’ll be the head of Szabad Nep,” Ferenc snapped.

“Listen, Istvan”—Judit tried to divert his attention—“that painter, your protégé, called me. He wanted assurances that he has a chance to receive a stipend.”

“Hardly the most pressing issue,” Ferenc said sarcastically, “when all Hungary is in convulsions.”

“It is important to Ram Kanval. Surely the paperwork has gone out? The main thing is that he has hope. They are taught to wait patiently.”

Judit looked at Terey with something like pity. She started to explain something but shrugged and sighed, “He will wait until the next incarnation. You are a good fellow, Istvan.” It was as if she had said, You are naive, even a fool.

“I wanted to apprise you that your other protégé,” Ferenc began maliciously, “well, you know, the runaway from Ceylon, the writer…”

“I did not support him at all.”

“But he came to the embassy and you gave him gifts. You loaned him money.”

“He printed two articles for us. You yourself gave him entrée, comrade secretary.”

“He lifted those articles from our brochures. He can do that much. I am not reproaching you, Istvan, but it would be better if you knew whom you were taking under your wing. In a few days he is going to the Bundesrepublik. He will write flattering reportage from there.”

“And you said he couldn’t write!”

“They will write for him. They will write; it will be enough for him to sign the articles.” Ferenc turned the knife. “You are a poet. You look for true art, and you despise the ordinary bullhorn because it is a bullhorn for hire. That is how Jay Motal should be treated. The Germans bought him. They beat us to the punch.”

“They won’t get much for their money.”

“That is our only comfort,” Judit said, and, wishing to end their quarreling, added, “Has either of you been to the cinema?” Seeing their surprise, she explained, “The film was not important. It was the newsreel. Yesterday at the Splendid Palace I saw barricades on the streets of Budapest, and dead insurgents. I tell you, for those few minutes of footage, you have to go. It wrings the heart — the scarred center of the city. Burned-out houses standing amid the rubble.”

“Shall we go, Istvan?” Ferenc suggested, scribbling on the windowpane with a finger.

“What are you drawing there? The gallows?”

“No. Your initial,” Ferenc rejoined. “A capital T, though it may be similar…”

“Go at eight,” Judit begged them. “Must you be eternally sparring?”

“I don’t know if I will have time,” Istvan said evasively. He wanted to take Margit.

“What work do you have that is so urgent?” Ferenc’s interest was aroused. “You are avoiding us, isn’t he, Judit?”

“Yes. He was different before,” she said with a baffled air. “You have changed, Istvan.”

“That’s rubbish!”

“You used to drop in for coffee. We always had something to chat about,” she chided him.

“The counselor no longer trusts us.” Ferenc tightened the screw. “Evidently he has found other confidants.”

“You know yourself that that’s not true.” Istvan turned away and, wishing to break off the conversation, went to his office.

He wrote a letter regarding Ram Kanval, warmly praising his art. When the clattering of the typewriter keys had stopped, he heard voices from the corridor: they were still talking. He sensed that they were speaking of him. His left ear felt hot. His old aunt had always warned, “Left ear burns you, they speak ill of you; right ear — good news.”

An insistent fear reasserted itself: what does Bajcsy know about Margit? Should he believe what Chandra had said? How could he profit by the warning? He could not sit still. He reached for the telephone and when the operator answered, he asked to be connected to the prosecuting magistrate. For some time the Hindu woman searched for the official who was investigating the accident involving the motorcyclist Krishan. At last he had the right man, a man who listened patiently to him and asked for his name letter by letter. When he had finished, the official informed him, to his great surprise, that his intervention was unnecessary, though of course information from a counselor at the embassy would have been highly valued; the woman who had been arrested had been set free the previous day. It had been irrefutably determined that she had nothing to gain by ridding herself of her husband, and she had accused herself as a result of the shock she had experienced.

Feeling relieved and a little disappointed, he hung up. “I acted too slowly,” he half-whispered.

Someone knocked at the door. Before he said distractedly, “Come in,” the balding caretaker had slipped into the room.

“I am here to clear away the papers.” He ran a hand over the desk, on which rose piles of bulletins and newspapers. “Indeed, counselor, you have no room to move. May I straighten up? What is put aside I will take to the archive, what is not needed will go to the stove, and you will have breathing space.”

“Very well. Take the stacks from the floor. From the desk as well. What I need I have cut out and put in my briefcases.”

“I know that an official needs papers, but you were a military man before that, counselor. Why rustle like a mouse in old newspapers? I will take them away. New ones will come.” He waved his hands as if he were about to fly up over the choked shelves. “I also came here on a temporary basis…”

He glanced at the nail on which the portrait of Rakosi had hung and winked knowingly at Terey. “I thought I would be in India for only two years and then back in our country, and in the meantime I have outlasted these great ones,” he said. “They fell off their high pedestals, and I keep my seat. I mind my own business and I have nothing to be ashamed of.”

He smiled shrewdly. He looked at his hands as if to be certain they were not dirty. “I gather up the trash…”

“Haven’t you been drinking a little?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “I can tell you, sir…everyone here has a mouth full of high-sounding words. They fight for socialism, but in the soft way, with their comforts, for good money. And I, with this very hand”—with his left hand he struck the open palm of his right—“I killed four fascists. That much I know for sure.”

“When?”

“When I went from Sallaumines to the Reds, to Spain. I did it in a mine with Poles, Italians, Algerians — the rag, tag, and bobtail. We had nothing to sell but ourselves.”

“And what happened there?”

“By the Ebro? Those I killed? One was a Spaniard, an aristocrat, a very handsome fellow; when I blindfolded him, he spat at me. I understand: an enemy is an enemy. And three Moors…they were skilled at fighting with knives.”

“What has brought on this deluge of memories?”

“I cannot speak English very well. I do not read the newspapers. Sometimes the cryptographer will tell me how things are, but he looks around three times before he speaks. Maléter has been shot. I knew him.”

“Would you have preferred that he shoot himself in the head?”

The caretaker looked nonplussed.

“Do you think there was no way out, sir?”

“My friend, I don’t know. I can only speculate. It’s wearing me out as well. Do you think it’s easy for me?” Terey sprang to his feet. “What if that death saved thousands of other lives? Think of it as a loss sustained in battle.”

The man tilted his head and scowled at Terey. His lips twisted in a bitter grimace. “No, counselor, I cannot. That would be putting too good a face on it. You people, as soon as something happens, will always get around a fellow with your talk of how there must be different ways of making sense of it. I know my own.”

He looked at his own hands again with a sternly appraising glance, as a father looks at his sons when they return from work in the field.

“Though I have killed, I have clean hands.” He straightened his back. “I go around the embassy and I look at the comrades. They feel that there are changes and each one thinks of how to find a place for himself.”

“That’s human, after all.”

“And I don’t worry that they will let me go because a better set of people come. I can always manage. Only I would like to be certain to the end that what I do not only puts food on my plate, but serves the nation. I would not measure out my blood drop by drop; what is needed is needed. What more can I give, except for my life?”

Terey went over to him and gripped his hand — a broad hand that even after many years was knobby and hard.

“I think as you do. So do thousands of others.”

“Why is it so hard for them to speak up and stamp out these lice who are crawling all over us? All my life I thought that one party — eh! We have seen how it is.” He raised his chin abruptly. “You may say that it depends on such people as I. I would rather go to the weapons depot and shoot one of them. For what am I or you or the ambassador? It is Hungary that is important! Hungary must be protected. And they have already shrunk us so that you cannot spit or it will fly over the border and annoy good neighbors.”

He moved toward the door and said, bowing half facetiously, “I beg your pardon, counselor, for being so forward. I am not well educated. Perhaps I have offended.”

Terey listened attentively as the caretaker’s footsteps sounded down the long corridor. If he himself had not had words with Ferenc, this man would have taught the secretary a lesson! He began to pace around his office as if it were a cell, moving diagonally from the door to the window. He looked through the window at the blind wall of the garage, which was covered with a shaggy blanket of dusty leaves.

How many times they had jeered at the caretaker, calling him a drunkard who deserved well of his country. And he was one of those who could be counted on when sacrifices had to be made. It is not with “comrades,” but with nails, he thought, that you hammer into place, join, reinforce the walls of the house. They go into the soft wood and hold it, and they do not even ascribe it to themselves as merit. They simply consider it the reason for their existence. And we? And who am I? he reproached himself. What right do I have to teach him?

Suddenly he felt that he had not yet reached the crossroads — that a test was before him, a test he had tried not even to think of. The face of a man aged beyond his years, rigid as a fist, was reflected in his mirror. “You are thinner, Istvan. You are torturing yourself, and I can’t help you. I can’t give you any relief, though I know what is preying on your mind.” Margit’s voice, full of deep, caressing kindness, came back to him and he felt her fingers moving over his tightly set cheeks, which were bluish from the razor. At the thought of her his eyes closed like a cat’s in a streak of sunlight and his tension eased.

I ought to master myself, or for some trifling reason there will be a quarrel and it will grieve me. I must always remember not to exasperate Margit. I must use my judgment. I must fight for her and for every day I share with her.

In his dreams Budapest collapsed in ruins, full of the smell of burning. He was choked with vague, inchoate images that brought on an unbearable sense of helplessness. He woke as if someone were tugging at his arm. He listened, terrified, to hear the telephone if it should ring. His heart contracted violently. With inexpressible relief he found Margit beside him, felt the pressure of her thigh, smelled the beloved fragrance of her skin and the hair at her temples. He knew that she was not asleep, only pretending to be so he could rest, if only for a little while — so he could forget this anguish. She lay as one who lurks in wait, watchful, her wide-open eyes gleaming in the flood of darkness. He was grateful upon discovering that she was keeping vigil over his nervous dozing, his abrupt disconnection from consciousness, as if a switch had been pulled. He wanted, after all, to satiate himself with her presence forever, to hear her breathing. The rhythm of it gradually calmed him, though sighs still went through it like ripples on windblown water, and spasms of choking, as if she were holding back tears.

Suddenly his head sank deeper into the pillow and he slept. But in his sleep he lost her, though he had vowed to stay awake, to accept that hour of oneness in the dark as an affirmation of their love. Far away beyond a corner of the window loomed the greenish, cratered autumn moon. “Sleep,” she begged gently, her hand tracing lines over his wide chest. “You must try to rest. I know this is dreadfully hard for you, but try to sleep.”

Full of gratitude and ashamed that he had abandoned her, he kissed her drowsily and, without a word to express the tenderness that overwhelmed him, fell instantly asleep.

He woke, assuring himself that there would be long nights when they would be truly together, like man and wife. The certainty nourished his heart and quieted the hunger of body which was never satisfied, only fleetingly muted by the caresses, the yielding, when Margit opened to him like a book of warm secrets.

He dreamed of long nights unshattered by the crowings of roosters like brass trumpets, of sleeping, then waking only to assure himself that she was there, that she was steadfastly beside him. He had passed, had crossed at one bound the obstacle which had long ago ceased to be important, had diminished, changed into a dry ear of corn broken across the path, not worth noticing when one is quickening one’s step, marching in double time. In these dreams Ilona was lost, pushed into the past among bygone experiences, like aged, faded photographs that remind us that we camped under the trees, sang beside the campfire, but all of that is past, remote from the present, of no consequence.

And a great astonishment broke over him that he could have felt himself happy then, since only today did he truly know what love could be. All his life until now had only been a long waiting, a preparation, though he was unaware of it, for meeting Margit. From opposite ends of the globe fate had unerringly led them toward each other, and from that wedding night they had begun to number their happiest days. Grace did not exist. She did not exist; their encounter had been an accident, a mistake. I must have been blind. After all, I met Margit that very evening, and still I did not foresee what she was going to mean to me.

Grace…the capacity for intrigue and gossip with which Indian ladies poison life, and the cool calculation of the English. She is not a woman who can be confined to the distaff side of the house, sentenced to a life between the kitchen and the bed. She has her unspoken plans and she herself is capable of carrying them out. Even the expectation of what is called a blessed event has not mellowed her. The repugnant family council on the matter of the claimant to the inheritance exhumed from the funeral pyre…she had been there. She knew, she kept silent, so she condoned the rationale that underlay her father’s and her husband’s actions.

How had she found her way to Bajcsy? She knew him from official receptions, but she had not met with him simply out of revenge. Perhaps her father would do the ambassador a favor and execute the transfer from his foreign account. What would he gain in exchange? If he, Terey, wanted to ask to talk to Bajcsy, Kádár’s appeal would create a fine pretext; best to meet danger head on. What had Ferenc read in that declaration that made him lash out blindly? Kádár — the man of the hour. If he makes the old party machine his base, they will all support him for the time being, happy that he demands no squaring of accounts.

I grieve for Hungary. My country. Kádár called on those people for help…help for whom? He wanted to save the revolution. Already there is peace in Budapest. Bitterness rose in his throat. Revolution is a two-edged sword; let no one deceive himself. People not only get their just deserts, they learn to think.

Time will tell…he noticed that he was talking to himself, gazing at the garage wall with its burden of fleecy greenery. If only it doesn’t cost us too much. It seems that our own country has its veins slit and blood flows unchecked. And then what? To refer the case to the just judge, and wait half a century for the verdict?

With a firm step he walked to the cryptographer’s office and knocked at the armor-plated door. Inside stood a radio set, a bulky safe, and a narrow table with a draftsman’s lamp — in every particular like a telegrapher’s cabin on a ship, not omitting a narrow wooden foldaway bunk fastened to the wall.

Kereny turned a pale, puffy face toward him. Hungarian voices came from the radio speaker; the cryptographer almost involuntarily stifled them.

“Are you picking up Budapest?”

“Sometimes late at night there are clear signals. One can catch them randomly,” he explained, tracing a line in the air with his finger.

Istvan inquired no further. It was clear that the cryptographer was listening to Radio Free Europe. “What news?” he asked.

“Shepilov has said that the Soviet armies will be leaving Hungary any minute. It would be enough for Kádár to demand it. There is no question of arguing with him.”

“And he will not demand it.” Terey shook his head.

“Because he would be gone tomorrow.” Kereny looked at him sleepily, almost indifferently.

“They have just said”—both knew who, though they did not name the station—“that the uranium mine sustained serious damage. They were satisfied that it could not be reactivated in less than six months.”

“So Hungarians have been duped.” Istvan beat a fist on the table. “The ruse started a wave of emigration. They urged them on to destroy the factories, for what does Hungary matter to them? All the hired dogs bark as they are told to, and our people blindly believe everything.”

“Radio Free Europe gets information so quickly that it is astonishing,” the cryptographer said reflectively. “They must have connections in high places.”

“That’s not difficult at the moment. For two weeks they had open borders. They went in and out. And the people themselves don’t know who wants the best for Hungary, or who is right: Nagy, who bolted to the Yugoslavians; Mindszenty, who decamped to the Americans; or Kádár, who yesterday came out of Rakosi’s prison and today brings in tanks. Everyone is in a daze. It’s lunacy! I came to you for the declaration because I know from talking with our colleagues that each one read it differently. They all looked for what they wanted to find.”

“They issued two pages. I have produced a written copy.” He pulled a briefcase with carbon copies out of the drawer. “But I am not permitted to let it out of my sight. Read it here, sir.”

Istvan walked over to the grated window, turned his back, and quickly perused the communiqué. Kádár explained that his decision had been influenced by acts of unbridled terrorism, lynchings, which did not bring the lawless to justice but took as targets communists who, like himself, had just been freed from Rakosi’s and Gerő’s prisons. A mob had murdered the secretary of the Budapest Committee, Imre Mező; the director of the military museum in Csepel, Sandor Siklay; and comrade Karamara, who was devoted to the cause of Hungary. Power had slipped through Nagy’s fingers; his government was impotent. The incursion of the Russians had been a historical necessity if Hungary were not to become another Korea. But the secret police were disbanded and the old Stalinist measures would not be reinstituted; the guilty would be called to account.

Terey nodded. It must have been this that had disturbed Ferenc, for the services that had opened the door to diplomacy for him might be seen as offenses, depending on who would be evaluating his previous career. Istvan raised his head and met the dogged, watchful glance of the cryptographer.

“Well, and what do you make of it, sir?”

The counselor shrugged.

“The devil only knows what’s behind a statement like this.” Kereny bent over a drawer and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He offered Terey Kossuths, lighted one for him, and remarked casually, “And a quarter million have gone into exile, or so they say. Not only rebellious students but our whole team, world champions in soccer. Gone.”

He spoke so bitterly that the counselor had to smile. “We will get over that,” he said.

“There you had boys worth their weight in gold. Anyone will take them and pay what they ask. They will not be playing in our colors. It is worse than defeat! Do you know what an impression that will make on the world? Millions of fans are watching. The Hungarians — finished!” He blew out a wisp of smoke indignantly. “I don’t care if whole embassies cut and run. The workers can be replaced with anyone at all. But goalkeepers or wings! Where will we find such talent?”

Terey did not share the man’s disappointment, but he understood his agitation. “Radio Free Europe spoke of people defecting from our missions?”

“Yes. They counted those from New York, Paris, London. They attacked the embassy in Vienna, where our people barricaded themselves and would not allow emigres in. That is a vital point, it is on the route. A long list. I wonder, has anyone left here? But who would want to stay in India?”

“They would not have to stay here. They could go where they liked. For such people, Kádár is not a Hungarian, and they see the country as lost. Fine feelings — for rats. I’m curious: how many of those who fled the country waving the Hungarian flag sat high behind their desks for a long time as censors, in the courts, in the security apparatus? An occasion arose and they sailed away, avoiding the court, having the forethought to smear their faces with the blood of the fallen. They made themselves into great revolutionaries. Tomorrow we will hear them on the radio accusing the party, broadcasting the details of dark doings, and well they know them, for they themselves—”

“If I did not know you, comrade”—the cryptographer turned his cigarette in his fingers deliberately—“I would think this was a smokescreen. Have you been talking with the caretaker?”

Istvan nodded.

“He has been doing a bit of drinking and has begun putting our people under the microscope. There’s not a one that doesn’t have some reason to say goodbye if the right moment comes. Even the boss, for he can go no higher, and what he put aside he transferred to Switzerland. Kádár will not take that away from him.”

“And you?” The counselor did not spare the man. “You have a wife and child here, and a good profession—” he pointed to the metal-clad safe. “You could parlay it into something else. The Counter Intelligence Corps would take you with open arms.”

“Certainly…but I would have to want that, and I am in no hurry. I have no quarrel with socialism.”

“And what do all of you say about me?”

The cryptographer hesitated, but snuffed out his cigarette and spoke his piece.

“You have a wife and child in our country, but that is an uncertain anchor. How many lately have been happy enough to tear themselves away from their families? You will stay, but you may yet be burnt, comrade. I speak frankly, for you go for the jugular sometimes. You do not watch—”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“I have traveled abroad for a good few years and I tell you, counselor, there has been a change. We would never have chatted this way before. One of us would have been afraid of the other. It’s good that a man can open his mouth — though one must still know to whom. And with us there are plenty of people who are schooled to have no scruples about pushing others around so the authorities will prefer them, will exaggerate their merits. But I know what a person is. They may say yes, they will do something; they may say no just as sweetly. But they cannot pull the wool over my eyes anymore. Once they did, and it was enough.”

“And what convinced you that I could be trusted?”

“Comrade counselor”—Istvan understood that this form of address had a special meaning for the cryptographer—“you saved my child.”

“I?”

“Mihaly told us everything. It was even in the newspapers: ‘mad elephant.’”

“I? That’s just prattle!” Terey tried to trivialize the incident. “The elephant turned back by himself.”

“But he might not have turned back”—the cryptographer looked keenly at him—“and the boy would have been crushed to a pulp. Mihaly does not make things up.”

“Very likely ghosts appear to him sometimes,” the counselor smiled.

“When Mihaly says he saw something, it means that he did. He learned Hindi as well, more quickly than his father. I don’t know when.”

Suddenly Terey saw Kereny’s animated face grow somber and take on a decorous gravity. He turned around. The door had opened noiselessly and the ambassador was standing there.

“What are you talking about, the two of you by yourselves? Well, you must not stand on ceremony with me,” he said indulgently, putting out a pale hand.

“We were just talking of ghosts,” Terey began jauntily. “At a time like this, better to talk of ghosts than politics.”

“About what?” The ambassador’s thick eyebrows bristled.

“I was only talking about Mihaly’s apparitions.”

“Yes!” the cryptographer added hastily. “He saw Krishan’s dead wife. Even before the accident.”

“You are talking nonsense.” The ambassador was angered at being reminded of the driver he had discharged. “Let the dead rest in peace, comrade Terey. You yourself are doing nothing; do not barge in on others. You hinder their work.”

He rested his heavy, hairy hands on the table, next to the radio. “Is there anything new?” he asked. The cryptographer shook his head.

“No? What are they thinking in the ministry? They ought to give us a tip first so we could influence the press, shed a little light on things for the politicians — do something, at any rate, and not find out everything only from our opponents. Not stick out our backside and wait to see who wallops it first.”

He pulled a wrinkled piece of paper covered with writing out of his pocket and laid it on the table, as a gambler puts down a trump card. “Send this right away. And you, comrade Terey, don’t run away. I want a word with you.”

He forced Terey against the door frame and put a hand on his shoulder, puffing the sour odor of his pipe into the counselor’s face. For a moment they looked each other in the eye.

“Better to go to your office. We would be more at ease.” He pushed the counselor forward with a matey shove that nevertheless asserted his own dominance.

Now comes the business of Margit, Istvan thought. He mustered his defense, waiting uneasily to see from which direction Bajcsy would try to ambush him.

The ambassador settled into the counselor’s chair, took out his pipe and a leather tobacco pouch, and tamped the tobacco for a long time, looking askance at Istvan. Finally he asked, “Whom did you call this morning, Terey?”

“I?” He was genuinely surprised. “Ah, yes, I called the prosecutor. You already know, sir? Our information systems are working well.”

“The line was busy for so long, the operator had to explain why,” the ambassador mumbled, holding the pipe between his fleshy lips and gazing at Terey morosely. “What kind of collusion is going on here?”

“I called about Krishan’s second wife. They arrested her wrongfully.” He spoke as if the matter were of no importance. “They accused her of putting sugar into the gas tank.”

“And you can swear that she did not?” The ambassador shifted his bulky torso until the chair creaked and rested his elbows on the desk. “Why the devil do you care about this?”

“I spoke with her.”

“What for?” His voice suddenly rose to a roar. “I’ve had enough of this! Cut it out, Terey!”

The counselor was silent. He looked at the older man as he wheezed with rage, his puffy jowls quivering.

“Tell me — what is happening with you?” The ambassador spoke in an abruptly altered tone, full of friendliness. “Look at yourself in the mirror.”

“I see myself every morning when I shave,” Terey murmured

“There are changes, eh? You are simply not the same man. Black rings around the eyes. You’re goggling like a lovesick fool. And always looking for a fight.”

“Me?”

“Are you worried about your family? You had a telegram from your wife, after all. I’m sure we will get her over here now. You’ll sleep better. One must keep a grip on one’s nerves, Terey. The tropics wear us down. Do you know what I propose? I truly regret that this has been a painful time for you.” He grimaced sympathetically. “When things are a little calmer, take two or three weeks off. A trip will do you good.”

In spite of the ambassador’s reassuring tone, Terey caught a guarded glance from under the half-closed eyelids with two yellow spots like clots of tallow. He knew instinctively that the ambassador had something more to get off his chest.

“Thank you, ambassador, but won’t it be an imposition on my colleagues—”

“Ferenc will be more than capable of taking your place. I am not saying that you should go tomorrow. Comrade Terey, I am making an accommodation for you; you ought not to be testy with me. It is time for a rest.”

He rummaged through a file of clippings. “They slander decent comrades. They drag them through the mud. Their only fault was that they wanted socialism and the nation could not keep pace. Whose side are you on, Terey?” He pointed his pipe stem at him; it gave off a little haze of bluish smoke.

“You know, sir. It goes without saying.”

“Kádár adopted all the slogans of the insurgents in order to keep himself in power, but between declarations and implementing them, fortunately, a good deal of time elapses. The people finger their bruises, reckon up the damages, and soon it all passes; their fanaticism cools. To me these great changes are like putting on a new cap while the head remains the same, and the head knows what it wants. You may take it for opportunism when you see how I spit on my finger to test which way the wind blows. I tell you, Terey, that is what life has taught me. We must hold to the golden mean.”

Seeing that the counselor was disinclined to join in this discussion, he puffed at his pipe and inquired, “What did you think of our film showing? Not a great success? Still another proof that we must bide our time until the commotion quiets down. Then — dribs and drabs: a little article in the press. Send a Hindu to us for reportage. Place a couple of photographs of the grape harvest, pretty girls, for everyone to salivate over. But a little time must pass first. When you come back rested, we will devise a campaign.”

I must irritate him so he will show his true colors, Istvan thought. He leaned toward Bajcsy. “Did you manage that transfer? Was Attorney Chandra of any help?”

Bajcsy swung around as if he had unexpectedly been hit, but saw nothing in the counselor’s face but the readiness of a functionary dependent on his chief and devoted to him.

“Chandra—” he gave a low whistle of approval. “A magisterial intellect. I had no idea that you were acquainted with such people. He said complimentary things about you. In the end, however, I took care of it without him. You can forget about that conversation.” He rose, his heavy hips pushing the chair aside. He tapped his pipe on a corner of the desk, then flung out one foot and crushed the ashes.

“Speak to Ferenc and establish a time for your departure. In December, perhaps, so you will have free holidays.”

Then, standing in the doorway, he asked, “And where would you go?”

“South. To the shore. I daydream about the ocean.”

“A true Hungarian,” the ambassador mumbled half sarcastically. “Bombay? Calcutta?”

“Farther. Cochin. A small port.”

“Small, but important. It is a port of call for all the shipping lines from England and Italy on the routes to Malaya and on to Australia.”

He turned around and went out, leaving the door wide open. Terey looked at his broad shoulders and sloping back. Was the mention of Australia the warning signal for which he had waited?

“I’ll go,” he whispered. “I’d be a fool not to take him up on it.”

He started up the fan. The great blades scattered the pipe smoke that still hung like a blue veil under the ceiling. He set to work with such a passion that it startled him when the telephone rang. He heard a name and grew calmer.

“Ah, it is you, Ram Kanval. Only today I was asking about your case.”

“I am Kanval but I am Ram’s brother. I am a translator. I had the honor of of meeting you, sir.” The fluty voice had a pertness like a crowing rooster’s. “I did not know that you would still be at work, counselor. I called your house.”

Istvan looked at his watch; it was past four. “It really is rather late,” he said.

“Would you not like to visit my brother? Today, even?”

“What has happened?”

“I am speaking from the shop. Perhaps you will come to us, sir.”

“It is that urgent?”

“Yes — as a matter of fact.”

“But may I eat dinner?” he said humorously. “That will not take long. I will be there at five.”

“Do you remember the way, counselor? At all events I will come out to the corner of the avenue, in front of the new blocks.”

The man’s voice was clear but full of concern. “Something has happened to Ram?” Terey asked.

“Yes — but he is already better. He is conscious. You have shown him so much kindness, counselor.”

“Very well. I’ll be there.”

What had happened there? Why had Ram not called? No doubt he was starving himself to spite them. Perhaps he wanted to borrow a few dozen rupees. No, one of his paintings is enough for me; I will buy no more. I have no walls to hang them on. In Budapest? Ilona would say, “Our boys paint better.” And Margit? Did she really like his work, or had she bought a painting out of pity, or because it would give me pleasure? No; her taste is very contemporary.

It seemed to him that Kanval’s pictures would be beautifully suited to the interior of a little house with fiery nasturtiums in boxes under the wide windows. They would remind them both of summer in India, of the year they met. Already he could see the bluish-gray wall and the flat surface, the color of flame, with painted figures emerging from formlessness. On the hearth there would be a black pitcher and a spray of rust-colored branches, and beside them the stone head he had been given by Chandra. Our house — Margit’s and mine. Through a large window there would be cornfields, a sky of powder blue, and one cloud with a well sweep against it. He smiled: the Australian landscape he had sketched in outside the window embodied his recollection of the countryside that had been home to his family, the land of his happy boyhood.

He locked the drawer and hurried, whistling, down the stairs. The caretaker was napping in the hall. Istvan put the key down on a little table with a loud tap to wake him. The man opened an eye, hardly nodded by way of goodbye, tucked the key in his pocket and fell to dozing. His mustache twitched drolly as flies crawled over it. He must have had a good pull at the bottle. The embassy was silent and empty; the staff had left long ago.

He kissed Margit and quickly told her about the telephone call, even holding the door open with one foot as he washed his hands so as not to lose sight of her. He was happy that he could follow her with his eyes — happy that in his presence she did not simply walk but seemed to dance.

“Can you take me?” she asked cautiously, against all contingencies placing medicines in her bag and ordering syringes to be prepared. They finished dinner quickly, much to the satisfaction of the servants.

As he drove the Austin he managed to read a large poster: House of Wax. It was a horror film. “I forgot to tell you”—he touched her thigh—“you’re going to the movies with me today. I must see a newsreel. There will be pictures of the uprising with views of Budapest.”

“What time do we go?”

“At six, when we are back from Kanval’s. We won’t meet anyone we know at that hour. Only local people will be there because that’s the low-price showing.”

They cut through streets lined with villas. The air smelled of the country, of stables and hay loaded on the creaking tongas. Already in the distance he saw the familiar figure, the navy blue blazer with metal buttons like those worn in English boarding schools, the full, starched white trousers.

“What happened?” He looked at the small face in which only the eyes flashed, full of reproach, and the mustache, long untrained, drooped, with shaggy hairs falling to the mouth. Kanval’s head swayed with happiness that they had met — that he had them in tow and could lead them to his brother.

“He drank some poison. He is better now. I could not speak freely by telephone, for everyone’s ears were open and the people in the shop know our family. I do not want to say what he poisoned himself with. His wife is with him.”

“Suicide?”

“We did not even want to think of that.” Shame darkened his voice as he tried to dismiss the idea. “But so it seems. His brother-in-law had been speaking very hurtfully to him lately, and his father-in-law had set his wife against him. They think that he does not want to work. According to them, painting is not work, and he gets no other work, though I myself have seen how he runs from place to place in search of it. He dreamed of escaping from here, of putting India out of his mind for a few months. You, sir, promised a stipend. He was counting very much on a journey to Hungary.” Suddenly he squealed, “To the left now, through the ditch! They finished the water main and they are excavating to lay cable.”

The car’s wheels ground through clods of baked clay that sent red dust flying upward. In front of the house a cluster of children were playing marbles, noisily cheering the well-aimed strikes. A slender girl in flowered slacks squatted in the middle of the road, triumphantly shaking a bag that held her winnings.

Rapidly they climbed the steep stairway with red blotches of betel juice to Ram Kanval’s family’s apartment. A huddle of relatives with saddened faces awaited the counselor, whose hand they quickly pressed. They looked respectfully at Margit, for the little translator managed to communicate to them that she was a doctor.

In a shadowy room the sick man lay wrapped in blankets. The outline of his emaciated body could hardly be seen under the folds of fabric. A clay bowl holding a white liquid stood by the bed. Istvan pushed back the window curtain and the westering sun struck Ram Kanval’s face. It was yellowish-green and glittering with sweat. His open mouth sucked greedily at the air. He lay inert; only his eyes darted about as if with an uncontrollable life of their own.

“His wife gave him curdled milk,” the brother explained. “But everything came back up.”

“Very good,” Margit said encouragingly. “Milk is an antidote to some poisons.” She listened to his heart with her stethoscope and counted his pulse. She peeled the cover from a syringe and drew an oily yellow liquid from an ampule. “I will give him something to build his strength. What did he take?”

“An infusion of some herbs.” His father, a stout gray-haired man, threw up his hands in desperation. “If we had known that it would come to this, none of us would have said a word to him.”

“He must be left in peace — above all, in peace,” Margit ordered. “Do not come in. Do not lament over him. He will sleep. His convulsions are stopping. Has a doctor been here? Where is his wife?”

A small woman in a peasant-style cotton sari leaned against the door frame. Her head hung so low that Istvan saw quite clearly the scarlet-tinted parting and the wings of unplaited hair that were a sign of mourning. The tight sleeves of her white blouse cut into her arms.

Ram Kanval recognized Istvan. His face, with a smile on his rigidly set lips, resembled the face of one dying of lockjaw. The counselor leaned over the plank bed and took the man’s cold, limp, sweaty hand.

“Nothing is lost, Ram. You will go yet. I promise.”

“No.” The word came through his labored breathing. “They are lying to you. They said today that they do not want me or my pictures.” He spoke in a broken whisper, coherently, but suddenly he looked walleyed at the ceiling.

“Did he poison himself with alkaloids?” Margit said worriedly. “It is too late for gastric lavage. What was in the stomach would have come up with the milk. The dose was not lethal, but even now I can see the effects of paralysis. Not much can be done to help. I believe he will survive.”

“He will live?” his brother demanded, picking wisps of his mustache from between his lips with a bent finger.

“If he has the desire — if he will fight,” she replied, coiling up the rubber pipe of her stethoscope. “Whether he will have a reason to live depends on all of you.”

“Listen, Ram”—Terey jogged his hand—“I swear that if you don’t go to Hungary, you will go to Czechoslovakia, to Romania. All the attachés are friends of mine.”

“They said my pictures are decadent, opposed to socialism,” Kanval said in a gurgling whisper. “They said that the uprising was not quelled so people’s minds could be poisoned with such an exhibit.”

“Ferenc,” the counselor snarled.

“No. The ambassador himself. It is the end of everything.”

“It is the end of nothing!” Istvan cried, nearly beside himself. “You will go to Paris! I will move heaven and earth.”

Ram Kanval twisted his lips into a misshapen smile. His eyeballs rolled and the pupils darted into the corners of his eyes; he could not control their movements. He must have been growing tired. A sweat heavy as foam broke out on his forehead.

“You must live, do you hear? Live! You will go!”

“Do not shout. I hear you…in red,” he whispered.

All at once he began to choke. Spasms bent his body until whitish clots showed on his lips. His wife knelt by the bed and rubbed his face with a wet towel. “He is dead,” she whimpered. “He has left me.”

Margit pushed her hands off him roughly. “No. He has gone to sleep. Leave him alone. Don’t tire him with questions. Cover the window; the light bothers him. Noise makes him see colors. I would prefer that he be sent to a hospital—” she turned to an older man in a camelskin vest whose bare knee could be seen from below his wrinkled dhoti, shaking nervously.

“What for? Here everyone keeps watch over him. He is well cared for. It is better not to fatigue him. A hospital is costly. And the whole building would raise a cry and say that we killed him.” He tugged at the arm of his daughter-in-law, who was hunched over beside the bed, and commanded, “Put hot water bottles on his legs. Have you been tending him or not? He is your husband!”

“You all wore him out. You know nothing!” She leaped at her father-in-law, waving her open hands like talons in his face. “A while ago a merchant was at the barsati and wanted me to sell his pictures. He put down ten rupees for each of them.”

“And did you sell them?” the brother asked worriedly. “That is quite an opportunity.”

“I am not stupid. He gave ten rupees; he will give twenty.”

Istvan saw that the painter’s eyelids had parted a little. His eyeballs moved uneasily. His lips were forming, not a grimace, but a hint of a smile. “The paints themselves cost more. Do not sell them,” he whispered.

A gaggle of children peeked into the hall, where a gray-haired woman was talking about the case. When they had jostled their way onto the stairs, a little boy jerked at the bag that belonged to the girl with bows in her hair and the marbles fell in a cascade, striking each step hard. The children jumped around, shrieking, to catch them.

“Thank you, sir.” The translator bowed. The ends of his mustache were sticky with saliva. “You have given him hope.”

“Not I. That merchant. He doesn’t believe me.”

They went out to the road and he turned to Margit.

“Yet another casualty of the trouble in Budapest. I’m not joking. If it hadn’t been for the uprising, we would have given him a stipend.” He glanced at his watch and was silent. He hunched over the steering wheel. It was past six.

“I’ll park the car. You run to the box office for the tickets. Cut in front of the line; no one will object. These colonial customs — sometimes I think they like to feel abased.”

They made their way in without difficulty and reached the balcony at the moment when the lights were dimmed. They sat in the first vacant seats they found. After an advertisement in color showing a sleek young man suffering from a headache and a kind soul offering him the wonder drug Aspirin, the newsreel began. They sat nestled against each other; Margit’s hand found Istvan’s, stroked it, then rested on it with a gentle pressure as if to say: Don’t torture yourself, I’m with you. What you will see has already happened. It is the past.

The building of the dam in Bhakra Nangal; the modern city of Chandigarh; in windows, glare breakers that looked like empty honeycombs or thinly sliced Swiss cheese; a palace of justice with gigantic columns like an Assyrian temple; oxen wading in thin mud at a snail’s pace, dragging a wooden harrow with several children standing on it so that the wheels ground more deeply into the churned mire.

Suddenly Istvan trembled. Three hunters flashed on the screen and moved precipitously toward the ground. A city that seemed to be made of white blocks appeared, smothered in a fleece of smoke. A crowd that from that elevation looked like a liquid overflowing fled into gardens and palm groves. He sighed heavily: this was not Budapest or any Hungarian city.

“An attack by the Israeli Air Force on Port Said”; the speaker’s voice penetrated his consciousness. They were shooting from airplanes and the crowd dispersed, dissolved into individual particles, darting figures running in zigzags before they fell, as if they were simulating the deaths of insects. But Istvan knew it was real. On the screen it even had its own aesthetic; people toppled over like ninepins, and a low murmur of something like approval ran through a hall inured to such scenes by American battle films.

A view of Budapest from a monument by the Danube burst onto the screen. He saw General Bem in a hat with a curling cock feather and the crowd with uplifted heads listening to a speaker who had climbed onto the stone plinth. There was nothing unusual in this frame, but Margit, with her hand on Istvan’s, felt Istvan’s fingers lock onto the arms of his seat. His breathing quickened. He raised his head. All his emotion seemed to be drawn to what he was seeing. The commonplace faces, the bared heads of the singing crowd were profoundly moving to him, for they were his countrymen — Hungarians.

He felt a bond with them that was incomprehensible to her, a connection she would never share. She looked furtively at him; his reactions gave her clues as to the significance of the images that changed like clouds driven by a windstorm.

A closeup of a half-torn away plaque with the inscription Stalin Road and under it the old name, Andrássy Avenue: the camera gave a view of the streets over which the crowd was surging. Long tricolor flags with holes ripped out of their centers where the stars had been torn away hung from buildings. Batteries of cannon in the park fired among houses. Soldiers in uniforms like those of the Russians, with cockades on their caps, held long missiles in their hands; at a command the missiles’ mouths emitted clouds of steam. The film had no sound, only a music track. The picture trembled. Evidently it had been made by hand by an accidental witness.

A crowd stood on a small square, heads upturned. Suddenly a man flew out of a fifth-floor window and struck the gleaming wet pavement heavily as a sack of flour. Others in uniforms were led out and driven to a wall with kicks. A young man in a hat with an aigrette and a double-barreled shotgun in his hand hit an officer who was leaning on the wall — with a whirling motion hit him in the back so hard that the butt of the gun broke. The enraged man went on hitting with the barrel while the butt, broken off but dangling on its long strap, skipped on the pavement. Those in uniform standing by the wall stretched out their hands, explained, pleaded.

A sudden convulsion distorted the faces; they looked like children curled up in terror, calling in the darkness, “Mama…” But they had already taken the bullets. Some fell dully, their faces unshielded by their arms as they hit the paving stones. Others lurched against the wall, their backs leaning on it, marking the place with a pooling of liquid black, for blood appeared black on the screen and a cry for mercy is the black stain of an open mouth — a harbinger of the night that would envelop them.

“No. No.” A voice tense with repugnance came from somewhere in the audience. Istvan turned his head as if to see who had shouted.

Houses in flames. Tanks. A long column photographed by stealth from behind blinds. The segmented crawling wheel of a tank turning little by little to vanish beyond a house on a corner.

“I live not far from there,” he whispered in her ear, and again lost himself in what was being shown on the screen: the interior of a room; a stern, fanatical face. The cardinal was allowing himself to be interviewed in the American embassy. The sound came on, and the first words in Hungarian were followed by a voiceover in English. Margit was pleased; at last she could understand, and she nodded as if in agreement. But then she caught Istvan’s whisper:

“He summoned them to fight and escaped himself. Their blood is also on him.”

People passing over the border, a throng dragging suitcases and bundles. In the cold, in the pouring rain, their breath steamed. There were accusations, tears. Soldiers laid down their arms before an officer of the border guard. The Austrian nimbly felt the thighs of the defector, shook the inside pockets of his coat, and demanded in a terse German dialect, “No grenades? All weapons surrendered?”

Women in white caps with crosses on their bands were carrying meals to children from a field kitchen. The screen was filled by a close-up of a small, smiling face with tears on its cheeks seen across a steaming mess kit. Margit felt her eyes brim with tears; she sniffled. He could have been there — she squeezed Istvan’s hand — they could have killed him and buried him among the trees that hovered grimly, stripped of their leaves. And if he had managed to flee over the border, he would have been among those the West was hurrying to help. Joy kindled in her that he was, after all, here in Delhi, in another part of the world, far from Hungary. And he would not return there for she was stopping him, blocking his way.

“Did you see how it was?”

“Terrible.” She felt him quiver, so she corrected herself, “Awe-inspiring.”

“You cannot understand us—” he began, then went silent. From the screen a girl waved her hand toward them; she was speeding along on water skis, leaving two trails of foam. “Come on.” He caught Margit in a grip that was a little too strong. “We’re leaving.”

She rose obediently. The lights went on, illuminating the empty chairs and the tardy viewers packed around the edge of the theater, who now moved in a wave in search of seats. Steering them toward the exit, Istvan spied the pale, altered face of Ferenc, who saw him as well and followed him with his eyes. Istvan let go of Margit’s arm and whispered, “Walk faster.”

When they were in the car, he sat for a long time without starting the engine.

“What is it?” She leaned over him apprehensively. “Let me drive.”

“All right,” he agreed easily. They changed places and Margit gave him a lighted cigarette.

“Istvan — which side are you on?”

He inhaled and answered quietly, “When I talk with Ferenc, I know the insurgents are right. The same when I talk with the ambassador or with Judit. Talking with others, I think: What should be done to save Hungary from being torn apart? The survival of the nation itself is at stake. We can cease to exist. They will divide us; we will disappear from the map. It has happened even to larger countries.”

“Can it be as bad as that?” she asked incredulously, frowning. “You haven’t answered. Whom are you for?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I say that in all sincerity. And it wearies me, it drives me mad. I simply know too little about what has happened.”

The watchman with his bamboo rod lying tight against his arm welcomed them in military fashion.

Istvan sat in a chair with his head tilted and took a long time to light a cigarette. “I’m sorry you had to look at that,” Margit said.

“No. I must know. Only now do I grasp the scale of the disaster.”

“Even if you were in Budapest, you could see only a part of what was happening. Don’t despair. Think of what can be salvaged, how to get clear of this trap. Those who crossed the border have not stopped being Hungarians. They can do more for your cause than those who are gagged.”

He looked at her, blinking.

“Yes. So it would seem. For the time being, the world is moved by the tragedy of Budapest, but tomorrow they will have had enough of the refugees; they will only be burdensome foreigners. To remain in Canada or Brazil, which are offering hospitality to defectors, they must work, become like others, stop flaunting these bleeding wounds — in a word, year after year they must downplay their origins, put them in the drawer with their hidden memorabilia. It will come to this, that they renounce the very cause for which they took up the struggle.”

“So you believe they really shouldn’t have left?” She grew somber. “And you? What would you have done? Would you have taken a chance and returned to that Kádár?”

“What do I care about him? I would have been returning to my homeland. Understand: your country has never really been threatened. Your Australia is not just a nation but a continent. Only a man who is suffocating knows what an open window is. Kádár had to adopt the slogans of the uprising because the nation was calling for reforms. If he is honest enough to follow through with them, we must make every effort to support him. If he lied, nothing will save him. But that is in the future. Only time will tell.”

“You prefer to wait here—” her lips were parted. She held her breath.

“That doesn’t depend on me. I care most about something else. Margit, I love you. Remember that.”

She smiled, but there was anguish in her face. She lowered her bluish eyelids. He saw how fatigued she was, how overwrought. He felt a deep tenderness and gratitude. In her own way — a different way than his — she, too, was disturbed by what was happening in Hungary.

He got up and sat on the arm of her chair. She rested her head on his chest for a long time and they sat in a comfortable silence.

“Tell me,” he whispered, stroking her springy red hair, “how are things going at the university? Handsome fellows, those students? Are you nervous before your lectures?”

After seven he began to pace about uneasily. Suddenly he announced that he had something urgent to attend to, something he had forgotten about. Though the cook had set the table, he reached for the key to the car.

“I’ll be back in half an hour. I’m very sorry.”

Margit nodded to say that she understood, she would wait.

“Will madam eat? Everything is ready.” Pereira was perturbed. “Shall we wait for the master?”

“I’m not hungry,” she said calmly, but her hands trembled when she poured some whiskey and the siphon, under pressure, wheezed.

When he returned as he had promised, she did not have the courage to ask him anything. Only as they were lying close together and he was sleepily stroking her smooth knee as it rested on his thigh did he confess in an undertone, “I didn’t tell you the truth, Margit. I was ashamed. I went to the cinema again to see that newsreel. I went in without a ticket; I gave the doorkeeper a rupee. I stood in the dark and watched it. It seemed that the first time I overlooked some details that are important to me. I looked at the faces to see if I recognized anyone.”

She listened, curled up as if she were cold. This will always be closer to him than I am, she thought despairingly. He pats me mechanically, as one pats a dog.

Her calm, her sudden torpor, he read a different way. “You are wise, Margit,” he said. “Very wise. It’s better not to speak of what happened there.”

“No.” Her head shook on the pillow. “We ought to talk to each other. When you don’t speak, I’m not sure if you’ve learned anything. Did you understand that this was a useless sacrifice? I’m terrified at the thought that tomorrow you might be tempted to do something self-destructive. The experience of others seems to mean nothing to you. Must everyone give his back to the lash?”

“That’s not the way it is,” he said indignantly, kissing her hair. “You see that I’m not doing anything foolish.”

“I want you — I beg you — not to go back there,” she said passionately. “I want to save you. I believe in your talent. Do you think they will allow you to write without constraints? To write as you wish?”

“At the moment — certainly not.”

“Well, be brave enough to say, I am not going back to that cage.”

It was the first time she had spoken so brutally. The sight of that river of refugees gave her added courage. If so many had made their way across the border, why did this one, her chosen one, hesitate?

“I’m not going back,” he whispered, touching her temple with his lips. “I’m not going back, and as yet nothing is pressing me to.”

“I wanted to remind you that I didn’t renew my contract for next year. As of January I’m free.”

“What will you do?” He leaned on his elbow.

“Wait. For you. I will patiently cut the threads that still bind you to this lost cause. The strongest tie was burned away by the uprising. You saw yourself that those who were keen for the struggle, the real patriots, have left Hungary. They won’t let the complacent ones be at ease; they won’t let the free world sleep. They won’t let it forget. Australia waits for you — a whole continent that you can move, wakening sympathy for your country.”

Istvan listened, choked with emotion.

“Certainly I am not ordering you to decide in an hour, or tomorrow. I know this will be terribly difficult for you, but I will be with you then. I won’t let them destroy you. You have to write, to create. In your literature, were there no poets who went into exile and returned to find themselves famous, to see their books being passed from hand to hand like torches?”

“Of course there were.”

“Well — you see. You see yourself,” she said triumphantly.

They lay in the dark. Passing automobiles threw dancing splotches of light on the walls, as if someone were shining a flashlight and trying to peer into the house. A feeling of loathing came over him, spawned not by thoughts of India but by memories of whispers, the furtive looks with which he had measured the distance from hostile ears. Some colleagues warned against others, dropping words like stones: agent, spy, informer. The quip ran through his mind: if you want to be a member of the writers’ union, you must put out two books and put away three friends. Awards, favorable notices in the press, the thrusting of names and titles into the limelight, even undignified celebrity, and the disappearance of other writers — the silencing of their voices, to the astonishment of readers — all took place at the push of a button, at the express direction of people who had nothing to do with culture.

He remembered all that, yet his resistance was aroused by Margit’s demand that he share her aversion to Hungary. It was his country. It was not decent to speak ill of it, as it was not decent to speak ill of one’s mother.

“You think I’m too stupid to know what happened in your country,” she whispered. He felt her warm breath on his neck. “I wanted to understand you better. I’ve read everything that has come out in English about the countries behind the Iron Curtain.”

This admission moved him, even amused him a little. She must have felt this, for she added hotly, “That’s not funny at all. You will say it is all propaganda and slander, and I remember what Krushchev said. Nothing need be added—”

He took her in his arms, rocked her on his chest and tried to soothe her. Silence deepened throughout the house. Even the great blades of the ceiling fan were motionless. Only in the flashes from the headlights of the few passing cars did the shadows swing around and silently elongate.

“Great Britain is covering up some murky business as well, but there is this difference: no premier has yet dared to speak of it so openly,” he said tersely, bitterly, as if he were bringing charges. “Let these Hindus tell about the weavers whose fingers were cut off, about the murder of the family of the last mogul, about how here in the Red Fort a major of the Queen’s Lancers shot even little children and for that was made a peer of England. And the way they fed dissensions among the Arabs, because oil is more precious than blood. And General Templer, who led the Dayaks to battle against the Malayan partisans and applauded them for beheading prisoners…well, and Suez. You saw, after all, that a brazen crime has been committed, but the poor don’t count. You can shoot at the villages as if you were on a firing range and get away with it.”

She grew tense in his embrace; he felt her alienness. It hurt him, but he had to defend the world in which his life was lived — to which he was connected by the twin forces of struggle and creation.

“If I didn’t understand you, my dear one — so dear! — if I didn’t know when you spoke that you were filled with anxiety and suspense, that you want the best for me and that you believe that you are rescuing me, it would be hard, after what I’ve heard, for us to talk to one another.” He weighed his words carefully, holding her in his arms; it was not easy for him to put all his bitterness into words.

“You are good to me, very good, not because you are submissive, but because you really do think of me, of Istvan Terey, who has only one life. You don’t even know if what I write has any value, but you believe in my ability, you believe in my behavior as you see it. In my words and gestures of tenderness you find certainty, the confidence that you aren’t making a mistake. Love makes you perceptive. Often it seems to me that you know more about me than I know about myself.

“You have premonitions about a poet, Istvan Terey, who could be born only if he were with you. You know the power of love. You know its force, that ardent readiness to surrender. Sometimes I wake up at night because I dreamed about you, and I look for you. My throat is tight and the taste of blood is on my lips. I’m ready to scream because you aren’t beside me, because the thought has come to me that I’ve lost you somehow or that you have left me. Margit, I’m sure that no one has ever loved me as you do, or ever will, and that I have in my hand a gift that is priceless, unique. If they were to tell you, ‘If Terey lives, you must die,’ you would show no shadow of hesitation. You would say, ‘Take me.’ Can there be a greater sacrifice than life?”

She relaxed a little and nestled her face against his arm. When he stopped speaking, she seemed to beg him, with a light touch of her lips, to say more in this language which was not his own. She remembered that and agonized at the thought that in Hungarian the words would have a different, perhaps more beautiful ring; they might lead her closer to what she wanted to understand, to sound to the very deepest level.

“If it were only that you had given yourself to me, I would be grateful to you. I would desire you, for you’re the most beautiful woman on earth to me, but that isn’t everything. It’s a precious gift, but not unique. Margit, there’s not much true love in the world, though so much is said about it and still more is written. Those who haven’t known it swear it doesn’t exist. You’re a mature, intelligent woman. You have a profession; you have some experience of life. Tell me: how many times have you loved as you do now? You yourself have said, only two times that count. Years ago there was — Stanley. You were full of passion and girlish naivete. That passion was unconsummated and untested. It was a presentiment of the element, like the hum in the shell you put to your ear that lets you imagine the ocean.

“There were men in your life. You crossed out their names because, as you say, they didn’t count. At last I was here, blown into your life from the far side of the world, from a country that’s strange to you, putting thoughts into your language with difficulty. There are thousands of matters that absorb me that you know nothing about, and yet you say without hesitation, ‘You are the man. I was waiting for you. I only want to belong to you. I want more: to help you become what you ought to be.’”

Her thigh moved over his knee; she rested her head on her hands. He hardly saw the moist gleam of her wide-open eyes. “Speak,” she begged. “Speak.”

“The last evening in Agra you said — sitting by me, for I had just awakened — you said, with a world of goodness and devotion in your face, ‘I wish you were a leper.’ I was taken aback. I was seeing the stumps of those people on the carts with their hands and feet eaten away — those poor stammering wretches to whom one gives alms. ‘Are you mad?’ I shouted. I was angry at you. Then you stroked me tenderly and said, ‘For then all the world would disown you except me. Then at last you would know that I love you.’ It seemed an eccentric metaphor to me, but now I see the truth in it. You are capable of that sort of love — of deep, even painful joy at devoting yourself beyond human endurance, recklessly, without calculation.”

“Speak,” she whispered when he was silent.

“Very well, Margit.” He put his hand on her warm, receptive one. “This will hurt. I warn you.”

“Go on,” she breathed, moving her lips over his chest.

“You thought of my boys. You know that I have two sons. You bought them, Geza and Sandor, carved animals, elephants, buffalo, tigers. You chose very carefully. I remember it all: your defiant smile, for it had to be a surprise for me, and it was. You put me to shame; you had thought of them and I, their father, hadn’t. I remember every move, the funny way you wrinkled your nose when you looked closely to see if they were really sandalwood. A box of toys from you, but you kept yourself in the background, so they came from me, and you were happy to do better than I had, to fulfill my responsibility for me. And now you demand that I go away with you and take away their father at a stroke. Margit, I love you, but I don’t want to lose them for—”

She writhed like a fish when it feels the hook.

“No, Istvan!” she cried in desperation, pounding the pillows with her fists. “You know me, after all. Don’t think badly of me. I had one desire — to save you from the fate of those people in the film. I was trembling all the time we were in the theater, thinking that you could have been one of those who were shot or mangled. Or one of the exiled and homeless who fled as refugees, feeling bitter because they had lost, or because they had not understood what they were doing and had brought destruction on the capital they love. You want to be free. A creative person must be free. I only wanted to help you in that. I’m stupid, stupid. Forgive me, Istvan. I’d never have dared demand that you give up your children.”

She beat her forehead against his hand and her hot tears flowed over his skin. He stroked the back of her neck and felt sorry for them both. He clenched his jaws until it hurt.

“I don’t want you to suffer like this.”

“You did right! You should beat me if you see me being senseless and wicked. I had the best intentions, and only now I see that I didn’t love you enough. Don’t remember it against me, please.”

“I’m like a leper, Margit, at least for one-third of humanity, because I come from there, from the Red camp. You would like for me to repudiate my country, and it is there. To abandon my family, and it is there. To forget the language they speak there. You want me to advance by betraying my homeland. Think: you yourself would lose your respect for me. You would never be able to trust me. You would wonder: since he renounced all that, how can I be sure he will not be untrue to me as well?”

“Don’t distress yourself,” she moaned. “I know the way I spoke was horrid, but I was truly not thinking that way.”

He was close to her. She felt his presence with her body, which was touching his; his open palm was under her forehead. But she felt that he was far away, looking at her contemptuously. The bitter taste of her mistake was in her mouth.

“It’s my fault, Margit,” he said, suffering as much as she was. “I shouldn’t have loved you, shouldn’t have met you on it with every gesture and every kiss vowing faithfulness. I couldn’t renounce you. I didn’t know how. And I can’t do it today. I’m so happy that I found you. That I have you. Don’t ask me to hasten the hour that must come. I ought to beg for your forbearance, for when I say, Stay with me, I’m not speaking of the last day, the hour of death. That is how it should be…I’m only pushing the day away, like a coward. It’s not far off: a year, two years — the threshold we can’t cross together.

“I believe I know you, and I know how much you’re worth. Sometimes I pray: God, let her be happy. To do that, after all, is to pray against you and me. For since I can’t bury the past, I can’t say: Istvan died, a father died, Hungary died, and someone was born who — apart from pain and self-loathing — has nothing to offer. After all, the one you would take with you would not be me. Do you understand? I would despise myself. Could you be happy with me?”

“Istvan! I shouldn’t have said that,” she sobbed.

“You should have. We’ve avoided this conversation for too long. You thought: it’s his decision. I don’t want it to seem that I am trapping him. I won’t urge him; it will happen of itself. And I steered around the questions that needed to be asked, for honesty demands that they be asked. We must both answer them in good faith, supporting each other. You must help me in this, and I must help you.”

“That is just how I have always thought about this moment,” she gasped out, wiping her tears. “Nothing is final yet. Everything can still change.” There was a ring of resilient hope in her voice. “After all, you still haven’t given me anything to be despondent about. I see how happy I can be. I want the deep peace I find in you. Will that be taken from me? To mock me? He could not play with us so cruelly.”

She breathed fitfully. Her words were tremulous and broken from her crying a moment before. He knew that she was not making her argument to him, but bargaining for him with the One they both, though they knew He existed, wanted to leave out of their considerations. He stroked her head, which shifted heavily on his chest as if it had become severed from her body. There was nothing sensual in these caresses, only tenderness and the hope of quieting the sobbing that was going away like a storm driven by the wind — the sobbing that tore at his heart.

They lay side by side, breathing on each other. Her fragrant hair was spread lightly against his temple. The shadows deepened above them and pressed down so heavily that breathing was difficult. He thought he heard the rustle of flying flakes of invisible soot, but perhaps it was only her eyelids brushing his chest. It seemed to him that they were like a pair of freshly hatched chicks whom the brooding hen has not taken under her wing, who are put into a pot full of gray down and feathers and, terrified by their unknown fate, cuddle together, searching for courage in their own warmth.

He heard the brisk ticking of his watch on the table; the metal face emitted a low tinkle as if the squeaks of a greedy insect were tirelessly cutting into the congealing dark. Margit’s breathing grew even; she must have closed her eyes, for one last tear, pressed from under an eyelid, flowed onto his chest, tickling him. His arms were growing numb, but he avoided the slightest movement so as not to rouse her. He thought she was sleeping when she said softly, taking him by surprise with her cool, wakeful tone, “Let’s not talk now, Istvan. We’ve wounded each other enough.”

“Yes.”

“I want you to sleep. You’re showing the strain of the last two weeks. You must rest. You must sleep.”

“I can’t.”

She moved her hand over his forehead as if to wipe away the disturbing thoughts that repeated themselves in his mind. “Think of the boys. They love you, though they may not even know it. They have you, even if they don’t appreciate it. Think of them. They are alive. They need you.”

“I’m thinking of you.”

“You’ll have plenty of time for that. Until the end of your life, when I won’t be with you.”

They were silent, listening to the rapid beating of their hearts, terrified by the words she had spoken. The sleepless nights of the lonely, separated from each other, when pictures bleed from the memory to torture the heart, and insistent questions return. Why? Could it have turned out differently?

He kissed her warmly as if she were a child, covered her carefully with the blankets, and, lying on his back, listened to her breathing in the darkness that teemed around them, rose and then subsided into black atoms. It seemed to him that the gnawing insect in his watch was working faster, boring into time, cutting indefatigably. Its tiny rasping bit Istvan to the heart.

“You must go away.” Margit was handing him a cup of morning coffee.

“That’s what the ambassador recommended. But I can’t just now. I don’t know if things have really quieted down there.”

“What did you say to him? When he lets you, go.”

“I told him I would go to Cochin.”

“Where is that?”

“In the south. The very tip of India.”

“But why there?”

“Out of cheek, to take him by surprise. Soon after I arrived in India I saw a color film: the ocean, palm trees, white beaches. Little houses, the water, and sails like kites on the horizon. I said to myself, I must go there. The winter is a good season, not too hot.”

“Well — go.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“I’ll be free the fifteenth of December,” she said thoughtfully. “I didn’t extend my contract.”

“Would you go?”

“Yes. Though I know it would be senseless, trailing after you to the end.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“Cochin. Cochin,” she whispered. “Surely that’s far enough from the embassy. Do they pester you very much about me?”

“They don’t know much about us, fortunately. I’ve stopped spending time at the club.”

“That must seem strange in itself. It will be harder and harder for you to hide me. You must be seen among people. You can’t avoid them like this. They really should see you. That’s only common sense. Promise?”

“When I’d rather wait for you. I think…I’m at no loss for company.”

“You’re dreaming,” she said sorrowfully.

“Do you forbid me to dream?”

“When you dream, you are preoccupied with what you are creating. I, a living person, am less important to you. Istvan, you are much happier than I am. When you are suffering, you can tell the whole world in your writing. And I…I only have you, and still I hesitate before I say a word.” She took his hand and put it on her heart. “We will go to Cochin together. If you like.”

“We’ll steal away and be out of sight. We’ll have no one but each other.”

“You don’t even know what you’re saying.” She was defending herself against the vision of that joyous solitude on the sparsely peopled beaches of the south. “That’s terrible.”

“We’ll be happy.”

“So that afterward we can push each other away into despair?”

He kissed her hair and whispered pleadingly, “Don’t talk that way. Please.”

She was quiet. She only held him desperately, as if the future were going to tear her away and carry her to a place from which there was no return.

“Listen,” she said in a peremptory tone. “Salminen is arriving Saturday. He’s giving a lecture on Sunday. He asked me to assemble some material for him and develop some statistical summaries. I’ll be busy.”

“Two whole days?” he burst out, annoyed that the old doctor with whom he felt little connection was taking away what was his.

“He’s coming by car. I must wait for him at the hotel. I certainly won’t tell him I’m staying with you. It’s only decent for me to be with him on Sunday. Imagine how affronted he would feel if I weren’t in the hall! On Saturday you can entertain your colleagues. On Sunday, go to the club. Surely you don’t want their attention to be drawn to us.”

“I don’t want to see anyone. I’m not up to talking to people.”

“I’m not asking you if you want to do this. You must,” she said with emphasis, “for our sakes. I really want to go to Cochin with you. All the holidays; just the two of us.”

“Good!”

“And Sunday?”

“For a few days now Nagar has been after me to go out for duck with him. But not a real hunt. A club picnic.”

“So much the better. Everyone will see you.”

He only sighed.

“You don’t have to murder ducks. Let them live,” she whispered. “And in the evening I’ll come to you and you will tell me everything. Remember — it must be a cheerful story. Do you hear?”

“Yes.”

“And now kiss me,” she murmured, pretending that she was brave, that she had already forgotten about the night’s conversation — that she was thinking only about the next few days. That she was carefully forming plans, believing that there would be many such days, so many that both of them would begin to speak not of days to come, but of years.

The Yamuna flowed languidly through a wide valley. Its moving surface sparkled with scales of light. Its shoals were overgrown with willow and clumps of reeds three meters high, with tassels of violet seeds curved like cocks’ feathers. The marshes dozed, their slimy pools like windows surrounded by a wall of bulrushes — a wall partitioned by miry streams that could hardly be seen under clumps of matted grass. The sharp edges of the rushes attached themselves to clothing; the hand careless enough to catch one was cut as if with a razor. Even on the tops of the high hunting boots there were white scratches.

These thickets were the ducks’ breeding grounds. Their only enemy was the jackal who, lured by sleepy squeals, could steal the young from the nest. But when the mother led them to the water, they were safe in the shadowy corridors of streams hidden by the mane of riotously overgrown grasses, and the fecund slime assured them of plentiful food.

The birds that were not shot burst into flight reluctantly. They liked to forage among the rushes and bide their time while the hunters wandered along the streams, plunging into the labyrinths of grasses, into the tall reeds, which emitted the fusty odor of rotting weeds — the sickeningly warm, heavy stench of decay.

Under a high sky dimmed by a melancholy autumn fog, the shotguns popped without echoes. They sounded almost harmless, as if someone were shooting into a paper bag for a joke.

“Hold the dog. Don’t let her go!” Nagar squealed, and two servants dragged along the spotted Trompette, who tugged at her leash after every shot, barking frantically. Her eyes were bloodshot and her teeth chattered as saliva leaked from her muzzle. “She is like a wife who does not see the ducks that have been shot, but only scolds at every miss,” he said chattily to the Partridge twins.

Fanny, freckled, plain but energetic and full of the journalist’s temperament, wrote for women’s magazines and traveled a great deal. Her specialty was exotic customs — in short, erotic practices of Papuans and Polynesians, wooden codpieces elaborately carved by tribes in Borneo, matters bordering on witchcraft, primitive medicine and poisoning, which very moral, wizened Englishwomen read about with blushes.

Her sister was always in her shadow, a homely, obliging girl whose blue eyes were perpetually wide with astonishment, whose frizzy hair was the color of straw and whose name was Anna, though everyone called her Moufi — even her sister — and she placidly assented. She helped her famous twin; she was something of a photographer. She adored Fanny, whom she regarded as a woman with no equal. Neither shot; they only helped start up the birds. Fanny stepped watchfully, beating about the high grass, while Anna waited for her sister’s orders with her camera at the ready.

Nagar, in a light linen hat and carrying his bag, wearing field glasses on his chest and a belt gleaming with the brass cartridges he had tucked into it, seemed most impressive to them, particularly with his endless narrative of tiger hunting. They exchanged significant looks. Moufi signaled to her sister: there’s a story for you, and Fanny responded: I already noticed that, but you remember, too, because it might come in handy.

The twins had never parted since their parents had died in the bombardment of London. Rumors circulated about the pair: they were called “the Partridges” like a married couple, and one was never invited anywhere without the other. Jokes at their expense they took in good part, and often told racy anecdotes about themselves that made them almost universally popular.

In the listless air, sluggish lines of smoke spread like gray cobwebs. Cooks, surrounded by a cluster of people from the villages, squatted by the fires, stoking them with thorny branches and sheaves of stalks. Vultures kept watch from the bare tops of old trees, clapping their sides with their hard wings after the shots as if registering their approval of the slaughter of the birds.

Istvan had not brought his cook, since he assumed that Nagar would insist that he join him for dinner. He had come with Dorothy Shankar, who was turned out in hunting garb. Instead of a sari, she wore a plaid flannel shirt with pockets over her small breasts. Her outfit, completed by a belt and riding boots, aroused general delight. In her hand she carried a light single-barreled fowling piece. She was excited; she talked so unstintingly of her home and family that Istvan did not need to exert himself to entertain her. The driver, a gloomy Sikh, kept looking in the mirror to see what Terey was doing, since he was silent while the girl burst into seductive laughter. Her huge eyes were a velvety black; her cherry-colored lips and the dimple on her swarthy cheek lured with a virginal freshness.

Yet it was with relief that he left her to the Partridges, who, delighted with her beauty, unceremoniously forced her to let them take her picture with the gun raised.

“I’m ordering photos!” From behind a strip of tall grass the American reporter raised two fingers. “I’d rather have them than ducks.”

“I’m not giving you any, Bradley!” Fanny declared. “You’ll use them to impress your friends and tell them that she is your fiancee.”

Miss Shankar listened blushing, with the barrel of the gun aimed at the sky, paralyzed from waiting for the click of the shutter. “Is it over?” she asked, like a child playing hide and seek. “May I move now? I would like to shoot one round at least. Mr. Nagar is cracking away like a machine gun, frightening the ducks for miles.”

Terey slipped quietly in among clumps of plants with wilting leaves; the fermenting vegetation smelled like tobacco. He waded through grasses, yellowed from the summer drought, which crunched under his steps. He made his way toward an old stream bed where rapids glistened like a freshly sharpened sickle through the dun-colored weeds.

The spongy quagmire, streaming with water that made sucking noises, gave under his rubber soles, but on the layered webbing of enormous grasses it was possible to step securely. Through denim pants that fit closely around his ankles he felt the rough, sticky edges of the grass scratching like innumerable claws. Sometimes something rustled in the reeds; his ear caught the fluttering and then it subsided again. Only the crickets twittered in two tones as if commanding him to be watchful.

I’ve lost the knack for socializing, he reproached himself. I’ve grown unused to being with people. It’s just as well they haven’t noticed yet how much the last months have altered me. I really am avoiding everyone! I’m not looking for ducks, only the chance to be alone.

Behind him walked a young Hindu in a turban formed from a soiled rag, carelessly wound. The end fell to the back of his neck, shielding it from the maddening flies. He followed at a distance of a dozen paces or more, now dropping back, now moving forward, always keeping Istvan in sight but never intruding. Even his footsteps created no distraction.

“Sahib”—he put his hands to his mouth, but alerted Istvan in a whisper—“there. Two fat ducks.”

In the shadow of overhanging branches, hardly rippling the olive-colored water, a pair of teals swam close together. Istvan shook his head and waved, then took down the gun he had hung from his neck and leveled it as if to shoot into the air. The other man nodded and bolted into the bushes. He raised a hand, then threw a piece of rotting root into the undergrowth so that it splashed. The ducks flailed in the water, which seemed to cling to their wings, before sputtering into the air over the thicket. Istvan let them fly up so the ricochet from his shot would not graze the Hindu; they struggled to rise high above the clumps of reeds. The shot swished through the air. One duck fell like a stone, rattling dully on the ground. The other flew on, quacking in mortal terror. Whitish down stripped away by the lead pellets lingered behind her in the air.

Suddenly, as if her beak had struck a windowpane, she whirled and, hammering with her wings, burrowed into the dense mesh of grasses.

“Beautiful shot.” He heard a husky voice behind him and saw Major Stowne in washed-out denim standing motionless in the reeds. With the dark barrel of his shotgun protruding, he reminded Istvan of a heron.

“I’m sorry,” Terey faltered, embarrassed. “I didn’t see you, sir. I wouldn’t have barged in.”

“That was just the point: for me not to be seen. You will pass on; I will stay. You all scare the birds and they move over here, where it’s calm — just under my barrel. Have a look.” He pushed aside a shock of overhanging grasses with his boot and showed Istvan several birds that he had killed. “I have no complaints. See, there on the wing. Shoot.”

From the direction of the camp, where the chatter of gunfire never stopped, flew a little flock of ducks — five, seven, Terey counted, moving his barrel into position. He had no qualms now as he drew a bead on the first three. He fired and one began its fall, finally striking a shrub amid a shower of yellowed leaves.

Stowne did not even bend over to collect his birds. He only whispered to summon the villager. The Hindu was caked with mud to his thighs; the sash on his hips was soaking. He held the upturned lower edge of his shirt in his teeth and shook the spoils of the shooting. He stood in the sun, trembling from the chill and perhaps with excitement, for he grinned broadly.

The shooting by the river never let up. It was as if someone were throwing stones at the bottom of a barrel.

“Monsieur Nagar is crazy.” Stowne’s florid face creased in a frown. “You were a soldier, so you instinctively avoid him. Sometimes I’ve gone out with him for quail, and I had to crawl because he was shooting like a tank in all directions. I was never under such fire on any front in the war.”

“He wants to be king of the hunt,” Terey said mockingly.

“And you’ll see: he will be. I know him. A real fox. He told the lads who retrieve the ducks for us that for each one they brought him they would get half a rupee. Well, didn’t I tell you? And where is yours?”

Istvan looked around the bushes. The Hindu disappeared; the tufts of reeds swayed almost imperceptibly. He lifted the bird he had just brought down. It had lain with wings outspread, its blue patch dazzling, its neck iridescent. He fastened it to a strap on his belt.

“Eh, what? Did I get it right?” the gray-haired major said triumphantly. “You can stay here as long as you don’t disturb the ducks or, above all, me. It’s a good place. It will do for us both.”

But Istvan only tipped his hat, pushed the tangled reeds apart and moved wordlessly away.

He dodged and wove for a long time, wrestling with the undergrowth that clutched at his feet like a snare. Time after time he heard the flapping of ducks’ wings in the air and their quacking, but reeds and shrubs twice his height covered his field of vision. He came upon a swampy depression — a tiny stream was trickling somewhere under the layers of colorless grasses — and he had to get around it; he had no wish to emerge drenched and plastered with mud. He had gone so far away that he could hear no shots. He was tired and the sun, though invisible, was broiling. He decided to go back — to make his way to the high bank, circle through the fields, and approach the camp from the road by which they had come.

I am at the hunt, as Margit requested. But she would not be satisfied, because I am alone. After all, she wanted me to enjoy myself, to break out of my solitude.

As he came onto the dry meadows he shot one more bird, which had flown recklessly near his barrel. It was not a clean shot; the cluster of pellets had been too large and had ripped apart the belly. When he picked up the duck, warm blood ran over his hand. He wiped it on the grass but it stuck to the butt of his gun. Swarms of flies swirled around his face and settled around the open beaks of the birds strapped to his belt.

“Hello, Mr. Terey!” He heard an elated voice behind him. From the direction of the bare, rocky fields and patches of corn stripped of its ripe ears, from among the stalks whitened by the sun, Bradley heaved into view. He looked like an overgrown peasant with chubby cheeks and bristling, tousled blond hair. “Look what I bagged! Not just any silly duck.”

Above the American’s fist a small head was sticking up amid a comb of pertly waving royal blue feathers. A long sheaf of shifting, fiery colors — the tail — swept the dust.

It was a peacock.

“Hide that this minute!” Istvan commanded.

“Why? This is a tasty bird.”

“But sacred.”

“I never dreamed—”

“There will be trouble. We all could be stoned. These people are not so docile.”

Bradley let go of the peacock and stood over it, hesitating.

“Tear off the tail. Cut away the wings and legs. Wrap the rest in anything you have and put it in your car right away.”

“Damn! It was the tail I wanted most.” He nudged the bird with his shoe. “Curse this country! They won’t eat these things themselves and they won’t give them to anybody else.”

Terey did not wait but walked rapidly on. Bradley caught up with him.

“Are you afraid or what?”

“No. I’m just hungry.”

“And my throat’s burning. God! I’d drink three cans of beer as long as there was ice. Surely they have it.”

“Of course they do. Nagar does — I’ll vouch for it.”

“For beer on ice I’d give him the Suez. But the French got hit where it hurts there, though they took no losses. A defeat with worse repercussions than Dien Bien Phu: they have all the Arabs against them. They’ve taken a kick.”

“Don’t bother me about politics,” Terey snapped.

They walked along the path side by side. Shadows lay on the decaying grass from which whitish stones, worn smooth by the river, protruded like bones. Lizards warmed themselves on them — darting little skeletons sheathed in greenish skins.

“You know, Fanny’s not so bad,” Bradley began. “But that other one — some fellow made a move on Fanny and she invited him home. They did some drinking and went to bed, and when the guy had finished, Fanny called, ‘Come ’ere, Moufi. Come, sis, and I’ll show you a real man. That’s a rarity today.’ Well, and what was a fellow to do? He saved his honor. He took the poor little dear in her quilted housecoat with forget-me-nots, and Fanny perched on the couch and watched to see that everything happened as it ought—” he burst into a loud laugh.

“He told you that himself?”

“No,” he admitted, frowning. “Fanny was bragging. She’s a lot of fun.”

“That’s just publicity.”

“Probably. Everybody likes her, but as a friend, not as a woman. Sure, she told it to make an impression. But Miss Shankar could be in a Coca-Cola ad. Oh, the delightful smell of roast duck!” He rubbed his big palms together. “Istvan”—he clapped him on the back with a heavy hand—“we’ll knock back a few.”

“We’ll hit Nagar up. I’m ready to give him my ducks if he’ll just break out the whiskey. The king of the hunt must stand everyone a drink.”

“I like you, Terey. One must make sacrifices for the future. Especially when it smells so good.”

A joyful hubbub greeted their appearance. Girlish voices asked how many birds they had shot. Istvan shook the few undistinguished ducks that hung from his belt, and Bradley roared, “I shot a great big bird, but it flew beyond the river—”

“The Air India plane, no doubt,” Nagar said. “And you certainly didn’t hit it…I have fourteen ducks.”

“Long live the king!” Bradley called in a thunderous voice. “Hey, fill the bumpers! Only — can Comrade Terey drink a toast like that?” he asked in a stage whisper. “Maybe I’ll drink for him.”

The guests lay on blankets under shady trees, relaxing. Nagar dismantled his gun and tried to impress them by tooting on the barrel as if it were a trumpet, but the sound was not at all similar, which sent Bradley into spasms of laughter. Fanny Partridge added to the merriment by proposing to the American, announcing that it would be a marriage with something extra, and pointed to her blushing sister. Even the Hindus smiled, though with restraint.

“I have to eat first,” Bradley stipulated. He sat crosslegged, balancing a tin mess plate on his knees and eating rice soaked in spicy sauce with a spoon. “When I have eaten, you will draw straws”—he licked the spoon with a knowing wink—“to see which one of you will have the honor of chasing flies off me when I’m lying down.”

Major Stowne leaned toward Terey and said an undertone, “A gentleman does not behave this way.” He shook his head ruefully. “Many things may be said, but not in front of the servants.”

The villagers who had retrieved the ducks stood in a group under the trees. Each had a ladleful of rice in a bowl made from a leaf. They ate with their fingers, looking over the faces of the picnickers with eyes full of astonishment and bovine mildness.

“Soon, soon, sahib,” a cook assured Terey. “I am heating the meat.” He squatted, blinking, and blew on the ashes of the dwindling fire. White flakes of burnt stalks flew up, swirling. “The rice is surely warm. I wrapped the pots in thick coverings of newspaper.”

Rattling their wings, the vultures jumped to the ground and walked about, moving their long necks up and down. They were looking for bones, for scraps scraped from mess plates. They plucked shreds of greasy paper from each other’s beaks.

“Why don’t we just shoot at them?” Bradley made a face. “They stink when I’m trying to eat.”

“That isn’t done,” Stowne scolded him. His face was red from alcohol. “They are repugnant but useful, in contrast to journalists. Wherever there is shooting, straight away there are plenty of you. But the vultures — they truly clean the world.”

The sun shone benignly. Veils of haze hovered over the broad river bed with its sandy shoals. Ducks flew overhead, settled amid the rushes, slid softly into the water, shook their rumps and quacked as if for joy that the hunt had stopped.

“Trompette!” Nagar said anxiously. “Where is Trompette?”

She was running with great bounds, carrying a teal in her mouth. She trotted up to her master and looked him in the eye for a long time, not even wagging her tail.

“One more that I shot but we could not find. Fifteen,” he exulted. “Put her here — here, at your master’s feet.” His finger pecked the air, pointing down.

The dog hesitated, then moved a step forward.

“That is the only one he managed to shoot!” Stowne whispered.

Istvan, lying on his side, reached for a little pot of rice packed in newspaper and took off its wrappings. Steam rose from under the cover. He took a helping and waited for it to cool.

Suddenly his eye fell on the grease-smeared headline of a short item of news: “Death of a Hungarian Journalist.” He reached for the paper.

“UPI. The well-known Hungarian journalist Bela Sabo was shot yesterday as he attempted to cross the Austrian border. Though he received assistance, he died. Bela Sabo, born Bela Fekete, was a distinguished reporter; his book on liberation movements in Africa, Where the Devil Is White, was translated into many languages. Sabo’s tragic death has evoked an outpouring of grief in the world of journalism…”

He stared at the rumpled, soot-stained newspaper with the circular indentation made by the bottom of the pot. Without knowing what he was doing he smoothed it, trying to find the front page.

Bela is dead. Killed.

Stupefied, he gazed at the great blue smoky space above him and the flashing current at the bends of the crawling river. The glare from it made his eyes smart.

“Here, Trompette, little doggie, dear,” Nagar coaxed, reaching for a collar to restrain the resisting bitch.

Bela killed. The dog lays the duck at Nagar’s feet. Bela is not there. Not there. And never will be. The duck opens its wings, springs onto Nagar’s chest, flutters in his face, and from his shoulder flies into the air. Bela killed. What is that roar of laughter? Everyone is going off in gales of giggles, howling and clapping. With his hand Nagar wipes his muddy cheeks. The dog watches with reproachful bloodshot eyes; her muzzle is full of feathers. Where did the feathers come from? Why are they laughing? Bela is dead.

“She wanted to save the honor of our king of the hunt!” Bradley bellowed. “She grabbed him a live duck!”

Bela. Bela. Why did I have no premonition? He buried his face in his hands.

“You’d hardly call this a hunt,” he heard Major Stowne beside him murmuring and smelled the aromas of curry and whiskey, “but I must confess, it’s been a first-rate frolic. Even that sad Hungarian is about to choke from laughing.”

Istvan walked away, staggering. The Indian attendants stepped aside at the sight of his blanched face. He walked blindly; he stumbled into a tree trunk. He wanted to hurt himself, to feel physical pain, since anguish was tearing his heart so that he was standing with his mouth open, hardly able to breathe.

Over the smooth bark of the tree, white as if it had been bleached, ran a little line of red ants. They crept to his hand, which was grasping the trunk. They gathered, seemed to hold a council, and then circled around, peeping and examining the spaces between his spread fingers with their antennae. Bela is not there. Whom could he talk to? Whom could he talk to, who would understand? They had sworn to be together always.

He went back to where he had been sitting. He did not believe this. He must check. Perhaps he had made a mistake. Perhaps there was another surname, another first name. Only a pack of vultures, crunching torn paper in their beaks, were walking over the pot and rolling it, shaking out the remains of the rice.

He wanted to kick the birds, to take them by their nude, squirming necks and strangle them. Around the rattle of wings rose the stench of carrion. He stood over the tatters of the newspaper, the overturned pot. He heard Bradley’s easygoing laugh:

“They ate it all up. There’s nothing left.”