Stone Tablets

Chapter XII

In neither of Ilona’s letters was it possible to find an evocative image, or even a sense of the climate created by developments in Budapest. He had the impression that she had written cautiously, conscious that her letters would be read by many eyes before they reached the hands of the addressee. The most important thing was that all the family were still alive. Only Sandor was ill, with flu. He had gotten a chill because it was hard to get a glazier. Windowpanes everywhere were broken. There was no lack of food; bread was supplied in timely fashion, meat could also be found, and they were not suffering severe shortages because her parents had sent a large parcel from the country with real salami, salt bacon seasoned with paprika, mutton, and a tin box of eggs which arrived without breaking, having been half buried in sawdust.

He smiled as he read this scrupulous recounting of trifles. He liked Ilona’s exactitude; he seemed to smell the pungent rawness of the beechwood shavings around the eggs as if they were clinging to his hands. He saw the table under the window that looked out onto the narrow yard with landings off kitchen stairs; he heard the stairs rumbling under the feet of packs of gleeful children.

The letter in which he had asked for details relating to his friend’s death must have crossed hers in the mail, for she had not written a word about Bela. Perhaps she did not know what had happened to him. She could have telephoned the editorial department. But were any of the old staff there — any of those with whom they both had been friends?

He remembered years when such a question would have brought ambiguous, evasive answers, words carefully screened as if to avoid upsetting someone seriously ill, and the conversation would have concluded with a phrase that was almost ritualistic: I will tell you when we meet; it’s best not to speak on the telephone. In that case, what the devil were telephones for? Just to assure the caller that there was life at the other end of the wire? Or were they only for the ears of eavesdropping authorities?

The letters brought him a feeling of relief. So the worst was over; at last there was calm and a measure of order. He stared at a short sentence: “It has been very difficult lately.” Then immediately the subject changed, as if Ilona were trying to cover her tracks, feeling that she had already said too much, particularly about glaziers and windowpanes, which were in short supply throughout the city.

To all appearances the functions of the embassy were being carried on normally. But close observation revealed that other embassies were avoiding contact with theirs. At receptions, conversations broke off and groups dispersed into the crowd when the ambassador or Ferenc came over. It seemed that the world around them was waiting impatiently for pronouncements, demonstrations — that official connection to any government in Budapest had deprived them of their standing as representatives of Hungary’s true interests. That was not only galling but humiliating.

It was rather different in his own case. At the club, in the press corps, they simply liked him. But the friendliness and tolerance he met with, the advantage he seemed to enjoy, was baffling to his colleagues and aroused their suspicions.

There was genuine excitement when his poem appeared in Bombay’s Illustrated Weekly. He had translated it himself. For a long time he had wanted Margit to become acquainted with his style. She had suggested several improvements; she had been able to select the appropriate English expressions. The poem was about Budapest, about his nostalgia for the beauty of the city.

He was summoned to meet with the ambassador. He passed quickly through Judit’s office, since he found Bajcsy’s door open and saw the boss’s curmudgeonly face beyond the threshold. He was sucking a pipe that had gone out. Judit could only glance at Istvan with fear and sympathy, as neighbors look at an acquaintance with whom they have exchanged words every day and who has suddenly been found to have murdered his wife, set a fire, or at the least indulged a perversion.

The door had not even closed when Kalman Bajcsy pounded the pages of the thick weekly with the back of his hand and growled, “What is the meaning of this, Terey?”

“A poem. They invited submissions. I sent one.”

“Who cleared you to do that?”

“You yourself, comrade ambassador, recommended that we begin to draw the attention of the press to Hungary again.”

“A poem about Budapest? Do you know how this will be read just now?”

“Does the name of the capital have to be left out because there has been an uprising? I wrote this a long time ago.”

Bajcsy fixed him with a stony glare. “And what does this mean, ‘bloodstained leaves,’ ‘banks in shackles’?” He read the words with damning emphasis, turning the stem of his pipe. “Don’t make a fool of me.”

“Metaphors. In the fall, leaves turn red. The suspension bridge on its chains binds both banks of the Danube together,” he explained with impertinent precision. “You remember the Chain Bridge, comrade ambassador?”

“But who knows about it?” the older man thundered. “You will regret this, Terey. Who called my attention to this antic of yours? An ambassador who happens to be a friend of mine.” He jabbed the pipe at Terey’s chest as if it had been a knife. “He congratulated me on having people on my staff who could write poetry. I know very well what he meant. I will not have you making a laughingstock of me.”

“Perhaps he knows something about poetry?” the counselor ventured to remark with a show of disarming naivete.

“He? How? We must be watchful here. There is no time for us to amuse ourselves. And I will tell you something else, Terey: don’t publish anything without my consent. You may be a great poet in our country, but it is different here, where every word has to be held up to the light three times before it is printed. You are with the service; you are an official of my embassy. You will not play politics on your own hook. They put me here for that.”

If he could have, he would have given an order to have me flogged, Terey thought fleetingly. He looked at the burly hands with their curling black hair as they clenched into fists and opened again in powerless rage.

“Well, why are you looking at me like that? Did you understand my order?”

“Yes. I only wanted to put you on notice that another poem of mine will appear in the Bengal literary monthly with my biography and list of credits.”

Bajcsy caught his breath. “And there will be more about bloody leaves and shackles? You will withdraw that poem this minute.”

“I’m afraid that would make a very bad impression. I will have to furnish some explanation, and I will write them that I declined publication at the ambassador’s wish.”

“You will attribute nothing to anyone except yourself.”

“That’s impossible. I want the poem to be published. These are the first pieces of Hungarian poetry to appear in India.”

Bajcsy’s eyes bored into Terey. He breathed as if he had been running. “And what is this other poem about?” he asked more calmly.

“About love.”

A vein throbbed in the ambassador’s neck. He nodded skeptically. “About love? It depends on what you put into it. About love for a woman?” he asked suspiciously.

“Yes.”

“And will that one have metaphors as well?”

“Politicians also use metaphors, not just poets. It will be translated into Bengali.”

“That’s better.” Bajcsy exhaled. “Let them print it, but you will be responsible for the consequences. In the future, however, everything you publish goes through this desk. I want to see every scrap of paper you send to the Indian editors.”

He sat pressing his hand into his beefy cheeks. At last he asked wearily, “Terey, why do you take such delight in upsetting me? I will prick you once and that fame of yours will burst like a balloon.”

“You can shout at me, but that’s all. And send me back to Hungary. But there have been changes in the ministry there. You think that they love you, ambassador — that you can speak a word and they will all be on their knees. Not in these times. You know well that I fill my own balloon, if I may use your figure of speech. I glide under my own power. Your boys may learn about me in school. Well, yes — they will take the qualifying examinations. You know that just as well as I do. No one need inflate my balloon. I have value outside this embassy.”

Bajcsy’s creased face glistened with sweat. Suddenly he croaked, “Get out.”

“Have I satisfied you on the points in question, comrade ambassador?” Terey rose.

“Take yourself off!” the ambassador roared. “Get out of my sight or it will be too bad…I can’t stomach you, Terey.” He sprang up and stood by the window with his back turned. He did not even look around when the counselor closed the door to his office.

“In a hellish humor, eh?” Judit leaned across her desk. “Did he try to bite your head off?”

“Yes, but he realized in time that he couldn’t stomach me.” Istvan winked. “Do you know what sent him into such a fit? A homeopathic dose of poetry — just one poem of mine in Illustrated Indian Weekly.”

“You’re not behaving sensibly.”

“If I had been sensible, I would never have been a poet,” he admitted ruefully. “The boss doesn’t know what he wants. First he calls me in, then he says he doesn’t want to look at me. It’s not as though I’m forcing myself on him.”

“You’re in a good humor,” she said, surprised. “Have you had news from home?”

“They are alive. They have enough to eat, a roof in one piece over their heads, and glass in the windows. What more do you want?”

For a moment she did not speak, but brooded with her fingers against her lips. Finally she whispered, “Ferenc has a letter for you. It’s best that you get it from him, but don’t mention that I told you.”

His mind filling with fresh agitation, he went straight to the secretary’s office. He tugged at the door handle, but the room was locked. Ferenc had gone out.

At his own desk, beside the newspapers rolled up and secured with bands of thick paper — the daily allotment of press brought by the caretaker — he saw a narrow envelope with words stamped in Hungarian: air mail. He looked carefully to see if it had been opened. The back bore no sender’s address, but the handwriting looked familiar. He tapped the envelope on the desktop and carefully cut the edge with scissors. He drew out sheets of paper covered with unsteady writing. He looked at the signature on the last of the folded pages and suddenly had to stifle a scream of grief. The letter was from Bela.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you. I miss you terribly. I caught myself, as I walked through Heroes’ Square, in a dialogue with you, as if you were here. A huge statue lay pulled down on the pavement, the larger-than-human face turned toward the sky, the crown of the head white with bird droppings, like a graying of the hair invisible to us until now. As long as it stood, it was not subject to the ravages of time. It did not age; it grew in fame. Some fellow was battering its head with a hammer on a long handle until the bronze shell groaned, but the head did not give way. The chap grew warm from his exertions, threw off his jacket so that his suspenders could be seen crisscrossing his white shirt, brandished the hammer, and banged away like a madman. No one was near, but little groups of passersby watched furtively in front of the half-opened gates of houses. Amid the metallic ringing of his blows came the high whistling of stray missiles fired from beyond the zoo toward the suburbs.

I walked through the square, where there was hardly any light, only the soft luminescence of the wet paving and tramway rails. I felt as if I were in a dream. A small, disappointed man was taking his revenge, pounding with a hammer like a child beating his fist on the corner of a table that had given him a bump on the head. I wanted to watch him at close range. I admit there was some journalistic curiosity in this: a monument on the pavement, a body in a bronze uniform groaning under the hammer head. What was this fellow trying to avenge by shattering it? Had he lost someone close to him? Or was he only disappointed because of what he had imagined about greatness, infallibility, divinity? Perhaps he was punishing it for his own blind trust, for his love and attachment. Perhaps he was one of those who had marched chanting the name on the monument, at the calls to action forgetting their grievances, for only the man in bronze would think on their behalf and establish laws.

I felt no joy in the frenzied toil of the man with the hammer. It was easier to shatter this monument without leaving a trace, except for the clinking of bronze, than to change the convictions of people, to straighten bent necks, to get it through their heads that the violence the fallen leader employed, just by virtue of its being raised to a legal norm, was a crime three times over. Death took him, and his colleagues stripped him of his merits; they exposed him for what he really was. But they did not root out the poisonous old antipathies, and contempt for the ordinary man, who was supposed to listen and admire. They hate the demigods from an older time before whom they groveled, but today in the depths of their souls they would take a lenient attitude toward “wet work,” for indeed there are situations in which it is simplest to have recourse to those unpleasant but effective methods and — at a stroke — do what must be done.

So I said to you, and today I will recount everything. I was walking to the stone pedestal when a tank came from the avenue, shooting into the square with automatic rifles. I tell you, it was like a bad dream. I was not even afraid. It was as if I were incapable of being touched by what was happening. I looked out from behind the granite plinth; above me stood gigantic jackboots from which wisps of straw protruded as if in mockery. Only the statue lay on the empty square, the dead face with its mustache turned toward the lowering sky. In the wavering glare of rockets from over the Danube, it seemed to sneer. The tank rolled onto the square and peppered an abandoned tramway car until shards of glass sprayed from the broken windows. They had been afraid of an ambush. Tons of rocking steel crawled toward the park; wheel belts left a wale of indentations in the asphalt. Flashes came from beyond the railroad bridge, and round after round of machine gun fire ripped the air. I was alone by the fallen statue on the darkening square. Suddenly I saw the attacker, the avenger, crawling out of its hollow interior, dragging his jacket. He had taken cover there. He spat on his hands and hit the head with his hammer. The head moaned like a bell that has burst. The noise of the blows lured the curious to the gates. Traffic started up again; people slipped by quickly along the walls.

I am writing this for you. I have not succeeded in finishing the letter. I am writing now after a two-day interruption. Today by the cemetery wall I saw the bodies of people who had been shot. They lay one by another, as if looking to each other for warmth. I was told they were informers, agents. Someone seemed to know who they were. He summoned people from the street who brought them in and handed them over to the workers’ guard. They had been beaten with no investigation. I am going with the people of the capital. That strong current carries me along, but there are moments when — condoning impulses of hate, hurriedly explaining to myself that it must be so, that this is the price that must be paid — I feel a chill as I think which way this turbulence will drag us.

Istvan, the mob is terrible. It is good that you are not forced to watch what is happening. Stalin said, rather ten innocent be punished than that one enemy elude us. That was a crime, but today, just as hastily, people are unjustly punished. They have already told me of people hung without justification. There is an appalling momentum on the street; they are squaring accounts as if they did not believe that law would re-establish itself and tribunals mete out justice openly. The crowd wants retribution now, this minute, blood for blood. In return for the humiliation they have suffered they beat the interrogation officers, the former masters of life and death. They spit in their faces and their victims do not even dare wipe the saliva that trickles from their foreheads. They look back with lifeless eyes as if they know what awaits them.

What should be done, Istvan? Should they be pardoned? Tomorrow they will recover from their fear and take our magnanimity for weakness, or, worse yet, stupidity. They will muster their forces. Their concern is not the nation or socialism. They want power. They wallow in their sense of immunity. They despise those in whose name they wield authority but whom they consider human dung. Say: what would you do with these judges who condemned the innocent, who began the hearings with the verdicts in their briefcases in accord with instructions received by telephone, with the findings of specialists in interrogation who tore out fingernails, maltreated prisoners physically and psychically — who tortured them into signing depositions in which they confessed to crimes not committed? What would you do with doctors who sentenced political prisoners to confinement in bunkers smaller than coffins, in cellars with water to their knees, cynically attesting, “This is a man, not a horse; he will endure it. And if he should kick the bucket, we will write that the cause of death was influenza, heart failure. The coffin will be sealed and all is done.”

Would you let them go free? Wouldn’t it be better to strangle them while we have them in our hands? While the workers’ fingers are lodged in their beardless, greasy chins so that they shriek with terror?

Today we would revel in the investigation, the trial, the lawful verdict. And tomorrow they would grant them amnesty! They destroyed not only people, but socialism. They ruined the moral fiber of human beings. They frightened and bought off the younger generation. Everything seethes around me. I flail; I do not know whom to believe. There is so much conflicting information, and all from eyewitnesses, shouted angrily, affirmed on oath. People see what they want to see. Istvan, you can be happy that you are far away from this. You will come back, you will return when conditions are right. Desperation forces people to strike blindly. I hear tank patrols thundering around the boulevard; the motors are droning. If only they would let us cleanse ourselves! We ought to do it with our own hands, with no one’s help. The Poles are trying. How much they are spoken of and held up as an example, but they have no conception of how it was with us through all those years. They never went with the Germans. They were not poisoned.

Istvan, the committee deliberates without recess. Day and night lights burn and angry voices spar. Delegates come in armed. Rifles hang in the cloakroom instead of coats. One feels that the earth is trembling under Hungary. Momentous hours. Under the windows a parade passes. Young people cry, “Don’t believe Nagy. He only babbles.” “Power to the committee of the Revolution!” I walk along the street. I go into the crowd. It is a raging river. I entrust myself to its current. I want what is good for this nation. I want what is good for Hungary.

Warmest regards,

Your Bela

P.S. Two more days have passed. It is calm, and that is gratifying. I do not trust the mail; it is still not working properly. I am giving this letter to the correspondent from Vienna, who leaves today, for nothing unusual is happening here. Thank God; I dream only of such bulletins.

November 3rd, 1956. Budapest.

P.S. One word more: believe me, we will emerge whole from this chaos. It is impossible that in our camp two socialist countries, two countries bound to each other by a defense pact, would turn their gun barrels on each other.

Your red Bela

Dazed, he looked blankly at the map of India, at the outline of a triangular land like a dried cheese. Outside the window the sky glowed and a car horn blared. The Austin was open. No doubt Mihaly was sitting behind the wheel.

The next day at dawn, the dreadful memory confronted him again. How could you trust them, Bela? The nation is not the mob that stamps on portraits and roars in the squares, brandishing weapons torn away from soldiers. Yes — it is easy to say that now. And with every day, as the date memory clung to grew more remote, it would be easier to recognize the signs of hate, madness, provocation, and obvious counterrevolution. But they did not want to see, as the comrades who were carried away earlier by airplane from their positions of power did not want to hear the voices of protest, the complaints and calls for justice. Bela is dead. It cannot even be said that he died for the cause. UPI only reported that he had been wounded as he tried to cross the Austrian border. And so you let yourself be swept away by the mob, the outflowing human river, by mindless forces. The suffocation was too much for you. You abandoned Hungary.

Was the letter that dangled from his fingers a call to arms, a testament? Or, now that it had reached him, was it only a warning? Was it a sign that he should not go back? If there were no homeland, to what would he be returning? Or was it wrong to think that way, even at the worst of times?

If the Western newspapers were putting out the news of Bela’s death, they must have buried him in Austria — not even on Hungarian ground. Anyway, was that important? Magical thinking: the ground is the same everywhere. No. No. The ground on which we took our first tottering steps…In that grass I hid my face, I wiped away the tears of my first humiliations. I beat it angrily with my powerless fists. I tugged at it so it would not slip away from me, for it whirled so after the mad chase that my ears rang. The ground I named in the most beautiful of languages, for it was my own: Hungarian. It is waiting for me, I know — not a large place by my standards.

Bela is dead and I am foundering, crumbling. Now there is no one who remembers the enjoyments of childhood: bathing the horses, camping on the island in the Danube that was overgrown with willow when the river rose without warning and nearly drowned us as we slept in the cabin. Bela was the only one I told that I loved Ilona when we were still schoolboys, before we had taken the final examinations. I wanted to beat him to death when he grabbed her photograph from me and laughed as he hopped from bench to bench and held it over his head. Then when I caught him, he threw it to the other boys, and they gave it back with a mustache and beard drawn on her face. I wished he would die. And now he has.

Indeed, I loved him because he knew me. He shared my anxiety; so many times we talked the night away, chatting until dawn. We had bitter mottos for those nights: Fun shall make us free. Revelry revives the nation. A devoted friend. A splendid colleague, full of the joy of life. Always ready for adventures, full of madcap inspirations. Impossible that the air has closed over him like water, without a trace.

Words about a lost friend from childhood…about my own death in the passing of my loved ones. Istvan was ashamed. Was he ready to exchange every motion of the heart for words, calculating unconsciously that he would print them the next day and throw them to the world as one throws seed to birds?

Fervently he set about conjuring up faraway images. The meadows by the Danube loomed before him — the doleful cry of the startled lapwings. Willows: big cats with the downy golden coats of spring. Branches swayed in the wind, jostling tiger-striped bumblebees who protested in bass rumblings. The water was a strident blue; it whirled away into little streams and slowly filled each of the horses’ hoofprints with quicksilver. Suddenly he heard a heavy step in the corridor and noticed that the handle of his door was trembling.

“Come in!” he called, sitting erect and alert.

“I do not want to disturb you. That is why I listened for the sound of the typewriter,” mumbled the caretaker.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing. I would only like to ask if you received your letter, counselor.”

Istvan grasped the thin sheets, which were folded accordion-style, and showed the man the envelope.

“Thank you. I have it.”

“No, not that one. Among the old newspapers I cleared from here I found a letter you had written by hand. Tom brought it here, but the secretary met me and said that he himself would give it to you, and sent me to the warehouse.”

“Why do you think he couldn’t give it to me?” The counselor tilted his head.

“I saw him read it, and then he took it off somewhere. Where, I don’t know. But I could see that you had written it and laid a newspaper on it, and then something happened and you forgot about it. But a letter like that had better not get into the file.”

“Did you read it?”

The caretaker squirmed uncomfortably and shifted from one foot to the other.

“My English is weak. It was not in the envelope. I read — counselor, sir — I read the letter, so nicely written…” He put a hand on his chest. “Comrade Ferenc is in. Perhaps just now you could—”

Istvan moved toward the door.

“Wait here.”

He went to the secretary’s office. Ferenc brightened at the sight of him.

“Give me the letter,” he snarled.

“In good time. Sit down. What is your hurry? I have been wanting to have a personal conversation with you.”

He groped in a drawer and drew out an unsealed envelope. Istvan saw the address: Miss Margaret Ward. Agra. He did not dare glance inside and see which of his letters it was and what declarations of feeling it contained. Heat flowed along his spine. He could have choked with rage at himself. All those evasions and concealments, only for this — that all should be lost for such a stupid reason, everything given away. He tucked the envelope into the pocket of his jacket. He would have given anything to be able to see its contents.

“Take a seat,” Ferenc said invitingly. “Whither away so fast? Surely not to the post office; that is dated two months ago. It can wait. When are you taking your furlough?”

“Before the holidays.”

“For long?”

“As long as I can!” he said vehemently.

“Have you found us so trying?” Ferenc said regretfully. “Well, what next?” He took out his wallet and carefully counted out ten banknotes. “Here is a thousand. Take it; don’t be tiresome. It is honestly earned. Your commission from the firm for cases of whiskey delivered at your order. Don’t be coy. Take it as I give it.”

Istvan did not look at the money, only at the ingratiating smile on the secretary’s face. What stratagem was hidden behind it?

“You have no reason to be offended by the money. By me, you may. Surely you cannot think that I am a Judas so upright that I share the silver with my victim. I have not shown the letter to anyone. It is your private affair. In your case I have other reservations.” He looked at the pocket into which Istvan had put the letter as if he wanted to touch it so as to divine the content of the message. “But remember this: I will not dig a pit under you.”

“Thank you,” Istvan muttered after a pause. “There is no point in my not taking it. Since you charged the order to my account, I suppose I am entitled to it. The first business I’ve done — through no wish of my own — thanks to you.”

“If you would not be so hotheaded,” Ferenc sighed, “we could look around for more. Profits are there to be made, but it is difficult to count on you.”

“Best not to count on me.” He gathered up the notes. “I’m not a businessman.”

As he was walking out the door, a whisper reached him: “And I am not your adversary. I would gladly help you if you had decided to—”

“To what?” He whirled around.

But the secretary only waved.

“Nothing. You are so distrustful of me, there is nothing to say.”

“Did he give it back?” the caretaker asked worriedly.

“All is well.” He pulled out the wrinkled letter, and when the door closed he held his breath as he glanced through a dozen lines. He read it with a critical eye, suspiciously, looking for hidden connections between simple words and his actions, plans, the decisions which, in their judgment, he might make. You know, Margit, I have no secrets from you. I tell you everything as it really is. These words might be read as referring to the professional secrets of the embassy, real and imaginary. It will be as you wish. Only call me and I come…You are my whole world.

Yes, these turns of phrase might attract Ferenc’s attention, might arouse suspicion that by chance a confession had fallen into his hands — the confession of a man who was about to betray and desert his country, who had caught a glimpse of freedom and chosen it. My flight would be convenient for them. A deserter — anyway, we suspected it a long time ago. Our collective (that word takes on luster in this case!) showed true devotion to the cause of socialism, and to you, Comrade — here for the time being a space must be left for the correct name, since no one knows if Kádár will remain in power a month.

Never! He bit his lip in impotent rage. Already he felt a despondency suffused with bitterness. Why not listen to them? They are afraid of independence; they depend on their positions. Yet two hundred thousand have left the country. Bela, on whose integrity I would have staked my life, died trying to pass into Austria. By what right do I judge myself wiser than they? How can I doubt Bela’s patriotism? Because they killed him?

His letter described events that had occurred hardly a month ago. Terribly long ago; the distant past. The letter, like a twig pressed into coal, says little about the murmur of the primordial forest. A lost epoch; perhaps in years to come posterity will search out and retrieve those buried memories. We must go forward. Looking behind me will not bolster my courage. Bela’s grave in an Austrian cemetery offers no hope; it puts me on guard. No bullet will reach me here. I put the country’s borders behind me long ago.

But as he pressed his fingertips against his eyelids, he felt that that border was in his heart, and had not been crossed.

To go away, to break this tether…enough of the embassy, of the same faces, conversations and rancors, which wore on him like the stench of burning feathers. He rested his head heavily on his hands and shut the world out. Fate, after all, hides events in its sleeve, and death is not the worst of its surprises. I am prepared. I am ready for that final meeting.

But even as he passed judgment on himself, other solutions occurred to him. If Ilona…We all would be saved, we all would benefit, even You. I would not have to shatter Your stone tablets. One may shake the Ten Commandments in helpless anger, but no one is exempt from them. They are always with us, etched on our consciences; they weigh every action, affixing their sign of approval or condemnation so as to crush us in the last hour and accuse us for eternity.

Why should I not shake myself free of the past and begin a new life, cut off from all that had been — from myself as well? Let the new poet, Istvan Terey, be born on the shores of Australia, writing in English. Indeed, I can write in that language. I have proof that I can reinvent myself. My work is being printed.

Perhaps in years to come someone will ferret out the fact that I came from Hungary and feel that he has made a discovery. And that is all. People are quick to forgive the abandonment of one’s past. They forget that their speech was supposed to be the yes that means yes and the no that means no, like border stones between good and evil. And they long for leniency for themselves; they want us to be tolerant of each other and not take notice of faults, because we are, at bottom, accomplices.

Since no bullet shot in Budapest brought me freedom, I have a wife, obligations. What is unfolding in my mind is hideous. How many times my eyes have slid over brief news items under small headlines: he killed his wife, he stabbed his wife with a knife, and I shrugged them off, thinking, can two sensible, cultured people not find a simpler solution, not separate without losing respect for each other, not remain friends and part without insults and curses? Is death really the easiest way? Or perhaps the convicted murderer was more honest: he killed because he wanted to be free. She was blocking his way, so he thrust in the knife. And I am convinced that one of those bullets, blindly shot, could bring me freedom. I am a murderer, though my hands are clean. I find pleasure in these hypothetical solutions. I assent too eagerly to these possibilities. Moreover, I attribute them to Him Whose will is discreetly called fate, coincidence, or chance.

I am angry at Ilona because her existence reminds me of myself years ago, when I was mawkishly and absurdly in love. If only it were possible to forget that! To say: I did not know yet. I embraced her in a breath of jasmine, as yet understanding nothing of life. A blind puppy.

Chandra would absolve me with a simple explanation, with light mockery: that one who long ago took his vows and meant to keep them is not you. Cells die in the body and others replace them. Every so many years we change completely. Your wife is accustomed to you; she did not notice that a stranger lived beside her — not at all the same man she had exchanged promises with, but another. How can you, a living man, take responsibility for someone who a long time ago ceased to exist, only because you have not changed your name and you still look around when they call: Istvan Terey? But you can be someone else entirely. You can create yourself. It is only necessary to have the courage to say, I can, therefore I will.

Only the first step is difficult. After that you will see that you yourself created the constraints. There are no impassable barriers. None. If He exists, let Him try to stop you. After all, you created Him for yourself from ten commandments, and you carry Him like a crushing burden. Instead of wishing for your wife’s death, kill Him; that’s no great trick. It’s enough to say that He does not exist, and I myself will be the master. At once everything becomes simple.

To escape, to go where we will be happy. To take Margit by the hand and lead her. To return to my country. Let them say what they like. The whole world is of no concern to me. It does not exist apart from us. Only our looks waken it to life, and words can consolidate a more perfect, unblighted world.

One must have the courage to say: I decide. My happiness is the law. I. Margit and I. Because I want her. For her adoration, the surrender in which she herself takes such delight, has become indispensable to me.

Yet a plea arose from deep within him: Help me, I don’t want…But he did want; he wanted painfully, desired, craved. In this torment there was a disingenuous calculation: he was trying to force God’s hand, to blackmail Him. If You cannot find me a way of possessing this woman that is compatible with Your law, do not be surprised if I must break it, and it will not be my fault. I went to great lengths to find a solution.

He banished these troubling thoughts, these whinings of deceitful logic, like arguments from the chambers of hole-in-corner lawyers where dark goings-on are forever being whitewashed. Chandra greets me. Chandra offers me his services, he thought irritably. The telephone rang and he lifted the receiver, out of temper at being disturbed.

“Istvan? You invited me for today. Nothing has changed, has it?” He heard a tinge of sourness in Trojanowski’s voice.

“No. I’m glad we can chat a little.”

“Your wife is well? Your children doing well in school? Windowpanes being replaced in Budapest and scarred façades on buildings beginning to be repaired? Are you in a better frame of mind?”

“Everything is all right at home.”

“And with you?”

“Nothing wrong. I’m tired. They’ve promised me a holiday.”

“Will you dash over to Hungary?”

“No. I’m going to the seashore. A furlough in the country of posting—” he repeated the conventional form of words.

“You were born under a lucky star. I envy you. Till tonight. I am ordering the ‘wooden plate’ and red wine.”

“What time will you be here?”

“When I have sent some telegrams. One thing more — or perhaps you know already. Madam Khaterpalia’s child was stillborn.”

“What?” he cried, as if Trojanowski had accused him of something.

“Nagar said so, and he knows everything. After a visit from her doctor she felt some discomfort, and an unexpected premature birth ensued. The child was dead.”

“What happened? Such a fine-looking woman!”

“The devil only knows. Perhaps old indiscretions on the part of the rajah? How do you know that he is healthy? Money does not cure everything. Have I caught you unaware with the news?”

“It’s terrible. She had been so happy—” he whispered.

“Like every mother. Very difficult. Predestination.”

“You don’t know where she is? In a hospital?”

“Call Nagar or the rajah. I don’t know. Until tonight.”

“Goodbye.”

He put down the receiver. Poor Grace. Misfortune aimed its blows at her with appalling accuracy. So many cunningly considered measures to ensure that the one whose birth the family awaited would receive the entire inheritance: plans and calculations now set at naught. All for nothing. He remembered how, on the veranda at the club, Grace had pressed his hand to her belly so he could feel the baby’s movements. Was it mine? He trembled with alarm. No. No.

He strode nervously around the room, then called the rajah. A servant answered and promised to notify his master. His voice was serene and obedient, as if nothing had happened in the house.

“You already know?” He heard Khaterpalia’s voice. “Thank you. Grace does not wish to see anyone. Even me. Do not come.”

“You have my deepest sympathy.”

“I know. You like her.” The man sighed, and after a long silence stammered hoarsely, “She is most upset and angry that this happened within two hours after a visit from Kapur, who said that everything was okay, that the baby would be born in two weeks. There might be light pains, for the placenta was dropping, but all was well. Because of that I made light of her discomfort. Grace was suddenly frightened because it was not moving. I calmed her; I assured her that it must be sleeping. She insisted that that could not be so, that it had never been quiet for so long. The doctor did not hurry, either. And then he groped around her with his stethoscope, growing more and more apprehensive. ‘I cannot get a heartbeat,’ he said. ‘I cannot hear anything.’ And very soon the birth occurred. It was choked by the cord, which was twisted two times around its little neck. As if someone had deliberately choked it.”

Istvan could tell that the rajah was suffering, was seeing what had happened to him as a horrible injustice, as if fate were sneering at him. The hand with which he was holding the receiver was slippery with sweat. If I feel this so acutely, what state must he be in?

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“No. He had a tuft of damp black hair and a small face contorted as if he were crying. They said he resembled me and not Grace. I have lost a son.”

“How does the doctor explain it?”

“Does it matter? He cannot bring the child back to life. Kapur says that the fetus was small, as is usual with the first child. The mother experienced some emotional upset and the stimulus was communicated to the infant, who rotated and became entangled. But Grace was in no distress. She was so happy!”

“This is terrible. Please convey my—”

“Very well,” the rajah interrupted. “When she is calmer I will let you know. I must create a cheerful situation for her, gather friends, leave no room for thoughts of…She did not even see that child. Let the whole incident be like a bad dream. I have ordered that everything be removed that could remind her of him: the little carriage brought from London, the layette, the crib. She had already been walking around the hall with that carriage to see what it would be like. It is gone. It was not there. We did not have a child at all. These were only dreams.

“Thank you, Istvan. I knew that you…You will be the first of those I wish to see at her side. Only I warn you: speak of anything, even that you were a little in love with her, as long as you do not allude to this. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Now a few days’ quiet. Until she is herself. I will let you know. Remember, a child is in her future. It will come in a year, a year and a half. That one did not exist.”

Istvan was speechless. Magical thinking: he believes he can expunge pain from memory, make it disappear like that tiny curled body that the water of the Yamuna swallowed up.

Outside the window the garish sun beat down. The wind carried clouds of red dust and caressed the heavy coat of leaves on the tangled vines that covered the garage wall. Out of sheer force of habit he completed the last bit of writing for that day. He left the embassy with relief. Mihaly in a jockey cap with upturned visor was swinging on the unlatched gate, which scraped mournfully.

“Uncle, take me. I will go for a ride with you, uncle.”

“I’m not going home,” he answered through the lowered window of the Austin.

“You don’t like me like you used to! We don’t have any secrets anymore.”

“Get in, you little blackmailer.” He opened the door. “But I can’t bring you home for quite a while.”

Behind the small moss-covered temple, besieged by brambles and with its roof chipped like a bitten apple, the city’s gardens began. They saw long swatches of red snapdragon and green mignonette. Fields of salvia blazed such a jubilant red that they seemed to shimmer. Autumn did not hamper the luxuriant plant growth as long as hoses sprinkled the ground. He bought an armful of huge violet gladioli; their sleek chalice-like blossoms were open. Blinking in the sun, Mihaly cradled them carefully

“They smell like wet dirt!” His face puckered with disenchantment.

Istvan attached an envelope containing a note: “I share your pain, Grace.” It was not true.

He felt a fear, a vague presentiment that the hand of judgment he had invoked might also reach into his life. If You want me to settle the question, very well, so it shall be: the thought returned like an ominous musical phrase sung by distant choirs. Grace lost the child she longed for. The most agonizing blow. He knew what to take — and what will He take from me? He shuddered. Distant song, and the dull beat of drums slapped by a scrawny hand, streamed on the air like black ribbon. Do I not have the right to reach for what is most precious to you, since you call Me your Lord?

He stopped the car in front of the park gate and sent Mihaly to deliver the bouquet and the note. The watchman who always guarded the entrance, circling about like a dog on a chain, was not there. The doorway to the palace was open, and dark; the small windows on the second story were tightly closed.

The boy was already running back, his knees catching the light.

“No one was in the hall, so I put the flowers on the table,” he panted, full of elation. “They will be surprised!”

When the automobile had started again, he turned to Istvan with a flushed face and begged timidly, “Since we are here, couldn’t we have ice cream? It is so awfully hot.”

“It’s not nice to trick me, Mihaly,” he said sternly, but he did not have the heart to refuse. “Have you had dinner yet? I don’t want to get in trouble with your mother.”

“Ice cream isn’t food. Anyway, I won’t brag about it. If you like, that will be our secret today.”

In the colonnade at Connaught Place, vendors of illustrated American and English publications had spread their wares on a brightly colored carpet on the walk. Terey stopped; he was always drawn to books. A gaunt Hindu with a sunken chest and a graying mustache detached himself from a pillar and said in an exhalation of garlic, “I have banned items: Secrets of the Black Pagoda and Indian Nights. I have photos. Thirty classic positions.”

Istvan shrugged. The man looked tearfully into his eyes. “Sahib — perhaps the address of beautiful girls?”

From habit, so as not to kill the hope in eyes glittering from hunger, Istvan put him off. “No, not today. Another time.”

The peddler bent in a respectful bow. It seemed that his slender, veined neck would break under the burden of his enormous turban.

In the sweet shop the curtain was drawn back. Sunlight from the windows shone through the layered cloud of bluish cigarette smoke. The fans were not humming, so the din of voices divided itself clearly into Hindi and English. The quiet laughter of women, the jingle of spoons and the clapping of hands to summon the waiter drew their attention to the neighboring tables. The exquisitely pleated turbans of Sikhs clustered thickly in the snug booths. Their tightly rolled beards gleamed oily black. It was difficult to find seats. Terey looked around uncertainly.

“I will take it on a waffle, in my hand,” Mihaly said helpfully. They moved toward the buffet, which was shrouded in a haze of steam from the balefully hissing coffee warmer.

It seemed to Istvan that as he moved through the narrow space between the tables, he caught himself on something. Then he felt a hand detaining him.

“Come and sit with us.” He heard the voice of attorney Chandra. “You know Kapur. Doctor, please make a little room. What for the boy? For you, strong coffee, I know.”

“Ice cream,” he answered mechanically, taking a seat with relief. He pressed the lawyer’s cold, bony hand and the doctor’s warm, strong one.

“The child must eat slowly,” Kapur advised, puffing out his full cheeks. “He could easily take a chill, you know? And I predicted: too much good fortune all at once.” He rolled his eyes. “A fortune. Youth. Health.”

“And love. Love,” Chandra prompted sarcastically.

“It is written on her palm: she will give birth to two more.”

“And if they are daughters?” the lawyer asked.

“They must try until the end is achieved.” The doctor threw up his hands as if to say that there was nothing more to discuss. “They are both young, after all. Nothing is lost. She can still bear children.”

The waiter brought a tall, slender silver bowl of ice cream with coconut cookies stuck into it. He poured coffee from a glass globe that he set above a spirit lamp. Its blue flame pierced the dimness with a sepulchral glow.

“Doctor”—Chandra leaned on his elbow—“pay the check, and in exchange I will furnish you an opportunity for substantial earnings. A great opportunity: decide quickly.”

Kapur smiled distrustfully and shook his head as if to say: I will pass it up.

“I think, however, that it cannot be done without my help,” the attorney began in an undertone.

“I might have known!” the doctor retorted. “I see what awaits me. The risk, mine. The profit, yours. I will not be taken in. I do not agree to it.” Then he said appeasingly, “In any case, I will pay the bill.”

“I have not finished yet. The rajah has lost his son. The important thing was, after all, a son. A great deal of money was waiting for him; a fortune! Undivided.”

“Well, and they need not hurry. It is still waiting. We will not receive the legacy: not you, not I.” Kapur thrust out his thick lip.

“Be calm. I tell you, it is already too late. And we both can profit handsomely if we act in concert.”

Kapur grew sober. He leaned across the table and looked deeply into the lawyer’s placid face and his eyes, which concealed a catlike somnolence. His fleshy nose scented business. Suddenly he turned his head as if he had remembered that there was an unwanted witness.

“Later, perhaps?” He opened his sticky lips with a smacking noise.

“Mr. Terey is not hampering us. The more who know of this, the better,” Chandra drawled emphatically. “The widow of Khaterpalia’s older brother is expecting a child.”

“Impossible!” The doctor bridled. “He was repulsive. The terrible burns, the scars. I saw him!”

“When one loves, one wants to have a child. And she conceived one. She needed to. She will not be a barren widow but the mother of a young rajah. Of the elder heir.”

“But that man died!”

“And was burned. But he managed to beget a successor. That he was the rajah’s brother I have proof in writing: the statement of the court and the protocol signed by all the members of the family who have an interest, including the father-in-law Vijayaveda. The decision cannot be reversed, though they could try. I will see to it.”

“In what month is she?” The doctor leaned forward, devouring every word.

“She says she has not bled for two months.”

Istvan nodded toward the boy, who lowered his eyelids and busied himself by chipping at his mountain of ice cream.

“Nothing is certain yet,” Kapur said with a worried air. “It is still possible to bribe the servants, to give her an herb. She could lose it.”

“That is why we will draw up an agreement with her, and you, doctor, will take her under your most scrupulous care.” Chandra tapped the table with his bony fist.

“The rajah will not forgive us. You helped him…” Kapur hesitated. But his eyes were opened to the possibility of unbounded influence and of gaining the widow’s trust.

“In any case, you must be by her side,” Chandra said in a low voice. “That is your function, doctor. Mine is to ensure that it is paid well. Royally. A fortune is at stake in this game. Khaterpalia and his father-in-law are seasoned merchants. They will not haggle.”

Istvan looked at their faces, which were brightening with the smiles of partners refining a strategy. They had come to terms; they understood each other. “You are a formidable man, Mr. Chandra,” the counselor said quietly. “After what you told me that night—”

“I? Ah, yes.” The lawyer waved a lean hand, ruffling a stream of smoke. “Do you mean to say that business ventures with me are hard to bring to termination? Well, yes. But, indeed, you know my specialty: I am a philanthropist. Should I not occupy myself with the affairs of a poor woman who is expecting a child and who has twice lost her husband — especially when I see danger threatening her?”

“An unusual case.” Kapur turned his head, puffed out his hairy cheeks, and sniffed.

“Only unusual cases interest me.”

“Does the rajah know of this yet?” Istvan asked.

“The later he finds out about it, the better for everyone. One worry is enough for him. I am not asking you to keep it a secret, though I think good judgment dictates that we keep it confidential for a time. Why put pressure on him? Am I right?”

It seemed to Istvan that he knew what the lawyer was thinking.

“It will be safer that way,” the doctor affirmed. “I will go to the widow today. I will examine her. I want to be certain.”

“Conditions vary with women. But since she wants a child”—Chandra seemed to be talking to himself—“she can always have one.”

“Time has passed since the death of her husband,” Kapur reminded him. “A child cannot be born too late, for they will question it. And they will win.”

“And in the seventh month?”

“It is easy to recognize a premature one,” the doctor warned.

“These considerations are theoretical at this point,” Chandra cut in. “In case…For the time being, she expects a child. A normal pregnancy. The third month. I want to have that from you in writing.”

Istvan listened with aversion. After all, they did not have to hide what they were saying from anyone. They spoke of assistance and care — matters which were not in conflict with the law.

“Attorney, you enjoy appearing in the role of fate.” He looked into Chandra’s dark, murky eyes.

“Fate? And what is that, properly speaking, if not my intention?” Arrogantly he tilted his face upward. “Faith…gods…I am not the tool of predestination. I direct it, my dear sir. I can enlist the gods in my service.”

“You are fond of money, however, and in the end it is the goal,” the counselor insisted.

“You wound me! For me it is only a means. I despise it, so it is pushed into my hand. I punish some by taking it from them and reward others by giving it to them. I love to prepare surprises. I thought you appreciated my disinterestedness. If you found yourself in a predicament…”

Suddenly there was a clink as the boy put down his spoon.

“Let’s go, uncle.”

“Perhaps you would like one more helping?” Chandra tried to pat him but Mihaly moved back, avoiding the touch of the bony hand that, like a reptile, executed a half-circle in air blue with smoke.

“No, no. I want to go back now.”

“I often think of you, Mr. Chandra—” Istvan said under his breath.

“Good. I also have a sense that you are trying to summon me,” the lawyer cut in.

“I think you are very unhappy.”

“I? That is foolish! I have everything I want.”

“You would like to be loved, adored. All you possess is paid for. You buy friendship, women, even the blessing of a beggar.”

“Not true!” His voice rose. “They must be grateful to me. I fulfill their desires.”

“Uncle, I will wait in the car.” Mihaly pulled away as if in terror.

“We’re going now. Goodbye, doctor. Goodbye.”

Chandra squeezed his hand with unexpected force.

“Before long you will be the unhappier one. That is my prediction. You will always find a confidant in me.” He looked Terey in the eye almost beseechingly. “I myself will attend to your affairs.”

Istvan turned and moved impatiently toward the door. Mihaly ran ahead, dragging him by the hand. “Uncle, that is a bad man,” he whispered. “He will do something awful to you.”

“He can’t do much. The worst injuries are those we inflict on ourselves.”

“Uncle, you heard about the girl who was given an apple by the witch. She bit it and slept as if she were dead. Or she gave her a comb that she fastened in her hair and forgot who she was. Or she pricked the girl’s little finger and squeezed out a small drop of blood, and then she put that finger to her mouth and drank all her blood…and there was no trace of a wound. Or she took hold of her blouse and twirled so long that it strangled her — the girl’s own blouse — and she was sitting between her parents, but they could do nothing to help her. Or the witch led the girl to a great mirror, and when she looked at herself, the witch gave her a push and the mirror closed behind her. It was mute and never told anyone where she was. I know he would be able to do that, and even worse things,” Mihaly insisted. “That’s why I wouldn’t let him give me anything.”

Terey listened uneasily. Mihaly seemed to be babbling like a child with a high fever, muttering to himself. He touched the boy’s head: it was cool.

“After all, you know, those are fairy tales,” he said. “You weren’t afraid of an elephant, but you run away from an old gentleman who wants to treat you to some cake? Mihaly, what happened?” he asked, trying to calm the boy. He looked at the street full of bicyclists and motorcycle rickshaws and scattered them with the blare of the horn.

“I was eating my ice cream,” the boy stammered, curling up on the seat of the Austin, “and suddenly I was afraid. His eyes seemed to suck the life from everything, even your smile and the taste of my ice cream. Because of him my heart seemed to stop and even the spot of sunshine on the table went dark. Something cold comes from him. He’s like a dead man.”

“No. He’s just an unhappy man. He has a great deal of money. He helps people.”

“His money is a part of the plot,” the boy whispered with fear in his eyes. “It takes more money from other people’s pockets and it returns to him before midnight strikes. And if you tried to stop it, it would turn into dry leaves or cockle shells.”

All at once Istvan realized that Mihaly had a gift he would look for in vain in his own sons: fantasy, the ability to create. He was moved by the receptiveness of the boy’s imagination. Perhaps India had embedded itself in him so that in years to come, when he was a grown man, he would remember today’s encounter and a feeling of dread would creep over him, with Chandra in the character of a servant of dark forces. Were his instincts already telling him that? After all, Istvan himself also had moments of unmitigated loathing for the attorney who was so ready to be helpful.

The sky took on a green tint and began to cool. A gust of wind shook the huge papaya leaves. Young Sikhs with topknots like girls’ released a red kite in the form of a vulture. A pair of spotted puppies nipped at each other’s tails. A benign chill rose from the earth; the brief twilight came on and the first stars, as if just washed, appeared above the horizon as the heat dissipated.

I would like to live on in this boy’s heart…Suddenly it seemed to him that it was not in his sons but in this child that his legacy would remain — that it was not through blood or genes, but through words spoken in confidence, intimate revelations, that the boy could inherit his traits, his desires and hopes. I am like a cuckoo, pouring into the absorbent mind of the child my own restlessness, goading him to spread his wings. Indeed, Mihaly had once said with a rending sigh, “I want to be like you, uncle.” Anyway, he doesn’t know me, he thought, smiling to himself. He creates his own version of me. He imagines someone much better, much purer: his ideal.

Or was he always missing his sons? He stole a glance at Mihaly, who was now in a sunny humor as his gaze followed the kites. Two — three — they glided like fish, falling through the glowing sky toward the darkening ground.

“Uncle, can we stand here and watch for a while? Oh, that big one is flying over to eat the others! It will bite holes in them.”

They got out of the car. He put his arm around the boy, and with upturned faces they watched the dance of the orange and yellow kites dragging tails like garlands. The strings were invisible, so the motions of the kites, diving in the afterglow from the west, were like the motions of toys in free play — toys of childhood off on a spree, full of a life of their own.

Through the thin fabric of his clothing he felt the warmth of the confiding little body. He heard his cries of delight when the paper vulture lost altitude and fell among the trees. The two smaller kites seemed to climb higher and higher on the mild breeze, over the first beaming star with its greenish twinkle, its light wavering as if it were uncertain of its place in the evening sky.

When he had taken the boy home and returned to his house, he saw two figures nestled together on the steps of the veranda: the watchman and his girl. The man sprang up officiously and turned on the light; it glowed from among the leaves. His fiancee darted into the shadows like a lizard. Passing the soldier, who stood at attention but moved his turned-up mustache as if he wanted to say something, he saw a small body curled up in a thick cluster of climbing plants. Only the deer-like eyes flashed in the shadows of the branches.

“When is the wedding?”

“In a week, sir. The best day. The horoscopes have been checked. The stars favor us.”

Terey shrugged and grasped the door handle. The cook had already come running up and turned on the light in the hall. By mistake he had started up the fans, which were whirling under the ceiling.

The stars? And what did they have to do with this? How nice for them that they can foist off the responsibility for their own lives, can pray to the stars or shake their fists at them, and they hang above us, they revolve in the freezing heights, stony, indifferent.

“Madam is not here,” Pereira announced, scratching the graying stubble on his face. “Madam will not be staying here tonight.”

Istvan nodded as a sign that he knew this, though for a moment he had deluded himself that he would find Margit watching for him in her chair, a little drowsy — that she would take him in her arms, that he would feel her fingertips pressing him before he managed to push the light switch, and he would kiss her for a long time, a long time, resting his forehead against her temple.

The cook seemed to float in the darkness, barefoot, noiseless. He lit the lamp on the desk. The masks with bared teeth grinned from the wall. “There is a letter, sir.” He motioned toward the air mail envelope with its striped edge.

Istvan recognized the round letters: Ilona’s writing. The envelope opened easily — he hardly had to pry it with the little opener — as if it had been trained to give up its contents. Inside were a sheet of paper and photographs. Ilona: the high forehead, a little childish, framed between wings of black hair. Strong eyebrows; frank, straightforward eyes, eyes that have nothing to hide. Full lips prone to smile. Pretty; very pretty; lovely, he told himself; probably even prettier than Margit. He gazed at her face as if he wanted to remind himself why he had singled her out among so many others, why he had loved her. She is like a Hindu woman, he thought with astonishment. In his imagination he drew a point between the eyebrows, darkened the eyelids, hung a thick silver necklace around the throat.

He set the picture down outside the circle of light and began to read the letter. It was concerned with commonplace matters, like her other letters: stories about their sons’ doings, about Sandor’s throat, about Geza’s dream that his father would bring home a monkey, even a very small one. Then he came upon this sentence: Do you ever have time to think of us when you think of home? I wish you were here with us. It was not a cry of longing or a confession of love — only a reminder that he belonged to them. She did not like overt gestures, or light when she lay resting in the nude, or even a mirror when he kissed her in the foyer before he left for the office; he had noticed her sidewise glance at that mute unwanted witness.

He had gone away. He had become a stranger. He surveyed his own past dispassionately, as if it were a book about someone else’s life.

Once more he took the photograph in his hand. As he admired the young woman’s beauty, a feeling of satisfaction came over him. She can still begin a new life, he thought complacently. She will not be broken. She will easily find a man to console her.

What does she think of me? That really makes no difference. And suddenly, pitying himself and his own anguish, he found himself believing that when friends learned of his departure and began to condemn and stigmatize his betrayal, Ilona would defend him. He could hear her calm voice: Perhaps it is better for him this way. Perhaps he believed that he would be able to write in a different way. Who knows what drove him to this? It is not easy for him, either.

Ilona’s large, dark eyes, shadowed by her lashes, looked out without blinking. That angered him: her insistent, inquiring gaze. That’s what the fool of a photographer told her to do, he thought irritably, dropping the little piece of cardboard on his desk, for he heard steps on the veranda and the voice of the watchman assuring someone that the counselor had been home for an hour. It must be Trojanowski.

“Hello! Why are you sitting there with a dry snout?” the Pole called from the threshold. “Open sesame—” he pulled at the handles of a carved box with both hands and greeted approvingly the necks of bulging bottles that emerged from under the lid.

“You walk in with no greeting?” Istvan asked.

“Would you like a Chinese ritual? ‘Hello’ is not enough? Well, allow me—” he folded his hands as if in prayer and bowed low. “Namaste ji. Be praised, oh noble one!”

He settled into a chair, stretched his legs and crossed them. He lit a cigarette. “Does the watchman lighten your loneliness by bringing in girls?” He peeked alertly from under his lowered eyelids to see whether he had hit his mark. “He just hid one from me.”

“No. That is his fiancee. They will be married in a week.”

“Well, well. Now I understand. Mountain people from Nepal have different customs. An Indian groom would not even be allowed to see the girl before the wedding, so he would not defile her with a glance. Parents and matchmakers look over the goods. A photograph is enough. And with us they would want to go off right away to bivouac together with a tent and a kayak. To test things out, to examine them in detail. And they break up almost without regret. There! Just another experience.”

The cook poked his head in and, having assured himself that the wine was poured, carried in a tray of hot, peppery meatballs bristling with toothpicks.

“It’s looking grim for you.” Trojanowski bit into the appetizer. “Today a crowd of workers gathered at the parliament demanding an end to repression. They insisted that Nagy be returned. They took their time about it. Kádár spoke to them. He promised that those who had been driven out would return. The people believe that he will attend to that, but it has been difficult for him in the beginning.” He drank a little of the golden plum vodka. “And what do they write you from home?”

“Nothing of interest, really.” Istvan threw up his hands. “Everything is all right. They are alive. My wife is working. The children are studying.”

“That means that things are hard.”

“Why the devil did he call in those people? Couldn’t it be the way it was in Poland?”

“Don’t be a child. First, they already had their hands on you. Second, Kádár was summoned. I must confess that his courage impresses me. He took on himself the responsibility for Hungary’s fate. He feels, after all, the aversion that surrounds him,” he said reflectively, “but he has a goal, a great cause, that enables him to withstand pressure. He knows what he has rescued. The struggle for a nation, for the future, is that much more difficult because it is lonely. Well, he has people. But many attached themselves to him for tactical reasons, all the while suspecting that he seeks power, that he wants to pay himself back for being in prison. However, the motives of their actions are not important; only the effects are. The thing is for him to have time — a year or two. Then they will begin to respect him.”

His eyes wandered around the room as if the silence had just begun to make him uneasy. “Let’s put on a little music. It’s dismal here.”

He turned on the radio. A melody from some American film about white immigration gathered volume: Anastasia. His foot swayed in time to the music; he liked the plaintive song crooned in a soft, husky female voice.

“So you think Khrushchev rushed Nagy’s ouster?” Istvan asked, turning down the radio.

“He wanted to make things easier for Kádár”—Trojanowski curled his lips—“to clear the decks for him. He did not take the effects into account. Now he has strikes in Hungary. But that will pass. To eat, they must work.”

“I don’t like that way of getting things done.”

“Who does?” Trojanowski smiled sarcastically. “Agreements. Guarantees. We are grown people. Agreements stand if the conditions under which they were signed do not change — well, and if the stronger party wants to abide by them. In adult terms, if that party still has something to gain. Everyone operates this way except us, except Poles. We defeated the Turks at Vienna, rescuing the nation that invaded us later. We were with Napoleon until the end, though everyone else left him, and at least half of Poland could have been bargained away from the czar. Faithfulness to the end! To the last shot. The world marvels at us for that, and takes us for fools. Crazy Poles, eh!” He waved an angry hand. “Our communists are romantics as well — but they have their feet on the ground,” he added as if to himself. He sucked meditatively at the plum vodka.

“If it were not for them, our People’s Republic of today would not be,” he added, setting aside his glass.

“And you are like that,” Istvan mocked gently. “A chip off the old block.”

“What can I do? At birth I was burdened with this inheritance,” Trojanowski sighed with affected regret. “At times I am even proud of it.”

“Certainly Mindszenty would be to your liking. A cardinal, a voluntary prisoner in the American embassy. He did not abandon Hungary.”

Trojanowski leaned on his elbow and ran his hand through his dwindling shock of blond hair. His blue eyes glowed belligerently.

“I don’t trust such pathetic gestures. Is that a test of my intelligence? We must get this straight: he left Hungary — he left because he is on American territory though he is still with you. He understood nothing about the situation in which he found himself after he left prison. He thought it would be as it had been. Suddenly he felt himself to be not a spiritual leader, but a political one. He urged people on to the struggle. And then he boasted—” Trojanowski looked around for cigarettes, which Istvan pushed toward him in an Indian copper case. “No Kossuths? I prefer strong ones. But the Church has experience. It is a wise institution. It does not approve of desertion.”

“You can’t demand that anyone push themselves into martyrdom,” Istvan protested. “They would have shot him. He’s an old man.”

“Well, yes. It would have been a worthy ending for his life. The Church acknowledges two solutions for its dignitaries in such cases: endure with the faithful to the end and go to the wall when the end comes. The Church values the sowing of blood. It does not go to waste. As a matter of fact, the communists think the same way: an idea that is not worth dying for is not worth living for.”

“And the other solution?”

“It is more difficult, for it requires not only zeal and heart, but good sense. It is a wise, circumspect pact with the victors, for in the end it must come to that, and the Church values that, perhaps even more. But for that it is necessary to love one’s flock more than oneself.”

“Are you a Catholic?”

“You might say so,” he said as if the question troubled him. “In all sincerity, I was. One can renounce it, but it trails after us: tradition, habit, almost magical gestures. I have kept up the hope that the problem exists.” He blew smoke at the ceiling. “It would be better if it did. One pushes away these thoughts; there is no time for them. We do anything to deaden that insistent voice.”

“And so — only after death?” Istvan whispered, listening intently.

“We are inured to death. We know that life is a fatal illness. But who wants to remember that every day? I tell you, I cannot imagine not lying in the cemetery under a cross…Don’t tire me. Surely you didn’t invite me here for this.”

“I wanted to ask for your help,” Istvan ventured. Trojanowski turned toward him, surprised. “I have a painter here.”

“A Hindu?”

“You know him, so it will be that much easier for you to talk to him. Ram Kanval. He was going to go to Hungary. But you know what those imbeciles call it: decadent art.”

“Uh-oh. Something unpleasant comes back to me when I hear that scientific term,” the journalist drawled. “Well, go on.”

“Bajcsy refused to approve his stipend. You have the greater freedom: take him. He’s going to waste here. He tried to poison himself in a fit of despair; I mention that only for your information. Well, think of something. Will you help?”

Trojanowski sat silent with his eyes closed.

“Listen. I’m going away. I put this to your conscience,” Istvan insisted. “Try for once not to do this like a Pole, for you wax sentimental, you promise, and the next day your zeal passes and you forget altogether.”

“All right. I will speak to our cultural attaché,” he agreed at last. “You may count on me, though I can’t vouch for the result.”

“That’s all I ask. Thank you. I know he will be to your people’s liking. Enough now. Let’s go into dinner. What’s your pleasure? Wine? Plum vodka?”

“Let’s stay with the same.” Trojanowski took the bottle and, still holding his glass, moved toward the dining room. “Ah — the smell! All the time I was missing something: it’s just that I’m hungry.” He clapped Istvan warmly on the shoulder.

Istvan spotted a notice in the press that two well-known journalists who had escaped from Hungary had appeared in Calcutta and Bombay. None of the embassy staff, however, could remember any newspaper or other publication at which people by those names had worked. He would gladly have talked with them and listened to their accounts of the uprising, even if it had inculpated him in the ambassador’s eyes. But the route taken by the self-exiled representatives of Hungary bypassed New Delhi.

In bold type on their front pages, the Hindustan Times and the Hindustan Standard sounded alarms about scuffles between patrols on the border of Kashmir and riots in Tibet. They accused the Chinese of invading territory that had been Indian from time immemorial, though only lightly manned forts on two main caravan routes marked out the zone in question, with its barren highlands and arid valleys in which bands of herdsmen wandered freely, grazing yaks and sheep, or pilgrims on their way to Lhasa or the Buddhist monasteries of Kullu passed to the beat of gongs and the birdlike whistle of fifes. An exchange of fire that was actually insignificant reverberated in the press, conveniently for the government, which welcomed the interrogatories of members of parliament demanding new appropriations for arms.

Hungary had vanished from the front pages, displaced by developments in nearby Tibet. In reports of the deliberations of the United Nations Istvan spied a note to the effect that the representatives of Kádár’s regime had been subjected to procedural hostilities instigated by Argentina or by the regime of Chiang Kai-shek, but that it was clear already that the communists had won — had forced the West to acknowledge the new government.

Istvan wandered around the embassy, began conversations, scrutinized his colleagues, only to tear himself away suddenly, escape to his office and shut himself in. It seemed to him that they knew more than he did, that they had access to inside information — that they belonged to the circle of the initiated and he was left out.

“Don’t lose your wits. Stop looking for a fight.” Ferenc put his hands on Istvan’s shoulders. “I swear to you that nothing is going on. I would have told you right away. You are the source of your own anxiety. Take yourself in hand or your nerves will do you in. Go away. Rest up. The boss approved your leave.”

“Don’t chase me away. I’m going of my own accord.” Full of suspicion, he broke away from Ferenc’s grip.

“When?”

“In a few days. Understand — I’m always waiting. It seems to me that as soon as I leave Delhi, something will happen to spoil my plans.”

“That is the best evidence of nervous exhaustion,” Ferenc said triumphantly. “Nothing will happen, I assure you. You are simply overwrought. Otherwise you would not be a poet, only a bookkeeper.”

“You’re probably right.”

When he returned to his house, he was overtaken by fresh misgivings and a feeling that something was threatening him. But the days passed monotonously, one like another, with no surprises. He must be hysterical, he thought. He wrote letters to Ilona, explaining with consummate cruelty that he loved someone else and wanted to begin a new life, and asking her to understand even if she could not forgive. Then he tore them up in disgust, knowing that he was lying in spite of his best intentions, and that the pain he would cause would provide no closure, would not end anything. He sat across from Margit with a glass in his hands and tried to find assurance in her eyes. He drank a great deal, though alcohol did not furnish him the anodyne he wished for.

He nestled close to her. As he dropped off to sleep he felt her knee on his thigh and clasped it sleepily with his hand, only to wake after a short doze. He was instantly conscious; he listened in alarm to her even breathing and the wails of jackals scavenging in the yards of the villas.

Margit did not urge him to leave the city, but she believed that the farther they were from New Delhi and the embassy, the easier it would be to divert him, to tear him away from the centripetal force of his country’s anguish.

“I’ve finished the lectures,” she said calmly on the day before the feast of Diwali.

“Well, what of it?” he bristled, as though she had accused him of something.

“Nothing. I’m free.” Her eyes were so clear and trusting that he was ashamed of his angry retort.

“Do you want to go?”

“I want to be with you,” she said gently. “I have more time for you now. I thought you would be glad.”

“All right.” He turned his head away as if she had pressed him for a decision. “We will clear the account at the hotel. Pack. Leave a suitcase here. It’s time to go.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to take everything with us?” she said, weighing her words.

“Do you think we won’t be coming back to Delhi?” He looked her aggressively in the eye.

“Perhaps that would be best,” she whispered, “but I will do as you like.”

Under his hostile look she inclined her head as if it were drooping beneath an excessively heavy burden. Her red hair fell in a wave, shielding her face. She did not gather it back with the usual gesture but let it fall in a languid cascade. Finally she said, “Everything you would come back for can be bought. Leave part of the baggage. I understand that you want it to appear that we are only going for the holiday. Do you find it calming that there is still time for a final decision?”

“And you think…”

“I don’t think anything. I know. I would only like to help you. But you must decide for yourself. Otherwise you would hate me.”

In the deep silence they heard the shouting of the cook and the clank of the mortar in which he was beating the spice. Vines worried by the evening wind were scraping the dusty screen in the window beside him.

“All right. Let’s go tomorrow,” he said suddenly.

A new vitality surged through her. She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and her eyes began to sparkle.

“Tomorrow. At dawn,” he declared, now decisive. “We will be off to the white beaches I’ve dreamed of. The water will cleanse me of these worries. We’ll bury them in the sand. Margit, help me.” He bent over her. She put her arms around him and pressed him tightly to her.

“This is all I want, after all.”

He buried his face in her disheveled hair with its familiar fragrance, which he drank in until his blood hummed. “You are good for me,” he said, kissing her neck.

By the time the bellboys carried her luggage to the car twilight had fallen. On balconies and the stone parapets of terraces leading to gardens, hundreds of small lights twinkled. Little gold tongues licked the darkness. Houses were already lit for the ceremonial opening of Diwali. On roofs, in windows, even on the steps of houses, lights flickered. Wicks in oil blazed in metal boxes before beggars’ shanties. Everyone hoped to lure the goddess of happiness to their homes; they marked out the path and lighted the way in. Istvan found it painful. He was supposed to buy flat candles and clay sentries with oil lamps, but in the press of business before the journey he had neglected to prepare for the Indian holiday.

All the city smelled of candles. The dance of lights, the warm, living flame, transformed buildings, lending charm to the scene. Over the treetops the fires of enormous, vitreous stars trembled. The sky seemed to droop among the houses, shaking flashing particles of light onto doorsills, walls, and paths. The goddess Lakshmi, with a lamp in each hand, was leading good fortune toward those who were waiting, begging, in the twilight.

“I wonder if our house will have lights. I didn’t give the cook any money. I completely forgot,” Istvan said.

But when they drove up onto the grassy square, he saw with relief an unsteady little cockscomb of flame on the low wall. The dusky grotto that was the veranda, covered with its fleece of climbing plants, glittered with golden flames in little lamps. The watchman stood with his legs planted wide apart, leaning on his thick bamboo stick. Three rows of small lights blinked on the grass at his feet, bowing in the barely perceptible breeze. The fiery display lit up his legs, which seemed hewn from bronze. His huge shadow fell on the wall, making him the vigilant envoy of the supreme beings.

“He lit the place.” Istvan sighed with relief. “They deserved a reward. And happiness has a shining path to our house.”

Margit waited in front of the gate until he had parked the Austin in the garage. The cook greeted them with a triumphant air; he was squatting, straightening the tilted wicks with a stick.

“As good as everyone else’s, true, sir?”

“Even handsomer.” Terey clapped him on the shoulder. “You didn’t stint on the candles.”

“We must be generous to Lakshmi so she will come to us,” the man answered ingratiatingly, and discreetly handed him the bill for the little votive lamps.

“Very good. Here you are.”

“This is too much, sir.” The cook cocked his head on his slender neck like a magpie that cannot lift a bone in its beak.

“Take it all. Because you used your head.”

“Ah! Sir, your happiness is our happiness, you know. The watchman is getting married because he has a good job. All my family, sir, blesses you. And the sweeper’s family, and the gardener’s. You are like a strong tree and we are like birds who weave nests in your branches. You have an open hand and do not ration rice as they do in other houses. Sir”—his speech took on the rhythm of an incantation and he raised his hands toward the leafy fringes of the climbing plants—“may the goddess Lakshmi visit this house with gifts for you and madam.”

Long shadows fell on the walls. The air smelled of hot oil and candles, like the interior of a temple. The assembled servants bowed to them.

“And we wish you great success,” he answered. “I leave the house to your care. Manage our home wisely. Tomorrow I go to the south.”

“For how long, sir?”

“For a few weeks.”

When he found himself in the living room, he went up to Margit, amazed and anxious. She sat hunched over, hiding her face in her hands.

“What’s happened?” He opened her hands and saw that her face was damp with tears.

“Nothing.” Under wet lashes that clung together, her eyes were shining brightly. “For the first time you said ‘our home.’”

He bent over her, taken aback. Gradually he began to understand, and to feel compassion. She needed so little — an impulsive word — to build the whole edifice of the future. She loves me — the thought recurred like an accusation — loves me.

“I want to hear that always, until my last day,” she whispered, nestling against him with damp, flushed cheeks.

Swarms of lights on the neighboring villas shone in blurs through the window screens. An acute sadness seemed to have settled over the city, like crepe over the plots in a village cemetery on the day people light candles in memory of the dead.

“We will go tomorrow.” He pushed away painful thoughts. She leaned toward him, rubbing her cheek and blinking with happiness, like a little girl who has no words to express her joy and thankfulness for an unexpected gift.

They lay on fine white sand, close enough to touch each other. A few yards from their feet, turbid waves died on a shore that had been battered and swept smooth as an enormous bowl wreathed with heaps of pungent-smelling seaweed. The ocean swelled gently and tilted, driving water toward the coast. Yellow and reddish sails, appearing almost motionless on the horizon, stood like triangles with their points resting on the gray water.

It was not easy to find a name for the few loosely connected beams, forming something like a beak, that opened like a fan with slits to create a channel for foaming seawater. There were no boats to be seen, only the slowly revolving triangular sails, patched and dimming in the sun, that wandered on the edge of the sky like kites ripped from their strings.

He turned his head and fixed his gaze on Margit’s austere, chiseled profile, veiled by her windblown hair. Her bluish-green eyes, squinting a little, glittered with happiness. Her lips parted slightly with her deep breathing. Her small breasts under her wet bathing suit, barely covered, challenged him.

The choked alleys of Old Delhi dissolved and vanished: the crowd pressing blindly, the mass of bodies one had to rub against to walk along the street, the stifling odor of drains, urine, pastilles, fermenting fruit peelings, incense, the smells of flaming butter in votive lamps and palm oil that permeated hair and lingered on clothing.

Here on this great sweep of beach they were alone, deprived of all resources but each other — joyful castaways. Free of obligation to the world, they rested, not even hearing the groaning of the surf that doggedly spilled onto the shore, raking with it the coarser sand and the pink shells. A damp breeze blew over them, allaying the sweltering heat of noon. The air over this expanse of sand untrodden by anyone’s feet was veined with flashing green. The leaves of battered palms rose, swelling as if in flight, shaking their leathery fringes.

“Don’t sleep.” Her fingertips brushed his side, which was plastered with smooth, fine-grained sand.

“I’m not sleeping. I’m thinking,” he answered, stretching. “Do you know that in two days it will be Christmas Eve?”

“Are you counting the days? Do you know exactly how many have passed?”

“What for? Our time here will be too short that way. I know about Christmas Eve because I got a letter from the hotel management asking what we would like for the holiday dinner.”

“Don’t they believe that Daniel will repeat our order accurately? He’s a clever chap.” Daniel was a young man whose services came with their rented cottage.

“The entire menu was written out. I only had to underline our choices.”

“Why did you do it without me? You should have consulted me.”

“It will be a surprise for you.”

“I’m sure you ordered something awful, as you did in the Chinese restaurant that time. When the chef explained what it was made of, I felt something inside me protesting!”

“But you liked it. As long as you didn’t know, you enjoyed it. I’ve ordered seafood for us.”

“And where is the turkey with dates and chestnuts?”

“It’s still alive, but there is enough of it to order six servings. They have it figured very closely: chicken, two servings; duck, four; turkey, twelve. Apart from us, there are only two old English ladies. Amazing how empty it is. I expected a crowd.”

“Do you wish for other women? Am I not enough?” She scooped up a handful of white sand and watched as it trickled through her fingers.

“Don’t talk nonsense.”

“I’m glad you rested a little. The solitude will do us good.”

“For the time being there aren’t many people here because the Suez Canal is blocked. But they will be here for New Year’s. The beach will be filled with them.”

“I don’t need them at all. It’s fine with me as it is.” She sifted sand through her fingers; it made a little mound on his chest. “I love the sea. There is such peace about it.”

“Even though I was half dead from driving, the first night here I couldn’t sleep. I heard it,” he whispered. “It has so many voices. It chats and it lures. It rumbles as if it were impatient. It seemed to me that it was taking advantage of the darkness to creep onto the shore, scour the dunes, submerge the beaches, and circle around us, all very cleverly. The roar of the water intensifies in the dark.”

“You got up. I heard you go out onto the veranda. But I didn’t want to open my eyes.”

“I saw how it shone. The land was black and the waves glowed like phosphorus, as if they were full of drowned stars. I was as frightened as a little boy for fear the tide would wash us away, cottage and all.”

“I’m not afraid of the ocean.” She thrust out a cocky lip. “I like the way it carries me along.”

“You swim out too far. I call you and you pretend not to hear.”

“You swim alongside me”—she peeped into his dark eyes—“and I think you would swim as far as you could go. It’s hard to decide when to turn back. It’s easy to swim out. It’s much harder to go back to shore.”

“I saw a map in the harbormaster’s office. The bay has shore currents. It’s best to remember that. They could carry us a long way out.”

“You wouldn’t leave me, though.” She laid her hand on his suntanned chest. “I wouldn’t be afraid to swim away from the shore with you.”

“I don’t like this train of thought!” he shuddered. “It’s silly.”

The sea soliloquized more loudly, surging and washing the smooth sand on the shore with its thick tongues.

“But there are some disturbances at night,” she said, engrossed in playing with the sand, which was as clean as sugar. “The night before last I heard shouts and something like a chase. Last night there were shots.”

“I asked Daniel. He said the police had set a trap for smugglers. Think of these empty cottages. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if gold or opium was stashed in them. The water near the beach is deep; they could sail close to the very shoreline with a cutter. Anyway, those boat-rafts of theirs can scud about for days.”

“You have imagination,” she said approvingly. “You are always ready to reconstruct the whole story. It is enough that someone was running along the coast. One rocket fired; perhaps it was for practice?”

“They also smuggle people — refugees from Pakistan. Daniel told me while you were asleep.”

“They are fleeing. They will not escape themselves. Freedom is in us. We must muster all our courage and determination and break out of the iron band that was forcibly imposed on us.” She turned toward him; he felt her sandy hand resting on his thigh.

“Not forcibly imposed, unless what you mean by ‘forcibly’ is that you have a birthplace, a language and a fate shared with others whom you should not abandon. The rest of our obligations we undertake voluntarily, and you know very well that they are part of ourselves.”

“Primitive blood ties.” She lowered her head with aversion.

“No. I’m speaking of the deepest community of interests with the world we find at birth, which we ought to change, to transform.”

A wavering trill from a flute could be heard in the distance. At the foot of a layer of rocks, between the leaning coconut palms, they saw the dark torso of a conjurer playing his song. He seemed to have no head, for his white turban was indistinguishable from the bright sand milled from under patches of turf parched by the sun.

“It’s easier to change the world than to change yourself,” she whispered bitterly. “The world, the world! And what is that but a game in the sand? You’ve already seen how much of that remains. It’s a lesson you should learn.”

“And you? What role are you marking out for me?” He raised himself on his elbow and looked into her eyes. The ends of her curled eyelashes glittered in the sun.

“Be yourself at last. Free. Write as you like. Don’t be hampered by anyone.”

“Even you?”

“Even me,” she insisted. “Write about your Hungary, but free yourself from that dog collar that’s choking you — from the time you’ve lived through, from its improvised systems. You don’t have to be a bureaucrat whose masters’ words are law. Think of what is yours, your own, unique. What do you have to say? To people, not just Hungarians.”

“My masters’ words are not law to me,” he smiled. “They change too often. And what I would like to say to Hungarians ought to be important to everyone who thinks and feels responsibility for the collective fate.”

“Time — yours, ours, we must submit to it. Don’t let yourself be weighed down. Don’t become involved in collusions for a year or two. Your mind is full of words that are not your own. You put out your hands and they are poised to applaud. It’s not even like a circus, for force doesn’t require dexterity.”

“Stop,” he said. “Don’t torture me.”

“I?” She pretended to be surprised. “This hits home because you think the same.”

Again they heard at a distance the birdlike squeal of the beggar’s flute, until it was swallowed up by the roar of the surging water.

“What is he expecting?” Istvan gazed at the naked body growing still darker among the gnarled, half-exposed roots of the palms. The motionless fronds hung down like roosters’ tails in the sky full of trembling light.

“He is like me,” she said broodingly. “He wants to attract someone’s attention.”

“Why has he been sitting so far away?”

“He doesn’t want to be obtrusive.”

“Do you think he’s waiting for us?”

“He is a beggar, not as shameless as I am, but undoubtedly a beggar. We recognize each other at once.” She drew curves in the sand with a finger and watched vacantly as a breeze sweeping the beach pushed the sand before it grain by grain.

He turned around quickly and pulled her to him.

“Don’t talk like that. Better to hit me. It would hurt less.” He kissed her, breathing hard. “Everything I have is yours.”

“Except you yourself.” She shook her head. “I’m poorer than that beggar, for he doesn’t know what he could have, and I know what you have deprived me of, what you withhold from me.”

“I?”

“You. You don’t want me.”

He kissed her bluish eyelids and smoothed her eyebrows with his lips. He found coarse traces of sea salt on her shoulders. He tried to smother her despondency, to dispel it with tenderness, but he made his argument only to the body warmed in the sun that lazily coaxed caresses from him like a tame animal.

“Don’t,” she begged as he was uncovering her white chest and pressing it with greedy lips. “That man—”

“He is far away.” He laid her gently in a warm hollow in the sand, a white cradle. She threw out her arms and he rested his hands on the palms of hers, entwining their fingers until it hurt. They heard the distant notes of the flute, the cries of birds, and the deep restless groaning of the ocean, which crescendoed until the perpetually washed sand received its baptism by water and the foam soaking into it sizzled.

They rested side by side, languid, sleepy, as the glare of the invisible sun bore down. At the touch of each other’s hands — the affirmation that they were together, bonded in the amicable communion of bodies — a deep, peaceful joy pulsed in their blood.

“Are you going in the water?” she drawled lazily.

“I must!” He sprang up, seized her hands in a tight grip, and raised her from the sand.

Holding each other, they ran over the level strand of beach, which was licked clean by wind and water. The ocean glittered blue and silver so that it hurt the eyes. It drew back, luring them on, only to raise them on a tall wave that churned up sand from the bottom. The swelling water bathed their heated bodies with its coolness and passed them easily to the next wave. The shore withdrew imperceptibly as if at their wish. It all grew more and more distant: the cottages squatting on pilings as if on little legs, poised for flight; the palms shifting their places. They felt as if they had been cast adrift among these hills of water while the shore was slowly wandering, freed of their presence and their watchful looks. Istvan felt the light pressure of the current.

Around him he heard something like provocative applause — the clapping of wet hands — and the greedy smacking of the waves. He grew alert. Margit’s green cap jumped high, then dipped into the deep troughs. She swam calmly, boldly, a few yards ahead of him. She turned her head, frowning as the salt water made her eyes smart. He saw that she meant for him to follow her. She was testing him, courting danger.

They heard the guttural groaning of the buoy, pounded by a wave, engulfed and then floating again with a dull moan of relief.

“Margit!” he shouted. “That’s enough! We’re going back.”

His voice was snagged in the morass of sound that came from the heaving, rustling water. He was not sure that she had heard him. He swam to the buoy and grabbed the ring, which was rough with blisters of rust. A wave dragged him; it tried to wrench him around, to pull him away. He had to be careful to keep it from forcing him against the metal covered with sharp shells.

“Margit!” he cried angrily. She heard; her body shifted, hovering in the deep water. She raised a hand that glistened like a flake of tinfoil as a sign that she understood. He saw with relief that she was turning around.

Blowing water from her nose and mouth, wrinkling her nose in comic revulsion, she clung to the tilting buoy. The current tugged at them. Their bodies jostled each other.

“Have you had enough?”

“At least one of us has to have some sense,” he snapped, holding onto the bare cone of the metal float.

“You’ve lost your nerve.” She gloated like a child. “I could swim like that, and swim and swim. The water carries you. It holds you.” She patted the smooth, tilted surface of a rushing swell.

“I remember how far away the shore is.” He scuffled with the buoy, which, in an unusual burst of animation, tried to shake him like a skittish horse.

The brisk sea wind flicked grains of sand about and lashed their shoulders. The palms began to bend toward each other and their heavy wings feigned flight.

He heard the crunching of packed sand under Margit’s quick step and bit his lip. The lunatic; I wouldn’t have been able to save her. Resentment penetrated him like a chill: we both could have…I, too. I would have stayed with her. And somehow it was easier to think of that, with the water licking their feet like a warm tongue, than to think: I will sail with her to Australia.

“It’s quite a way to the hotel.” Margit sounded surprised as she came up behind him. “But it carried us away. You might have waited. You’re not very concerned about me.”

“It was you who wanted to do it. I’m hungry.” He walked faster as he saw her shadow overtake him.

“And I’m happy.” She marched along beside him, leaving deep footprints that the sea behind them leveled and erased as if reminding them that only the moment existed, so they ought to enjoy it.

He felt an almost agonizing joy that they were together — together, only the two of them, walking the narrow road the sea and the sun smeared with a shifting coat of silver, mirror-glass, and glare. The two of them, as if it were the first day of creation. They could have wandered that way for eternity. A wave rustled like a chatty friend and their steps seemed to sing.

He looked at glittering crabs no bigger than peas. When he reached out for them, they pulled in their legs and let the retreating water carry them with it, hiding them in its turbid depths. He leaned over, determined to seize them. But even as his hand covered them they burrowed quickly into the sand, and the water, as if in collusion with them, hid their traces. So he collected flat shells like rosy petals of stone flowers.

“For Mihaly?” She handed him her rubber cap.

He filled it until it creaked like a moneybag with bits of calcified sponge, broken branches of coral, and polished pebbles with marble veins. Their colors faded as soon as they dried, until he moistened them in a wave, uncertain if it was an illusion, and the sea gushed suddenly over his open hands and plucked away his booty.

For whom am I collecting them? The thought of the reckoning that would follow this happy hour welled up, tinged with bitterness. No, not for Mihaly. He had gathered the shells impulsively for his boys, or rather on their behalf, looking for treasures with their eyes since they were not with him, they were not wading in the quicksilvered water full of changing fire. A senseless impulse. In any case I will not send them this rubbish.

A wave rushed up, hissing, and scraped the shallow bottom. He turned around and shook the shells out into the retreating water, which was full of ragged wisps of rushes. He waited for an obliging swell and rinsed the cap to a glistening turquoise.

“Why did you do that?” she asked with genuine regret. “You’re so contrary.”

He looked at the oval of her face framed by the clinging coppery strands of her hair. In her eyes the sea seemed to be brimming in lustrous green. He felt a profound sadness, as if he had behaved deceitfully and she, utterly trusting, had acquiesced to it. He kissed her to comfort her as one kisses a child and whispers, Sleep peacefully.

A wide path between the water and the white beach gleamed ahead of them, smoothed by the subsiding waves. Far away they saw a twisted black shape like a tree trunk with roots that the ocean had dragged ashore, as if it were throwing off everything that could foul it internally. A dark gray mass of shriveled wild plants, seaweed, and rotted boards with tar stains gave off a rank odor. Two crows pecked at a jellyfish the size of a washbowl, picking out clots of darkening tissue.

“Look.” She stopped, pointing with an outstretched hand.

Half embedded in the packed sand lay the blackened body of a drowned man. His skin was cracked. His hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes were overgrown with rust-colored clots of salt. His eyes were sunken as if the sun had blinded him. The incoming tide had washed up the corpse and thrown a garland of little grasses on it. A few flies hovered close to it; their tiny wings glittered like mica, vibrating with a monotonous hum, but they did not light. Foam spattered high.

“Don’t touch him!” Margit exclaimed. “The water isn’t taking him away. The hotel must be notified.”

“He looks like a piece of rotted wood. He’s not disgusting at all.” He saw that she was startled and repelled. “He has no legs. Exactly like a fashionable sculpture.”

“Stop.”

“How many days was he carried by the waves? He is not loathsome; he connects us to the earth we walk on. How astonishingly quickly he became a thing, no longer a human being.”

The moaning of a gong drifted on gusts of wind like a knell: the hotel was summoning guests for lunch. Margit walked rapidly as if she wanted to run away but the half-obliterated form were pulling her back. She imagined that the corpse had changed position, that the drowned man was trying to rise and follow them. But the hard-packed wet sand had sucked him halfway in, imprisoned him, and would not let him go.

“We will never know what happened to him. I cannot think of him only as a decaying material object. There is the imperative to attend to him, to bury the dead,” she reminded him in an undertone.

“To burn them,” he corrected her. “There has been no storm for the last week. He must have drowned, or died of natural causes and been thrown overboard.”

“But then they would have wrapped him in a winding sheet and attached a stone.”

“They would have had to have a sheet.” He shrugged. “He was naked. There wasn’t even a loincloth.”

Another large jellyfish, pecked to shreds, gleamed on the sand. Farther on lay several, then a dozen or more — a burial ground for masses of fibers like short-lived fossils under domes, all dissolving in the sun to a sticky, stinking soup.

They turned and took a shortcut across the beach, which was glowing with heat, wading to their ankles in white sand like the ash from a fire that had just gone out. Turning away from the shifting views of the ocean and of the bay, which seemed to be covered with fragments of mirrors, they pushed wearily along toward the pavilion. The hotel staff were setting tables on the shady veranda; through a sunny chink white napkins flashed, artistically folded. The melody played by the Hindu sitting among palm roots led them along. Women in faded saris with flat baskets on their heads passed them, bowing and moving with small steps toward the sea, their silver bracelets tinkling.

When they reached their cottage, the slender, boyish servant hurried out to meet them, smiling broadly and handing them bathrobes. Margit went into the shower first; the water, warmed by the sun, dissolved the salt that had pasted her eyelashes together.

“Come quickly! We seem to have run short of water again,” she called. “Use it while you can.”

When he walked out to the veranda, dressed in linen trousers and a light shirt, Margit was chatting with Daniel. In a simple green dress with white edging she looked girlish; her red hair, tied with a white ribbon, flowed onto her right shoulder, and her skin was rosy with sunburn.

“Smugglers of people won’t turn back for one dead man, especially a foreigner,” the young man told her with incomprehensible exhilaration. “They dissect him so he is unrecognizable and throw him into the sea.”

“Who attends to human remains?” Istvan pointed to the flashing silver crescent that was the bay.

“They will call from the hotel. A policeman will come and order the elders of the village to burn the body. He himself will not touch it, for it is not known what the man died of — perhaps plague — and he is educated and knows what bacteria are.” The young man’s white teeth showed in a winsome smile.

The blistering heat from the sand burned through their sandals and seemed to scorch Margit’s calves. As they reached the central pavilion, Istvan saw that Daniel was hanging the rinsed bathing suits on the railing. The air quivered as it rose; the melody of flutes mingled with the hiss of grasshoppers, the buzz of swirling flies, and the rippling fronds in the palm grove in a mellow symphony of holiday leisure. When they walked into the delightful shade of the hotel veranda, it seemed to Istvan that the opulence of summer was dripping like a honeycomb when a breeze fluttered the pages of the big calendar and revealed a date: December twenty-third.

“Pardon my boldness, but sir and madam are very careless.” The maitre d’hotel, dressed in starched white linen, was leaning over them. “I was observing through field glasses. You swim out too far.”

“Are you thinking of sharks?” Terey said, making light of the man’s warning. “We have become accustomed to your sign: Beware of sharks. Well — what of it? After all, we came for the swimming.”

“It is difficult to return to the shore.” The maitre d’ was still bending over them worriedly. “The current pulls hard. I was not even thinking of sharks. They have never yet attacked a white person.”

“If not to the shore, surely we could swim to a fishing boat. Its men would pull us out.”

“Unfortunately, they would not.” The man’s concern was not to be turned aside as he summoned the waiters to serve the meal. “If the sea takes a victim it desires, it also reaches for a member of the family of anyone who rescues him. After someone is drowned the catch is always better. The sea shows its gratitude. The fishermen would not rescue you, for they want to be in the good graces of the element from which they draw their livelihood. They believe this. They want to propitiate the sea.”

“Nothing is as you imagine,” Margit sighed, but just then her attention was drawn to the dish placed on the table and the beer, poured from cans, that left a cool fog on their tall glasses. “And perhaps that sadhu who was playing the gourd fife is not a beggar.”

“I don’t mind saying that it would have been just my kind of gaucherie to give him alms,” Istvan fretted. “I wanted to, but not in my bathing suit.”

“That is fortunate. He is a very rich gentleman. This hotel belongs to him, and so do a large number of fishing boats. He has warehouses for coconut meat and houses in the port.”

“And he sits by the sea and plays like a pauper waiting for pennies.”

“That prayer of his is a hymn of worship to the sea. He sees divinity in it.” He explained this as he would to children who comprehend none of the wisdom of adults.

When the waiters had left the table, Margit exchanged greetings with two elderly Englishwomen in the other corner of the veranda and asked them if they liked the place. Looking indifferently around the vast blue sky, they answered that its attractiveness, like that of the other places in the brochures, had been exaggerated. It was true that the weather was good, but it was empty and cheerless. Immediately after the holidays they were going to Colombo.

“Why did you get involved with them?” he said, quelling her friendly impulse. “We won’t be able to get rid of them. Eat.”

“I don’t think they’re happy.”

“They have bank accounts. They travel. They do as they like.”

“Too late. Everything came too late: wealth, acquaintance with the world, even the pleasures of the table. They don’t digest their food well; I heard them ask for rice gruel. But they hope to find a chink through which to escape their age. It distresses them. They don’t want to resign themselves to it. Sad.”

“And they are funny in those girlish dresses, with garish lipstick. Pearls on turkeys’ necks. They follow every Indian man with their eyes. Don’t they see how they look?”

They walked toward the blue cottage.

“They’re terribly unhappy,” she said with conviction. “They don’t believe in love even if they once experienced it. By now they only trust money.”

“And that is dreadful.” Contemptuously he kicked a coconut shell that rolled like a monkey’s skull. “They buy men’s attentions.”

She was silent, stepping lightly along the firmly tamped path covered with streaks of sparkling sand. She shook her head reproachfully and whispered almost to herself, “Everyone buys love somehow. I do, too.”

He whirled around, took her by her arms and looked deep into her eyes, where he saw the lustrous reflection of the clear sky.

“Is it so bad for you, being with me?”

“No. You know that very well,” she answered soberly. “I want only one thing: that we go to Australia and this seesawing finally ends.”

They stood in the full glare of the sun. The warm wind ruffled Margit’s skirt. Curving, feather-like palm fronds swayed above her red hair. He felt the pulsing of her blood, the fragrance of her skin, and the slow, infuriatingly calm hum and rumble of the ocean.

“Margit, you’re wise, after all.”

She gazed with anguish into his dark eyes. He looked forthrightly, defenselessly back at her. She saw the heavy line of his eyebrows, his tanned forehead, his windblown hair.

“Wise?” she repeated reflectively. “Do you mean that I feel nothing? When someone drowns, he calls for help, he thrashes about. Even when he goes under, you can see his hand grasping at the air. I know, Istvan, that you would rush to rescue him. To rescue anyone. But you don’t notice me. I eat, I drink, I sunbathe on the beach, and I sleep with you, but I’m drowning. Understand, Istvan! I’m drowning.”

He was silent. He hung his head. Their shadows joined and formed a single silhouette on the white sand at their feet.

“I understand.”

“No. At least spare me that. If you understood, you would not leave me in uncertainty. After all, I dragged you to the very tip of India. My strength is exhausted. Let’s go to Colombo. Decide on that one step.”

He looked at her with profound tenderness.

“That’s why you attached yourself to the English ladies. They are flying there.” He patted her and whispered, “Don’t distress yourself. I’ll go with you.”

Though it was a beautiful day, her eyes were clouded with sadness.

“You must not talk that way. You know it isn’t true. I am buying you. You have my body; you forget about me. You say, You are good, you are wise, you love me. And then it goes against me. You want me to end it because you don’t have the courage. I know what lies behind all those reasons you invent: Ilona, the boys. I only veil her at the moment because I am here.”

“Please understand.”

“I understand more than you.” She pushed his hands away. “That’s why this is hard for me.”

“But I’m with you,” he cried, clenching his fists in a gesture of powerlessness.

“Do you think that a condemned person is much happier if the sentencing is delayed?” she said in an undertone, turning her head toward the ocean, which advanced tirelessly toward the white beaches.

He took her, resistant and upset as she was, and kissed her temple. Gradually she relaxed and, leaning forward a little, let him lead her toward the cottage. He felt a tremor run through her; her lips were hot and dry. The sun, he thought. We lay in the sun too much. It seemed to him that she had a slight fever.

They drew near the little blue house in silence, reconciled, leaning on each other. Through the open door came the slow tapping of typewriter keys. They stood still, smiling indulgently. Turning his head back and forth, utterly absorbed, the attendant was striking the keyboard with two fingers. The breeze lightly ruffled the bundled mosquito netting. Daniel was alert; he looked around and, startled, jumped away from the typewriter.

“I am very sorry.” He cringed like a dog that has gotten into mischief and now waits for a hiding.

“What are you writing?” Istvan looked over his shoulder, but the boy quickly pulled the paper out of the machine.

“Nothing. Really, nothing.”

“Show us.”

It looked like a song written in English, not polished but fresh and full of feeling. Its subject was the star of Bethlehem that shone in the eye of an ox and on the silver neck of an ass. Their breath warmed the bare, helpless feet of the baby. The animals sympathized with him, for they knew the world: the stony roads, the long journeys in the dust and heat, the blows falling on the back, the lashes with the whip and the burdens too heavy to bear, the premonitions of death when even a damp sponge does not moisten the cracked lips. The few beasts pity the newborn who desires to conquer the world with love.

“Well, what next?” Istvan asked, surprised.

“Only wishes. Joyous holidays—” he was embarrassed. “I wanted to lay the letter on the table with the present for memsab. It was going to be a surprise.”

He pulled out of his shirt a long strand of tiny opalescent shells, well matched and strenuously polished. He laid them on Margit’s outstretched hand. The necklace retained the warmth of his skin.

“Who taught you the song?”

“No one, sahib. I composed it myself. I am sorry for disturbing the machine. I thought it would be more elegant this way.” His gentle eyes were soft with humility, his long, dark fingers entwined pleadingly. “I wanted to prepare a gift, for I will be receiving something from you, after all,” he explained with childlike candor.

Terey was ashamed; he had not thought of a gift for Daniel.

“And what would you prefer? A gift, or money to buy yourself something you want?”

Daniel raised his shapely head. He looked troubled. Margit shook the string of shells softly; they chattered and tinkled. Outside the window the ocean was keening. White streaks of foam rushed toward the shore and dissolved on invisible beaches. Dunes swept by the sea wind glinted uneasily. Now and then the dry rattle of palm fronds, as if someone were ripping oilcloth, drifted into the room.

“Of course Daniel wants both.” She dispelled the young man’s worry. “You will give him a tie — the mango-colored one. And a few rupees, as you said.”

“You will go to church? At midnight there is a Christmas mass. Many fishermen will come. And there will be a crèche in which everything moves. The people have been working on it all year.”

“Let’s go, shall we?” Margit suggested. “There is nothing to do here. And you’re probably tired of this solitude — just the pair of us.”

“We’ll see.” He felt trapped and defensive. He had forgotten, completely forgotten. Was this a subtle invitation from the One he had pushed from his thoughts, driven away from the sunny beach and shut into the chapel, as a troublesome suitcase is left in a baggage room? “And where is it?” he asked rather coldly.

“Not far from here. Beyond the village, in the palm grove. And the priest is from Europe. A real monk with a beard.”

“Of what nationality?”

Daniel’s long eyelashes fluttered helplessly and he threw up his hands.

“I don’t know. White.”

Margit said encouragingly, “We’ll go and we’ll see.”

Outside the window figures appeared with flat baskets on their heads. They spoke in husky voices. Daniel answered them, and announced with a smile of satisfaction that displayed his charming dimples, “They have brought the star. I ordered a star of the sea for you from the fishermen. I told them to catch a big one. I can dry it so it will not lose its color. You can fasten it to the hood of your car as the English do when they drive away.”

Leaning on the railing of the veranda, they could see into the baskets. Crabs half a meter across, tied together and strewn with seaweed, fumbled with their legs. Yellow cuttlefish swelled like living money bags, rippling arms that seemed both animal and vegetable. Like the leaves of the century plant, Istvan thought. Sometimes from under the seaweed a goggling lashless eye flashed disquietingly.

“They ask you to buy lobsters, sir. They can prepare them in the hotel kitchen. Freshly caught; live.” He took them carefully in his hands and raised them to show how the tails fluttered in their hard shells. “Not costly, sir. A very good dish.”

The women stood still, not even raising their faces toward Istvan. They seemed to be intermediaries. The glare of the sun fell on the shallow baskets and kindled rainbow-tinted points of light on the wet scales of the fish and the crabs’ shells. It flashed on bare breasts, empty, sucked-out bags hanging from under saris carelessly thrown on.

“Surely you will not force me to eat these appalling things.” Margit stepped back. “Especially after what we saw on the shore.”

They raised their heads and looked at the long expanse of beach. A smudge of smoke rose from among the dunes: a body was being burned. A tall man swathed in white stood there, guarding the unseen fire. The funereal chirping of flutes floated back to them. “The sadhu apologizes to the sea,” Daniel said drowsily and began, without aversion, to rake through the seaweed with his hand. He selected lobsters and held a whole cluster by their long antennae.

In the silence they heard the crunch of the shells, the rattle of the angry tails. The intonation of the sea was fainter, as if it were farther from the land. Squeezing Margit’s hand tenderly, Istvan whispered, “To your next holidays — in Australia.”

“I want to be there sooner,” she replied impatiently. “And with you. Well, please — say it again. It’s terribly important.”

In a low-necked white dress accented by a necklace of irregularly shaped hunks of turquoise that complemented the color of her eyes, she was captivating. Her hair glowed with coppery highlights like tiny living, shifting flames from a candle; it cast a shadow on her forehead. A light shawl with gold threads was slipping from her arms.

“You know that’s what I want, too,” he whispered, gazing into her cool eyes, which were now sparkling with joy.

“But say it again,” she insisted, leaning toward him as if drawn by an irresistible force.

“With you. With you.”

On a silver tray sat a dish with leftover shells and the crisp red husk of a lobster. Its antennae threw a darting shadow on the white of the tablecloth, while the painstakingly arranged claws the color of coral wallowed among leaves of curly kale. They ate filet of turkey breast with fragrant nutmeg stuffing, sweet and biting, and pineapple salad, washing it down with chilled wine. Far away over a sea burnished with shifting light a row of golden points glided along: a passenger ship making its way south. It was sailing to where Margit wanted to go. In the quiet they followed it with their eyes until it was lost in the darkness.

“I would give anything for you to be happy.”

“I will be. You know very well that it depends on you.”

Under palm fronds the cheery English ladies raised their glasses, forgot for a moment the coolly expectant young Indians in white dinner jackets who were leaning solicitously over them, and called to Margit, “Merry Christmas!”

Istvan and Margit lifted their glasses. In the dark, outside the windows that opened toward the bay, the Angelus bell rang with an insistent, rapid rhythm. As if it had summoned him, Daniel appeared on the steps of the terrace. Margit noticed with satisfaction that he had put on the new tie, the gift from Istvan.

“Do you really want to go?” Istvan said, still resisting. “Wouldn’t it be better to go to the beach in front of us, to the ocean?”

“No. No.” She shuddered with aversion. “Let’s see the chapel and how they pray.”

When they were walking away from the radiantly lit hotel veranda, the night seemed milder. The sand glowed and a soft breath of warm wind drifted from the dunes. Fireflies flew over tufts of dry grasses. The bell urged them on, clanging beyond the palm grove.

“I told the priest you would be coming,” Daniel said with a self-satisfied air. “He was very glad. This way, please. Be careful of the roots. The path takes a turn.”

Between the gently sloping trunks of the coconut palms the sky teemed with stars — large stars that glittered nervously and hardly pierced the dusk. Now they could see the faithful, women and children, their figures moving noiselessly among the trees. Only a little lamp suspended from a black wrist made a splash of color on a sari donned for the holiday. Little lights arrived, converged, and gave off a soft glow through the open gates.

“I did not believe that you would come.” A friendly voice spoke up and a tall figure detached itself from the wall. Istvan felt the hearty, coarse pressure of a workman’s hand, a hand accustomed to wield the ax and shovel. “It is rare that any of the tourists drop in. They prefer the sea.”

They stood before the chapel gate. By the warm twinkle of the candles they could see a gray uncombed beard, a sharp glance from under bushy brows. The priest wore an orange linen habit — the color worn by Buddhist monks — and sandals on his bare feet.

“You are from England?”

“No. Madam is from Australia and I am from Hungary.”

The monk held Terey’s hand as if he were afraid he would wrest it away and escape. “Good heavens! What a surprise!” he said in a choked voice, and suddenly began to speak rapidly in Hungarian. “I also am a Hungarian, from Kolozsvár. A Salesian. I have been here since 1912.”

“Hungarians were still not free then.”

“Hungarians were always free. Only the kingdom…Are you an emigrant?”

“No. I am here temporarily.”

The priest looked him hard in the face. “And can you return there?”

“Can’t you?”

“That depends on the will of my superiors. They are accustomed to having me here, and I am reconciled to it. I had not thought that God would give me such joy on the holiday. I can speak in my native language! I even taught a pair of boys here. They picked up the words like a recording tape, but they are not Hungarians. It was as if I had taught parrots.”

“Are we detaining you, father?”

“No. Father Thomas Maria de Ribeira, an Indian from Goa, is saying mass. I will hold one later for the fishermen when they return.”

“What are you speaking?” Margit moved closer to them; they had almost forgotten her. “Is the priest Hungarian?”

“Yes.”

“Well — you are glad!”

“Yes. Don’t be jealous. Have you been in contact with our embassy, father?”

“No. They sent me the registration document, but I put it aside and there it lies.”

“And your passport?”

“Everyone knows me here. No one asks about documents. I have no intention of going anywhere. And for the last road no passport is needed. Heavens — what happiness, to speak Hungarian! Are you man and wife?”

“No.”

“But you are a Catholic — you came here—” the priest was troubled. He raked his beard with his hand.

“Yes.”

“Perhaps you both would like to join—”

“We have just finished dinner. It is impossible. Perhaps another time.”

They stood in silence for a moment. The monk seemed ashamed of his insistence. “I am sorry,” he said. “I would so have liked to hear a confession in our language. How I would enjoy being an instrument of grace to a countryman! Here — in India. It is no accident that has brought you to me.”

Margit stood leaning against the door frame, peering into the church. Warm light fell on her cheeks, which were tinted rose over her tan, and kindled on her hair. From inside came singsong voices repeating the litany, and the spicy smell of the warm throng.

Women entered, apologizing for their tardiness. They bent gently and touched the worn threshold with their foreheads, kissing their fingertips as they placed them on the floor. They threw lace mantillas over their hair, glancing at Margit as if she were not well brought up, then slipped inside.

“Then you will be able to see our Budapest?”

For a moment he did not answer.

“You know nothing about the events of November, father? About Kádár?”

“Who is he?”

“Or about the revolution, the fighting in Budapest?”

“No. I have no radio. I do not read the newspapers. But tell me: what happened there?”

Where to begin? How to tell him in a few sentences? Suddenly Istvan lost the will to speak. One would have to begin with the entire history of the last forty years. “Well, there is peace at the moment,” he said bitterly.

“And I was so upset. Praise God! Better not to read the papers; the reporters write such screaming headlines now, you begin to think there will be war tomorrow. And in the meantime nothing so terrible is happening. Nothing. And that’s good.”

Deep in the chapel a bell tinkled. The old man turned around and dropped heavily to his knees. He waved an admonitory hand, cutting off the conversation, urging them to fix their attention on the altar. Over the kneeling crowd Istvan saw, between the dark fingers of the priest, the golden flame of the chalice and the fragile white disk.

Women crept forward on their knees, suddenly stood erect, then sank down with their foreheads to the floor, hunched, breathless. A crowd of figures draped in white surged to the altar. The men shuffled on bare feet; the bundled fabric that secured their dhotis swung to the rhythm of their walk, falling like loose skirts below their knees.

Are they truly aware of what is taking place here? Do they understand the mystery? I believe. I know — but I have cut myself off, I am not being nourished from the source. In that moment he was stricken at the thought that he was excluded from this community, that he was under indictment. He himself was the prosecutor and judge. As long as I am with Margit, there is no forgiveness.

The Lord will not afflict his servant, will not retract the word that saves for eternity.

He raised his hand and covered his face, which was contorted with stinging remorse and anger at himself. Indeed, I knew all this, or should have known, if I feel so superior to fellow Catholics from this village in Kerala, fishermen, gatherers of coconut meat and fiber, peasant women wading in rice fields, girls bending under the burden of little brothers and sisters. Each of them could come here in a trustful spirit for the blessed bread; I alone cannot, as long as…Of his own will he condemned himself to estrangement, he abandoned them: yet another betrayal under the pretext of gaining freedom.

Margit slid closer to him and leaned gently against his arm. He felt her touch through his light clothing and his pain intensified. “That was beautiful,” she whispered. Her hair tickled his neck.

Does she comprehend nothing? She looks at the altar and the praying crowd as if it were a pageant full of light and color. And I will not try to explain it to her; I would have to say something detrimental to myself. He exists — we are even prepared to reconcile ourselves to that — so He can serve as a cane to lean on and then put in a corner so we have both hands free to seize the world. To visit in church as in a museum. We admire the statuary, the stained glass, conceived in a transport of humble adoration. His memory was bursting with images from tours of churches; he saw the upturned heads of people gazing at the frescoed vaults, hardly hearing the smooth recitation of the guide, who was extolling the choreographed gestures of the baroque saints or the agonizing tension of the dark figure at the moment of death.

He pulled Margit close, as if he were afraid he would push her away. She turned toward him trustfully, tenderly. She is good, he thought.

“Are you here for long?” the missionary queried in English. The light that fell on the open gates made a yellow blur on the edge of his frayed cassock and his bare feet in worn sandals.

“Two weeks. We would be happy to visit you.” She extended a hand. “It is so peaceful here. And it would be so nice for Istvan to speak his own language.”

“Will you come?” The monk spoke directly to Istvan, for he was troubled by his silence.

“No,” he said in an undertone. Ignoring Margit, he turned around and plunged into the deep twilight among the palms, where the elongated figures of Keralan fishermen disappeared amid whispers and the light jingle of bracelets. The warm light of swaying lanterns slowly floated away.

“What is it?” There was a note of anxiety in the girl’s voice.

“Why did you drag me here?” he burst out, knowing his anger was unjustified. “I had a feeling it would go badly.”

“I thought it would give you pleasure. What did he say? What did he want from you?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s my problem.” He took her hand and raised it to his lips. “I’m sorry.”

“What is it all about?”

He turned so unexpectedly that she almost bumped into him. “Do you really want to know?”

The tone of his voice gave her pause. “If it’s something painful,” she said hesitantly, “perhaps not tonight. But I’m with you. I can share the burden. It won’t overwhelm me.”

“We have to talk about this sometime.” His voice was subdued. The attendant walked a little way behind them; he knew the paths, so he put out the lantern, but his finger played with the button. Bright patches of light exposed rough palm trunks running toward the sky, clumps of dry grass, and dusty, almost black branches of shrubbery.

“After all, there is always — a solution.” He could hear weariness and a drowsy sadness in her voice. “But don’t demand that of me. Let’s leave it to fate, like the Hindus.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If I weren’t alive…”

He clamped his fingers on her arm and shook it desperately. “Don’t even think of such a thing!”

He kissed her forehead and her eyes, pressing her eyelids hard with his lips and ruffling her eyebrows. Her cheeks were flushed and salty, her mouth dry under her lipstick.

“My life,” he breathed, rocking her as she clung to him.

“And Ilona?” she whispered. “Please, Istvan, at least don’t lie to yourself. So many times we’ve talked about the future without taking her into account, as if she were already dead. Well — be brave enough to think that I might leave and release you.”

“I don’t want to. I can’t.”

She trembled as if a chill had run through her. A salty breeze from the sea carried the smell of rotting heaps of plants and wet sand. They heard the reluctant drumming of the waves. She pressed his hand to her lips and cheek. He felt her tears.

“Here is the path, sahib.” White light spurted between the bristling dry grasses.

“Go first, Daniel,” he ordered, letting go of Margit.

“You did not see the crèche, the three kings, the elephants. They shake their trunks,” he said proudly, speaking very low. “After mass the villagers turn the winch and all the figures walk around the manger. The star shines. Saint Joseph smokes a hookah just like a Hindu.”

“Madam doesn’t feel well.”

“I have a little fever,” she admitted, licking her dry lips.

“Memsab lay in the sun too much,” the servant murmured admonishingly. “Too much time in the sea. The sun and water sap your strength. Sahib should not allow it.”

They stepped in among the dunes and floundered in the deep sand, which squeaked under their feet. The white eye of a lighthouse winked far away in the dark. Long ridges of talus glimmered like rotted wood in the breeze. Daniel put out the light. The darkness was not impenetrable; in the sand, washed to a sheen, they could see their half-effaced footprints.

They made their way, unhurried, toward the orange-tinted windows of the hotel restaurant. The guttural voices of the bay drowned out the barely audible tinkle of music from the pavilion. They caught the blare of a saxophone, the syncopated beat of percussion, like lost radio signals. Daniel walked confidently and, it seemed, faster. He took off his sandals and held them in his hand. Margit followed suit. Under its surface the sand had not cooled; it gave under the pressure of their feet, and warmed them.

It seemed to Istvan that this had happened before — that he knew this landscape, obscured by darkness and sprinkled with glassy stardust, knew the figure of the guide outlined by the warm glow of the distant lamps. Perhaps he had waited in a dream for a friendly hand to lead him away from his fears, to point out a refuge. He took Margit’s hand. She trembled.

“Are you cold?”

“I’m sad,” she answered thoughtfully. “I’m sorry. I’m not good company.”

They were near the cottages, whose rear walls rested on the steep bank; their fronts were raised on poles that faced motionless waves of gray sand. In the windows, as if in black mirrors, whirled a rain of stars. The shrill voices of cicadas pursued them like alarm bells. They bored into the ears; they were a torment.

“What is it, sir?” Daniel said suddenly, startled. He lit the lantern, but it was only a hindrance; his eyes were accustomed to the dark. A large animal leaped from among the dunes and ran in a zigzag until it was lost in the shadows. The cicadas shrieked madly.

“It was a man.” The beam of the servant’s lantern fell on a partly dissolved footprint with a small circular hollow around it. Wet grains of sand clung together. Istvan felt the moisture with his fingers as he checked for blood.

“He came out of the water.”

“Leave it be.” Margit gripped his sleeve. “He ran away and we have peace. What concern is he of yours? Please — let’s go back to the house.”

But the footprint lured them. Daniel caught it in a white stream of light. “He ran on all fours like a dog,” he said. “He must be here somewhere.”

“Don’t be afraid, Margit. We’ll be back.”

They walked quietly, alert for the slightest sound. The wheezing of the sea quieted; there was the blast of a trumpet. The cicadas marked the men’s passing with a long cadenza of rasping. The declivities in the sand disappeared and they found themselves on parched, gritty ground with sparse dry grass that prickled like fish bones.

“Wait,” Margit called, putting on her sandals.

Istvan stopped. He saw the lantern’s beam brush against their cottage, lick at the window, fall on the veranda steps, and creep among the piles that held up the floor. He heard Daniel’s triumphant call.

“Sahib, we have him! He was hiding here.”

He left the girl and came running. He squatted by the servant, resting both hands on the sand. In the circle of harsh light, squeezed between the piles and the sloping hill, a Hindu in wet rags caked with sand was cowering. His teeth showed from under his short mustache like a snarling dog’s. He did not cover his eyes. Holding a pebble tightly in his hand, he uttered a throaty cry.

“Did you understand what he said?”

“Yes. He asks us not to kill him,” Daniel answered in amazement.

“Tell him who we are. Ask where he came from.”

Daniel repeated this in an earnest voice and began serving as interpreter. Margit sat beside them and gazed at the Hindu, who turned his head away when the cone of light was fixed on him.

“Turn that off,” Istvan said.

“No need.” She restrained Daniel. “He’s blind.”

“He ordered me to swear by Durga that we will do him no harm, that we will not give him away.” The servant’s voice shook with excitement. “He escaped from a boat and swam toward the noise on the shore. He thought we were chasing him. Madam doctor is right: he is blind. He begs us not to kill him, for he saw nothing. He says that he has a rich brother who will repay us if we hide him.”

The appeals to take the man into their cottage went on and on. Margit sent Daniel to the hotel kitchen for a bowl of rice. The blind man’s eyes, covered with a film, gave his gaunt, tanned face a look of dull stupefaction. Finally he crawled out, admitting that he was hungry. He did not lunge for the food, but asked for water, washed his hands, rinsed his mouth and spat on the threshold, which he found by feeling for it with his toes like a monkey. He sat crosslegged, placed the bowl of rice between his thighs and ate slowly, listening to the far-off sonorous beating of the sea and the band from the hotel. Daniel crouched in front of him like a dog before a hedgehog, uncertain whether to attack him or acknowledge him as a member of the household.

“Ask why his brother doesn’t take more of an interest in him if he is so wealthy.”

“He is a singer, sahib. He composes verse and recites ancient poetry from memory. Among us such people are respected. He wanted to reach Ceylon, to go to the temple of Buddha. Everywhere people feed him and give him lodging for the night. He is a true sadhu,” he explained proudly. “He was in Benares. His brother does not restrain him; he goes his own way. He asks us to send a telegram to Bombay tomorrow and his brother will surely come.”

“Can he recover his sight?” Istvan leaned toward Margit. “You wanted to truly help at least one person in India. You have an opportunity if his brother turns up here. You can advise him as to how this man might be cured.”

“There would have to be an operation. He would see a little. I’m not a fortuneteller, only a doctor. I would have to do a thorough examination.”

“He asks for a few bottles, a pot of water, and two forks,” Daniel announced. “He will sing for us.”

“Where will I get bottles at night?” Istvan shrugged.

“I will look for them, sahib. I will bring some from the hotel kitchen. I will find them.” Daniel slipped away into the night.

Seven empty wine bottles were placed before the blind singer. With startling dexterity he filled them with water to various levels, struck them with a fork held flatwise, and, listening attentively to each tone, established a scale of crystalline notes. When he passed the fork over the glass, barely touching it, the bottles sang like a xylophone. He checked the positions of the bottles with his hands and tapped them as if to assure himself that he could strike them accurately. At last, now in command of himself, he gave Daniel an instruction.

“He will sing, and I will translate. He begs that you will ask no questions, for he himself does not know if he can do it. It will be the voice of the dead.”

“Do you want to listen to this?” Istvan asked Margit, but she only put on a shawl and nodded. She sat still, leaning hard against him. Suddenly she quivered.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.” She put a finger to her lips.

“Among us it is said: someone is walking on my grave,” he said, whispering, for piercing trills were rising with the fork’s firm strokes and the singer, inclining his head, began his monotonous recitative. Daniel translated it in a colorless voice, hesitating now and then and searching for an English word, trying not to fall behind the blind man’s cadences. Deep shadows appeared on the walls; between the pure chiming tones of the glass came the moaning of the sea and the boisterous sound of the band. But little by little the whole world began to recede while nothing remained but words like the wailing of mourners.

“The Kingdom of Lanka, the music of streams that never dry, trees with the smell of wet mangoes. Reviving rain lashes the great banana leaves; bunches of fruit smooth as a maiden’s skin await the hands of the hungry. On the palms, coconuts bump like young goats butting each other. In the fertile mud, ears of rice tickle the hand like cats’ whiskers. Birds fill the air and the sea rings with the scales of fish. Gods walk on the earth of Lanka, the island predestined for the just, given in possession to the meek and industrious…Land of plenty.

“They who escaped the knife of the Muslim, they who moved among burned houses, looked for work; they whose eyes cried out all their tears and were empty as the palm of a beggar. Fathers, feigning hope, went away every morning so as not to hear the weeping of hungry children timidly asking if they would eat today. They went away, they fled as far away as they could. They sat in the shade, grew feeble and dozed. Then the palm trees murmured in their ears; a hand combed tufts of rice ears, the mango touched the dry, cracked lip, and they dreamed of the Kingdom of Lanka, the land of plenty beyond the sea.

“A stranger came by night, and they whispered long, taking counsel while the children slept. The news went round that there was a ship that would hurry over the sea to the Kingdom of Lanka.

“They would only find rescue if they could pay. They counted long and carefully. Ornaments stripped from women passed from hand to hand: hoops of silver wire, gold coins on chains ripped like leaves from bosoms, lighter than butterflies’ wings. Little, too little gold to pay for the journey to Paradise.

“They touched the heads of their sleeping children. They chose victims. They sold their daughters as slaves to houses with no doors, only curtains of clattering bamboo rods, houses in which a woman does not sleep. Their sons they sold to peasants who felt their arms and inspected their teeth with their fingers, as they do with oxen. Their money, their treasure — and you could have held it in your fist — they gave the nocturnal visitor. He laid out a receipt which they could not read, but they trusted him, they believed. It was not the first load or the last of pilgrims longing for paradise, for the island of Lanka.

“I wanted to sail with them. To walk in the footsteps of Siddhartha, the prince who did not fear death. They did not want to take money from me. They knew me; I paid with a song. I listened to their quick breathing. I touched their hearts. We were led by night; the grass clutched at our feet, the branches snagged our hands as if to call: Do not go! But I was with them. In front of me, women carried their little children; men marched behind me with bundles of rice and clothing. We walked into water that slowly rose. I held the hand of a friendly wanderer bound, like me, for the land of plenty, the Kingdom of Lanka.

“‘Do not fear.’ They took me by the arms. ‘It is not deep here and the boat can be seen.’ I was not afraid. I had already heard the wave boom against the ship. I was pulled into its wooden bottom and tucked tightly into the passengers’ quarters. I felt the warmth of their bodies; they were overcome by sleep. The sail, swollen with the sea wind, creaked on the mast. The helmsman took me under his care. He ordered me to sing about the battle Hanuman waged with a pair of giants. The yardarm whimpered. I smelled the odors of tar and of the beneficent sea. When I was silent, they gave me milk from young coconuts. They fed me rice in a leaf twisted like a buffalo’s horn. They were good to me; they asked only that I sing again of the land of Lanka.

“We sailed two days, for I felt the sun’s breath, and the third night, when the gulls squealed like wakened children to greet the dawn, the helmsman ordered us to disembark. They tested with a pole; the water around the ship was shallow, the land not far. They left the ship quietly. They lowered themselves into the waves without the clink of a bracelet, blessing in whispers those who had smuggled them to paradise, to the Kingdom of Lanka.”

The glassy clink of the bottles struck with metal made Margit shudder. The hoarse voice with its cry for the country all the hungry so longed for was unnerving. The singer seemed to forget his hearers; his unerring strokes fell harder on the bottles, and with the uplifted face and white eyes of a statue he lamented to heaven and the distant sea.

Daniel crouched beside him and translated in a whisper. He did not hinder the blind man, but conveyed the sense of the cry which reverberated in them both — as if they were remembering it — in a secret language. Margit’s hot, dry fingers pressed Istvan’s hand hard, like the fingers of a child who hides behind its mother so as not to see something frightening. The music in the restaurant stopped; they did not notice at all. Only the voices of the ocean seemed nearer, as if they had been called as witnesses.

“I wanted to go down into the water, but they held me back. They ordered me to be silent. They had been good to me, after all; I believed that they would take me to the shore. The ship sailed lightly without people. And then the first moan floated from over the waves. The betrayal was discovered: there was deep water farther on, and the shore was distant — the shore, or perhaps smoke. I heard weeping, shrieking, pleading. Already the sharks were cutting the wave that surged toward them. They beat as if with oars. They snorted like oxen. They smacked like pigs at the trough. So the partners blotted out the traces, drowning the cry that died away beneath the sky of Lanka.”

Suddenly the light blinked and the glare began to leak from the bulb. It was only a red wire; at last it went out. Istvan wanted to go for a candle but Margit held him lightly with her arms around his neck.Then he remembered that to the singer, darkness was no hindrance.

The bottles jangled like gravel on a windowpane as he hit them. He struck without hesitation; the chords sang in the dusk. All at once they were overtaken by a dreadful suspicion that the tale they were hearing was true. The night encircled the walls of the cottage, murmuring and humming. Among the distant stars the lighthouse blindly waved its yellow sword like a giant at bay.

“Before a wave extinguished the last voice, the helmsman paced up and down, looking out. They must have watched the spectacle; I thanked the gods that I was blind. I heard the sharks thrashing. I felt death near. I did not fear dying, only the rending of the body that is alive, pulsing with blood, terrified, naked and defenseless. Those who had been devoured had paid for their faults. Whimpering from ignorance, free of the past, they would be born anew in the beautiful land of Lanka. I waited for death — and the helmsman demanded that I sing to them. The vessel quivered in the fair wind and the lines creaked. They gave me fish to eat; no one refused the water that smelled of mildew.

“That night I heard the bargaining for my head. The helmsman swore he would not betray a blind man. They landed here and threw a stone instead of an anchor. When I heard the sounds of the shore amid the clatter of the surf, I waited for night. The water carried me onto the hardpacked sand, but the sea, not satiated with victims, suddenly changed its mind and dragged me back. Nevertheless I emerged and ran through the dunes in fear that it was pursuing me. And you are the first I have told of that flight to the earthly paradise — of the people who will never accuse the living, for they, reborn, are unaware of the fate that met them at the very gates of Lanka.”

He struck one clear note. As its tremolo hung in the air, he clapped his hand on the floor boards twice with a dull boom like the sound of a drum. Then the deep silence was only measured by the sighs of the drifting sea. The singer hung his head in inexpressible weariness. Daniel trembled with emotion, as if he had only grasped the meaning of the ominous narrative as he translated its final words.

“Ask him if he will tell the police all this tomorrow. I’ll take him in the car. No one will find out.”

“No, sahib. He says he will not speak. The police will not believe him.”

“But is this possible?” Margit squeezed Istvan’s hand so hard her fingers seemed to be biting it. “Is what he is saying true? It’s not just a poem?”

“That is the truth concerning earthly flights to paradise,” Daniel answered, still thrilled and appalled by the blind man’s recital.

“Where is this isle of happiness?” she demanded.

“It is Ceylon,” Istvan said, adding hastily, “We cannot leave him like this. We must…”

The blind man spoke insistently to Daniel, demanding something.

“He asks that we hide him until his brother arrives. Two days. Three. He is certain that his brother will put aside everything and come. He swears that the gods revealed this secret to him so he would sing of those who were swallowed up by the ocean, devoured by the sharks.”

“Damn it! Nothing will save those people. The pirates must be caught and hanged!” Istvan stormed.

“He says: We leave justice to the gods. The pirates only enforce the will of the one who gave them ships and enabled them to engage in smuggling. Sahib,” he added after a moment, “we do not have a death penalty. Even Gandhi forbade us to execute his murderers.”

“I’ve had enough of this ‘he says,’ ‘he wants,’ ‘he doesn’t want.’ I make the decisions here. Is that clear?”

Daniel and his countryman spoke rapidly to each other. At last the young man rose and said earnestly, “I have heard nothing, sahib. The blind man gives good advice. Before there would be a proper investigation they would poison him, and me as well. Best to be silent.”

“Who would poison you?”

“The pirates. The smugglers of people.”

“Do you understand any of this?” Istvan turned to Margit in helpless exasperation. “How can we help them when they don’t want help?”

“Night is not a good counselor. He should not stay here. They will surely be looking for him.”

“Where can we hide him?”

“I would take him to the mission now that it is dark,” Daniel advised. “Let the fathers attend to him. Perhaps you will go with me, sahib. I am afraid.”

“I’ll go, too.” Margit rose, then quickly gave up the plan. “Go. I’ll wait. I’m terribly tired. Go yourself.” She sat slumped and weak in the darkness under the looming white bundle of mosquito netting.

“Lie down.”

“All right,” she agreed easily. Alarmed, he touched her forehead. It was hot. Her hair was damp with sweat; it clung to her temples. He was seized with a fear that she was ill — very ill.

“There’s nothing wrong with me. A little fever,” she insisted. “It’s giving me a pain in my joints. I’ll take an aspirin and it will go down.”

“And the blasted light had to go out. Can you find the aspirin?”

Daniel took a flashlight from under his dhoti. A stream of white glare hurt their eyes.

“Turn it out,” she begged in a whisper. “The aspirin’s in the drawer. Well, go on. I need to be alone now. The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll be back.”

The blind man stood up, jostling the bottles so that they chimed briefly. They listened: it seemed that in the echoes of the sea they could distinguish muffled noises, the stamping of many feet. It was so quiet that they could hear grains of sand dropping from the man’s wet rags and scattering on the floor. Their own pulses beat painfully in their ears. The blind man whispered something. Daniel translated, “He says that we can go. That is only the sea grumbling.”

“Take this. I’ll be calmer,” she breathed into Istvan’s ear. He felt her push a long, cold object into his hand; it flashed in the dark with a moist, vitreous sheen. “Be careful. It’s a lancet.”

He shrugged. What was she imagining? We are on the hotel’s beach; the staff are sleeping alongside us. A patrol is even walking the shoreline. The mumblings of the sightless visionary have frightened Margit; the night and the fever have conjured up phantoms. We are in no danger.

Irritably he took the bare arm, which was still caked with sand, and helped the blind man down the steps. The cool skin, rough with sand, reminded him of the lifeless form the waves had left on the beach.

He turned around and saw with relief that Margit had disappeared under the tent of mosquito netting.

Gripping the lancet, he waded across the beach as if the sand were cold ashes. He smelled the greasy, briny odor of the blind man’s windblown hair. What have I become involved in? Certainly I’m not going to fight anyone. A diplomat with a knife, at night, on the dunes…A smuggler runs from a pirate ship: a madman’s story. He would gladly have thrown away the lancet, but he was afraid he would not be able to find it later. The roar of the sea crashing against the beach soothed his anxiety with its measured rhythm.

As they passed the last cottage, which was empty and bolted shut, Istvan laid the lancet on the step. Under the sky with its burden of stars, the whole tale seemed no more than the raving of a fevered mind. Another day, he thought, and I’ll be laughing at my gullibility.

He waited, hidden among the palms in darkness black as thick smoke, until Daniel had given the blind man over to the care of the mission. He heard the dry clashing of the great ragged leaves, the sleepy grunting of the tall trunks. He was worried about Margit. He was already eager to go back when the servant slipped silently out of the shadows.

“I told the fathers that it was at your direction, so they took him at once,” he began in a whisper. “His brother will pay.”

“If he has a brother,” Istvan muttered skeptically.

“I believe him. He does not lie.” After a moment’s hesitation Daniel added, “Fugitives from Pakistan came, then left, and no one worried about their disappearance. They had a layover in the port. They begged; now they are gone. They are nowhere to be found. So much the better. Now there is no more trouble. Ceylon protects itself against people from India, but there are chinks, so they leak through.”

“And no one knew of this?”

“Perhaps something was said about it, but who would believe? To believe is to kill hope, sahib. And that is to acquiesce to death — a slow death from hunger.”

They walked in darkness filled with stars. The sand crunched under their feet. The sea groaned like a mute, trying clumsily to utter something with plaintive rumblings and splashes. All the coast was dark. Only one lighthouse nodded toward them, beckoning with a stream of brilliance.

“I think they all perished, sahib,” Daniel whispered. “That is why no one brought an accusation against the pirates.”

“But there was no confirmation that anyone had sailed safely to port. What about their sons and daughters?”

“They did not want to write, for it would have betrayed them. Or perhaps they did not know how. And where to write? They waited for word, and then they forgot. When the parents sold their children into slavery, they foreordained them to ruin.”

“And you can think so calmly of all this?”

“That is human life, sahib. We all delude ourselves that where we are not, it must be better.”

Istvan was furious. He could have taken the man by the arm and shaken him. You fool. You damned fool. Why don’t you rebel? All the servant’s logic seemed senseless to him, yet he acknowledged that his explanation of the crime they had stumbled upon might be correct.

“Think, Daniel! Is it worth it to kill for a handful of silver — a pair of rings and necklaces?”

“They do not do it for the booty. They must collect the fee or no one would believe that they would take them,” the servant whispered, holding on to Istvan. “They offered those people to the sea.”

Istvan strode on with clenched jaws. The insane lie: one devised it and the other stupidly believed it!

“The sea gives fish, the sea feeds us. We must assure ourselves of its good will. Otherwise it will be angry and reach for victims itself. Fishermen for generations, their fate depends on the sea, so is it any wonder, sahib, that they want to propitiate it?”

“And you are a Catholic?” Istvan tugged angrily at the young man’s arm. “Don’t you understand that this is a crime and those thugs are ready to lure new victims?”

“The runaways would have starved to death. And so — I did not push them into the water. They themselves wanted to go away. Best not to meddle. I am a Catholic. I also want eternal life. Let each save himself as he is able. Everything that happens happens because God permits it. If He had not willed it, He would not have allowed them to die.”

Daniel understands nothing, and certainly thinks that I understand nothing. Caste and fate. He does not think of such people as his neighbors. He manages to anesthetize his love for God in Indian style. To anesthetize himself from cooperating with God, from co-creating himself and the world that exists, which after our death can be better, more beautiful because of what we leave behind.

From the long beaches washed by waves drifted a wet odor like the smell of a dog being chased in the rain.

“I would not involve myself in this. I would leave vengeance to God. It will find them when the time is ripe,” Daniel said softly. They had reached the line of cottages on piles; they were dark and quiet as hives of hibernating bees.

“First thing in the morning you will send a telegram. Perhaps his brother will show better judgment and convince him to file a deposition.”

“Very well, sahib.”

“Until tomorrow, Daniel. Give me your flashlight.”

He ran up the steps, covering the stream of light with his fingers. He pushed aside the mosquito netting and leaned over the sleeping woman. Margit lay with her fists against her half-open mouth, from which trickles of sweat and threads of saliva gleamed. Her breathing was choked as if she had been sobbing not long before.

Something crumbled under his foot — something like a grain of sand. He uncovered the flashlight and saw white pills scattered on the floorboards. He was terrified that she might have poisoned herself accidentally, dizzy with fever and reaching for another bag in the dark. He raised one of the pills and was relieved to see that it was stamped Bayer. Like an echo her words returned: If I died, everything would be simpler. Since you cannot make the decision yourself, cannot make the final choice, you will leave it to fate. You will call in the arbiter.

No. No. Trust me; give me a little more time. I will resolve my issues myself. With his hands resting helplessly on his lap, he saw the swarm of stars framed in the rectangle of the open door.

As if she sensed in her sleep that he was near her, she rolled onto her side and groped for him with her hand. The blind, trusting motion of her body moved him. He put out his hand and she took it in her fingers; they were weak, hot and sticky. Let her be angry; I’m going to get the doctor in the morning. This may be something serious. Margit is not versed in tropical diseases.

He remembered that there was ice water in the thermos; it only remained to squeeze in a couple of lemons. Above the monotonous noises from the bay he seemed to hear the dull, labored beating of her heart. He looked at the dark swirl of her hair and the faint outline of her body under the sheet. His ankles were smarting with mosquito bites; they stung like sparks from a fire. He scratched them with the sole of his sandal. The last tugboat heaved a long groan, reminding him of twilight over the Danube.

He bent over her and then fell into a short doze. He did not lose the sense that she was by him, that he must help her. When he was younger he had not experienced such oneness in love — a love not impelled by the cry of the body, but deeper, quieter. And then he spied the lancet he had forgotten lying on the threshold like a silver fish thrown up on the shore, but it was the threshold of another cottage, not this one. He must bring it back in the morning or children would find it and take it away.

He woke with a feeling that something terrible had happened. The light of the lamp was barely visible under the ceiling, irrelevant in the brightness of the rising day. Margit lay beside him with her eyes open, watching him as if she were ready to burst into tears. A white sky without a single cloud hung over a quiet sea. Only a flock of gulls rocking on a wave screamed with voices full of amazement.

“Have you been awake long?” he asked.

She shook her head and whispered, “Merry Christmas. I’ve spoiled your holiday.”

“Don’t talk that way.” He touched her forehead. Her temperature had not gone down. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Give me another nightgown. This one is all wet. And move away. I’m disgusting.”

“We have to call a doctor.” He kissed her dry, coarse lips.

“Don’t kiss me. I don’t know what I have, and you might get sick, too.”

“We would lie here together,” he said, trying to joke as he pulled garments smooth and transparent as water from a cabinet. He helped her change her nightgown; for an instant he saw her small breasts, naked and defenseless.

“What could a doctor tell me? I’m not in pain. There is no rash. We have to wait. The disease will have to manifest itself.”

They spoke very low. She looked through the open door toward the sea.

“Such a beautiful day! Go for a swim before breakfast.”

Her eyelids closed. She looked like a tired child; the glare of the sunny day dazzled her. She took the thermometer from the corner of her mouth and tried to shake it quickly, but he managed to read: 39.2. She tried to smile but only distorted her mouth. “Go on,” she urged tenderly. “You’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“You’re weak. I’ll help you.”

“I can get to the bathroom myself.” She lowered her narrow feet and stood up, leaning on the bed. He saw the outline of her tanned body through filmy fabric; the deep cut of her nightshirt exposed arms bronze from the sun. I must remember her this way, he thought — dependent on me, yielding, undefended. I supported her and she accepted that with relief. She let herself be led.

“Let me be,” she whispered. He kissed her temple. He wanted to encourage her, to assure her that he was there.

He undressed quickly, throwing his pants on the chair. He turned off the useless lamp. As he stepped down onto the cool sand, a tremor ran through him. Dampness, chill, and diffuse light — the luminous blur of dawn — mingled in the air. He ran, breathing deeply the smell of the sea, delighting in the dexterity of his muscles, the responsiveness of his body. He stopped before the last cottage and was astonished to see that the lancet was not lying on the step where he had left it. He saw no footprints; the morning wind had erased them. He knelt to see if it had fallen into the sand. A brown rat lurked among the pilings, polished by the flagellating wind, that supported the floor. It looked out fearlessly with yellow-ringed eyes. He ran on and splashed into water that tilted gently with an invisible wave. It parted reluctantly, sleepily. The gulls swam as if they had grown tired of the unpeopled shore and abandoned it.

Just before his eyes, on a smooth expanse of water, he saw a fine dust carried from the land — light particles of soot from the tugboats. Beside it loomed, like a globe of violet glass, the circular form of a great jellyfish that was making its fateful way to the beach. On that dark belt of sand, the sun would kill it.

His brown arms cut the water. He did not swim so much as loll in the surf, roll, fall into the trough, then beat the water and rear up to the waist like a bird rising into flight. He was filled with the joy of a new day, of the love of a woman, fulfilling desire and transcending it, drawing the soul aloft as if on wings; he felt an immeasurable tenderness and gratitude that she wanted to be with him, to share the day. In the distance, like children’s laughter, the cries of gulls were borne on a slow wave. A ship in the port bellowed in a bass key.

The doctor, wearing a painstakingly pleated turban, left his stethoscopes hanging from his neck and moved a hirsute ear over Margit’s back. He pressed it with his cheek and she bent under the weight of his head. Because her temperature had not fallen — and this was the third day — he suspected that it was a paratyphoid fever, which was usual enough on the coast. Memsab’s system would soon get the better of it. Wishing to show that he was conversant with modern medicines, he suggested penicillin, for he had just received a fresh supply. But Margit only shrugged. She was weak; her hair had lost its coppery sheen. She tried to comb it, but there was no strength in her hands. She sat as if eaten up with fever, perspiring, her eyes flashing with an unhealthy brightness.

“I’ve grown awfully ugly.” She put down her mirror. “You are truly in love if you can look at me without loathing.”

He sat in a wicker chair and read aloud an entertaining short story from a thick edition of the Illustrated Weekly of India. Within himself he felt an unfamiliar serenity and order; it seemed to him that they were an old married couple and that what connected them was embodied in their surroundings, confirmed and reinforced by experience. He stole a glance at her: she had grown ugly. But when all is said and done, he thought, I love her not only for her grace and beauty. Through her I have this gift of peace. We understand and trust each other.

“Sahib.” Daniel was standing in the door to the veranda in a white linen costume that made his face and hands seem even darker. “Sahib, the wealthy brother is here.”

“Just don’t do anything foolish,” she begged.

“I’ll talk with him on the veranda with the door open. You’ll hear everything. You can put in a word at any minute.”

In front of the house, in the sun, stood a man in European dress: a white shirt and tie. His face was olive; his eyes looked out watchfully from under thick brows. He held a light straw hat in his hand.

“I am not intruding, I hope. I will only take a moment. I have already seen my brother. He told me everything. I had to come and thank you.”

“Please sit down, sir.”

He bowed and pressed Istvan’s hand tightly. He walked lightly up the steps and seated himself with catlike grace. Daniel brought a tray with Coca-Cola, ice in a wide thermos, lemons sliced in half, and a metal squeezer rather like a nutcracker.

“Will you drink whiskey?”

“With pleasure. I beg your pardon, but who is in there?” He pointed to the bedroom door.

“My”—Istvan hesitated as if he were being deposed by investigators—“my wife. Unfortunately, she is ill.”

“Ah, I know. The lady doctor. I asked because we are speaking of intimate matters. I do not like it when there are too many ears. Fortunately we can see all around us.”

“Someone may be under us.”

“No one is there. I checked.” He smiled with satisfaction because he had already thought of that. “I wanted to ask you to leave this matter to me.”

“Have you informed the police?”

“No. Mr. Terey, one should not forget that you are from the Red embassy, while I am from the Congress Party. Here in Kerala the communists are in power for the time being — a coalition supported by the votes of ‘wild delegates,’ or, if you prefer, ‘independents.’ The communists enjoy a certain popularity because they want sensible reforms. But that would mean that someone must give up something, must lose so others can gain. And those who have are not at all eager for redistribution.

“This government will not sustain itself. Delhi will remove it. If the matter of smuggling people to Ceylon should come to light now, it will only be a card in the game; at least that is the way the opposition will treat it. They will say the communists are concerned about whipping up the passions of the voters, not about justice. Those drowned refugees from Pakistan — from another country — are people from nowhere.”

“Do I understand that you are against the communists, and yet you have not given up on seeing justice done?” Terey brandished his glass. The sunlight rested on his bare, sandaled feet caressingly, like a fawning cat.

“You have put it well. If you file a deposition and my brother does not confirm it…after all, you do not know Malayalam.”

“But Daniel…”

“Your attendant translated a classic poem. Right, my boy?” He turned to Daniel, who was sitting crosslegged in the shadow of the house, gazing with longing at the undulating vastness of the sea.

“Yes, sahib.”

“When one has money, one can do much. I am here a day and I know almost everything. Even if they were arrested, they would escape the ultimate penalty. Trust me a little.”

“When it is not right for me to be silent—” he said in a hard voice.

“You have already been silent for three days. I know; you were waiting for me. There are other justifications. It is not necessary to trumpet everything one knows right away. Silence is not a lie; it only leaves room for deliberation. If you file a statement, they will treat it as a pawn in a political game: you are from the communist side. Please trust me. I will attend to this.”

“What guarantee do I have that they will not load a new cargo of runaways tonight and leave them to be eaten by sharks?”

“None, except for my word.”

“I don’t even know your name.”

“And what is the point of your knowing it?” The dark eyes looked sternly at him and the lips under the close-clipped mustache narrowed in a malevolent smile. “They meant to kill my brother. He was saved because he is a sadhu, a singer of the gods. The gods allowed the blind man to see the truth. You are only one link in the chain. You received him, fed him, conducted him to a safe place, and summoned me. The rest is my business. My brother’s life is worth more than that ship full of beggars. Just now I have hurried here; I am not like him. He has greater riches, riches inaccessible to me, but I have rupees enough to find hands that will assist the cause of justice. Do you believe me?”

He leaned toward Terey and gazed into his face. On the fingers of both his hands were thick gold rings with rubies.

“Yes. I believe you. I have no choice.”

“How much should I pay you for your help? Answer without restraint. I have plenty, and what you did for my mad, saintly brother is beyond price.”

Terey saw that Daniel had raised his head and was looking tensely at him, moving his sticky lips as if he wanted to shout something.

“Nothing. I really did nothing for him.”

“I apologize,” the man whispered, “for speaking in front of them.” He motioned toward Daniel and the open door to the bedroom. “Here is a notebook; write something here. You are with the diplomatic corps; you are afraid that there will be trouble. I swear, no one will know.”

“No. I would have taken in anyone in need of help.”

In the silence gulls uttered nagging cries. A flock of gray crows shrieked hoarsely as they snatched with their beaks at the jellyfish that gleamed like clouding glass in the sun.

“If not with money, how may I repay you?”

He heard a quiet call, as if Margit had suddenly thought of a way: “Istvan, come here for a moment.”

He jumped up, almost stepping on the hat the wind had blown off the windowsill without anyone’s noticing.

“What do you want, darling?”

She sat with her head tilted a little like a listening bird, her matted hair pulled back and held tightly behind her ears with small combs. Her blue eyes beamed exultantly. She motioned for him to lean over.

“Tell him to take his brother to a good oculist. I’ll give him the address. Surgery can remove the cataracts and his sight will be restored.”

He kissed her forehead, which was a little cooler now. He repeated her suggestion to the Hindu, who was smoking a cigarette. The shadows of gulls tame as doves, gliding toward the rubbish bins behind the hotel, flitted over his knees and his face, which was bathed in glare.

“We have spoken of this more than once. After all, I am not a peasant from the countryside with the hindquarters of a buffalo obscuring my view of the world. No, dear sir, neither I nor my brother would agree to that. Are you sure that what I can offer him is better than what he creates? I know the beauty and greatness of it. More than once I have been brought to tears listening to his songs. He is a poet. All India is his. All that charms us would be lost without him. His song is like a blossoming branch.”

“Have it written down and publish it.”

“I have tried, but the resonance and the gestures are not there. The parts that cannot be reproduced fall away like petals from boughs in bloom.”

“There is still the tape recorder. The tape will preserve it forever.”

“And where will you find the light of that hour, the glow of clay walls, the dust soft as a carpet, and the cry of the thirsty hawk? The faces of the peasants listening with rapt attention, who abandoned their unsatisfied bodies — he carried them away, he involved them in the fates of the warring gods. No, that is not my brother,” he said loyally. “None of this concerns you: your kindness is devoid of understanding. To you he is just one blind man. But you are cripples. You hear his songs and do not understand them, for you do not know Malayalam,” he burst out, clawing the air. “I went to the mission school. I know who Homer was. I want you to understand! Would you dare suggest to Homer that he try to recover his sight? Do you understand what a pathetically ludicrous idea that is? What can you give him that is more than what he has, what he brings from inside himself?”

His brother must be the object of his love and pride. It seemed to Istvan that the man could tear an opponent to bits like a tigress defending her young if something threatened the singer. The two of them are mad. It is impossible to arrive at an understanding with them. They have the advantage over us; they are in no hurry. They believe that they will live on innumerable times, drawn ineluctably into vortexes of change.

“So you want nothing from me.” There was a note of irritation in the man’s voice. “I do not like being a debtor.”

“Support the mission. They gave him shelter there.”

“They are not our friends. They teach that we live only once. They implant an alien sense of hurry. I cannot give a paisa to that mission.”

He bent to retrieve his hat, but Daniel, standing on the sand below the steps, was already handing it to him.

“Thank you again.” He seized Terey’s hand like a beast of prey and pressed it until it hurt. He must be a practitioner of yoga, he thought. Strong — and he seems so unimposing.

The Hindu nodded to the attendant, who ran behind him eagerly and listened deferentially to his orders. His head with its curly black hair bobbed in zealous agreement, like the head of a bird pecking grain.

A sea of tilting mirrors gave off silver fire. The two Englishwomen were returning from the beach under parasols as light as those in paintings by Renoir. They were accompanied by a young man with a bronze tan who waved colorful bathing suits and wrung rainbow-tinted sparks out of them.

“Unhappy thought,” Margit said apologetically, extending her hand with a meek smile, “we will never come to understand this India.”

He sat down beside her. He picked up a weekly newspaper that was warmed by the sun and smelled of printer’s ink, but he did not read it. He was unconscious of everything but the girl, hot from fever and with dark rings around her eyes — rumpled, wan, and so desired.

“Come,” she whispered and put his head on her shoulder, holding him to her like a child. “Stay this way a moment. No, don’t kiss me. I’m sticky. Lie against me. I want to enjoy knowing that you’re here. You will never understand that hunger.”

“I understand,” he murmured, and it seemed to him that he really did. His eyelids touched her bare neck, with swelling greenish veins under her golden skin. He saw tiny wrinkles, or rather their distant harbingers — the signs of the way she would look when time lay on her. Now only sweat and the dust of the moment outlined them, dust sifted from the shifting white dunes through the warm, gusty air that rocked the coconut palms and rattled their fronds like a fire close by.

“I’m better. Tomorrow I’ll try to get up. Istvan, forget about that blind singer. Leave that to the people here. Let them see to it that justice is done.”

“Did you want me to say that?”

“No.” She was silent for a moment; they heard the whishing of the tide, the squawks of startled gulls and the cautious scratching of a water rat who was climbing on a pole under the floor. “I was thinking of our old house, of all our family. If you knew them, you would know at once why I am as I am. My grandfather held tight to his money to the last. My father trained under him as a bank executive. Grandpa never spared him humiliation; he would give him tongue-lashings in front of the staff. On Christmas Eve, instead of presents, he would give us checks in envelopes — a gift that didn’t require him to think about us. He didn’t have to find out what we wanted, go to the shops and buy things; it was simpler just to fill out the checks.

“I remember Christmas on the yacht, spending the night on the bay. A huge turtle baked in its shell, stuffed with bananas. As long as mama was alive, we observed tradition: a festive dinner, the men in jackets, I in a long white dress with lace — the kind of dress I thought I would be married in. But that’s in the past for me; don’t worry.” She stroked him jokingly as if to reassure him.

“It’s terrible — the way time obliterates the past. Whenever I was rummaging in the cabinet and came across a handkerchief of mama’s, the smell of perfume would bring her back so vividly that I would cry like a little chit of a girl. Our cousin Donald…”

He saw tears on the ends of her lashes, but she was smiling. His look encouraged her to speak.

“I told you about the old clock in the hall.”

“The one in the shape of a woman with arms akimbo and the clock dial for a face,” he whispered, knowing that she would be glad.

“Yes. Donald took an air gun and shot at the pendulum. Grandpa caught him and was furious, not because the clock was a precious family piece, only because the target was so large — as big as a saucer — and he had missed it. Grandpa took the gun, put in the bolt, and missed as well. ‘You can’t shoot with that. It will ruin your eye,’ he yelled, and threw the gun out onto the street. Before Donald could run down the stairs, some little scamps had taken it away. It’s foolishness I’m telling you about, but that was my home — my real home. The others were just places to sleep.

“One returns home. That is where I want to give birth to our son or daughter. Best of all, one of each. You’ll like it. You’ll see. It will be ours. My father prefers a more modern house; I prefer the old one. Anyway, my father only thinks of his new child now. I’ve been pushed into the corner, and I annoy him; he stumbles over me as something that belongs to the past. I can’t manage to be happy about this little brother, probably because I haven’t seen him. Besides, I’m used to being an only child — and perhaps you make it hard for me to see anything else.”

He was touched to the quick by the memory of a rambling whitewashed house with streaks of bluing bleeding through. The high, chipped doorsill: how hard it had been for him to crawl over it! For whole years they had split the kindling on it. Sharp splinters had stuck in his bottom. He saw the hall, with its smell of dry clay, inlaid with flat stones. His ears rang with the squeal of a swarm of chicks, yellow with brown stripes on their backs, which fled at the rattle of the wrought iron door handle in the form of a ram’s horn. Dim light: windows filled with myrtle and pots of impatiens. Piles of pillows on the beds and a light scent of fresh air and moisture, for the linen had been taken to the orchard to be aired in the breeze and warmed by the sun. He had been born in a bed like that, and he could have slept for ever, listening to the placid chat of the neighbors and the whinnying of horses, the far-off barking of dogs and the creaking of the well-sweeps.

But he could not live in that house anymore. In Budapest, where the boys were, and Ilona…that was only the place where he hung his hat. He could change it with no regrets, move into another street. Even to Buda, near the castle. If a house had lost its significance — changed into a temporary stopover — could a country as well? Is it not enough to be a human being — free, without roots?

“Listen.” Margit was worried. “Did you send holiday greetings to your people?”

“To the boys? Quite a while ago. Two weeks ago.”

“I was thinking of your colleagues in Delhi. Of the ambassador.”

He shrugged. “They’re not thinking about me, either.”

“But you should be thinking of them. Send New Year’s cards. You’ll shame them.”

“You’re a good girl.” He rose, for he heard footsteps on the stairs to the veranda.

“Sahib!” Daniel called softly. “He took me with him on a special errand. I am to give you a present. He has already gone.”

“I told him I didn’t want any presents.”

“He was certain that you would accept this trifle.” Daniel grimaced in the glare of the low sun and held up the round green center of a young coconut. “Perhaps you will drink the fresh milk. It is very healthy. Shall I cut into it?” he asked, reaching for a knife.

Istvan looked undecidedly at the smoothly gleaming green heart of the coconut, which was the size of a soccer ball. Several scratches could be seen in it — evidence of the coconut’s having been cut with a chopper. He raised it to his ear and shook it. There was a soft splashing inside.

“The blade has to be driven in three times at the base, where the shell is still soft. You remove the piece you cut out like a three-cornered cork.” The servant demonstrated; the fibrous tissue crunched under the point of the knife. He brought a tall glass and Terey poured in the cool, cloudy liquid. Suddenly something emerged from inside the coconut: a gold chain with a pendant in the shape of a leaf like a hand.

“Margit!” he called, then asked in astonishment, “How was that so cunningly placed in the center?”

“A surprise, sir.” Daniel doubled over and slapped his thighs with excitement. “He is wise. He knew that you would accept the coconut. We stuck in two knives and pushed apart the pulp. The chain slid in as if it were an alms box and the nut closed with hardly a trace. Sir, a medal with the hand of Buddha brings luck.”

“Go and give it back to him right now.” He fished out the necklace with a knife. Drops of coconut milk trickled from the metal.

“I told you, they are gone. Perhaps memsab likes the necklace?” he suggested with a friendly, knowing wink.

“Do you want it for a souvenir?” Istvan held the chain on his fingertips. The gold hand with the lineaments of a lotus flower flashed red in a stream of sunlight.

“Beautiful work.” She was holding up her hair with one hand and trying to do up the zipper at the back of her neck.

“They touch it up, they polish it, because they have time. The form has been consecrated for ages. Do you like it?”

She nodded, drew Istvan to her, and kissed him on the cheek. He sat on the edge of the bed and held her as she rested against his chest. They listened to the dry scraping of the palm leaf broom as Daniel swept the veranda, the angry buzzing of flies drunk on sticky drops of Coca-Cola and the protest of one trapped in an empty bottle — the shrieking vibrato of a terrified insect. The sea, as if exhausted, emitted sleepy wheezes. He held the girl tightly; his lips were on her tangled rust-colored hair, which shone in the glow of the setting sun. The fly played its quivering treble note. Margit must have heard it as well, for she whispered, “Go. Let it out. Or kill it.”

He did not hurry. He sighed tranquilly.

“And bring the coconut milk.”

Reluctantly he stood up and turned the bottle on the tray so its neck faced the westering sun. The fly found its way out of the bottle. The desperate buzzing stopped. As he carried the glass, he stealthily sampled the refreshing, slightly salty liquid. Margit drank it in large gulps. He saw the trembling of her tense neck.

“The taste reminds me of tears,” she whispered. He saw the clear blue of her eyes and almost moaned.

For three more days he did not let her lie on the beach. Though the breeze from the sea tempered the heat, the invisible sun would have sapped her strength. He himself only plunged into the water briefly and swam out for short distances, knowing that she watched him constantly, apprehensively, half-hidden in the shade, resting her head on the warm wall of the veranda.

He hurried toward the cottage through the dry exhalations of fire that came from the white sand. He brought her a rose-colored shell as big as two hands, a crab shell, a green fragment of bottle glass, its roughness rubbed smooth by the waves — frosted, as if every trace of civilization and mechanical production had been rubbed away, leaving a glassy pebble through which the world appeared completely different than before. The crab shell, bristling with spines around the edges, served as an ashtray for them. The rose-tinted shell lay on the windowsill; the glass, like a bookmark, was buried in a volume laboriously read.

These acquired treasures Daniel cleaned away without their noticing, removing them from view, and they forgot about them like children who abandon their pails and shovels when they are called away to other enjoyments.

On New Year’s Eve automobiles arrived and powerfully built men in clowns’ caps, with balloons fastened to the backs of their trousers, ran between the cottages in the twilight, trumpeting squeaky notes on paper horns. Elderly ladies with dyed hair sprinkled with gilt offered bare arms to young men, hoisted the edges of their long gowns as if they were fording a stream, and pulled their escorts along, tittering and hopping about like little girls. The dining room was ablaze with yellow lights and alive with quickened rhythm and jarringly loud conversation. From the cicadas in the bushes came a frenzied jangling, as if they were trying to be heard above the music.

In the night he sat on the veranda with Margit. They felt no wish to be part of the crowd that was shouting in defiance of the music. When in the pearly glow from the sea they spied roaming couples, silhouettes locked together as in mortal combat, they smiled indulgently. Istvan found Margit’s hand and stroked it lightly, nourished by the peace in his heart. They sat late, gazing at the little lights of passing liners, so far away that they seemed to mingle with the enormous stars. They talked without hurry; the undulation of the water measured off long spells of silence. Only the mosquitoes, lured by the fires at the restaurant, finally drove them into the cottage and under the netting.

But the next morning was, as before the holiday, quiet and empty. The guests got into their cars almost unseen and stole away toward the town, as if they were ashamed of their escapades the previous evening. The cottages stood open on the shore; he could hear the thumping of wicker furniture in rooms from which mattresses had been dragged out, and the singsong lament of the staff as they restored order.

Adroit as a circus performer, Daniel carried in their breakfast on a tray on his head. Margit settled into a chaise longue, propping her bare feet on the railing of the veranda. Her cretonne dress, in a geometrical print with green and violet fish, was unfastened from top to bottom, revealing her close-fitting turquoise swimsuit and her body, which in the scorching sunlight seemed to be made of reddish gold.

They talked of the future — the future he wanted to believe in.

“You will write about your Hungary and no one will stop you. You forget that you won’t have to support me,” she explained as if he were an obstinate child. “At last you can be yourself, not looking over your shoulder at the jury box, the self-appointed authority on what you ought to write and how.”

“You said that I am taking Hungary with me.” He spoke quietly, reflectively. “That’s true. A movie cut short. I can look back at it all, write my commentary on images recalled, be moved that I was there — a participant in those events. Up to the time of my leaving. And then I’ll begin to collect, to fish short bulletins and notices out of newspapers — traces of events, so I can imagine what’s going on in my country. The rest will be guesses. And if predictions are misleading and my people show themselves different than my cherished image of them, I will not be able to understand their behavior and may begin to feel hatred or contempt for them.”

As the sun on her knees became unbearably warm, she flicked her straps down and partly uncovered her small breasts. Droplets of perspiration sparkled between them. She pushed up her hair, which was sticking to the back of her neck, and tossed it over the back of her chair. She remained for a moment in that pose, hands above her head, sighing deeply with half-closed eyes.

“Not many of those who are fleeing stop to think that they are no longer sharing the fate of their country. They have wrenched themselves from that common bond. Even if I could see the forces that threaten Hungary better from a distance and make my arguments without interference, I sense an unspoken stricture: ‘But you will not share the future with us. You will not risk your neck. You have already walked away. You have said your No. Well, that is enough; we can understand your decision, but at least spare us your preachments.’ In spite of sentiments, attachments affirmed once in a while, with every year I would become more estranged. And that’s the truth. Everything I would write there about Hungary would be about the past.”

She took his hand and laid it on her heart, stroking it. “And must you drag the past with you? You will find a hundred themes, another country, new people. You will rediscover Australia even for us, for Australians, because you will see it for the first time, with new eyes. You are poisoned with politics. Do you have to be the dog at the heels of the sheep to block their way, to bark and turn them back?”

He took his hand away.

“You know whose dog I can be without losing my dignity.”

“Mine?” she whispered, stroking his hair.

“No. Not yours.”

“It’s terribly difficult to communicate with you. You’re becoming tiresome. You can always write about yourself; you say, after all, that a person is a universe. Artists are never tired of telling about themselves. Go. Swim. Cool your head, my great writer on the five-year plan. You’re bent on suicide. Well, why are you looking at me like that? You’d be ashamed to admit even to yourself that you’re destroying your own talent. You believe that an angel will fly down and take you by the hand like Abraham when he was about to kill his own son. But you Catholics don’t like to glance into the Bible,” she jeered maliciously.

“And perhaps you’re shifting some of the responsibility to me? I will take you on my conscience, free you from your shackles and carry you so far away that you can absolve yourself. I, you hear, I.” She beat her fist against the frame of her chair. “What you want is for me to become the voice of destiny. I will be. And I swear to you, I will save the poet in you.” Her lips tightened in a grimace of pain and angry impatience. “Only don’t make me beg too long. It’s humiliating. Now go.”

She curled up and put her bent hand under her forehead. She seemed to be crying. He stood over her for a moment, ready to kneel and embrace her and whisper words of comfort, but a sense that he had been insulted grew within him and he stiffened with resentment.

He went down to the water. He slipped off his beach coat; the sun touched his arms like a trainer examining an athlete’s muscles. He broke into a run, threw himself into the water, and did a hundred meters of crawl. He did not look around. He felt the need for intense exertion, even risk. As his breathing grew steady and he changed to the breaststroke, the surface of the tilting waves flashed as if with mica, pricking his eyes. Water the color of laundry bluing, bitter-tasting, stuck on his lips. He swam doggedly, putting distance between himself and the shore, though he was sure Margit had come out of the shade and was leaning on the railing, watching his head as it disappeared time after time in the troughs between blue ridges.

She would be beckoning to him to come back; that was just why he did not look around. It occurred to him that he would have to wage a determined struggle to get back to the beach. The current was stealthily, imperceptibly pushing him before it. It was as if Istvan, carried out from wave to wave, was not catching foam in his hands, but the mane of a thrashing horse.

Suddenly something told him: enough. He put his legs down into the water: they trembled like a cork on a fishing line. He looked around. The bank was far away. The veranda was empty. He counted the houses; he had not erred. Margit had gone in. She was not looking out at him at all. He let himself drift calmly; he swam in a long diagonal toward the beach. An hour later he stumbled onto the shore, collapsed onto the hot sand and breathed with his mouth open. He had no saliva.

I have not set a date for our leaving, so she thinks I don’t love her enough. She lashes me like a horse to make me take the hurdle. Poor thing; why is she so tormented? Hasn’t she had enough proof?

The sky was like a sheet of zinc, with no gleam of white from a cloud or a gull’s wing. He walked slowly back to the water’s edge. Gushing wavelets ran up to his feet, streaking them with foam when he stepped in them. He strained his eyes looking for shells or branches of broken coral to take her as a peace offering.

The first taxis were coming into the palm grove. Out of them scattered whole Hindu families, mothers and children — groups of six or eight, so many that he marveled that they could have packed themselves into the cabs. Women in long saris, covered by parasols and guarded by their men, waded in the water, jumping back with squeals as warm spurts darted from the mischievous waves. Brahmins from wealthy families shunned the sun, shielding their light skins to avoid the tanning that would make them resemble the despised Dravidians.

Three girls wrapped in pink tulle went waist-deep into the water. Crouching and slapping their hands on the surface, churning up sparkling droplets, they bathed like old Hungarian farm women who had worn long shirts fastened between the legs with safety pins. He stood there for a moment, ready to jump in if help should be needed; he knew they could not swim. But they came out of the water, which tugged at them, sucking at their transparent dresses; the soaked tulle clung to slender thighs. A man in a blue shirt thrown over narrow trousers smoked a cigarette, not watching over the bathing women but only looking into Terey’s face with a hostile expression, as if he wanted to push him away.

He shrugged and ran along the wet strip of beach. A heap of seaweed smelled of fish and iodine; loose scales glittered like sequins on the dried plants. At last he found a forked branch of coral, white as if from salt. His heart warmed with a childish happiness that he could give it to Margit.

Under the leaning trunk of a palm the elderly Hindu was sitting with a flute, playing an evening greeting to the sea and the setting sun. Istvan passed him at a distance; even his long shadow did not graze the feet of the hunched old man. He remembered that the shadow of an infidel could contaminate, offend, render one unworthy to mingle with the divine.

The room seemed empty. Margit lay without speaking behind the lowered mosquito netting. He pushed aside the nets and at once met importunate, anxiously questioning eyes.

“I’m sorry.” She extended a hand. “I was unbearable.”

He took her hand, turned her palm upward and put the branch of coral in it. It flushed pink in the low light; outside the open door the sky was bursting with brilliant wine red.

“Do you feel unwell?”

“No. But I didn’t have the strength to watch while you were swimming in the ocean. If you loved me…I knew you were swimming a long way out to spite me. I came in from the veranda, but I saw you all the time, here, from behind the netting.”

“I didn’t think you had such an imagination.”

“Imagination!” she sighed. “I simply have a heart. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to, Istvan.”

“What are you afraid of? You’re so impatient.”

“Perhaps you could call it that,” she whispered, running her fingers over the lumpy excrescences of the coral. “But I’ll be calm now. I won’t cause you any more trouble. I swear it.”

Suddenly he was jealous of that piece of coral that she was caressing with her fingertips. The tender pursing of her lips, the hungry concavities of her cheeks, were so familiar. The red liquid evening had spread over the sky; he heard the soughing of the sea of molten copper, the challenging cries of gulls who were settling down to sleep.

“Anyway, I’m with you.” He kissed her, opening lips that clung greedily to his, and found the taste, bitter from nicotine, of her tongue. She huddled close to him, not letting the spiky branch of coral out of her hand. It jabbed his arm.

He bore down on her with his bare chest as if he were smothering her. They were oblivious to the open door that framed the violet sand, the red water of the bay, half motionless as if clotting, and the lazily wavering sun, small as an orange. He took her with angry impatience, forcing his way. She tried to resist, then against her own intentions gave caress for caress. When she threw back her head and moaned melodiously, he rose on a wave of immeasurable delight. He had drawn from her a voice as of a string tightening to the utmost — to the breaking point, the brink of a great silence.

They rested; they were tired out. He stroked her breasts, tasting her arm with the tip of his tongue. It was as salty as if she had come out of the sea.

“You think it’s enough to pat me, to kiss me, to caress me and forget about everything worrisome,” she whispered with drowsy rancor. “And you’re right. I forget, though only for a little while, when I’m filled with you, when I can take you into me. And afterward the anxiety returns, all the keener because I know what I might lose. Istvan, Istvan, I want to sleep by you even if it were the last sleep, the sleep with no waking.”

He stroked her in silence, feeling a vast emptiness. He could not find a word of comfort that did not ring false. Despair closed in on him.

The sun had fallen until it seemed half submerged. Its molten light blazed on the horizon. Nestling together, they pushed aside the netting that gleamed rose in the sunset and watched the last beam as it plunged behind the water. At once the early evening came on, and their eyes, still dazzled, were full of rainbow-colored sequins; in the sudden dusk, they oriented themselves by touching each other lightly, like the blind.

“It’s good for me, with you.” She put her arm under the back of his neck and rocked it lightly. “Very good.”

To be part of the pulse of his blood, to anchor myself in his memory. I must be very tender to him. If ever I must lose him, I will still be part of him. He will know that I loved him. One may have a wife, may have women and not be touched by love, not know that great sense of devotion, of oneness. After all, I’ve awakened beside other men — she thought with a jarring clarity — and it was good with them, but none of them gave me what he has. If he reached out for another woman, he would have to judge her by me, compare her with me, remember, remember.

But she did not say a word, for she was afraid that it would annoy him, that he would misunderstand. She felt powerless; she only snuggled up to him and pressed her cheek on his chest. And he, roused from brooding, at this beckoning kissed her eyes as if she had only that moment returned from a long journey — as though after yearning for her through a long absence he had found her again.

“Sahib. Sahib.” Daniel, standing on the veranda steps, clapped. “The chaprasi came with the mail.”

How did he know that he shouldn’t come in? Terey thought approvingly. Intuition, or tact? Perhaps just good English training. He freed himself from her arms, which fell away slowly and lay like torn vines that have lost not only their support but their sense of existence. He felt for coins in the pants that hung in the wardrobe. He threw on a robe and went out barefoot to the veranda.

“Give it to me.”

The boy came up the steps and with a deep bow laid a telegram on the railing. He was from the lowest caste. He believed that he might defile even a European by his touch, Istvan thought.

He opened the rough paper with its inelegant lettering and, turning his back to the sky with its failing light, read with difficulty:

Istvan Terey. Cochin. Hotel Florida. Imperative that you return to Delhi Stop Serious personal matter Stop Ferenc.

He went back to the bedroom, turned on a little lamp, and handed her the message. He read it over her shoulder, wondering what could have happened.

“Will you go?” she asked as if expecting him to say no.

“I must. I’m still an official with the embassy.”

“You’re with me, at the very tip of India. You could say now, ‘I’m staying. I’ll be there in two weeks to settle my affairs.’ Tell them goodbye — if they deserve that courtesy.”

“You forget that this is just a furlough. It’s only decent of me to go back.”

“Shall I wait here?”

He was silent. He lowered his head.

“How long will you make me torment myself?” she whispered. “Perhaps you would prefer that I go with you?”

“Yes.” He brightened. “Definitely. We’ll go together.”

“I’ll be following you around to the end.” He was struck by an alien, unwilling note in her voice.

“What do you mean?”

“And if they want to send you back to Hungary?”

Anxiety froze his face like ice.

“No. They would have made that announcement with joy.” He set his lips. “They wouldn’t begrudge me a friendly kick.”

“Call, at all events. Demand an explanation.”

He dressed hurriedly. Before he drove the car around she was already standing by it, self-possessed, ready to offer help and advice.

When they reached the asphalt highway, he put the brake on hard. A long black car was hurtling out of a palm grove. Its driver saw the danger and slowed down a little too late. In the raw glare of their headlights, which flooded the interior of the other car, they spied the old Hindu, the sadhu who had been serenading the sea with his flute. The look on his shaggy face with blinking eyes brought to mind the grimace of an enraged cat. The automobile sped away; its red taillights brightened and then faded.

“Did you recognize him? The peasant dhoti looked like a disguise. And I didn’t believe Daniel.”

“Keep going.” She clasped her hands. “They told us to wait at the post office.”

Great moths glowed in the stream of light, crunching against the hood like chestnuts from slingshots, leaving spatters on the windshield.

The town greeted them with distant plumes of smoke and the odors of burned oil and stagnant drains. Lights glowed in little shops here and there, then more frequently, before they drove in among brick houses. The low post office stood dark and empty; only one frosted window was illuminated. Istvan knocked once and again. Someone uttered a hoarse question but did not step forward.

Suddenly the blind screen was raised with a hard shove and the mustachioed face of a clerk peered out. “Oh, I am very sorry.” He assumed a ceremonious smile. “I did not know.”

He handed Istvan a form to be filled in: from whom, to which state, which city, how many minutes. “Delhi,” he read, shaking his head. “That is far away. You will have to wait.”

They sat in the stuffy room on a grease-stained bench, speaking in whispers. The man lowered the window and seemed to have gone back to dozing when the phone rang unexpectedly.

“Sahib will go to the booth, or speak from my telephone, for it is better. There where the riffraff speak, they have to do something with their hands, and they pluck at the cord as if it were a dhoti, they pick at the receiver as they pick at their ears. In the booth the connection breaks off.”

Eager for his conversation with the capital, Istvan glared at the telephone. In spite of the clerk’s assurances that it was a good one, he barely succeeded in forcing a distorted voice out of it.

“Hello! Hello!” he shouted. “Istvan here. Istvan Terey. Do you hear me? What’s happened? What do I have to come back to Delhi for? Something serious?”

At last through the hum and crackle they understood each other and Ferenc realized who was speaking.

Margit sat motionless on the bench, pressing her hands together and resting her chin on them. She listened in suspense, trying to guess from Istvan’s shouted words what the voice at the far end of the wire was saying, since its responses might affect their future.

“I don’t understand. I’ll start tomorrow. I’ll be with you on Thursday. But what does the boss want with me?”

The clerk’s face looked as if he were sucking juice from a lemon, he was so worried for fear the words would be lost, would not reach the receiver at the end of the wire.

“Tell me, though: is it good news or bad? Tell Judit hello for me. I’ll be there on Thursday without fail.”

He held on to the receiver as if deluding himself that now he would hear what was most important. That Ferenc would change his mind and blurt out the whole truth — would perhaps dispel misgivings and burst out laughing. Then his eyes met the girl’s anguished look and he forgot about the Hindu, who waited as if in ambush. He hung up hastily and thrust the telephone through the window as into the maw of a ravenous animal that could not close its jaw.

“What did you find out?”

“Nothing. When you come down to it, nothing. He said that it would be a surprise. That I should come without delay. The ambassador had instructed him to say that. You heard what I asked him. He said that there was important information for me. That I would not be alone. What do you make of that?”

He paid impatiently, though the clerk was still checking the bill, which seemed staggering to him. The telephone call had cost a quarter of his monthly salary from the post office, so he was alert for information that confirmed what he imagined to be the earnings of foreigners from the capital, and the revenues of large businesses.

When they were sitting in the car, Margit, filled with grim premonitions, put her hand on his arm.

“Perhaps your family has arrived? Your wife is waiting in Delhi?”

“He’d have let that cat out of the bag. He wouldn’t have kept it a secret.”

“He gave you a hint. He said that you would not be lonely.”

“You know, that’s possible.” He seized on her explanation. “They may be that idiotic with their idea of a surprise.”

In the darkness the car sped along the highway by the sea, which reminded him of a plowed field. White moths floated about obliquely like the first flakes of snow.

“Tell me — what is she like?”

“Who?”

“Your wife.”

He caught a glimpse of her chiseled profile, the stubborn line of her chin and the shadowed waves of her hair, which seemed to be submerged in water rather than in darkness.

“She’s different,” he began cautiously.

“I know: above all, she’s the mother of your boys,” she said enviously. “But if you want it this way, so do I. Will you have the courage to tell her that she will return to Budapest alone?”

“Don’t worry. I can tell her.”

“Are you still hesitating? Surely you won’t make me talk to her.”

“Leave it to me.”

“Remember — I’m with you.” She spoke as a friend speaks to bolster the courage of one who is about to meet a powerful opponent. “It’s the end of our holiday. When do we start?”

“In the morning. As early as possible.”

They drove onto the white sand on which the hotel stood. It glittered a little ominously, like camphor sprinkled under the lid of a trunk. Daniel appeared in the glare of their headlights and showed them where to park the car so it would have the most time in the shade. He had no idea that that was no longer necessary.

“Turn out the light and pull down the netting.”

“I won’t sleep tonight. Let’s listen to the sea,” she urged him. “Our last night…”

“That’s a thought.” He brought out a blanket, spread it on the steps of the cottage and covered her legs. “Do you have cigarettes?”

The zipper on her bag made a grating sound and she handed him a packet wrapped in crinkling cellophane. For an instant he saw her downturned face in the little yellow flame of the lighter.

Far in front of them the sea was a luminous white. It moved with a wet scraping and rustling as if it were diligently shifting the gravel and the sticky sand, from which water was streaming. It sighed and stuttered like a man engaged in heavy work. He put his arm around the girl. In spite of the cigarette smoke he caught the fragrance of her hair — the exciting fragrance that was so distinctively her own.

His eyes roamed over the shoals of stars and their shifting brilliance as they rose, sank, and reappeared in shimmering powdery sprays. Water rats scurried among the piles that supported the cottage, scattering the sand. The paper they had dragged in to line their dens in the furrowed edge of the mound rustled.

I have her. He stood stiffly, holding his breath. I truly have her. I have her because she wants to be mine. I find the confirmation of that in her: I have her. If Ilona has come, I must tell her honestly; I have already made my choice. It’s simple: all that’s necessary is to stand by Margit openly, in front of everyone. Let them see.

When they sat nestled together on the wooden steps in the friendly dark, it all seemed easy to him, though he knew that he would suffer, and that he would inflict pain.

She was smoking, saying nothing. Suddenly she flicked away her cigarette; it sizzled in the sand amid a spray of sparks. Fanned by an imperceptible breeze, its red tip glowed as if someone had picked it up and was finishing it greedily.

“What are you thinking?” He touched the back of her neck.

“That I’m still with you. That these days have passed so quickly that I feel cheated. Tomorrow we’re going back, and I still — what did I want to find here? What eluded me?” There was resignation in her whisper.

“You wanted to break the ties that bind me to my country.”

“And it didn’t work.”

“It did work. You got in the way of them. But it only took one conversation for them to tighten around me again.”

“One conversation, with that Hungarian of yours,” she said slowly, brooding. “And I didn’t even think…”

From behind the mane of black palm fronds the rim of the moon emerged, filling half the sky with a white glow. It floated straight toward the lighthouse, as if the flashing were drawing it irresistibly. They were silent.

“Have I lost?”

“No!” he said hotly. “You have me.”

“If only that were true. You love me, but I have no real place in your life. You even put yourself before me: you have honor and integrity, a deep sense of the obligations you’ve taken on. You respect the law. Perhaps that’s why I love you. Though I don’t want to admit it, the verdict has been pronounced.”

“Are you thinking of Delhi?”

“Yes. After all, you’ve procrastinated. You didn’t want to pronounce it yourself. You preferred that the decision come from beyond us both. You invoked it, and now you have it.”

“If a hundred ambassadors were breathing down my neck, I would decide for myself in the end,” he said with a catch in his breath. “This only hastens our departure.”

“Do you know what you’re going to do, then?” She looked straight ahead at the white windmill-like tower of the lighthouse.

“I knew from the beginning.”

He expected her to ask the next question, to probe for the truth. But she only leaned on his arm and reminded him, “All day tomorrow behind the wheel. You must rest before the drive.”

His hand was on her erect back. He led her into the bedroom; neither turned on the light. His ear caught the familiar rustling, the steps of bare feet, before she appeared out of the darkness naked, vulnerable. She stood with hands lowered as if transfixed by a sudden chill. He knelt half a step in front of her. She stood motionless so as to be near him, so his cheek could rest on her flat belly and his arms encircle her hips. “Margit,” he whispered. “My love.”

When he touched her she trembled, nestled to him, and pressed her lips to his. “I’m taking you to me as if these were the last moments of my life. As if it were all I could take into eternity.”

“Don’t say that!” he pleaded. He stroked her hips, then encircled them tightly with his arms.

She put her hands on his arms and dropped to her knees. Her firm nipples moved against him. Her cool skin slid softly against his, and in a cloud of hair her temple rested against his shoulder. Her forehead pressed against his pulsating neck and she heard the hammering of his heart; she felt his trembling. They knelt for a moment, listening to each other like horses that stand in a pasture head by head gazing at the setting sun, and only a shudder runs through the glistening reddish coats.

Morning broke, washed by a short, hard rain. The palm fronds gleamed as if they were freshly polished. The ocean danced in silver and green. “It’s as changeable as your eyes,” he said when they had emerged from the water and a light breeze was drying them.

“Our last swim.” She stood still, luxuriating for one more moment in the tranquillity of the bay.

“Stop,” he begged. “Be glad a beautiful day has begun. It’s like a good omen.”

“It will be sweltering. We’ll drive in shifts, shall we?” She bent to brush sand from her feet. “I liked that bay. I felt happy here.”

“Perhaps we’ll come back.”

She looked at him with enormous eyes that seemed to say: Do you believe that? The Angelus bell warbled plaintively; someone tugged at it as if in anger. Suddenly the ringer stopped dead, and the bell clanged off key.

Among the slender trunks of the palms, at the feet of the furrowed mound, stood a jeep. Police in shorts and red turbans were standing motionless; the high bank was swarming with half-naked fishermen swathed in white. Without going far out of their way, they saw what had drawn the crowd. The peasants’ eyes were riveted on the actions of the police as they examined faint tracks awash with loose sand.

Between them, his body curved as if he were bowing, lay the old sadhu. His forehead rested on the ground. Both hands were pressed to his chest as if he had wanted to hold to himself something very precious which was slipping away from him. A few steps farther on were a gourd with black holes, decorated with glass and bits of crushed tinfoil stuck on with a resin, and a common flute of the type used by snake charmers, beggars, and sellers of peanuts.

“Please do not come near.” A policeman stopped them. “We are waiting for the photographer.”

“What happened to him?”

“He is dead. He was a rich man. He was an important person in these parts. There will be trouble.”

“Especially for the family,” another officer grinned, his white teeth gleaming under his mustache with its twirled-up ends, “when they try to establish the amount of the inheritance.”

“Accident? Suicide?” Istvan demanded. The wind stirred the gray wisps of hair on the dead man’s sunburned neck.

“He is holding both hands on the haft of a knife, but that might simply be a reflex: someone may have thrust it in and he wanted to pull it out, and fell as you see. We would all have preferred that it be suicide. He had extensive business interests, not always above board. But a believing Hindu does not commit suicide. Even those in misery endure hunger and difficulty beyond human strength. They wait for the end; they want to be purified by suffering and attain a happier life. To be born into a wealthy family,” he explained sourly.

Fishermen stood on the talus, which exposed tangled masses of brown palm roots. They surged and pushed to get a better view. Suddenly the bank gave way with a dull ripping sound and the ground opened. Dark, slender figures sprang onto the sand.

The officer put his whistle to his bluish lip, but already the police were brandishing clubs. The fishermen were shouting and running in all directions to escape the bamboo cudgels. Those who crawled along the bank, hiding behind the palm trunks, snorted with laughter like boys being chased.

“Wait.” Margit held on to Istvan. “Here is the photographer.”

He fixed his tripod in place, took various views of the remains, then knelt, lay on the sand, and seemed to be prostrating himself before the dead man. Finally the corpse was turned over. The legs straightened as if with relief, the hands dropped and the black handle of the knife with its copper decoration showed from under the ribs.

“We can go,” Margit breathed. “Did you see how they looked at me? As if they had never seen a woman. I was sorry all the time that I didn’t have a beach coat.”

“What were you waiting for?” They waded through the loose sand. “Perhaps he sent those runaways to paradise.”

“A worshiper of the sea. I thought of that at once. Would you like to know why I stayed? I had to see the knife. You went out during the night; in my sleep I felt the coolness of your skin when you came back. And you didn’t give me back the lancet.”

“Do you think…I could have…”

“You believe it is your calling to hasten the verdicts of justice,” she said with emphasis. “If you had been certain that the old man was responsible for the deaths of those defenseless people and might evade judgment because he was a sadhu, because he was rich and the police preferred not to fall afoul of him, you wouldn’t have spared either yourself or those you love. I know you.”

He looked at her set lips. She was walking so fast that a red hank of hair that had escaped from under her aqua bathing cap swept her back. The sand parted under her narrow feet.

Before they went under the shower to rinse away the saltiness of the sea, he took her in his arms and turned her toward him. They stood that way, breathing rapidly. Her eyes were full of a cold fire.

“What do you want?” she asked. “You’ve killed, after all. You said so yourself.”

“It was war then.”

She tilted her head and suddenly he understood that she was like him: hard. She had been able to hate. She had come to India. She wanted to help people in misery. She had come to have her chance at life, to challenge fate. Well — she had had him. She had plunged into love, into the measureless element, but he knew by now that he was the stronger of the two.

“You don’t need a knife to kill,” she said pointedly. “Now let me go.”

She went into the shower and pulled down the straps of her bathing suit. A hail of bright drops beat on her breasts, which were paler than her arms. She immersed her face in the silver stream and closed her eyes: beautiful and distant.

“Sahib!” Daniel called from the veranda. “Murder on the beach! He was not a good man. Sahib, I have filled the petrol cans. He left a fortune. There are sandwiches in the basket and a mountain of oranges. They will probably arrest his nephews, since they would inherit it.”

They saw a dried red starfish on the hood of the Austin.

The rains, the monsoon downpours, had not destroyed the roads. The beds of the mountain rivers were not flooded. The wheels of the car churned shallow, sparkling water; they could imagine that the tires were relieved to settle into the swift current that made streaks in the yellow sand on the bottom. They plowed their way between mountains with dark brownish-red walls like clotted blood. The slopes were overgrown with matted, thorny bushes. Patches of earth parched from drought, lashed by winds, scratched and swept bare, gleamed over cracked subsoil. The sky had retreated upward and was empty, marked at long intervals by a black cross — a hawk that circled slowly and escorted them without bothering to move its wings.

A dry wind blew in the hollows. Invisible dust floated on the air; its vapid taste was in their mouths and it soaked into Istvan’s sweat-stained shirt, turning it red. Air streaming through the lowered car windows, heated as if by a stove, rippled through Margit’s light dress. She responded by removing one by one, with a little struggle, her underthings. Sighing, she lounged against the hot back of the seat and pulled her dress open at the top. Her hair, stiff with dust, swathed her forehead in a lusterless sheath.

They stopped beside a little brook and threw off their sandals. The water flashed cheerfully. A school of small fish scattered like shadows. Istvan raised the hood of the Austin and put water into the radiator. The steep wall of the gorge gave no shade; lizards scurried over it, shriveled as if the red clay had parched them. They panted with open mouths, looking stupefied.

Margit took a stick and picked out incrusted wasps and grasshoppers that the wind had blown into the cells of the radiator. Lost in thought, she turned the shimmering wings of a butterfly over in her fingers. Istvan poured gasoline into the tank; its vapors formed a trembling mist in the heat.

They hardly spoke to each other. They sat dazed by the noon heat, holding their bare feet in the briskly flowing stream. They smoked cigarettes that tasted bitter and gave no pleasure. They gazed blankly at the swarm of little fish that came swimming up until the water seemed to boil with them. The fish beat against their feet, fluttering as if there were an electric current in the water.

“We have to push on”—he threw a cigarette butt into the water—“and get to Hyderabad if we’re going to stay the night in a decent hotel.”

“Good. Only let me have a dip.”

She threw off her dress, knelt, and shattered the glare that lay on the water, splashing her skin with sparkling droplets. Her slender body took on the golden gleam of the late afternoon. She sank down softly with a deep sigh, half reclining on the sandy bottom of the shallow river. Around her the water was stained rose from the dust that washed off her skin.

“Margit!” he shouted. She opened her eyes reluctantly; the sun hurt them. “Sit up!” He gave her his hand and lifted her. She clung to him; he felt her weight and the coolness of her skin.

“Look! There, around the white stone. It looks like a root with the current breaking over it like glass, but it moves on its own and is ready to spring.”

Startled, she pulled in her legs. The moisture on her breasts, her bare, paler belly and her brown thighs dissolved in the hot breath of the red rocks as if she had rubbed her skin with oil. Istvan reached for a stone.

As if sensing his intention, the snake vanished under the water. The surface, veined with the current, pained the eye with its bright silver sheen and the crimson reflections of the mountainsides.

“It disappeared,” he said without anger, skipping a pebble that threw up glittering droplets.

“Do you think it was poisonous?” Margit hastily pulled on her dress; the hot fabric clung obstinately to her wet back.

“Shall I find it and check?”

“Let’s go. You’ve spoiled it for me.”

Istvan soaked his shirt in the water, wrung it out, and slipped it on. In the opposite lane garishly painted, overloaded trucks were rolling up and stopping in the center of the riverbed like oxen at a watering place. Disheveled drivers climbed down into the water and drank from cupped hands; snorting, they rinsed their noses and mouths. All the gorge rang with their shouts. They watched curiously when the Austin moved out onto the broken rocks, but the engine, after its rest, carried them out effortlessly. The truck drivers began to splatter water on each other like romping children. They had already forgotten about the foreigners.

The smell of mildew and dry grass rose from the superheated marl. On the trees by the road, which were red with dust, the throbbing chime of cicadas drilled the air. The road twisted, sinking between the hills, rising, falling again into large valleys, forcing him to be alert. He concentrated; he kept a hand on the horn. It was hard to tell if, beyond the next clump of trees, they might not meet a truck charging along, piled high with cargo.

He slowed down. Women with round vessels on their heads were coming down a steep path toward the road. They wore only skirts; their suckled-out breasts dangled like drying socks on their sun-charred torsos. Three-layered necklaces of silver flashed in the sun. They pointed to Margit’s coppery hair and spoke to each other rapidly, shielding their eyes with their hands and immersing their faces in the deep shade. The curve of the road carried them behind a sparse clump of bushes.

“You’d have liked to photograph them.” He turned toward Margit. “They had beautiful adornments that you don’t get at the goldsmiths’, but you still see them in the villages, in places far from the cities.”

“No.” She peeped drowsily into his eyes. “I won’t buy anything. I don’t need cheering up.”

“They had ugly breasts,” he added a moment later, as if it had just occurred to him.

“You managed to notice?”

“I was thinking of you.” He drove on casually, holding the wheel with one hand. With the other he touched her thigh and the hand that lay limp on it. His dry shirt puffed out and fluttered in the hot wind. He withdrew his fingers, fearing that their sticky weight would be hot and tiresome.

In Bangalore they found themselves stuck in a crowd of automobiles invaded by swarms of bicycles. Gardens seemed to doze; dust tarnished the lacquered surfaces of leaves. Only the white walls of villas glared in the sun. They wanted nothing to eat. They drank strong, sweetened coffee boiled with milk. The seller cooled it by pouring it in a long, narrow stream, as if he were juggling the copper vessels and spinning out viscous threads.

It was still too early to settle in for the night. They checked their route on the map. The racket in the city was wearing; the air carried the odors of fermenting rubbish heaps, the smell of grease from frying, the sweetish reek of excrement. They decided to travel on toward Hyderabad. Istvan knew night would overtake them in the mountains; he thought they would stay in some village inn. When he went to fill the gasoline tank and the spare canister, Margit, wanting to stretch her legs, walked across the street, which was crowded with dark-skinned figures in blue and white shirts hanging over carelessly fastened dhotis. Young men accosted her gently but persistently, offering to help her, to accompany her, to advise her. They gazed at her, remarking on her gestures, her clothes, the color of her hair. The narrow shops exuded a strong, spicy fragrance. Dust and streaks of smoke from little stoves hung in the air, and the sour stench of heated cow dung.

In a kiosk she found local newspapers in English and old illustrated weeklies from abroad. She bought cigarettes and matches; undecided, she spread yellowed pages of print and her eyes fell on the headline “Demonstrations continue in Budapest.” She checked the date; the information was ten days old. The correspondent reported that a crowd of workers had gathered before Parliament demanding that those arrested be freed. She was happy to read the commentator’s opinion that protest rallies were still going on, and that Kádár would face many difficulties before he gained the confidence of a society outraged and embittered by recent events.

She began rifling through the files of newspapers, perusing page after page, searching for news from Hungary. She bought several papers, rolled them tightly and pushed them into her travel bag.

They drove for a long time through a thirsty valley. The sun reddened; when once they let it out of their sight, it retreated among the shaggy ridges of a jungle faded from drought. Among the huts — clay nests clinging to rocks — they looked for water. A half-naked old man with a face of ebony led them to a well, or rather a deep stone cistern. The water was drawn with a leather bag. The rope scraped as it wound; water spattered heavily into the stone throat, jangling and singing, and the sounds of its generous pouring whetted their thirst. They pushed the spokes of the winch impatiently with the full weight of their arms.

“Don’t drink it!” Margit blocked him. “See? That’s not water, just a soup of drowned beetles.”

“It won’t hurt me,” he insisted, feeling a delightful coolness trickling through his outstretched hands.

But the old man raised a warning finger. He pulled the bag onto the wide brim of the cistern and drew out round, almost black watermelons. A knife plunged deep with a crunching sound, cutting out a juicy pink half-moon. The refreshing juice trickled over Istvan’s chin and chest. He bit in eagerly, slurping and smacking. Swarms of red midges swirled over him, pushing blindly into his eyes and mouth.

“The best I’ve eaten in India!” he said with profound conviction, rinsing his hands in a stream of water that leaked from a hole in the leather bag.

The old man would take no payment. He gave them two more watermelons for the road. But an hour later, weary with the ride, they tried another and had no taste for it. The unpleasantly tepid flesh, souring in the heat, was repulsive. Even the juice had spoiled; it gave off an odor of fermentation, like the offscourings of fruit.

The sky hovered close to the earth; its glow faded. Languidly, as if with a sword, the distant blaze of the sunset pierced the violet. The ground still panted from the heat of the day. He drove without turning on the headlights. On the horizon the sun was burning out, and though its light spurted in long radiant streams like a despairing call for help, a low moon ambled out and steeped the valley in a bluish afterglow.

“Drive carefully now. Shall I take over?”

“No. My sleepiness has passed.”

A stooped elderly man hobbled along the edge of the road, leaning on a long stick. He raised a hand in the glare of the headlights, but lowered it when he saw that this was not a truck. Istvan gradually slowed down. They passed him standing behind a clump of trees with trunks that gleamed as if they had been whitewashed.

“Shall we take the old man?”

“I’ve heard so much about the dacoits,” she began. She saw through the rear window that the man had one leg swathed in fabric and was dragging it like a piece of baggage.

“The dacoits don’t touch Europeans. I think they consider us beneath them. We are outside the sacred order, the castes, worse than the worst. Or they see us as a kind of natural disaster which must simply be waited out.”

The lame man stopped, unable to believe his eyes. He did not understand what they were saying to him; he knew only his own dialect, and the few words that Terey managed in Hindi did not reassure him. At last he understood. He got in, but let go his stick and crouched close to the car door as if ready to jump out any minute. He breathed with the shallow panting of old age. In the lazy air of the sultry evening an odor of pus rose from his leg.

“What’s wrong with him?” Margit wondered. “Leprosy, perhaps?”

“No.” He smiled cruelly. “Haven’t you recognized it yet? It’s a mortal sickness called life. It runs various courses, but it always finishes in death. He’s coming to the end.”

They drove in a haze of moonlight. The mountains sparkled as if they had been sprinkled with snow; perhaps even on the high slopes the starry sky had shaken down a dew. The glow of their headlights on the road cut a red wedge of clay packed down by wheels and baked from the heat.

Suddenly a flock of sheep loomed in front of the car; the animals, in a jostling mass, kicked up a reddish cloud of dust. Men drove undersized cattle into the ditch, forcing them to jump like goats. The smells of cow sheds — of milk and dung — burst onto the air. Women stopped along the road, tall women with shawls thrown over their heads. Dogs ran about in the light from the car, their black lips and white teeth flashing.

A gray streak of wood smoke hung in the air over the startled sheep. The women carried copper vessels suspended from fire hooks. The charred brands slept in their ashes: eternal fire. Istvan caught the familiar fragrance of home. Then the lame old man began to shout. Men with long spears ran up to the car. One had a rifle on his shoulder.

“He wants to go to his people. He wants to get out,” Margit guessed. As soon as she pressed the door handle, the crippled man pushed himself onto the road and snatched his stick out of the car. He caught up to the herdsmen and spoke to them, waving his hands.

The left side of the road was already empty. Istvan drove the car in among the gray woolly backs, pushing the flock apart. As they vanished in the cool blue of the night, he asked, “Did anything strike you about the movement of those nomads?”

She said nothing.

“They were walking quietly, as if they were driving stolen animals. The sheep wore no bells. The cows had no clappers. The dogs didn’t even bark. They seemed to dissolve in the dark.”

“Only the smell of smoldering wood was left, and the odor of wounds running with pus — as if he were still sitting behind us.” She hunched over in anger. “I’m not even sure he didn’t think we meant to kidnap him! The herdsmen didn’t seem happy that he returned.”

“They had thrown him out. He’s a burden to them. They’re looking for new pastures, for water. They can’t lose animals for the sake of one old cripple. The animals are their living, so they must care about them above all. Meadows not burnt up with drought — they make it possible to have milk from the cows and sheep, for they don’t butcher them for meat. They would die of hunger first. Milk is life. They had to leave the old man. They wanted to live.”

“And we took him to them again,” she whispered.

“No doubt they’ve already left him.” He spoke without turning his head; he was gazing at the reddish fragment of road the headlights were tearing from the darkness. “They live according to the ruthless laws of nature.”

Before eleven they stopped in a large village. Peasants smoking pipes lay on beds in front of the cottages, wrapped like mummies in white sheets. Their fires glowed red in the breeze. The smoke, like a veil, sheltered them from the mosquitoes that were breeding in the half-dried-up cisterns. They surrounded the car; a couple of the younger ones spoke English. A tall man volunteered to show them the way to an inn and guided the car along a footpath. Istvan had to turn around because the Austin could not squeeze between the clay walls on which cow dung had dried.

“Too narrow,” said the young peasant with as much pride as if he had made a great discovery.

Above silver water the horned heads of buffalo protruded, their eyes blazing like jewels in the headlights. Temple steps, notched and interspersed with clumps of coarse grass, led to the silent reflecting surface. An enormous low moon lurked behind the mangrove. The spreading branches grew in the earth like ropes of aerial roots, creating caves filled with diffuse light.

They turned around cautiously. The pungent smell of rotting herbs, muck, and slime drifted from the water. The shore was a band of black and silver, pocked with innumerable hoofprints.

They drove around the village. They passed a forge that gave off a glare sprinkled with sparks and rang with the cheerful beat of a hammer; the blacksmiths were finishing their work in the cool of the night. They drove along a thick stand of sugarcane near an octagonal building of masonry with windows narrow as loopholes. Behind a closed screen door the light of an oil lamp brooded.

“Here, sahib, is lodging for the night,” the man said comfortingly. “In the old Methodist chapel.”

The dying murmur of the engine summoned an old man wrapped in a patched blanket. Behind the building sat a shed containing the inn’s kitchen and a hencoop. An open hearth threw a shifting glow onto the ceiling; fringes of spider web shaggy with soot hung from the beams. A half-grown boy was sitting cross-legged by the fire and cutting an old piece of gutter into V-shapes with shears, bending the pointed ends up. At his feet lay a scrawny bitch with sagging teats. The boy tried to fit segments of the armor he was making, with its comb of bristling spines, onto her back. He beat a nail into the metal to make holes and secured each section with a wire. At every summons the dog rose meekly and heaved a sigh.

“The water will boil shortly.” The caretaker threw sticks onto the fire. “You surely have your own tea. I invite you: we have only local tea, smoke-dried. I will dress the chickens quickly.”

He went over to the poles where the birds were sleeping with their heads tucked under their wings and felt them, gauging their weight with his hands. As he wakened them, they cackled. He chose two, carried them away as they flapped their wings and squealed in desperation, and took the shears from the boy’s hands. He stopped in the doorway, which was splotched with moonlight as if with chalk.

The chickens had squawked themselves hoarse and were paralyzed by their sense that death was near. They dangled lifelessly. With one grating snarl of the shears he cut off their heads and let the bodies fall onto the heavily trodden grass. The headless birds lunged about as if to escape, spraying black blood against the moon. They jumped, dragging their wings, staggering drunkenly in circles. Before they went rigid they burrowed into clumps of weeds.

The dog walked out in her strange armor with its protruding points like a beast in a fairy tale. She licked up the blood from the dried grass as if from necessity — as if overcoming an aversion.

“Why have you got her up that way?” Terey asked.

“A panther has already taken two dogs from my son,” the old man blurted out. “This dog has pups too small to live without her. My son wants to protect her. He understands that it will be good for her.”

He did not pluck the chickens. He only tore off the feathers together with the skin. They stuck to his fingers, which were dark with blood. The bitch snatched the entrails as they were ripped out and gulped them down with one snap of her lean muzzle.

“I won’t eat,” Margit whispered. “I want to wash up, have some tea, and sleep.”

“I’ll watch to be sure he doesn’t skimp on the spices.”

“The water is in a barrel under the ceiling, but it is cool. You need only pull the cord and it will pour. The other barrel, the one by the wall with the dipper beside it, is for washing after. The water closet is here — but who except in a case of great urgency would come out to the yard — only please flush. One guest from the ministry is already sleeping: a Hindu, not important. If I had known that you were coming, I would have purchased more vegetables and some tinned foods and set aside the best part of the hotel,” he said proudly.

The moon shone brightly; it seemed to stare unnervingly into their faces. Weariness came over them, and they shivered from the chill of the mountain night. The flickering light gave the walls of the shed a greenish tinge and glimmered on the disemboweled chickens. The dog sniffed the severed heads and munched them, choking on the beaks.

The boy came out of the kitchen to help Istvan spread out the bundles of bedding that were strapped to the roof of the car. But, enthralled by the green globe that was the full moon, he stood for a long time with his head turned up as if he were bewitched.

Margit slipped into the shed and sat on a block of wood behind the caretaker, who was tending the fireplace. He ran his hands over the hot embers as if his skin were fireproof. The feathers that still stuck to his fingers sizzled; the stench of them drifted through the room.

Why did I feel the slaughter of those roosters as an injury to myself? Nothing really happened; the rest of the chickens fell asleep again. They will not realize tomorrow that there are fewer of them. Does some ruthless hand also snatch us away for some reason that to it is self-evident? An evil vision — as if I press blindly on toward something that I don’t yet comprehend, but that will overtake and seize me. Is it possible to hear in the cries of slaughtered birds the voice of one’s own fear of death?

She pressed her fingers between her teeth and bit until it hurt. It was a relief. That herdsman, lame, thrown aside by his people — we took him back to be thrown aside again, to live through the despair of isolation a second time. They will leave him on the road. They will betray him. He will try feverishly to catch up with them, dragging his ailing leg. The long shadow will gain on him, a whine will urge him on: the craven sob of the hyena, walking along as if with a broken back, sneaking from one windfallen tree to another, under bushes, in the twilight, lured by the decay of the body. It also wishes no man to be wronged; it wants only the carrion, the rotting meat. Its jaws snap; they can crush the thickest bone. And that cripple knew it was waiting for him to die, if not tonight, then tomorrow. The next day. Shouldn’t I have stayed by him, torn away the rags even if he resisted, made an incision, put on a dressing? Did I do all I could have?

She reproached herself for the relief they had felt at letting him go, at giving him back to his own people, perhaps his own family. The sick should be treated by force here. Women swinging vessels with embers in front of their eyelids, men guarding flocks with spears in their hands. It may even be that they are happy; it is enough to accept the premise that this is the only life possible for them, inevitable as fate. Does it matter how one dies? We pass through that black gate alone, slipping from the arms that want to hold us. Is it worth it to form bonds in this life, to cling with all one’s might, to struggle?

Perhaps that man who sat on the edge of the road threw away his stick because he knew by then that one does not defend oneself — that he was doomed because he was already dead in the eyes of his people, who had walked away. Perhaps he was reconciled to it. She smelled the scent of a hyena whining with the lust to tear and devour the still-warm body.

She prayed, she hid her face in her hands and prayed, for rescue for the lame man. After all, some truck might come along; he might shout, might stop it. A will to struggle might awaken in him. But she felt a bitter certainty that the sick man would not cry out, and that the hyena, frightened away by the truck’s headlights and the roar of its engine, would return.

In a drowsy burst of weeping she accused herself and begged for mercy for the man whose kin had abandoned him. And they will feel no guilt; their hands will be clean. Because they won’t know. Blessed ignorance.

In the leaping firelight the old man turned his brown, furrowed face toward her. “The chickens will be ready soon.”

The door opened. Istvan said that the bed was ready. He was baffled when Margit rose and clung to him desperately.

“A sleepy little girl?” He stroked her back and held her close. “I’ll tuck you in in a little while. I’ll feed you.”

“Do you think”—her tense whisper demanded an answer—“that they took that man with them?”

“Who?”

“The old man with the infected leg.” She was angry that he had not understood at once. “I saw a hyena slinking along behind him.”

“Of course they took him. You were dozing. That nightmare tired you. But surely you wanted to exchange me for him and devote your life to him,” he said with an indulgent smile. “You know the devout principle: nonviolence. Change nothing by force. Let evil destroy itself, and let us perfect ourselves. Let the world not hinder us in this. Nor any hyena.”

She was appalled. “You can’t be serious.”

“Of course not. I wanted to remind you of the law of this country in which we are only guests. They must deal with this themselves — not as individuals but as ethnic groups, as a state.”

“Mother India!” she sighed.

“Exactly. Remember how those mothers by the walls of the dung cottages raise locks of their daughters’ hair in the sun and delouse them. They comb out the lice and let them fall into the grass. To kill them is not allowed, for life is sacred. Calm down. Don’t castigate yourself. What is one cripple in the scheme of things? Life goes on.”

The old caretaker, busy with the reddening chickens that were roasting on a wire net over hot charcoal, seemed not to notice that the visitors were waiting. The dog scratched with its paw, pushed aside a creaking partition, and stepped into a dark corner. They heard the thin, mournful whine of a puppy.

Margit hurried to help. The bitch lay by her pups, impaling one on a sharp point of the armor. She would not allow the whimpering little dog to be freed. Istvan lit the corner with a flashlight. The dog growled at Margit, ready to bite. Her lips were curled and trembling; her fangs were bared. The oppressive armor, unnecessary inside the house, pressed against her back. The puppy was damp and soft as dough; she licked its lacerated belly and turned the others over with her paws. They pushed their way unerringly toward her teats. Her downy coat swarmed with translucent yellow fleas.

“Stop worrying about the whole world.” He drew her firmly to him. “Come and eat.”

She rose obediently. A savory smell was coming from the roasted chickens. The juicy meat with its crisp surface held the pungent aroma of spices. She hardly bothered to taste it before biting eagerly into a leg.

The bitch left the mewling puppy and drew near them, waiting, tense with anticipation, to be thrown a bone. The gleam of the open fireplace played on her tin spikes. The flames glimmered; red sparks flew up, tracing zigzags in the air. The remaining chickens squeaked in their sleep, sometimes stretching their necks and cocking their heads to look out with eyes like rubies, full of wonderment, only to tuck them under their wings again. Perhaps they had seen an apparition; perhaps they had heard those cries again.

They went into the servants’ quarters; the screen door stuck on one of the tiles in the floor, scraping harshly. Behind the partition of boards plastered with wallpaper the light was dim. Smoke floated over the makeshift wall as an unknown man puffed at a cigarette. The portable mattresses, pillows, and linen spread on plank beds were covered by old army mosquito netting painted with green and yellow spots.

“Which do you want?” she asked, yawning.

“Does it matter? I’m sleeping with you.”

“No.” She shook her head, motioning with her thumb toward the wall, which was rickety as a screen. Tiny rays of light burst through holes in the wallpaper.

He showed her a hook affixed to a beam at the end of the corridor. A cord was attached to the hook: he explained the mechanism. Water ran boisterously from a gasoline barrel. In the drain, covered with a slimy grating, something was scratching. She pulled down her dress, asked him to run the water again, and bathed, suppressing her aversion. The medallion in the shape of Buddha’s hand gleamed, throwing a golden blotch like a birthmark on her breast. When the water began to flow into the drain as if from a watering can, there was a scraping in the hole under the floor and a rat fled, squealing.

In the dark, invisible mosquitoes flew over them, spinning out their tremulous hungry whine. Their bites burned like sparks from a fire. They communicated in whispers, since under the barrel ceiling of the old chapel voices were amplified. When they returned, their neighbor’s curtain was pushed aside and they saw a slender, balding man in striped pajamas.

“Do not let my presence constrain you”—he inclined his head—“since we must share accommodations. Please behave as if I were not here. I have shown myself so you can see that I am not asleep.”

“Are you still working?”

“Who can sleep when the moon is full? It draws me outside. Do you hear, madam, how the jackals howl? They, too, are restless.”

It was clear that he was waiting for them to prolong the conversation, but they bowed politely and made their way to their quarter of the room.

They undressed in the dimness. There was nowhere to hang things, so Margit laid her dress over the foot of the bed under the mosquito netting. Istvan sat lost in thought, feeling to the bone the fatigue of the long ride that had demanded alertness and concentration. When he closed his eyes, he saw orange cliffs in the harsh sun; blue shadows and thorny ashen-colored brush on the slopes; watermelons almost black, with water streaming from them as if the rinds were coated with wax; Margit’s pale breasts ever so slightly brushed with tan in the flashing shallow stream.

“Are you thinking of what will happen in Delhi?” she whispered. She was as invisible under the spotted net as if she were hidden in a treetop.

“No. I feel calm.”

“Budapest?”

“I’d give a lot to know what’s really going on there. It’s quiet as a cemetery. Everyone wants to forget what happened.”

“There are demonstrations at the Central Committee again. The workers went with torches of burning newspaper.”

“How do you know?” He raised his head, suddenly alert.

“I bought some papers. There’s been unrest there for quite a while.”

“Why didn’t you tell me at once?”

“I didn’t want to upset you.”

“Where are the papers?”

“In the car. You’re not going to read them by flashlight, after all.”

She heard only the screen door frame scraping the floor. A moment later the other man was shuffling about as well. She lay with her hands under her head, half asleep. With a crackling sound the rat tore splinters from the wooden grating over the drain. It squeezed through with a squeal of relief and scampered along the wall. Margit, hidden behind the mosquito netting, did not see it. In the deep shadow its claws scratched on the stone; furiously it set about tearing at some paper. She thought solicitously of Istvan. No doubt he was sitting in the car reading the news briefs by flashlight for the hundredth time. Without knowing it she fell asleep.

Istvan could read by the light of the full moon; he sighed tranquilly. If the workers could hold rallies and march in the streets burning the party newspaper, and no cannon fire dispersed the crowd, that meant the new government was confident. Things were not so bad. He breathed more freely. Around him the world was white with luminous, shifting moonlight. Dung houses slept below him like cast-off building blocks. Monkeys sat on the peak of a small pagoda, and it seemed that they might easily jump onto the enormous face of the moon, which was all too near. The pond bristled with two-headed monsters: the heads of ruminating buffalo were reflected in water heavy as mercury.

In the distance, mountain ranges shimmered in the starlight. The quivering air was filled with lustrous, disquieting blue dust. Roosters hoarsely announced the midnight hour; a vast silence lay on the heart, unmarred by the sobbing of the jackals close by who slipped past in pairs, disturbed by the unusual brightness of the moon. In the yard, in a puddle of rippling silver, the dog in its weird armor, trailing a long, misshapen shadow, circled quietly this way and that like an antediluvian beast. Leaning against the wall of the inn, the Hindu was sitting crossed-legged, peasant-fashion, wrapped in a blanket. His bald head glistened in the stream of moonlight.

“Are you in a hurry to seek oblivion, to lose yourself in sleep?” he asked, wishing to detain Terey. “Sit on this stone. Let us talk for a while. What a splendid night! Surely madam is asleep already.”

All at once the captivating loveliness of the night was laid bare to Istvan. He was moved; he felt a warning twinge of sadness. Feast on this, he thought; drink in the beauty of the full moon over India. This may be the last time you will see such a night in the Ghat Mountains. His feelings choked him as if he were saying goodbye. He wanted so much to call Margit to him, to have her share the silence in the shifting radiance of the moon.

“I came here to fight against the greatest plague in the country.” The Hindu’s glasses gleamed like ice. “People do not even know about this, and after all, they are being devoured.”

“You hunt tigers?” Terey said in amazement.

“No. I am thinking of cows.”

“Sacred cows?”

“They are all sacred, the ones that go about the cities wearing garlands and the wild herds that roam by night and graze on cultivated land, destroying fields. A fifth of the crop is lost. Think: a cow for every two residents of a teeming nation of four hundred million. A cow, which gives a modicum of milk, eats as it tramples fields and is not permitted to be killed, so its meat will be eaten by dogs and jackals. Its hide can be pulled off only by untouchables, and not until it collapses from old age, at which time the leather is not worth much. These millions of cows are our downfall. They lay waste the fields and starve the people, depriving them of life. These wandering herds in effect devour people.”

His thin hands, like greenish bronze in the moonlight, stretched toward the sleeping village in the valley. His voice had a fanatical ring. Long shadows lay on the white wall of the old chapel.

“Do the peasants understand this? Aren’t you afraid they might stone you?”

“If I told them that extermination — selection of the stunted beasts — is necessary for their good, they would surely beat me to death.” His tone was bitter and sarcastic. “But I say that it is for the good of the cows. I speak of their hunger, of their agonizing deaths when the vultures rend them while they are still alive. And the peasants cry, more than they cry over their own starving children! Indeed, they have seen the cows when they are sick — ill with consumption, poisoned with bhang hanging down on half-decayed plants. They know very well what I am talking about, and they admit that I am right. They want to help the cows more than they want to help themselves.”

“And has your campaign brought results?”

“Yes. They must allot pastures, pave the watering places, set the healthy animals apart — I do not dare say the farm-bred animals — and remove the sick for the time being, for treatment. The veterinarians’ assistants must be Muslims, for their religion counts it no sin for them to kill without hesitation. And everything takes place with all protocols observed, painlessly. The animals must be coddled so that a fanatical crowd armed with sticks, stones, and sickles does not beat us to a pulp. I know that I am acting against the will of the people; any of them would joyfully sacrifice his own life to save a half-dead cow. If they saw my true intent, I would be a demon to them, a destroyer of the source of their sanctification. The cow, mother of goodness, the nourisher. The cow, which cleanses from guilt. It is enough to receive, to swallow—Panchagavya! — five ingredients of magic medicine that come from her: sweet milk, sour milk, butter, dung, and urine.”

“You are an unbeliever?” Istvan leaned toward him, surprised.

The man opened his shirt and showed him a sacred thread that made a loop on his chest. He was a Brahmin — perhaps a rebellious one, but still a member of the highest caste.

“I want to help people, to save their lives,” he said reflectively.

Istvan noticed that he was smoking a cigarette, puffing with his fingers wrapped around the end of it so as not to touch it with his lips, and he smiled almost imperceptibly. Even this iconoclast was afraid the cigarette might have been made by a machine operated by one of the unclean, or packed by one, and he preferred to avoid contamination.

In front of them the moon went its way, foundering in the tops of trees hewn from old silver. Its round face shone, then seemed to dim; it pulsed with radiance like a living thing. Jackals wailed, choking with spasmodic sobs. Yes — this man with his English education, bold, resolved, valued people’s lives above the lives of cows, but those he wanted to save from hunger he preferred to keep within the old divisions of caste — in the place birth, fate, and the gods had appointed for them.

He saw on the Hindu’s slender fingers the red reflection from the burning tip of the concealed cigarette when he pressed it to his lips. The dog in its armor sat in the middle of the yard; raising her head, she echoed the jackals’ whining note. Then, as if frightened by the dead face of the rising moon and worried about her pups, she scratched at the door. It opened slightly under the pressure of her paw: with a jarring clank the metal spines caught on it.

An overwhelming vision of this world in its captivating wholeness came over him and he loved the man, the enemy of cows, who sat crosslegged beside him; loved the dog, who was forcing her way into the sleepy dimness of the shed; loved the old man, though he was a slaughterer of chickens; loved the living chickens who squeaked in their sleep, awaiting their turn. He even loved the voices of the jackals, as if their lament, wrested from their famished entrails, was part of that world’s entreaty. The actions of all living things seemed incalculably precious, though he knew they were like words written with a stick on a path trodden by feet and hooves and sprinkled with dust by the wind.

For he was convinced that one must undertake the troublesome task of transforming the world, and carry on until the last heartbeat, the last breath. He felt that he was close to a great, enchantingly simple secret that would be revealed to him that night so that he would tremble with amazement that he had not guessed it long before. A few minutes more…The silver mask with its obliterated features seemed to rustle in the treetops in the gap between the mountains, to shatter the boughs. He had never been so close to the truth; he longed for it, and he feared that it would change him.

And then the roosters in the village began to crow raucously, as if with alarm. The younger ones in the shed chimed in in immature, broken voices. From inside the building came Margit’s voice, filled with sleepy alarm.

He went inside. When he pushed aside the mosquito netting, she seized his hand and pressed it to her hot chest. Her heart was pounding.

“Were you afraid? After all, I’m here,” he whispered. She relaxed and fell back on the bed with relief.

“Something was crawling near the bed. Probably a rat. I called and you were nowhere to be found. I was frightened. Outside the screen in the door I saw that dreadful moon and someone sitting hunched over, lurking there as if to tell me something awful,” she mumbled, not letting go of his hand.

“That’s our neighbor.” He laughed lightly. “It’s the full moon. An exceptionally beautiful night. We chatted for a while, sitting on the threshold.”

He noticed that her breathing was regular, that already she had ceased to hear him. Though she held his hand involuntarily, she was in a deep sleep. He went to his bed and undressed slowly under the netting. Mosquitoes flew over him and bumped into the screen. Their neighbor shuffled in, cleared his throat for a long time, and spat. Istvan fell asleep, still hearing a light splashing; he remembered with relief that water was spattering from the barrel a few drops at a time. He closed his heavy eyelids, then half-opened them. The light still glowed through the holes in the wallpaper.

It frightened him that this moon, bathed in its own glow, was merging with the whole world and overlooking, displacing, the woman he truly loved. He listened to her calm breathing. The scratching of the rat’s feet, the scraping and rustling, disturbed him. The truth. What is the truth in my case? Did I love less when I pledged to be faithful to Ilona? Perhaps in a different way, and I was different, he thought, hoping to justify himself.

He saw the white river, full of its own sheen, and someone warned him that that was just the truth. Simply to spite himself, he made his way to the water with an angry fearlessness, plunged a foot into it, and was appalled to realize that that white-hot metal, moving as from a blazing invisible furnace, would cool in unknown forms. He had seen such a pouroff of steel in Csepel, in Budapest. He felt no pain except that the leg with which he had stepped so confidently, which he had trusted not to fail him — a part of his very self — gave way and he lost his balance. He flew toward death in blinding light.

He woke, involuntarily feeling with his hand to be certain he still had a leg. His foot stung; he must have thrust it out from under the netting when he pushed himself onto the mattress. He scratched himself for a long time, happy that he had a leg. He dozed and dug at the bites with his nails again. The mosquitoes must have squeezed in under the mesh, for it seemed to him that they were trumpeting straight in his ear, grazing him, tickling him with their wings. But he did not fight them; he only covered his head with his hand and slept.

In the morning they drank strong tea and in delightful weather drove to Hyderabad. Their Hindu acquaintance had already risen at dawn so as to perform his ablutions on the steps of the temple above the smooth surface of the cistern, over the edge of which the sky seemed to have been poured. Though they had not slept through the night, they were not tired. The sun, not yet in full glare, sparkled through the trees beside the road and seemed to breathe in their faces.

At noon Margit took the wheel and something like a daze, a somnolence, came over him. His head drooped. He knew they were riding through plains tufted with sparse clumps of trees. Real images blended with dreamlike visions and he slept, breathing in the fragrance of dry leaves, fires dead in their ashes and the girl’s light, elusive perfume.

He awoke feeling embarrassed and scrutinized her for a moment from under his eyelids. He caught her solicitous look as she checked to see if sudden jolts disturbed him. A smile, momentary but full of warmth, appeared on her face like a burst of light. He felt deeply anchored in this state of peaceful happiness, and in her unobtrusive presence; she was simply beside him, taking over the driving, ready to share an hour’s tiring journey with him, or a day’s, or even fate itself.

They talked about simple things: about rest, food, lodging, the condition of the car and the supply of gasoline. At night they fell briefly into each other’s arms, exchanged wordless caresses, and fell asleep at once. The Asian moon, orange-tinted in the early evening, was frightening, like a face rubbed with chalk. White light splashed on the mosquito netting and the whining of jackals woke them for a while. They listened and then, profoundly relaxed, nestled together and settled gently back to sleep in the fecund darkness.

Two days later just at noon the Austin, red with dust, drove into the suburbs of Delhi. A railroad track crossed the highway; as if for spite a guard with lanky legs protruding from under his long shirt beckoned a group of children over, blocked the iron gates, and secured them with a large padlock. Though the train was not due for twenty minutes, there was no power that could force him to let the car through. The instructions were written for slow-moving tongas harnessed to oxen. Several were standing there, with the animals’ heads dully drooping. Istvan and Margit could hear the sticky switching of tails soiled with excrement.

The drivers squatted over a ditch and relieved themselves, chatting drowsily. A stork with a head that looked very old and a pouch under its beak stood on one leg above the whitened bones of a dead cow. No one looked for smoke on the gleaming rails. No one hurried. A light wind sprang up, driving clouds of dust, and scampered over the stony fields. Far in front of them rose the chunky shapes of houses with flat roofs. Flocks of circling pigeons flashed like handbills shaken from the faded sky.

“First, take me to the hotel,” was Margit’s plan. “Then find out what surprise they have waiting for you at the embassy and let me know. I’ll wait.”

“Wouldn’t it be better for you to come to my place first thing?”

“No.”

“Hope for the best.”

She said nothing. Her hands clasped her upraised knees. Her eyes were sad.

He got out and wiped the windshield with a chamois. The glass was covered with starry bloodstains where horseflies had smashed against it. The bass-toned whistle of the locomotive, like an organ chord, flew over them. The train streamed past — only a few cars, nearly empty; two with cooled air for Europeans and the rich.

The train had long since passed by — it was hardly even a speck on the horizon, blowing smoke like the horsehair brooms the tonga drivers used to beat away the flies — before the guard saw fit to unfasten the padlock and open the iron gates. Istvan leaned on the horn and passed the tongas. Amid yells and the creaking of enormous wheels, the Austin sprang across the tracks in front of the line of wagons and sped toward the city.

He dropped her off in front of the sunlit façade of the hotel on the shady street where Tibetan women had spread their rubbish heap of fabricated antiquities on mats under the trees — fragments of busts, imitation bronzes, and wooden masks. He heard the young men at the reception desk call joyfully, “Kumari Ward. Doctor Ward.”

The suitcases bumped into the revolving door as their knees pushed against the flashing plates of polished brass. Istvan felt that he was returning home. Suddenly he began to hurry. He breathed in the urban smells of asphalt, scorching paving stones and dust, the odors of exhaust and pastilles.

The car sprinted on. Before him stretched the avenue leading to the Arch of Triumph — a compelling perspective boldly conceived. The India Gate was a soft rose against the wan sky. In the distance stood a clump of tall trees and circus tents respiring in the wind. He had looked for Krishan there. Farther on lay the road to the embassy, to Judit, to the place that in this country he called home.

He was surprised that the watchman was not standing in front of the gate; the entrance to the yard was open. A goat with udders protruding at her sides and knocking against her shaggy legs looked at him with a malevolent yellow eye and went on nibbling colorless flowers that had long gone unwatered.

After all, they must have heard the murmur of the engine. But no one came out to greet him. On the veranda he bumped into a pallet and a blanket. A clay hearth stood there, full of gray ash, and a small pot in which flies swarmed. Leaves shriveled with drought crackled under his feet.

All the joy of returning to his old haunts left him. The house had fallen into disorder. Ilona and the boys were not waiting there for him, that was certain. The door to the hall was unlocked. He walked into the stuffy interior, following the din of voices, angrier by the moment at the slovenliness he saw. From a distance he recognized the half-senile grumblings of the cook and the languid voice of the sweeper, the peculiar effeminate sniveling.

He took them by surprise as he stood in the doorway to the kitchen. Apart from those of his own household he saw the neighbors’ servants, all of them sitting in a circle, conferring with each other as their hands reached into a large pan of rice and vegetables. The kitchen was filled with a stifling odor of something burning, of sweat and cigarette smoke.

“Sahib!” exclaimed the frightened sweeper. “Namaste ji!” Old Pereira wiped his soiled fingers on his patched, unbuttoned shirt and folded his hands, bowing so low that his bristling tuft of gray hair bobbed.

“What is this desertion? What’s going on here? Why is the house neglected, dirty? Open the windows, sweeper!” he barked. “You have an hour to get things in order.”

The other servants slipped away stealthily on all fours. Only in the heat of the yard did they straighten to their full height. Their bare feet fluttered dully on the stones.

“We were told that you were not coming back.” The cook looked furtively at him through eyes welling with tears. “We have not been paid for the new month.”

“Who told you that?” He nearly choked with anger; it throbbed in his temples.

“Mr. Ferenc. He was here and took all the mail.” The cook sounded terrified.

“The devil! What mail?”

“Letters that came for you. The ambassador told him to.”

“Who told you to let things go like this? What have you been up to without me? I’ll chase down the lot of you!”

He strode to the hall, where the sweeper had flung open the windows and dust gleamed gold in trails of sunlight. He saw the watchman in front of the house. He saw the small figure of the girl, whose falling hair covered her face as she leaned over, hastily rolling up the bedding, like a dog digging a hole in the ground to bury a bone. The light streaming in through the windows exposed layers of dust on the top of the table.

All at once it seemed to Istvan that he was an intruder — that he was causing confusion, like a dead man who had been carried out and buried and had suddenly claimed his place among the living. Pereira was standing before him, wringing his hands, exuding worry.

“What will become of us, sir? Will the new man keep us?”

“What new man?”

“He is not here yet. He is just flying in.”

Istvan was stunned. Now he understood.

“How do you know?” he asked quietly.

“From the ambassador’s staff. I took the liberty of asking the secretary when he was here. After all, it is a matter that concerns us — whether we will have a living — and he confirmed it.” The man with his aging face looked at Istvan to see if there was any remedy, any hope.

Istvan felt himself filling with bitterness; rage and grief stabbed his heart like a glass splinter. They have disposed of me. Smeared me. The dispatches have gone out urging that I be recalled. I have been pushed out of Delhi by some clandestine maneuver. Like a stupid, naive puppy I believed they were well disposed toward me. I went away with the girl; I put the evidence in their hands myself. Only one of their calculations failed: I came back. Now I’ve caused trouble for them.

He looked at the sweeper. The thin dark arms wielded the broom and wiped the dusty window screens with a damp cloth. Istvan thought of wind-up toys with broken springs; a few movements, a few shudders, and they stop as if astonished that the end is already here, that they are suddenly lifeless. The sweeper wrung out the cloth and reddish dust colored the water so that blood seemed to be dripping from the rag onto the windowsill.

He was grieved for the servants. He was the only source of subsistence for them and for their families, whom he had never met — the whole contingent of wives, mothers- and fathers-in-law and more distant kin. They were assured three times a day of a fistful of rice carried quietly out of his kitchen; he was, as Pereira said obsequiously, their father and mother. Even apart from the matter of food, he was a gift from fate.

What would happen to them now? For the time being they had a little savings; they could parcel it out, ration it, use up what remained from the past — and then? In clean, starched shirts they would make the rounds of the embassy staff, press bribes into the hands of people as much in want as they were themselves, speak ingratiatingly, plead in servile accents, for cooks are powerful; their patronage leads to the kitchen, with its delightful aromas of dishes cooking, where rice is not weighed before being poured into the pot or the heaping spoonfuls of flour for the chapati counted. To live is to attach oneself to a foreigner again. Files of effusive testimonials are not enough; one must promise a steady stream of payback from one’s wages to those who can help one to a job. They will pay for the very promise of work, for the hope that will keep them alive.

“Before I leave, I will try to find you a place,” he told Pereira, who repeated and translated the words. A glow seemed to fall on their faces; they bowed, raising prayerfully folded hands to their foreheads. They thanked him and blessed him.

The telephone rang. Margit wanted to know if everything was in order in the house.

“I’ve been recalled,” he said helplessly.

“Very good!” Her voice was clear, even challenging. “I expected that. Surely you’re not worried about it. Yes, Istvan, it’s time to bring the issue to a conclusion.” After a moment’s reflection she added, “What do you intend to do? Don’t decide anything until I come to you.”

“I must see the ambassador. And they are just beginning to clean the house. Margit, I’ll let you know when I get back.” He was almost pleading.

“Be calm. Keep your anger under control, do you hear? Remember, I’m with you. I’m waiting. Think: already they’re unimportant to you. You don’t need them. You’re free, do you understand? At last you have the upper hand. You can be yourself! They are afraid to speak, afraid of their own shadows. What are you worried about? If you’re really upset, I forbid you to go there just now. Do you want to give them any satisfaction? To show that they have struck a nerve, that it hurts? Istvan, it’s not even worth it to despise them. You can only pity them.”

He said nothing. He rested a hand on the light blue wall. He was calm again; a cold doggedness was growing in him, a desire for a reckoning.

“Do you hear me?” She sounded distressed. “Istvan, after all, they have done you a service. You should even be grateful to them. They have decided for you. You have this behind you. Do you hear?”

“Yes.”

“They can’t separate us.”

“No.”

“So nothing has happened. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I am calm. I’m going to the embassy to give them a surprise. They thought I wasn’t coming back.”

“Well, you see, they were thinking sensibly. Call first before you go. Stiff upper lip, darling.”

“All right. I really am calm.”

“I believe you. Go!”

Without replacing the receiver he pressed its holder and disconnected the call. His self-possession really had returned; he dialed the number for the embassy. Judit picked up.

“Is that you, Istvan?” She was amazed. Obviously troubled, she asked, “You know already?”

“I found out from my servants. I’d like to talk to the boss.”

“Half an hour ago he went to his residence for lunch. He has the new Japanese ambassador with him. Ferenc is sitting in. It’s empty; there’s no one here.”

“And what’s going on,” he asked sardonically, “except for my recall?”

“I must talk with you. You have no right to accuse me. You know nothing. Istvan, are you coming back? I’m sorry to ask you that, but everything depends on how you act. Don’t burn your bridges. Come — your salary is here. It would be a shame to let it go; it will come in handy. You can exchange rupees for pounds. Don’t cheat yourself to make a stupid gesture. Take what belongs to you.”

“I can pick it up anytime. I’m going to the boss.”

“Be careful. He can’t stand you,” she whispered. Then she added hastily, “He’s afraid of you.”

He did not care what else she might say. He hung up. Now she was ready to help him out with good advice, but had she said anything when they were destroying his career? I am calm, he repeated. I am utterly calm. His sweaty hand cast a shadow on the wall.

The telephone rang again, but he did not pick it up. He was sure that it was Judit, wanting to make him see things her way. She is not bad. And Ferenc? And the cryptographer? None was bad in his own right, but taken together…One goads the other, making sure no one hesitates. They are not bad, but they are not good, not only to me but for each other or for themselves.

He came into the hall, followed by the servants’ watchful looks. “It’s one,” he said, looking at his watch. “Don’t bother with lunch. Put on an early dinner, at five. A good one; make an effort. For two people. Here’s some money.” He laid out a bill, forestalling the cook’s wheedling. “I’ll pay you tomorrow.”

“For the whole month?”

“Even if I leave.”

There was no need to explain that. He walked out to the car, which was still unwashed and bore traces of the long drive. The watchman obligingly opened the door, stamped one foot, and stood at attention. On the grassy square his wife was waving a branch, chasing away a goat that had climbed onto the garden wall and was savoring a little flower. His tension was gone; release had come suddenly. Had the issue taken on its proper proportion and stopped tormenting him?

Margit is right. Nothing has happened. He smiled at himself unexpectedly in the dusty mirror. Nothing — yet.

He made his way, unhurried, through the streets of Delhi toward the ambassador’s residence. He passed motorcycle rickshaws with little canopied roofs. Hirsute Sikhs with puffy cheeks, leaning on their steering wheels, squeezed their pear-shaped horns with languorous smiles.

He left the car at a distance from the gate. The white columns of the residence were garlanded with passion flowers; the Bajcsys’ younger son was careening around a flower bed on a bicycle. Crinkled leaves rustled under its wheels and flew among the melodiously humming spokes. The boy nearly collided with the counselor.

“Look out!” Istvan exclaimed, jumping out of the way.

“You look out!” the little daredevil answered. “This is my yard.” He sped on along the paths, lowering one foot to steady the bicycle at the sharp turns.

Hidden in the shade behind the palace stood a car carrying a small white flag with a red circle in its center. The luncheon with the Japanese ambassador was not over yet. The guard, a short man with sinewy bowed legs, blocked Istvan’s way. The sun flashed on the handle of a knife thrust into his belt.

“Whom do you wish to see, sir?” he asked. Seeing that Istvan was moving confidently toward the stairs, he became disconcerted. “The ambassador is not free,” he said.

Istvan felt as if he were trespassing. He did not know this new, recently hired watchman. A thought stabbed him: had he really found himself excluded from the group, set apart, stigmatized? The boy on the bicycle flew straight at them, forcing them apart.

“Let him in!” the child shouted. “He is one of ours.”

He went up the stairs to the spacious hall and sat in a comfortable armchair. He decided to wait until the guest had left; he wanted to talk with the ambassador alone. From the open door to the dining room came a laugh in a bass voice and fragments of sentences basted with unctuous politeness. No doubt I’m here for the last time, he thought with relief.

So many times he had stood on the stairs greeting guests as they arrived, shaking hands as the park flashed with colored lights, the orchestra played old waltzes, the gravel crunched under the wheels of automobiles, and the smell of fuel blended with the perfumes of women sewn into glossy silks. Now that was behind him, like the lamentable film showing during the struggle in Budapest — the rows of empty chairs. The memory of the embarrassment they had endured grazed him like a bullet.

But other parties had been successful. Plum vodka and Tokay had livened up even the phlegmatic Hindus: they danced. They sang. They did not want to leave. When at last they were left alone, the ambassador with one jerk had pulled off his snap-on bow tie — for he had never learned how to tie one like a man in the higher sphere of society — unfastened his dress shirt, which was softened with sweat, and poured himself some wine. “Well, drink up!” he had invited graciously. “Well, Ferenc! Terey, go ahead! We’ve flushed out the crowd; it’s gone. We can breathe easily. There’s no one here except us.”

On the walls hung pictures of steel mill workers in the red glare of a blast furnace, masons on scaffolding, a woman mixing feed for piglets swarming to a trough; pictures like color photographs, approved and purchased, and no way was found to display them, so they were packed off to the foreign post. Lent — but no one would demand their return. They were relieved to write them off as a loss. The chairs and the red carpet had come from India. The great vase full of freshly cut branches with nondescript violet blossoms seemed to have been put in place randomly, with little relation to what was around it, for this house was not a home but a transient accommodation.

He lolled in the chair, smoking a cigarette, and was just walking out, saying goodbye to his life as an officer of the diplomatic corps. Margit was right: nothing has happened. Really, nothing.

“So you’ve arrived.” The ambassador’s wife came up. He had not heard the steps on the thick carpet. Evidently she had been bored with the conversation in a language she understood only poorly. She gave him her lumpish hand without a welcoming embrace, as if she needed support.

“Please sit down. They will be through directly.” She nodded toward the dining room. “You do not harbor resentment toward my husband? I want you to understand him. He had to.” She tried to penetrate his impassive expression. Her large eyes — hazel, even pretty — looked tearfully at him. “Instructions came to purge the mission, on the quiet, of a ‘doubtful element.’ He did not single you out; it was a collective decision. My husband said he would do nothing to injure you. After all, he has to be careful. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I understand too much.”

“No one believed you would come back. If you had not gone away it all would have gone differently. But that feeling persists. Talk to my husband, only please spare him. He has so many worries just now.” She confided in him, misled by the calmness of his manner; she almost took him for an ally. “He sleeps badly. His heart suffocates him.”

She leaned toward the counselor and laid both hands on her lap palms up, like a gossiping peasant woman. Her features were plain, honest.

“There are great changes in the government. Other comrades, not all of them friendly, went to the authorities. As long as he had the party behind him, he knew whom to go to and how to make his case; he always prevailed. More than once I was afraid — because he is so self-asserting, he demands so much — that he thought I was silly. And he was probably right, for he bore up against everything so that I was frightened sometimes. If that is reversed, he will not hold up well. Do not be hard on him,” she begged.

Voices drifted in from a distance; they were saying goodbye. Luncheon had ended, and she knew she ought to put in an appearance before the guest left.

“You can return to our country. To Budapest. Do you believe that I envy you?”

“I believe it.”

“There are no people here. We see diplomats exclusively.” She sighed heavily. “And one can be ever so careful, can handle them with kid gloves, and still they backbite, they make fun. But we must receive them. When you leave, think of your wife. I know where one can get beautiful silks in Old Delhi and lizard skin for sandals and bags. I would gladly go with you when the ambassador is not here.”

Bajcsy appeared with his guest. The ambassador, large and heavyset, seemed to be hustling the little Japanese man along with every breath. He spied the counselor and threw his head up, nodding to signal that he would be right back. Istvan was relieved to see his fleeting troubled look. His wife sailed up to the visitor, who stood with his head inclined. His smoothly combed hair gleamed as if the crown of his head had been brushed with lacquer.

The car engine rumbled; the hum died away on the gravel. Istvan welcomed the sound as a boxer welcomes the sound of the gong that summons him into the ring.

“Well, here you are at last, Terey.” The ambassador did not offer his hand; he only walked around with a ponderous step as if he were sniffing something. “This is a surprise. You’re being recalled.”

“As you wished, ambassador.”

Bajcsy was morose. His eyebrows were knit. “Yes, as I wanted.” He admitted it; he was courageous enough not to evade responsibility for the decision. “Well, now. Will you go back?”

“And when you are recalled, ambassador — will you go back?”

“Don’t bait me, Terey,” he said slowly. “I warned you in time. I asked you for your own good—” he looked around and, seeing that his wife was standing by, waved a hand. “Go. Leave us alone. I have something to say to the counselor.”

He waited until she disappeared into the dining room, then turned to Terey. He looked at him dourly for a moment, licking his drooping lips. “You wanted to investigate on your own hook, and there are no witnesses.” He spread his hands.

“There are none,” Terey admitted calmly, taking out a cigarette with a rustle of its cellophane covering.

Bajcsy cut to the chase. “You wanted to do me in.”

“No. Why would I?”

“So you say now”—the ambassador loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar as if he were short of breath—“only now. And I have you in the palm of my hand.” He shoved a clenched fist at Terey. “There is proof, black and white.” He waited a moment, then said abruptly, “I know who you were with at the shore.”

“Well, and what of it?” Terey said without batting an eye. “What concern is it of yours? For two years you’ve promised to bring my wife here and she’s not been here yet.”

He hated himself for saying it, but the argument had its merits. The ambassador reminded him of a country blacksmith, an old gypsy who was disguised in a light blue suit of raw silk but had forgotten to bathe. His fingers were soiled; there were traces of soot on his white collar. The comparison amused him, though he knew the stains came from the pipe Bajcsy was involuntarily tamping down.

“I’ll cut you down to size, Terey. I’ll cut you till you bleed. I’ve not yet written an opinion. It’s enough that I will attach a report of our meeting — of what the comrades said, and they had their eyes on you more closely than you think. You’ll be sacked from the ministry before you know what hit you.”

“I haven’t the least desire to stay. That’s a misconception,” Terey broke in, lounging carelessly in his chair.

“I’ll crush you, Terey,” the ambassador said gleefully, winking. “You’ll be squealing. I’ve taken bigger people than you down a peg.”

“If I were in your place I would be more careful about making categorical statements, ambassador. Try…” He was embarrassed at having said too much, for the other man had the upper hand and could injure him, accuse him — and explaining himself would bring down more blame. “There are comrades who remember your merits.”

“I was in prison. You can’t take that away from me.” He thumped his chest until it seemed to rattle.

“I wouldn’t think of it.” Istvan sat cheerfully erect. “It’s just that those merits are somewhat more common now. You liked the uncompromising way of doing things. Budapest is what it is because of people like you.”

Bajcsy was too good a player to be shaken; he took these blows. Could it be that this measly poet, this little puling cad, this detestable piddling intellectual, had his own channels of information? Was he reaching high? Did he know something the ambassador did not know yet? Had he received some signal?

“Do you want to know what the comrades attested against you?” He counted, seizing his heavy, soft fingers one by one with his other hand. “First: you hardly work. You’re lazy. And this is a country for conquest”—he quickly corrected himself—“a country that could be won over. You had nothing in your head but women, outings, amusements. No one but you belonged to a club; you’re a social climber. That circle of friends: you spent time with them, they invited you places, you became intimate with capitalists, for what is Rajah Khaterpalia? And his father-in-law? And that pettifogger Chandra? And Major Stowne, who works for the intelligence service, and everybody knows it but you? And what is she doing here, that Australian who’s attached herself to you? You picked a fine set of friends!” he intoned. “These are not just suspicions. I have evidence in hand. It was the last minute; you would either be recalled, or”—he weighed his words—“we would push you out. Cut ourselves off from you.”

“Groundless accusations,” he said with feigned indifference.

“Groundless? You foisted your trashy connections on me. On me personally.” He jabbed his chest with a finger. “And your suspicious inquisitiveness? I caught you in the cryptographer’s room, where entry is not allowed.”

“I wanted to read the proclamation of the new government.”

“You should have come to me. I would have given you access. And the strange pretexts, the sounding people out, feeling for their weak places. Who got my personnel to drinking? Did you give the caretaker whiskey? Six bottles. What did you want out of him in exchange?”

Istvan put out his cigarette. Stay in control. Next he will certainly be brandishing the invoices I gave Ferenc. I set myself up.

“Is that all?” To his own surprise, he sounded calm.

“Isn’t it enough? What would you do in my place? I only asked that you be recalled.” He leaned toward Terey, his face drooping as if in good-natured solicitude. “I didn’t want to destroy you. I wrote that it was at your request — that you have had enough of being separated from your family.”

Istvan was not certain whether Bajcsy was mocking him or overwhelming him with blame, humiliating him so he could raise him from his knees like a prodigal son with a gesture to all appearances forgiving, compassionate — raise him and press him to his bosom so tightly as to smother him.

“That’s right,” he admitted politely. “I think, ambassador, that they will not count that as a weakness on your part.”

“My dear fellow”—his fatherly tone was almost caressing—“why did you go behind my back? What were you prying and digging for?”

“I like to know things.” Istvan’s face tightened into something like a grimace.

“But for what purpose?”

“I was looking for the truth.” The admission had the ring of a concocted lie; it embarrassed him.

“At whose direction?” Seeing that Terey was silent and found the question distasteful, the older man explained as if to a stubborn child, “I will remain here. It’s impossible to move me; it isn’t even proper. If they cut Bajcsy, soon they would be asking, Why not the others? I’ve attained too high an elevation. To censure me is to discredit the party. Only those who do nothing are unblemished. Do you understand? I don’t want to yield my place to some fool! When they wanted dirty work done, they turned it over to me. And I was good then. Now they look at me as if I were a criminal. Though after people like me, something remained. It stands. It — is. Doesn’t that count? Have I ever said I am an innocent lamb?” He breathed with parted lips. Mechanically, angrily he shoved tobacco into his pipe but did not light it, for he knew the smoke would stifle him.

“I want to be a vice-minister. I will be. I want to rest, to go to a small, comfortable country — to a country like Holland — and I’ll bide my time. They won’t push me lower. Perhaps I won’t be read by schoolchildren as you will, but such people as I made the history of the republic.” The sagging fold of skin under his chin quivered with his shallow breath. “They won’t put me out to pasture. I won’t be buried alive. I’ll be where the party puts me.” Yet he spoke as though he would give orders to the party.

Istvan remembered the ambassador’s wife’s anxiety, the instinctive fear that the taut string would break. It was the tale of the golden fish: the boss knew the magic words and he knew in which ear to whisper them. And they had been fulfilled, but the party of today was not the golden fish. On his doughy hands, damp with unhealthy sweat, it would be difficult today to feel the corns, the traces of hard labor, for they belonged to the distant past. He had grown stout; his broad hindquarters filled more and more capacious chairs. He had lost his immunity, though he thought he still had it. The first failure would break him; he would sink into despondency. He would be like a rag. Istvan did not feel hatred for him. He was almost grateful that he could feel sympathy.

“You wanted the truth? And for what? Will things be easier for you when you know it? You insist on your right to it, and you don’t know what it is. Truth corrodes like acid. That is the price of power. Some of those who rule know the truth. And they must keep it hidden inside themselves, for if they shouted it to the nation, the people would stop their ears and run away. And they must open their mouths in order to issue commands every day, to lead, to govern. How I envy you that boyish ignorance, Terey!”

His hands shook. He noticed it and rested them heavily on his parted knees. “I don’t want to scuttle you,” he whispered furiously. “Just get out of my sight. Go to Hungary. Go to Australia. Go to the devil. Anywhere I can’t see you and those good, stupid, inquisitive eyes of yours.”

Istvan knew that Bajcsy was too distraught to play the game. He had crushed him; he knew he held the advantage. He heard his wheezing. He saw the fold under the unevenly scraped chin, the gray and black stubble; the cracks in the baggy skin showed through. The conversation must have taken a toll on him. No, I’ll not attack him. I’ll not inflict a blow. I don’t want to. I don’t want to.

Suddenly he seemed to see the ambassador in Budapest, walking with the shuffling steps of an old man. He stopped and leaned on a tree, oblivious to people who looked at him as they passed by, gasping through parted purple lips. Light air washed by a spring shower, wet, gleaming pavement and sparkling leaves, wrought iron garden fences, a boundless sky — and a man unable to get his breath. His feet slid along the ground, which had long since ceased to be a battlefield and become, in spite of the paving stones, soft and slushy. He shuffled, and if he still felt the earth under the soles of his shoes, it seemed unfriendly; it had become insistent. It reminded him that it was there, that it was waiting.

A servant brought a tray with coffee in two small, brittle cups. “Drink.” The boss’s tone was peremptory. Roused from his thoughts, Istvan looked at Bajcsy’s crumpled face. The older man reached for a cup and lifted it to his open lips. His hand trembled and drops of brown liquid fell onto the rug.

“So I shouldn’t go back to work?”

“That would be best.”

He looked back from the doorway. He saw the bulky, stooped figure, in a jacket hitched up too high, crammed between the arms of the chair.

“And my letters?”

“I ordered that.” He took the responsibility for everything on himself, certain that he was equal to it. “They are in the safe. Tell the cryptographer to give them to you. I don’t need them. I think we understand each other.”

Istvan passed through the shadowy house and walked out between the pillars on the porch. He sighed deeply and inhaled the clean, fragrant air as if he wanted to escape the dust, the weightless suspended particles, the ashes blown from the pipe that was stifling the ambassador. The watchman pulled aside the heavy gate; the garden seemed to be sleeping in the winter sun.

Fragments of sentences came back to him and he brooded over gestures and tones of voice, thought of more pertinent, incisive answers, marveling that they came to mind only now. He shrugged with a dissatisfied frown, like a man who should have provided crucial information but procrastinated, and an evaluation was written. But Ferenc didn’t pin the business he had going with the whiskey bought with the diplomatic certificates on me, and he could have; I wouldn’t have been able to explain. They would have believed him. In the end he preferred that nothing be said about it; he was saving his own skin. Unconsciously Istvan wanted to see his colleagues in a better light. He was hungry for goodness and congeniality.

His feet scraped on the paving stones; the sound echoed from the embassy walls. The working day was over. The caretaker stood among the palms in green-painted pots, keeping an eye on the Indian sweepers to make sure they took up the matting that served as a walkway and beat it, rather than simply brushing its surface as the usual cleaners did.

“Is it you, counselor?” The caretaker lunged toward him with such unfeigned joy that Istvan could not push away his extended hands. “I said I would bet my head that you would come back.”

“But you accused me in the matter of the bottles.”

“How could I be quiet when they all pounced on you? I spoke because no one else gave me a wretched bottle. I told them what kind of man you are, and right away they turned it into something to blame you for. I meant to defend you. A person has to bite his tongue before saying a word. I, after all…Surely you believe me,” he said pleadingly, pressing his hand.

“I believe you now — but it was painful for me.”

“I would have been on your side, comrade counselor. But when the ambassador said that he knew from a certain source that you had bolted, I kept quiet. I had my tail between my legs.”

“And you signed,” Istvan said bitterly.

“I signed. And not only I. It happened in such a way that there was no holding one’s own ground.”

“Very well, old friend. There is no more to say. The most important thing is that you didn’t go back on me.”

“The way it came out it was as if we had been slapped in the face.”

“Is the cryptographer still here?”

“Yes. In his office. The secretary is in, too.”

He hopped over the roll of matting that lay in the middle of the steps as if it were a threshold that was too high. He had hardly opened the door when Judit rose from her desk and threw herself on his neck as if he had been saved from impending death. She kissed him. He did not hug her; he stood with his hands lowered. He felt her warm, ample, friendly body against him. He saw, close to his face, her blue-painted eyelids and mild hazel eyes.

“Are you angry? Won’t you forgive us? Understand, Istvan, Bajcsy had information from some woman, absolutely certain information that you had sailed from Cochin with that Australian. Listen! I called you at the shore. They told me at the hotel that no such person was there. They always mix things up, mispronounce our names. They said — though I persisted — that a married couple had been there and gone away. No doubt they said that to get rid of me. A call from Delhi startled them. Then there was the meeting. The ambassador was so sure when he said that he knew the facts, that he was notifying us…that woman…”

Grace. It flashed through his mind. Grace, surely.

“I was with her.” He put a hand on Judit’s arm.

“Istvan, do you love her?” she asked in alarm. “What will happen to you both?”

He stood without a word, as if he had been struck by a hammer. Only now did the question cut him to the very heart. He turned around reluctantly, brimming with bitterness. He caught her look; it was full of pity and kindness, as if she understood — as if she had the same kind of test behind her and, feeling her own scars, wanted to buoy him up, to whisper: You see, I eat, I dress, I work, I live, do I not?

When he drummed with his fist on the armored door, he felt a hard spasm in his belly, as he had in wartime before an offensive. I’m wounded. The mournful refrain repeated itself. I’m wounded.

Little by little the door opened. Smoke billowed from behind it as if the room were burning. When he saw the metal box full of crumpled cigarettes on the table, the fumes suspended in the air — the tilted blue layers the other man stirred as he moved about — he realized that something serious had happened.

“I’ve come for my letters.”

The cryptographer looked around alertly. He asked no questions. Taciturn as usual, a little sleepy and absent-minded, he opened the safe and took out a thick envelope with a number.

“Was it a disciplinary recall?”

“No. At your own request. The date of your departure is at the discretion of the management of the mission. Have you spoken with the ambassador?”

Istvan opened the envelope and shook a handful of letters out onto the table. He recognized Ilona’s handwriting at once. He was enraged to see that they had all been opened. On some he saw something written with a red marker on one corner: the letter P.

“What I got I’ll give back.” His anger leaped ahead of events. “What does that mean?” He pointed to the marking.

“To photograph it. You probably want the films and the pictures. I have them in a separate place. Please just sign for them. I must do things by the rules.”

It isn’t his fault, Istvan thought. He only got an order and carried it out. Controlling his feelings with difficulty, he wrote his name in the open book. He saw the other man’s tremulous blink and suddenly it dawned on him that the cryptographer had deliberately not asked on whose authority he was collecting the papers and photographs. He had simply obliged him by returning them. Perhaps he had even taken a risk.

“Did you read the letters as well?”

“I sit here. I wait for hours. I get bored. I read them. Have a look at the ones that are marked. The parcel was waiting for the couriers. You withdrew it just in time.”

Istvan unfolded one letter. At the top he saw the inscription AFP. Nagar had written.

My dear fellow,

The news has reached me that you have taken leave of the embassy. Reportedly you are marrying, in spite of previous experience. Will you be going to Melbourne? I will miss you; you know how fond of you I am. If I can help you in any way, remember, you may count on me. You are not going back to Hungary: good judgment won out. I endorse the decision. Follow my example: I lost my homeland and gained the whole world.

Yours affectionately,

Maurice

The next letter was from Chandra. He proposed on behalf of a partnership including Rajah Khaterpalia, his father-in-law, and Chandra himself that Istvan assume the role of overseer of investment in Australia — of the construction of a modern cotton weaving mill and spinning factory which they had entrusted to their old partner, Mr. Arthur Ward.

“Knowing your interest in his daughter, I think that my, or rather our, offer — for it is the result of serious deliberation, and evidence of trust — may be suitable for you. Conditions remain to be negotiated.”

Why do I hesitate, then? I would make so many people happy. How comfortable it would be to say: We predicted this. This flight has been in the planning for a long time. He is guilty. At last we have the culprit! The mission was purged of a questionable element. The ambassador was not duplicitous when he said: I have evidence. There was proof enough. One does not write such letters if some shared secret does not lie behind them, some plan for the near future. Bajcsy knew what he was doing; he generously returned the letters but kept the photocopies.

Chandra’s letter was balm to his bruised self-esteem; it held out the promise of restoring his financial independence. He would not feel like a prince consort. It would be a beginning. He felt an urge to spit into the open safe, then rush to Margit, press her to himself, cradle her in his embrace and whisper, “Let’s run away from here. Let’s go. Let’s go now!”

The cryptographer looked at him out of the corner of his eye, puffing out blue smoke that swirled in the light of the draftsman’s lamp that was burning though it was daytime. The hand in which he held Chandra’s letter fell as if the paper were lead.

“Attractive offer, eh? Will you accept it?”

He said nothing.

“When will you leave?”

“I don’t know.”

The cryptographer smiled as if he had heard a choice piece of wit.

“Perhaps you two will fly out with the ambassador.” He leaned forward and exulted. “An hour ago a message came. He was recalled.”

“Does he know?”

“No. For the time being only you and I know. Amusing, no?”

His face looked a little like the face of a cat who holds a mouse in its claws: it betrayed a vein of startling cruelty. He is sure that I, too, have reason enough to hate the man and he wants, for a little while, the company of someone of like mind.

“When will you tell him?”

“Tonight. He will be more susceptible. Believe me, he will not check to see what time the wire came. He will have something to think about until morning. So many times he kept me here like a dog on a leash because he thought something would come in. He made me watch here whole nights. He treated the machine better! Now I will take this night from him. I will pull the pillow from under his head and sprinkle hot coals on it. He will not sleep tonight.”

In this submissive man, not given to conversation, condemned to loneliness because of the nature of his work, lurked undiluted rage.

Istvan brooded. If Kádár is replacing people, the change of course will not simply be a maneuver, a subterfuge, but a sign that there is life in our country, that there is hope for Hungary.

“If they shove him off the teat, you will see him spit on Hungary, and soon he will be sick of socialism. Fly out with him and bring him in by the scruff of the neck so they will make his tongue wag about what he did. But I am afraid that while they are making sense of the situation, he will become ill and put in for treatment in Switzerland, where he stored his money. And when he is close to the money, he will recover his health. He will disappear and they will forget about him right away, but the evaluations he wrote up will still affect the fates of people like me. That is why I gave you the photocopies and plates, though you did not even know about them. He will not give you a hiding. He will have to save his own skin.” The man spoke in a voice thick with anger long suppressed.

Suddenly he went quiet; they heard a knock at the door. The cryptographer put a finger to his lips. He listened: he recognized Judit’s voice and pushed aside the bolt.

“Come. Take your pay for January,” she said. “You’ll need it.”

Istvan pressed the cryptographer’s hand and went with Judit to the cashier’s desk. He signed the only blank space on the list, which was filled out with no room to spare by the embassy staff.

“Can I help you with anything?” she asked timidly.

“Yes,” he said vehemently. Seeing her face riveted on him and her eyes filled with suspense, he smiled slightly. “It’s nothing difficult. I wanted to ask you to retain my servants for the person who will take my place.”

“Good. That’s a trifle. I’ll see to it.”

“I know. That’s why I’m turning to you.” He rolled up the slick bills that still carried the smell of newly printed money, nodded deeply to Judit, and hurried down the stone stairs that were bare without the red cocoa matting.

Mihaly stood by the car. He rubbed the fender with the handkerchief he used to wipe his nose, stepped away, and looked with approval at his work. The light on the polished metal was so bright that the eye recoiled.

“How good that you are back, uncle.” The boy smiled so broadly that all his being seemed alight. “It was dull without you. No one has time. Everyone chases me away. I get in everyone’s way. I get under their feet.” He gave a comic imitation of the voices of Ferenc and the caretaker.

“And Miss Judit?”

“She gives me candy as if I were a little tot.”

“You’re not little at all.” He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“No, for if there is something to buy at the market, mama sends me, and then I am big. And when I want to go to the cinema alone, they yell at me. They tell me not to go so far by myself. Little, little—” he mocked. “Hindus my age already have wives. Really! A Sikh who plays badminton with me told me that they have already found him a wife, and he is just eight.”

Istvan took the boy in his arms. He was filled with affectionate sympathy for the child who, without friends his own age, felt isolated.

“We are very busy.”

“But why is it that you can talk to me sometimes? Why don’t you think I’m stupid? Stupid—” he frowned as if at those who pushed him forcibly back into the infancy he had outgrown.

“I like to talk to you.”

“No.” The boy contradicted him hotly. “You like me. Is it true that you’re running away?”

“You’ve got it wrong.”

“Uncle, take me with you.” He raised his keen eyes trustingly, looking for consent.

“You know that’s impossible. Your father wouldn’t let you go.”

“Yes, he would, and so would mama. Is that lady going with you?” he asked with unconscious shrewdness, groping in the pocket of his pants. “Uncle, I want to give you a present.”

Istvan had forgotten the boy, forgotten about the whole world. The question returned like an echo in empty rooms: it reverberated. It rang with reproach. It accused him.

“Uncle”—the boy tugged at his hand—“wake up. Put this to your ear, only don’t open it or it will escape.” He took a cardboard box from his pocket and thrust it toward Istvan. The lid had been pierced by a pin.

Istvan looked at the boy — at his outstretched hand holding the gift — as if he did not understand. Finally he forced himself to smile. “You have another bird,” he said, remembering the fun the boy had had with the grasshopper.

“No. I have a cicada. I caught it on the mirror. I set it between some leaves and it flashed like a piece of the sun and the cicada flew over. It walked around a leaf and jangled and then saw why the other one didn’t answer. Will you take it, uncle? It likes orange juice and the center of the lettuce best. It takes a leaf in its little hand and looks funny when it drinks. And it will wink at you if I don’t take it back.”

He tied the box with a thread and put it on the seat of the Austin. “Uncle,” he said thoughtfully, “why aren’t I your son?”

“Because you have your father.” He took the boy’s hand and squeezed it. “Thank you.”

“He is not mine. He belongs to the embassy. Do you hear how it jingles? It is saying goodbye to me.” Happy again, he waved to Istvan as he drove away.

For a moment longer he saw the little boy in his mirror. His hair bristled over his forehead as he stood alone in the sun on the red road.

When he reached the avenue he had to slow down. The whole width of the lane was filled by a crowd of shouting ragamuffins; dust rose from under their bare feet. Above the swirling streams of boisterous humanity a red banner with white curvilinear words in Hindi hung on two poles. Demonstrators peered into the car and rubbed its body with their fingers, leaving smudges. One threw him a flyer of thin paper that read, “Private sweepers of New Delhi: Demand payment of your whole wage, not just installments.” So something was stirring; for their work they were demanding the agreed-upon payment from their employers, not just a subsistence.

Pereira, rustling in his starched clothing with flat expanses where the iron had pressed hard, stepped around the table, waiting for the signal to serve the meal. In the center of the tablecloth stood a brass vessel holding a clump of cloyingly fragrant mignonette.

“Here you are at last!” Margit exclaimed. “What did the ambassador have to say? Do they want to send you back?”

“Yes,” he said in a voice that was not his own. He was like a man cut in two. He heard a command: Look. Well, look. You have her. You can do with her as you wish. And another: It is over. You chose, after all, long ago. Don’t be a coward.

“They want me to go back. As soon as possible. I’ll fly.”

Though his expression boded nothing good, she was still smiling gently, as if she were hiding a pleasant surprise.

“Fine. You should have a frank conversation with your wife. I’ll go with you.”

“No.” It was a stone being wrung from him, not a word. “You can’t.”

“I’ve been thinking of this for a long time. I can.” She waved a hand impatiently. “When all is said and done, they won’t eat me there.”

As if for the first time, she saw his gray face, dogged and full of pain.

“Surely you don’t want—” she whispered.

“I don’t.”

“So where am I to wait?” she cried fearfully.

“Don’t wait.” They were not words. They were boulders that took all his strength to push.

She still did not comprehend, but gazed at him in immeasurable astonishment, as if he were only now revealing himself to her and appearing shabby, detestable. She looked at him as if she could not recognize the familiar face, as if someone were impersonating him. But it was indeed her Istvan, who loved her, whom she trusted and to whom she was giving not only herself but all the future — life. Her life.

“Please understand, Margit. I—”

She shook her head and stepped back, standing erect.

“Enough. Don’t touch me. You liar. You miserable little liar.” Her tone was cold, superior. “Call me a car,” she commanded in a whisper that was worse than a shout. “Did you hear? I should have known it would be like this.”

He was silent. He did not try to defend himself. He only looked at her in despair as her breathing grew uneven and her eyes closed. She leaned against the open door.

“I don’t lie to you.”

“No. You don’t lie.” She measured out the blows with cruel calm. “You believe what you say — when you say what’s convenient.”

There was a knock on the window frame.

“A taxi is here,” Pereira called obligingly. “I have hailed it. What shall I say?”

They stood opposite each other, neither daring to take a step forward. He was racked by the pain he had inflicted.

“Didn’t you ever love me?” She bent over as if she were going to fall; she seized the door frame and steadied herself. Her head reeled as if she could not fathom her own blindness or the enormity of his actions. “Why didn’t you kill me? I could have drowned there, where I was so happy,” she moaned. Suddenly, with quick steps, she went out to the veranda.

He started to run after her, but the cook had already slammed the door of the old taxi shut and was standing with his gray head down, up to his knees in blue exhaust. Popping and roaring, the automobile started up and disappeared around the corner.

The sun, spilling through ragged leaves, hurt the eyes. Passing his hand along the wall, he went back into the living room, slumped into a chair, and hunched over. He poured some whiskey and immediately set it aside untouched. He swallowed as if something were stuck in his throat. From far away he heard the voice of the cook as he bustled about.

“Has something happened, sahib? Did I do wrong to call the taxi?”

He shook his head no, for that did not matter now. As if he had just awakened, he waved away the tiresome chatter.

“No. Don’t serve the meal. Eat it yourselves. Nothing for me later, either. Not tonight. Go. I want to be alone.”

He noticed with amazement that his face was calm; he saw it in the mirror. He managed to pay them their wages, to listen to their thanks, to assure them that they would still have employment, that nothing they feared would happen to them.

How could she say that I didn’t love her? What is this sea of pain I’m drowning in if not love? She is my life, and it is torn away from me. Most terrible of all, I myself — and she so trusting, so yielding — did it with my own hands…

Desperately he tried to remember the first step: when had he seen, been led aside by the certainty, that he was exempt — because he was different from others, because perhaps it would not count? I create the law, so I can break it. And I broke us both. One may, in a rebellious rage, break the stone tablets, tread them down in fury with a feeling of joyful liberation. One may free oneself from them. But they will block the way, threaten, speak in signs of fire.

“Till death do us part…” He heard his voice, for the organ pipes were silenced; Geza and Sandor chanted. For from the Danube country I took my strength and I will be her son — and then the words whispered by foolish lips thousands of times: I believe. I believe. I believe. Millions repeated words of commitment and did not even know why they kept those vows. Two hundred thousand went abroad; perhaps half would still return. Others believe as they breathe, without knowledge, happy as the ox and the ass over the manger. Their prayers are heard; they are not led into temptation. They would become lawmakers, they would judge, and they would forget that they will be judged.

I would have been happy with her. I would have been. I know. At the price of triple betrayal. I understood the last ring of Dante’s Inferno in the night; I knelt on the sand before the gates of the chapel built of pugged clay and cow dung, like Hindu ashrams. I heard the singsong rhythm of an unknown language, and I knew very well what they were saying — I, a future excommunicant. I don’t want it at that price.

She said that I had never loved her. After all, I did that for love, a love that embraced and assimilated her. She takes me for a madman. If only it were true! I wish I could believe it. How can I explain to her — or is it possible to explain to a person who has been stabbed why it was necessary? Why a loving hand thrust in the knife? I was not lying to her when I said that she is my life. Only mine, mine and hers. We could have turned our backs on all the world and been satisfied with each other.

He bent over, pressing his fingers into his eyelids until he felt a radiating pain and saw red spots. He muttered, “I had to. I had to.”

He stiffened with alarm for her. He counted the stages of their advancing intimacy; he remembered the other man who had hung with bound hands in a raked-up fire as his hair sizzled in the flames. But enemies had done that. Today he himself, whom she so loved…A hundred times worse. And if in that hour, pushed to the very edge of despair, she saw no relief except in oblivion?

He raised his head defiantly and stood up. Bumping against his chair and pushing it away, he ran to the telephone. He dialed her number at the hotel. She was in her room; he breathed more easily as he heard, after the rattle, the click of the receiver as it was raised.

“Margit,” he whispered into the forbidding silence. “Margit.” He had to beg. “Can I see you?”

“What for?” He heard a voice in which there was no longer any hope.

“I want to tell you…”

“I’ve heard everything.”

And a sound like the click of scissors. She had hung up.

He went back to his chair. Her words, gestures, decisions repeated themselves and though he explained and clarified them to himself time after time, he was afraid. Her pain was greater than his; it was holding her at bay like an animal, engulfing her in a thickening wave of darkness. Hopelessness. He understood. She had stopped waiting. He realized with terror that she had not been exaggerating when she whispered, “Why didn’t you kill me?”

It was impossible, impossible to explain. What did it matter that he had also reached the depths of despair? Suffering does not unite. It pushes people apart, awakens aversion even to loved ones. Something about it embarrasses, makes one wish to hide it, like sickness.

He hated himself because he could think and act so coolly, even adjust his tie with a deft motion and remember to lock the door. The startled watchman rose abruptly from the veranda steps and stood at attention as a concealed cigarette glimmered in his left hand. The girl nestled by the balustrade like a young animal, half-disappearing into the cascade of climbing plants so he would not notice her. He pretended not to, but he knew very well that they had been sitting together, embracing. He did not envy them. He enjoyed indulging their happiness, which again, thanks to his intervention, had a future.

He drove the car out as if he were in a trance, involuntarily — as if he were dozing behind the wheel. He went into the hall. At the reception desk they knew him. Yes, Miss Ward had asked for her bill; she was leaving. They had gotten her a ticket from Air India. She had given an order to be wakened at five; before six there was a plane to Bombay. She was upstairs now. A moment ago she had asked not to receive calls from the city. They knew everything; they knew more than he did. He hesitated, reassured by all these directives of hers and what they indicated. And he could still come unexpectedly, and suddenly all these measures, these preparations to decamp, would be unnecessary.

He did not dare go upstairs. The inquisitive looks of the staff who had seen them so many times…He could not bear the garishly lit hall. The big reel with slides: the red fortified walls of Fatehpur Sikri, the white marble domes of the Taj Mahal, the blue ocean and the placid tilting palms, like the long necks of birds, that reminded him of the places where he had been with Margit. He turned his eyes away and saw them even under his closed eyelids. He escaped to the car and huddled in a corner of it. It seemed to him that she was beside him, keeping watch just a step away.

He peered at the hotel windows: some blazed gold and rose, others were dim and colorless. He gazed at them until he realized that he was looking for the window of her old room. Now she would have another one, and he did not know which. She ought to know I’m here, he thought. Or perhaps she was calling him now, again and again, and he was nearby but unable to hear, in the metal body of the automobile as in a crustacean’s shell, shrouded in the shadows of the trees.

In the wavering glow of the streetlights he saw a small band of men passing by — a pair of Englishmen trailed by a Hindu in an enormous turban who was chattering incantations, muttering that today was an exceptionally propitious day for omens, that the stars were revealing the fates of people. But the Englishmen knew what awaited them; what they were already certain of was enough. He gave up hope and turned to the drive leading to the hotel. He peered at Istvan and called softly, “Sahib.”

But seeing that Terey was sitting with his eyes closed, he did not dare rouse him. He walked slowly away, disappointed.

Events take their inevitable course, exposing the logic of connections. Even Grace had only accelerated their course.

Was it precisely for Margit that fate had brought him to India? He was immovable in the conviction that he had been born for this test, had matured for it through the years. They had come to each other from two extremes of the globe, led unerringly so that…It had to happen as it did. Any other choice would have been a denial of the truth. Had he known from the beginning how he must proceed, though he had not wanted to admit it to himself and had delayed, had put off the fatal hour?

It was not at the moment when he had stammered out “I don’t want—” but earlier, much earlier, that he had doomed her and himself. He had reached the decision in anguish, always resisting, dragged step by step.

Then by the sea at midnight, when he felt that there was no appeal from the verdict, and she slept with her face pressed into her bent arm and he heard in her breathing a quiet choking like the smothered echo of recent crying, he had needed to be alone. Alone. He had waited until her breathing grew soft and regular. He had extricated himself from the mosquito netting. The stairs of the veranda creaked. Under his toes there was the cool, grainy sand. The wide beach slept in the dark; the sky with knots of stars hung like netting flung unevenly above it. The ocean rushed onto the sloping shore and streams of water flowed down, scouring millions of shells. A ridge of dredged-up seaweed, parched by the sun and black during the day, teemed with a shining powder of alien life.

He moved as if without volition, slipping over the tilting dunes, walking in the beam of the lighthouse — the lowest of the stars, set aglow by human hands.

He was only a step from the sea. All his senses were attuned to the vast surging and subsiding of the water, the exhalations of salt and decaying plants. The breeze ruffled the hair on his chest and blew around his legs. He felt a light warning chill. At the water’s edge, where the hard-packed ground was licked clean by the tides, he stopped. Foam died away at his feet with a hiss like a stifled sigh.

The world. A vision of the world: a writhing mass of suffering. Terrified creatures murdered by bestial toil and hardship. What was his despair compared to that abyss of pain and misery?

It seemed to him that he was hearing a remote swelling wail, but it was only the calls of distant tugboats signaling to each other. So many die at this hour. They don’t live to see the dawn. A heartfelt tear of crystallized grief. They can do nothing more. To the last breath they are disturbed by the certainty that they could have accomplished more; they are pained by the enormity of good left undone.

I stand in the darkness, naked before the sea, the sterile earth and the stars — alone, as in the moment of death. Let me count the days that are left to me and stifle the thought of myself, of the body’s joy, of approbation fleeting as foam.

As if he were feeling around him those who were departing the world that night, as if he were one of them, he dared to raise his head. Great stars hung like the points of raised spears.

Help me, so I may accomplish even a part of that which You began, from which You stepped aside — so I may advance a few steps farther on the road You abandoned. Take my eyes if they see only superficial things.

A sacrificial flame kindled in his heart.

Change my tongue into a coal if it speaks idle words. Let me have one thought, one desire: to give myself without calculation, without receiving a word of gratitude, even without hope, to the last spasm and the bottom of my heart, to the renunciation of myself in Your name, Who are love. To serve You by giving myself over to the most miserable, to those who never know satisfaction, to the jealous, to those with a cruel thirst for love and those who don’t believe in it. They wait for me, though they know nothing about me. They: those nearest me, those from my country and those from distant continents. I see them as if with one face, breathing hoarsely through its open mouth, pouring with sweat — a work-worn, sorrowful human face. Yours.

He was accustomed to the darkness now. On the smooth, gleaming sand he saw thousands, hundreds of thousands of crabs no bigger than peas, rolling yet smaller globules from the mud. Another wave came. If it were not to engulf them and wash them away, this was the last moment to burrow in and hide — to wait until the stream of water retreated. They emerged from the packed sand and began again. He thought of time and generations, arduous human building, creation in the face of destruction. All the shore teemed, glimmering with phosphorescence from the unabating, hurried activity.

Though the cry he had flung into the dark went without an answer, in the slow billowing of water white with crests of foam and the swarming of the crabs, which did not pause from their labor, he found new strength.

He went in to Margit, who shivered in her sleep when she felt the coolness of his body. He lay with his eyes open, his muscles contracted with pain.

“What have you come for?”

Margit’s whisper. It seemed to him that he was still seeing her at the shore.

“I had to be with you.”

The bitter curl of the lips. The shadow, the memory of her smile.

“You were afraid that…”

“Yes.”

“Did you come out of concern for me or for yourself?”

In the twilight of the avenue her hair gleamed like copper under the streetlights; he could not see her face. He opened the doors of the Austin. She hesitated, then bent over and got in without looking at him. Her eyes evaded his by gazing into the street, toward the long line of trees interspersed with the greenish glow of the lamps.

“That would have been simpler,” she said after a while. “For where do I start? You took everything from me.”

She said no more. She was overcome by weariness. Suddenly she raised her head and their eyes met in the mirror.

“How little you know me. Don’t be afraid,” she said in a hard tone. “I won’t do that. You can’t free yourself from me now. I’ll be a weight on your heart through all the nights we won’t be together. It’s terrible, Istvan, but even after what you’ve done, I can’t hate you. I can’t.”

“I had to do it,” he ventured in a whisper as pain pierced his heart.

“You had to. You had to.” She bent her head. “How I hate Him. The cursed idol, faceless, infallible, for He is not material, like us.” She was blaspheming, spasmodically clenching her hands. “You’ve sacrificed us both for Him.”

He listened. Every word burned, then turned to ashes. She had cut him to the quick; she could not have wounded him more deeply.

“I will not kill myself, do you hear? Don’t torture yourself, go, rest…Go to sleep,” she whispered, laying her hand forgivingly on the back of his bowed neck. He bit his lips and trembled under her touch. Suddenly a sob wrenched itself from him. The tears of a man broken by pain; it is most charitable not to look at them.

“Will you ever forgive me?” he moaned. “Me…You should accuse me, not Him.”

She contradicted him with a slow movement of her head.

An approaching car cast a sharp glare over her. Her eyes were wide, as if she were blind. She was numb; she saw days like voids before her, a desert impossible to wade through, time when she would be alone as a stone among stones.

“Go now,” she whispered. “End your vigil over the dead.”

“Let me stay. Let me take you to the plane. I want to be with you to the last.”

“When the porter rang and said the gentleman was waiting, I cried, ‘Who?’ ‘The one who always comes…’” She repeated the phrase through clenched teeth. “I sent him to check. I didn’t think you’d have the courage. But it was you. And everything came back. You’re here.”

Timidly he made out the outline of her face in the dark, the straight nose, the pale, narrowed lips — lips he remembered as full, parted, expectant.

“When you go back,” she breathed in the voice of one who is dying of an illness and in exhaustion whispers, “When you bury me, I want you to…”

He waited, quivering and ready, vowing to himself to do anything she might demand.

“Don’t let them crush you. Stand up for yourself. Be hard, cruelly hard, as you are to me.”

To the last she was thinking only of him: he and his writing were important. She believed that he was a creator. That with a word he could call things to life, revive them, stop time.

The old peanut vendor shook his smoky stove on its bamboo slat. An imperceptible breath of air bent its five red flames. As if she could not bear for anyone to go away disappointed that night, she let him hand her nuts in a little cone of twisted newspaper that smelled of kerosene. She did not open it; it lay between them. The old man caught the money and walked away a few steps. Then, as if his honesty had gotten the better of him, he turned back and held out another bag.

“I had a premonition that it would end this way.” She opened her hands spasmodically as if she were trying to grasp an elusive thread. “And I didn’t want to accept it. I couldn’t believe it.”

“Do you regret everything? Would you rather we had never…”

“No.” For the first time, she looked at him. “Without you I would never have known how it was possible to be the happiest woman in the world. Should I thank you? Do you want to wring that from me? You gave me a gift and then took away all the joy. You shattered it.”

The words lashed him. He cringed and took the blows.

Beggars, some of them women and children, came out of the darkness squealing like hungry birds. They peered into the car. They stood patiently for a long time with fingers outspread. She dug the last of her change out of her pocket. They crowded in, shouting and pushing. In the light from passing cars he saw their thin legs, their tattered, threadbare clothing. They could not shake off the whining crowd; the mendicants shoved their faces through the window and tapped on the car with their fingers. Great flashing eyes gazed from under matted hair, waiting for the hand that sprinkled coins.

“Give them something.”

“They’ll never leave us alone,” he said. When she threw a whole handful of coins onto the walk, he turned on the headlights, blew the horn, and drove on — escaped.

“I’m poorer than they are,” she whispered. “I have nothing.”

They rode along the Yamuna. Below them the funeral pyres were burning out. He drove her through Old Delhi. On the sidewalks the homeless lay like headless cocoons, wrapped in soiled sheets. Garlands of colored light bulbs blazed as if in derision; gigantic figures of film heroes swung on cables. We were here, he thought bitterly as each place they passed evoked a memory. We visited Krishan’s wife in the little room behind the tailors’ workshop. We bought sandals. We took our first walk, when I pushed her into the smoke of dried cow dung as if it were deep water — the stench of burned bodies, the smell of unleavened bread baked on tin plates. She was immersed in the real India.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked drowsily.

“Nowhere.” Frightened, he hastily corrected himself, “Nearer to dawn…Perhaps you will want to come back?”

“I have nothing to come back to.”

It was growing cool. The bent grass, trodden down by foot traffic, gleamed with the early morning dew. The sky was going white; behind clusters of huge trees a fiery fissure split the night.

They drove up to the hotel. He waited for her to let him follow her, but she motioned to him to stay where he was. Two sleepy bellhops, yawning and scratching under their arms, went to get her suitcases. He got out of the car and opened the trunk.

“You ought to eat something,” he reminded her, but her look silenced him.

He had not had a bite all the previous day, but he felt no hunger, only bitterness — the slimy dregs of bile. As they were passing the gardens outside the city, he stopped the car. In spite of her protests he called an old man from a shed with watering cans all around it and asked him to cut some roses.

“How many?” he asked, rubbing the scratchy stubble on his face and yawning until the yellow incisors flashed in his otherwise toothless mouth.

“A lot,” Istvan shouted impatiently. “All of them.”

The man brought a sheaf of buds. They were almost black, with stiff leaves; they smelled of the freshness of the night and of wet mown herbs.

“What are they for?” She fixed her eyes on the fleshy petals sprinkled with dewdrops. She held them apathetically on her knees.

The road crawled along, curving gently through arid hills. They came upon a sadhu who had abandoned everything to follow the truth he sought.

And then the airport appeared. The corrugated aluminum roofs of the hangars gave off a white glare. Travelers surrounded them: women with children, carrying bundles with pots tied to them. A megaphone chattered in a foreign language, the voice compelling attention and then wearying the listeners, for they could understand nothing. A beautiful girl with enormous earrings served them coffee from a machine. They drank it and looked mutely at each other.

A mustachioed clerk asked Miss Ward the weight of her luggage and noted it on her ticket. Istvan seemed to feel the girl in his arms — his arms, which had carried her, cherished her. The rising roar of engines could be heard like the voices of winged beasts surging into the air. A bass voice called, “Flight to Nagpur. Change there for Bombay and Madras.”

A stewardess with slim thighs, wearing an iridescent blue sari, raised a bare arm and beckoned to them with long fingers. They left the hall, which rumbled like the inside of a barrel, and walked down to the wide, flat, grassy airfield. He noticed that it was a beautiful, sunny day.

The airplane was white in the light. The stairs had been rolled up to it.

Margit pressed the prickly armful of roses, which only now were taking on a red tint. She did not give him her hand and he did not dare reach for it. He saw her face, wan and looking older than her age, her blue-veined eyelids and her eyes, which mirrored despair itself.

“It’s wrong, Istvan,” she whispered through colorless lips. “Even a dog doesn’t deserve this.”

She turned around and almost ran toward the plane so he would not see her burst, trembling, into tears. The stewardess took her by the arm and led her inside as if she were ill.

Before the steep stairs were rolled away, the Indian woman appeared once more and put Margit’s roses on the little platform. He remembered the prohibition against traveling with plants and fruit: fear of contagion.

The left engine roared first, then the right. The airplane turned where it stood. A hard breeze jerked at the white skirts of the barefoot attendants who bent over and pushed away the stairs.

He gazed at the round windows; the sun blazed on them as on a row of mirrors. The plane moved slowly, hopping lightly. The odor of exhaust hit him in the chest. The breeze ruffled his shirt and nipped at his pants legs like a dog. Clouds of dust drifted about and grit beat his forehead. He shielded his eyes and when he lowered his hands, the plane was a speck sailing into the glistening blue. Then it was lost as if in the depths of the ocean.

When he was sitting in the Austin, unable to put a hand on the wheel, Mihaly’s cicada began to sing in its box as if it were insane. He undid the thread, raised the lid and shook it out onto the grass. He saw that its wings glinted like glass as it flew toward the tops of the trees, from which came a rasping as of metal gears: the overture of the advancing heat.

Her bag with a yellowed newspaper, the tightly twisted little paper horn in which peanuts rattled — she had held them in her hand. He sat unable to breathe. A cry rose in his throat; he wanted to turn his head away, to beat it against the car. He missed that golden hand, the eyes beaming like the sky after the first snow, looking trustfully at him from under waves of coppery hair. Margit is gone. Gone. And I am alone.

I am alone.

A dull pain grew and settled at the bottom of his sickened heart. It wandered through his pulse, then tightened around him. He parted his lips and gasped for air. He closed his eyes; he saw the dry grass bending in the warm breeze, the red stony hills, the sun filling the vastness of space, lashing it with brooms of flame.