Stone Tablets

Chapter III

“Tell me, Istvan, what has been happening with you? You used to find time for me,” Judit reproached him. “Yesterday you were very unkind. You didn’t want to go to the cinema with me. You said you had urgent work.”

“I really did.” He looked worriedly at her.

“Don’t lie, at least. You’re no good at it. I went by myself.”

“To what film?” Suddenly he showed an interest.

“To the same one.” Then came the home thrust: “I sat two rows behind you.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“No wonder; you were so preoccupied with her. A pleasant girl, but you’re seen together a little too often. And then the way you hop around her — be careful that you don’t turn into a kangaroo.”

She smiled, but her eyes looked troubled. She rotated a fan and put her face into the stream of air.The scorching sun made a yellow glow on the curtain.

“Infernal heat—”

“Don’t blather. I’ve seen a lot and I’ve lived through a lot. You ought to take account of people a little, you know. You live in a bubble.”

“I can swear to you that there is nothing between her and me.” He looked her straight in the eye. “She is just a nice girl — and it gives me an occasion to speak English.”

“You poor thing — is there a shortage of people here for you to speak to in English?” she said with a sympathetic grimace. “You could have kept from giving yourself away. I’m sure you will enrich your vocabulary, but in an area far removed from the professional.”

“You’re buzzing like a fly. Upon my word, with Miss Ward it’s quite a different story.”

“Are you — involved?”

“What put that into your head? Believe me, it is not serious.”

“So much the worse. Istvan, you belong to the corps of our embassy, and she is from the enemy camp. Both sides will be suspicious of her. You will do her harm. At least, my lad, you ought to remember that. You ought to use a little judgment.”

“Stop. You’re being a bore.” He pretended to turn back to his work, but Judit settled in for a long stay and lit a cigarette.

“Don’t let me disturb you. Work. I came to look at you because I had almost forgotten how you look.”

“After all, we see each other at the embassy,” he said in self-defense.

“What kind of seeing is that?” she waved dismissively. “You used to come for a Coca-Cola and talk like a close friend.”

They were silent for a moment. A cicada in the climbing plants behind the tightly closed window jangled monotonously; the sound was like a mowing. The insect was intoxicated with the surfeit of sunlight.

Istvan looked at Judit’s mild face in profile: the capricious lips, the heavy wave of dyed hair. She must have been a very handsome woman. She had been through a great deal; she was wise and self-possessed. By now she only wanted peace, the companionship of well-wishers, a few comforts.

“After all, we didn’t meet just yesterday,” she said to soothe his irritation. “If I caution you, I do it for your own good, not to nag you. You surely don’t suspect me of jealousy?”

“Certainly not,” he rejoined warmly, not noticing that he was causing her pain.

“Istvan, Istvan! You do not see the woman in me at all!”

“I am so sorry!” He raised her hand to his lips.

“Well, as compensation you may tell me what your Australian is like.” She gave a conspiratorial wink. “Out with it — yes, as you boys would talk among yourselves. What sort of person is she?”

“A doctor. An oculist. She works for UNESCO. Her father has some woolen factories; rather a wealthy family. They have a yacht. Her mother died, her father married again, but she thinks highly of her stepmother.”

Judit folded her arms and nodded sympathetically.

“You speak of her as if she were one of the Hindu girls: money, factories, yacht. What do I care about all that? Tell me about her, about what she is. What do you see in her?”

“Nothing. Really, nothing.” He wriggled like a boy whose mother has caught him with his first cigarette. “I take her around and show her things about India — sometimes frightening things. She came here to work for at least a year at the Ophthalmological Institute to spite her family. Do you understand?” he said, almost pleading.

“More than you think.”

The door opened cautiously, and Ferenc stood in it.

“Don’t you hear the telephone in that room? It has been ringing and ringing.”

“We hear it,” she answered lightheartedly.

“Why don’t you pick it up?”

“You only have to hurry if you want to catch fleas. It will ring and it will stop. Do you have more serious worries? If it’s really something important, they’ll ring back.”

But the secretary leaned forward and whispered, “The ambassador has called a briefing at eleven. At five to eleven there will be a meeting in my office.”

The breeze from the large fan blew into the painstakingly arranged waves of his hair. He smoothed them down immediately.

“Terey,” he said with a disapproving look, “here you are again without your tie. You are introducing bohemian habits.”

“Don’t you know what the boss has on his mind? He usually notifies his captive audience about these conclaves at least a day in advance. I have a tie in the drawer. I will make a dignified appearance.”

“Hurry up, then.” Ferenc tapped a fingernail on the crystal of his flat gold Doxa watch.

“Do you know what he’s going to talk about?”

“I know.” He raised his eyebrows and, seeing that their curiosity was aroused, withdrew, closing the door.

“They are certainly beginning to treat me like a schoolboy again,” Istvan sighed. “I’ve had enough of this sermonizing.”

“No. You will come into your own when the time is right, when everything is ripe. I know what is on the boss’s mind, too.”

“Everyone knows but me. I am not worthy of confidence.” He strode around the room, pulling on his tie with an expression of dread, as if it were a noose.

“It’s the best evidence that you have distanced yourself. Istvan, you cannot think only of that woman. If you had come over to say a stupid ‘Good morning’ to me before the beginning of work, I would have whispered, ‘Glance into the garage. Have a chat with Krishan.’”

“What the devil for?”

“Let’s go. It’s time.” She crushed her cigarette in an earthenware ashtray. “We are at the mercy of Bajcsy’s watch, even when it’s a quarter of an hour fast.”

She took him by the hand and pulled him along with a jocular air.

“To know does not mean to understand, and even less to spread something around. What you know, keep to yourself, and be glad that you are privy to it. Remember, old Judit tells you so, and beware. Sometimes your knowledge may be turned against you.”

The ambassador had the appearance of a man whose energies have suddenly been roused — who has encountered defiance and must enforce obedience ruthlessly, must administer the matter as he has determined beforehand. He was rather like a predatory animal who puts its heavy head on its limp, tucked-up paws and blinks its yellow eyes, while now and then a spasm darts through its muscles and its claws thrust themselves out, ready to rip open a living body.

They sat in a half circle, in armchairs. Ferenc occupied a smaller chair, looking very proper, his head tilted forward in a way that signaled concentration and readiness to serve, provided the expected services did not affront his dignity. Judit had a notepad on her knee in case some decisions needed to be recorded. The cryptographer, a short, sturdy fellow, drew in his legs, hardly hiding his boredom, for after all, how could these instructions concern him? His duty was to change words to numbers, to read dispatches, to painstakingly destroy notations and guard the key to the safe in which copies of reports were hidden, together with Ministry of Foreign Affairs directives and codes. The ambassador carried the other key in his wallet. It was the emblem of the highest level of initiation. The members of the trade mission waited on a sofa, treating each other to cigarettes. Only the caretaker Karoly was missing.

Several bottles of Coca-Cola and siphons of soda water glinted on a table covered with green baize, rather ominously presaging a long meeting.

“Dear comrades,” Bajcsy began, “do you recall the recent incident involving the Turkish ambassador, who went on a hunt for peacocks? A peacock is a sacred bird here. In fact, the devil only knows what isn’t sacred here. The monkey is, too, and the snake, and the cow. The meat of the peacock is a delicacy”—he seemed to be remembering the savor; he closed his puffy eyelids—“especially from the female. They went out at dawn and killed a few birds. The driver shoved them into a bag. He was a good Muslim, he didn’t find the blood revolting. But the ambassador’s wife wanted a fan of peacock feathers for the wall, so instead of tearing off the tails, crumpling them up, and throwing them in the bushes, they left them on, sticking out of the bag like feather dusters.

“As luck would have it, two tires went flat. The chauffeur had no spare, and the tubes had to be patched. They stopped in the village. A crowd gathered, staring. In a place like that anything is worth gaping at, let alone taking tires off and looking for holes. The villagers helpfully brought a tub of water and assisted en masse. Unfortunately, the chauffeur opened the trunk, and out flashed a tuft of peacock feathers. The crowd hooted and began throwing stones.

“The ambassador didn’t wait to catch a thrashing, but took off on foot. The driver tried to defend the car; he has a broken hand. The peasants turned the car over and set it afire so as to ensure a worthy funeral for the sacred fowl. And that was not the end of this unlucky diplomat’s troubles, for the affair was bruited about and got into the papers. Though there’s no official ban on hunting peacock, custom ought to be observed. As a matter of fact, the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs apologized to the ambassador, but such a climate of opinion grew up around him that he had to ask to be recalled — to say nothing of the fact that the Hindus never made restitution for the demolished car.”

Bajcsy suddenly exploded with fervor. He stared into the faces from which no glimmer of interest was rising and delivered his blow:

“Why, you must be wondering, does the chief blither about this? Yesterday I had an accident. That idiot Krishan rammed the car into a cow.”

Everyone shifted in their chairs and looked him nervously in the eye.

“A sacred cow?” Ferenc asked with a hint of a laugh in his voice.

“Is there any other kind of cow in this country?” Bajcsy, incensed, puffed out a thick lip. “Fortunately the hood was only a little bashed, and a headlight was broken. We were able to escape before they beat us to a pulp. I assure you, they would have liked to. They were flying around with sticks and gathering up stones, and the cow lay on the highway with a broken spine, roaring like a siren. An old, mangy cow. Krishan, that hysteric, went to pieces, covered his eyes and bellowed. I had to drive the car myself.”

“Did you manage to protect yourself on the legal side, comrade minister?” asked the counselor for trade in a voice full of concern, as if for the chief’s health.

“Absolutely. We went to the governor of the province and I told him everything. He summoned the commandant of police and they took down statements, particularly the statement of that blithering imbecile, Krishan. The worst of it was that there is no other road back from Dehradun, and we had to go scurrying through that same village…and the car so easy to recognize with that shattered headlight. I didn’t want to be driving at night with one light, and they could only do the repair here in Delhi. So the governor gave us a truck as an escort, a platoon of police with billy clubs. What are you taking notes on, comrade?” He looked uneasily at the pad Judit was holding. “What I am saying is to be kept in strict confidence.”

“I’m just scribbling.” She held up the pad, which sported a geometrical design.

“Imagine: the villagers were waiting for us, the road was cordoned off. But the police made quick work of them. They beat them over the head with their sticks like farmers at their threshing.” He shut his eyes approvingly. “In three minutes it was all over. I saw how they drove them away so they could clear the highway. At once the people returned to the way we know them every day: slow, feeble, very quiet. They only wiped their snotty noses, which were dribbling blood because the police had given them a pretty good drubbing. And everything was calm again.

“Would you like to know what happened next? The sacred cow lay under a baldachin crowned with flowers. It only groaned with its muzzle open. They had put a myriad of little lamps in front of it. But to bring a bucket of water and give the expiring beast a drink — no one thought of that! It’s not their sense of how things should be done. The vultures had gathered on a meadow nearby; they came jumping up to see if the victim was in the last stages. If it had not been for the wailing villagers, they would have taken the entrails out of the living cow. I preferred to tell you about the accident myself, comrades, in order to show you by my own example the dangers that lie in wait here.”

He rested both hands on his desk. “The conclusion? I would ask that you remember what I have communicated. They make mountains out of molehills here. I remind you that this is a highly confidential matter. Though my position and diplomatic immunity protect me in the final analysis, please keep conversation on the subject to a minimum; I appeal to your good judgment. In particular I do not wish it to reach people who are not well disposed toward us”—he looked significantly at Terey—“people from outside our camp, for they can bring harm, not on me, but on us as a whole. Is that clear? Any questions?”

“No,” they answered. “No.”

“You had quite an adventure, comrade ambassador.” The counselor for trade shook his head. “But it could have been much worse.”

“I hope this will be the end of it,” Ferenc mused. “If only Krishan, that fool, won’t babble too much!”

Leaning on one elbow, the ambassador lifted his upper eyelid with a finger. They saw the dark tufts of curly hair on the back of his hand.

“What do you advise, then?”

“I would let him go — but not right away. There are reasons enough. He damaged the automobile. He drives like a madman.” Ferenc looked Bajcsy in the eye.

“He has a sick wife,” Terey ventured.

“Oh, yes!” Ferenc seized on the mention of the ailing woman. “His relations with his wife are detestable. Instead of sending her to the hospital—”

“And I would slip him a few rupees to keep him quiet,” the counselor for trade put in, looking at the cryptographer, who did not speak but drummed with his fingers on the arm of his chair, as if he were sending something in Morse code.

“No. No money. That’s the worst way to go about it.” The ambassador beat the air with his hand. “He would never leave us alone after that. In any case you agree with me that he is not a good driver, and, worse, not a good man. We have to put up with him for the time being. But, Comrade Ferenc, warn Krishan that if there is the slightest infraction I will be ruthless, I will chuck him out! We must have order here, and, believe me, I know how to keep it.”

He looked at them grimly, malevolently, as if he were trying to tell which of them would be first to show himself an enemy. He turned to the cryptographer, whose mouth was half open.

“There will be no notification of this matter to our country. The repair is minimal: to beat out the dents, restore the finish, install a new light. I will cover it myself. And now, dear comrades, in such heat — since our meeting is coming to an end”—he spoke in a paternal tone—“perhaps Judit would break out a bottle of Tokay for us. Well, they are small bottles; perhaps two. Three. Why make two trips?”

Everyone began to move around, gratified. Only the counselor for trade asked to be excused, for he had an appointment with someone who wanted to buy a dozen buses and open his own transport line to Agra.

When the others had dispersed, the ambassador detained Terey, opened a drawer, and gave him a letter. At once he recognized the diminutive letters joined as in chain stitch: his wife’s handwriting.

“It must have come here by mistake when the morning post was handed around,” he said by way of explanation.

Istvan took it in his fingers and pressed: the letter had been cut open. Several other letters of his had gone astray recently. Was the ambassador involved in the inspection of correspondence? Were letters being confiscated as evidence for personal attacks?

Bajcsy’s heavy figure hung over him. The ambassador inclined his head and looked out from under bristling eyebrows. “Well — what has you so mystified?”

“It could at least have been steamed open and given back with no clue that it had been breached. Any jealous wife would do it better than this.”

“Calm down, Terey. Calm down. I opened this letter by mistake. Involuntarily. First I ripped it open, then I was taken aback when I saw it was not to me. My apologies.”

“But there is a pattern in these mistakes that happen to me. Why has my wife not gotten a passport to this day?” He held the opened envelope with its ragged edges as if it were repugnant to him.

“I have sent a notice of urgency concerning that matter. It seems that the arrival of your wife would be most expedient here. As to this letter, I have offered my apologies, and that should be sufficient. Goodbye now. This heat is unbearable, it wears on everyone’s nerves.”

When he had closed the office door and thick oilcloth cushions had shifted with a smacking sound, Judit raised inquiring eyebrows.

“Well?”

He showed her the torn envelope. “This is what I got. I told him what I thought of it.”

“I assure you, he was not the one.” She shook her head.

“But who?”

“I don’t know for sure. Ask the caretaker. That letter was not in the mail that passed through my hands. I would have set it aside.”

“God repay you, Judit!”

She looked ruminatively at him.

“When I hear that, I get an ominous feeling.”

“Because you know only the Father, and I the Son,” he answered soberly. “I was not calling down vengeance on your head.”

He walked out to the hall. He was in no hurry to read the letter. He felt as if he were reaching for an apple someone else had gnawed from the other side. Only when he was sitting behind his desk and had finished smoking a cigarette did he shake out the sheets of paper and photographs of his sons. They were holding a sheepdog by the collar; they were looking with keen, wise eyes toward the camera. They were small and slender, with hair clipped short. This was their grandfather’s work. And there was friendly Tibi, the great shaggy dog, who let himself be mounted like a pony.

Ilona did not raise his hopes that she would appear in India soon; she was encountering resistance. She asked him not to worry, for they were well. The boys were doing well enough in school, and she was managing. They had spent Easter with her parents; hence the photograph with Tibi.

Since you have been away, visitors have stopped coming. A delightful peace fills the house, yet it gives me a strange feeling. Only Bela, who is so kind, thinks of us. I see only now that without you I am not necessary to anyone except the boys. They ask that you put many stamps on your letters, and of various kinds, for they exchange them with their friends. We long for you, we kiss you — Your own Ilona.

And then the scrawled postscripts from his sons:—And I as well — Geza. And with a fanciful flourish: Sandor.

The letter was two weeks old. What had happened during that time? Nothing. Obviously, nothing. He would have gotten a telegram. She could even have called. Every day there was a designated hour for a connection with Budapest, or a cable through London, a roundabout way. He remembered only one telephone conversation, which had concerned a sudden decision on proposals by the counselor for trade. The telephone connection existed, it represented a possibility, but a call would consist of sentences spoken in the hearing of many witnesses, like a meeting in the visiting room of a prison.

The letter exuded sadness. Reproaching himself for thinking of home so little, Istvan ran his eyes over it once more. No — he found nothing to disturb him. Yet it left a residue of something like pain in his heart. Ilona had stopped believing that they would be together here; she had decided to wait out his tour of duty, she thought the solitary stay in India was for his good. The care of their sons filled her life. It was easy for her to adjust to this long separation, and rightly so. Doesn’t she need me, he wondered. Feelings remained, after all, not just the bonds of marriage. If Bajcsy had really sent that notice of urgency…

He heard the throb of an engine. He looked out the window lit by the fiery sun with instinctive aversion. Clear weather: he was sick to death of clear weather. Krishan had arrived. He must ask him about the business with the cow.

The dry air smelled of baking leaves and dust. The tiles of the walk that led around the building sent heat through the soles of his sandals. He peered into the dim garage and saw only concrete with a greasy oil stain. He bent over and touched it with his finger. It was sticky: the spot was fresh. Krishan must have hit the cow hard, since oil was leaking, he thought; the results could have been worse.

“What are you doing here?” He heard Ferenc’s voice at his ear. He gave a start. He had not heard the man’s light step.

“I thought Krishan had come.”

The secretary looked at him truculently.

“I wanted to ask him—” Terey floundered.

“And I came at the ambassador’s direction to order him to keep quiet. I advise you to mind your own business. No private inquiries. You are from the cultural division. There is no need for you to become intimate with the driver by chewing the fat about everything. Every Hindu must file reports about us, even the silly sweeper. The oversight system here works very efficiently; they want to keep an eye on our affairs. When you go out on some escapade, not to mention personal meetings, it’s always better to drive the car yourself. It’s more secure. And don’t talk with Krishan about the accident. What’s to be gained by alerting him to its significance?”

“Very well.” Terey nodded.

They went out into the sunlight. Terey had a bad taste in his mouth because he had let himself be caught in an indefensible position.

Mihaly, the cryptographer’s son, walked up to them in unbuttoned pajamas and a hat of plaited reeds, pulling a tin box on a string. Deprived of companions his own age, the child devised odd amusements for himself. He helped the chauffeur with chores in the garage. Four hours each morning he spent in a school conducted by nuns. There he had quickly learned to chatter in English, and, from Hindu children, in Hindi. Often his mother took him to the marketplace as her interpreter, for he could express himself better than she. He had the head for it, and she enjoyed showing him off. What was said in front of him he remembered at once, so that one had to be careful.

“Namaste ji,” the boy greeted them respectfully.

“What have you got there, Mihaly?” Istvan drew the boy to him. The little fellow raised his head, rubbing it against Istvan. The brim of his big hat rustled.

“A bus. I’m taking little birds to the shade.”

“You cut them out of paper?”

“No. Live birds.” He held the box up and handed it to Terey.

“Put it to your ear, Uncle Istvan. You’ll hear how they peck. And you, too”—he turned to Ferenc—“only don’t open it or they will fly out.”

Istvan, torn with longing for his own sons, was moved by Mihaly’s confiding behavior. The shadow of the hat, which was painted with red zigzags, fell on the warm little face.

He heard a tapping sound in the box when he held it to his ear. Ferenc did not restrain himself; he raised the lid and big grasshoppers shot out, opened their rust-colored wings and flew into the glare with a loud whirring. They landed high among the climbing plants that swayed when a breath of wind grazed them. Mihaly did not seem at all aggrieved, but rather amused at the secretary’s surprise.

“I told you they would fly out.”

“They are grasshoppers.”

“No, birds,” he insisted. “Isn’t that right, uncle?” He seized Istvan’s hand.

“Of course they are birds. Mr. Ferenc doesn’t have his glasses, so he didn’t see.”

“It is that way with God,” the boy said gravely. “My sisters say He exists, but Daddy says He doesn’t. He must not have glasses, either.”

“They are muddling the youngster’s thinking,” Ferenc said angrily. “Of course there is no God,” he added, speaking as one who imparts a fundamental precept to a child.

“You always like to play the devil’s advocate,” Terey laughed. “Of course there is. Only not everyone sees Him, and even to one who does, it may be more convenient to take the view that He does not exist.”

Ferenc sighed and let his hands drop in a gesture of helplessness. “Carry on this theological debate without me. It’s too hot. And when you have arrived at an understanding, look in on me, Istvan. I would like a word with you in private.”

He walked away with a quiet step. The sun beat down; even his shadow dwindled in the heat.

“And now we will let out the rest of the grasshoppers or they will roast in this sweltering—”

“Birds,” Mihaly corrected him. “After all, you see.”

Istvan took them in his palm. He was amused by the long legs that kicked hard and then flitted into the air, by the little red wings that flashed in the sun and suddenly sank, falling into the leaves like pieces of a brown branch. They faded into the background without a trace until they began to hiss and ring.

“Show me those glasses, Uncle Istvan,” the boy begged sweetly.

“What glasses?”

“The ones to see God with.”

“I cannot show you those because each person must have his own. They are called faith,” he whispered confidentially to the child, who looked at him with wide eyes. He felt a quick spasm of grief: who is speaking of this to my boys?

“And will I have them too, when I am big?”

“If you want them, you will surely get them. Many grownups have them. They just don’t want to admit it.”

“So no one else will take them away?”

From around a corner Krishan appeared. In a white shirt with sleeves rolled up unevenly, in wide linen pants, he looked like thousands of other men on the streets of New Delhi. It struck Istvan that although he was thin, gnarly muscles could be seen under the light covering of his skin. He was a strong, agile fellow. His watch and a heavy gold signet ring were reminders that he earned a good living. He walked with a light stoop; one could see from his expressive face that he was dejected.

“Krishan, Comrade Ferenc wanted to talk to you.”

“I have just come from him, sir, but what am I going to do when the police summon me again?”

“You have given your deposition already. And signed it.”

“Yes.” He looked dolefully at Terey.

“Stick to what you said then.”

“You know everything, sir?”

Terey nodded.

“The car will be ready for the evening.”

“Don’t worry, then. They will forget it. But you must be discreet. Don’t talk too much.”

“I know, sir. The secretary ordered me.”

Krishan turned back with a heavy step and walked toward his quarters in the outbuilding. Istvan felt that the driver was expecting sympathy, understanding, rescue. But he remembered Ferenc’s instructions and shrugged his shoulders. Krishan had been in the war in Africa; he had experience, he was not a child. He ought to know what he was doing. After all, was this Terey’s concern? He had a wife. Let her cheer him up.

Mihaly looked after the driver.

“Krishan is sad. Why, Uncle Istvan?”

“Because his car is wrecked.”

The boy walked behind him. The tin box rattled as he dragged it over the tiles. “Uncle—” he seized Istvan’s hand in his hot, moist palm, “is it true that you have a kangaroo?”

Terey stopped where he stood, stunned. The rumor-ridden atmosphere had begun to exasperate him, but it had its amusing side.

“Mama said she saw you at Jantar Mantar with your kangaroo. I would so terribly like to see it. Will you show it to me?”

“I will show you, but don’t tell anyone. It will be our secret.”

He twitched the brim of Mihaly’s hat and pushed the hat onto the boy’s nose, then walked into the stuffy interior of the embassy.

What to do, then, he thought. Go into hiding? How, exactly? The very idea was funny. They might stop paying so much attention to me. Now, fortunately, they have the accident to talk about. Perhaps they will let me have a little peace. He felt almost grateful to the ambassador for concentrating the attention of their little world on himself. But his impatience was growing. If Ferenc tries to play the teacher with me, I’ll give him a talking-to he’ll not soon forget.

Having to explain his acquaintance with Margit, to endure conversations about her, to anticipate gently mocking smiles, seemed odious to him. He wanted to pass by Ferenc’s office, but the door was partly open and the secretary said invitingly, “Come in. As it happens, I need you very much.”

He got up from behind his desk and closed the door. As if wanting to make the most of their time together, he offered cigarettes. Istvan bristled inside.

“Have you ordered many cases of whiskey from Gupta?” the secretary began.

“What concern is that of yours? Would that give me bad marks in your book?”

“This heat! Everyone jumps at each other’s throats, and you are on edge as well. But I wanted you to put twelve dozen for me on your account. It’s just that I have ordered too many lately, and I don’t want customs to notice.”

“I haven’t ordered any in the last month.”

“So I surmised when I filled out the order card. Just sign it and I’ll take care of the rest with Gupta. Don’t worry about a thing.”

“Why so much vodka?” Terey marveled, reaching for the card.

“The case has a dozen bottles. I have been here two whole years longer than you, I know many, many people, and everyone wants to take some. Whiskey is the best gift, especially when they raise the duty. You understand?”

“Now I do,” Terey smiled. “After all, I’d have bet that you didn’t drink alone.”

Ferenc laughed, and they parted in good humor.

Istvan returned to his rooms to write a letter to the Times of India correcting some malicious information about Hungary reprinted from an American agency. Such a letter might be published under the heading “Conversations with Readers,” but it would be better if it were signed by someone who was not from the embassy. Ram Kanval, perhaps? Or Vijayaveda himself? He did not want to draw Margit into political imbroglios.

The cook announced with some perturbation that there had been two very important telephone calls.

“I wrote them down.” He pulled his glasses in their wire rims down from his forehead and faltered out the words he himself had scribbled, “Sir…Vijayaveda reminds you of the…party…to celebrate the return of the young couple…and Madam — that is, Miss—” he corrected himself, straining his great gloomy eyes—“I have it written here…‘also asked if sir will be there.’”

“But — Miss who?”

“I must have made a mistake here. I can’t read it.” He straightened the crumpled paper. “But it was an important call. In English.”

Perhaps Grace had wanted to be sure that he would come? It would be better not to appear at all. Shame and apprehension engulfed him at the thought of such a meeting. How to talk to her so as not to touch her? To pass over everything in silence? She would decide, would set the terms of their new relationship with a coloring of her voice, a glance, a way of extending her hand. He would prefer to avoid meetings, but at the same time he felt that suddenly to change his behavior toward them would be harder still — in a word, stupid. He would have to find a way of explaining it to the rajah and Vijayaveda.

No sooner had he sat down at the table, which was set with a linen place mat, and Pereira taken a grapefruit from the refrigerator, than he sensed that something in the room had changed. He hesitated for the twinkling of an eye before he noticed that a blue and white carpet lay on the floor, downy as moss in a beech forest.

“Where is the other carpet?”

“The merchant was here and exchanged it for this one. I myself chose it.”

“But who told you to?”

“Sahib never said a word about whether the red one was suitable.”

“Find the merchant and tell him to leave it for me,” Terey stormed, as if the rug they had disposed of were his property. “I want that carpet returned to me.”

“And if he has found a buyer?”

“I was first.” He removed a seed with his spoon.

The cook’s face brightened as if a beam of sunlight had passed over it. He was already calculating the tip he would haggle from the vendor.

“Sahib wants to keep the red carpet?” he queried, pressing for confirmation. His hair rattled dryly as he scratched above his ear with a bent finger. “It will be expensive. It is real cashmere.”

“If he thinks he’s going to fleece me, let him not bring it at all. I don’t want to look at him or at rugs. And you, instead of doing business of your own out of this, attend to the kitchen.”

A strong smell of burnt cake wafted from the half-open door. Pereira went pattering out in beaten-up slippers, shaped like the boats boys whittle from pine bark, that were never cleaned. In a moment he was back, passing a lump of something black and smoking from one hand to the other.

“The teacakes burned,” he announced, as if it were a great achievement.

The dining room was stuffy in spite of the large ceiling fan that whisked the air into motion. The cooling machine hummed like the roar of the sea in a shell. At the thought of the oppressive sun, which was out of eyeshot here but now and then crossed the threshold and fell like a weight on his shoulders, Istvan felt a pressure in his head and a sudden faintness swept over him.

He lay down and was beginning to read The Naked and the Dead when the open book fell onto his forehead. He let it fall and sank into sleep.

He awoke dazed and uneasy, with a dew of perspiration on his chest. He had dreamed that he came in by a narrow wooden stairway, roughly hewn with an ax like cottagers’ staircases, to a cramped loft. Dried sheepskins were hanging there, with their fleecy sides toward the center, smelling of rancid fat and an herb to keep away maggots. Ilona would be waiting there. In the darkness he reached out and touched a snugly wrapped baby sleeping in a wicker trough. Groping with his fingertips, he felt the moist, open lips. They smacked and the infant slept on.

In the bathtub, he chuckled as he remembered his grandfather, who had a knack for explaining dreams, “A child — that’s trouble. It sleeps all wrapped up, and everything is fine, but be careful not to wake it up.” His cheerfulness returned; he seemed to hear that voice, grumbling but full of warmth, just behind him. But his grandfather had died before the war, before Horthy…Oh, foolishness! He swatted his shoulders with a rolled towel and instead of rubbing himself with it, let the air dry his skin. He wanted to preserve the fleeting illusion of coolness that lingered after his bath.

He drove out to the gardener’s plot behind the European cemetery, where patches of snapdragon and gladiolus grew, and baby’s breath with tiny, silvery blooms that created a mist over the dense cluster of color — the indispensable finishing touch to a bouquet.

He bought flowers for Grace.

The rajah greeted him with sincere delight, handing him a tall glass of whiskey in which ice cubes gleamed like chunks of topaz. A slender man in immaculately pressed trousers, noticing the familiarity between them, gave Istvan his seat. The leather chair sighed like a human being as it accepted its new burden. When the man was introduced, the counselor did not hear his name distinctly. The skin lying firm and tight across his cheeks made it hard to determine his age, but he must have been over forty, for the neatly trimmed hair at his temples was streaked with silver.

“Who is that?” Terey asked in an undertone.

“Another one looking for credit. No one so important that you have to remember him,” the rajah said dismissively. “I don’t ask what he wants money for. What’s important is that he return it at term and pay the interest. But what he does with it—”

The conversation went on this way, as if the thin Hindu did not exist for either of them. But he, without antagonism, stood in obedient readiness a step away so as to be able to join in at any moment.

The rajah settled in to dwell at length on the splendid homage that had been done him at Jaipur, the hundred elephants that had come out to meet him and his bride. They had ridden into their estate on an elephant wearing a caparison of gold. Merchants had brought presents in spite of the fact that legal subjugation to the ruling family had ceased a few years before. But the merchants themselves kept up the tradition in order to signify that they enjoyed favorable relations with the wealthy of Rajasthan.

Miss Ward was not at the reception, so Grace must have called. Pereira couldn’t manage to repeat anything. Terey writhed, listening with one ear to the rajah’s boastings.

Grace was hidden in a bevy of sleek women who passed their lives lounging about and gorging on pastry and gossip. Each year they gave birth and wheedled jewels from their husbands as rewards, then used them to pique the envy of their friends.

Grace’s face was full of soft brightness, but impenetrable, like still water in temple ponds; it hid a mystery. Could marriage have changed her so?

He took the earliest opportunity to escape the rajah and attach himself to Vijayaveda, Dr. Kapur, and a tall, hunched man wearing a white shirt gathered into innumerable creases and drawn together with a band under the neck. The man wore a dhoti and held the ends of it in his fingers like a dancer’s skirt, fanning his bare calves.

“War is not so terrible when one is our age.” Vijayaveda beat his chest. “We are talking of events in Tibet — a minor revolt of the lamas, the slaughter of some Chinese advisers,” he explained to Terey. “Even if the Americans took up the cause of the Dalai Lama—”

“You speak of something you have never experienced, sir,” the Hungarian countered. “I have seen war at close range. One must have vast patience and great intelligence to hold in check an arrogant opponent who is cocksure of his technology. Even if it takes enormous concessions, peace must be preserved.”

“You repeat it like an incantation, sir: peace, peace,” Kapur attacked him, “because the communist strategy demands it. You put the world in fear of nuclear annihilation, then you yourselves foment small wars, which are just, you say, because they are fought for freedom.”

“War is not so bad,” the manufacturer insisted. “It brought freedom to India, it dislodged foreign capital. And it all happened at little cost.”

“Little? If you disregard several million who died of hunger. In spite of catastrophic droughts, with your help the English pumped rice through to the African front. The passive death of Indians was also an ingredient in this war,” said the tall man in the dhoti.

“There are enough of us left.” Vijayaveda shrugged off the point. “I would rather see a war in Europe. There would be movement here straight away: orders for factories, turnover of goods, technical advances. War is not terrible so long as you maintain neutrality.”

“Easy to say, but who can guarantee that?” The tall Hindu spread his hands and raised the edge of his dhoti, uncovering half his lean thigh.

“The politics of Gandhi, Nehru,” Kapur put in. “As long as the Congress Party, the party of former prisoners, persecuted and struggling for freedom, is in power—”

“You know very well that the whole Congress is like one of our joint families, a family partnership. You were honest as long as you were behind bars; when you got your hands on power, you began to change overnight. I don’t deny that Nehru, Prasad, Radhakrishnan are noble people, leaders without self-interest. But the rest? Behind their backs the rest find ways to profit, to suck the people like horseflies on an ox’s neck. The money goes to a common pot, and they hand off funds to the Congress for propaganda and for the police, who are the guardians of their shady businesses. ‘Joint family’: one set of faces from the outside, another from the inside,” the Hindu said vehemently, his dhoti flapping like a sail. “And no sooner are they caught than they invoke the memory of their past merits, which were even in many cases quite genuine, because in those days they took no account of danger. They also like to point to other people’s scars, and to cluck, ‘Oh, Gandhi, Gandhi,’ thinking that that shibboleth will anesthetize the agitated public. It is time for us to have a proper role in the running of this country. Socialism!”

“Another shibboleth.” Vijayaveda shrugged. “An antiquated nineteenth-century economic theory elevated to the dignity of a philosophy.”

“Professor Dass, as you have just witnessed, is already infected by you. He dreams of revolution,” Dr. Kapur whispered to Terey. “And those humanists who extol revolution are the first to have their necks wrung by it.”

“You will never take over governments in India.” Vijayaveda struck his palm with the other fist. “You are compromised once and for all. When we called for boycotts during the war, when we haggled with the English for our freedom so blood would not have been shed for nothing, the communists directed the laborers to work loyally for the English. You condemned the strikes and demonstrations. And why? Why so loyal all of a sudden? Because Moscow was in danger, and you listen to her. What concern of yours are the interests of that nation? Chandra Bose was better.”

“Not Moscow, but humanity, was in mortal danger. That is why we agreed to make concessions,” the professor retorted. “The enemies of our enemies were our natural allies…for the time being, of course, for the time being. And if Chandra Bose had been successful, we would have had a Japanese occupation. Ask them in Singapore how they liked that! To drive the English out with help of the Japanese is to chase one devil away and let all hell in. Madness!”

“And what actually happened to him?” Istvan asked, recalling a snatch of an old newsreel and a crowd of moviegoers, not given to being demonstrative in public, rising in the darkness to pay homage.

“He died near the end of the war,” Vijayaveda said.

“When the campaign for the subjugation of India did not succeed,” Professor Dass said with a sneer, “the powers summoned him to Tokyo to explain why no uprising had broken out here. But on the way it appeared that the verdict had come down. They swung him by his hands and feet and threw him out of the plane.”

“He was a man of integrity,” Kapur said.

“Where would he have led us?” hissed Dass. “Perhaps he dreamed of a great India, but at what price? The people felt the tyrant in him and did not support him.”

“Stop hiding behind ‘the people.’ ‘The people, this,’ ‘the people, that,’” Vijayaveda shouted. “The people is a great mute. First of all, it doesn’t speak because it doesn’t know, and you shout on its behalf. And then, when you take power, it cannot speak even if it wanted, for you hold your paw over its mouth.”

Jumping as if on a spring, raising its rump high, a gray monkey ran in from the garden. Its long tail hung in an arc over its senile, ugly head. Its eyes, pale green like gooseberries, had a mocking look. In its paw it dragged an open bag that belonged to one of the ladies, dropping a handkerchief, lipstick in a golden case, and a bunch of jingling keys along the way.

A servant lunged to the rescue and tried to snatch away the booty, but the monkey tittered, shrieked hysterically, and with its back bristling, leaped over onto Grace. Complaining like a child, it cried and buried its little face under its arm.

“Let the monkey play with that,” called the owner of the purse. “She will grow bored and give it up of her own accord. There is no point in annoying her.”

The Hindu ladies resumed their conversation. The monkey, now soothed, jumped onto the back of a sofa and began to pluck sheets of paper from a little red notebook as if to put it in order.

“Delightful!” gushed the victim. “Grace, did you raise her?”

The monkey tousled her hair, making a shambles of her coiffure. It pulled out jasmine blossoms that had been threaded into her hair and began chewing them and spitting them out. Then it went back to separating the tangled strands of hair.

“Careful, that hurts!” the Hindu woman bridled, offering the little animal a mango. “She behaves just like my husband. My hair bothers him in his sleep. He says that it gets in his face, that it suffocates him. He wrestles with it. In the morning he can’t get his fingers untangled.”

The monkey sat on the back of the sofa, above their heads.

“My husband gets his ring tangled,” the rajah’s sister-in-law chimed in, shielding herself with a napkin from the drops of juice that leaked from the darting black paws of the monkey. Kapur, who was watching this amusing little contest, winked at Terey.

“I met the ambassador in Amritsar.”

“I know. He told us about the Golden Temple of the Sikhs and the extraordinary success of the speech. Reportedly the hall was so crowded no one could breathe.”

“We found around thirty persons: officials, intellectuals, members of the Hungarian-Indian Friendship Society.”

“Those people also belong to the Czech and Bulgarian societies.”

“Socialist sympathizers,” Professor Dass interposed.

“Not necessarily. Snobs — and some are simply there under orders, but many reports confirm that the activities of the Society do not escape surveillance,” the manufacturer added. “Perhaps this is painful to you, Mr. Terey, but so it must be. Self-defense.”

“Allow me to finish,” Kapur insisted, distending his hairy cheeks with a smothered simper. “It was after the ceremonial greeting, when the crowd pressed into the hall with wives and children. Not only were all the seats occupied, but people were even sitting on the floor and the windowsills. The ambassador expressed his thanks with elation, because he thought he himself had aroused such interest. No one disabused him. In the meantime, it was a rabid monkey that had driven listeners into the hall where he was speaking. It was jumping from a tree onto the necks of passersby and biting them. It was attacking cyclists in particular; no doubt their torpid pedaling irritated it.”

“I read in the newspaper that some Sikh killed the monkey,” Terey recalled. “And he didn’t even claim the reward.”

“Very wise. If the monkey in question hadn’t been mad, he would have been accused of sacrilege,” Kapur explained. “He shot it with a bow and arrow. The whistle of the arrow attracted no attention. Those who had been bitten were summoned to be inoculated against rabies. About three hundred people reported, but none had bite marks. People simply like to be treated. The shot is free; they must take advantage of it.”

“Did anyone seek out those who really were bitten?” Istvan asked worriedly.

“Have you no more pressing concerns?” The doctor shrugged. “They will fall ill, they will die out and the circle of exposure will eliminate itself. We trust in the wisdom of nature.”

“You say that,” Dass said angrily, “as if you meant, let us leave it to the gods.”

No; Kapur enjoyed treating people. Even his ritualistic questions about health resonated with the secret hope that he would hear some guarded admission of sickness, spy out its first symptoms. He was a surgeon for the love of it; he had a deft hand, and even in this accursed heat, wounds closed easily and pus stopped running. He delighted in injections; as often as he could he applied those he received free of charge from pharmaceutical houses, each in a package with its advertising prospectus. He divided patients into two classes, the chronically ill and the incurable. During the time of treatment he did not spare expensive measures, especially when the medicines were nearly out of date and needed to be used up quickly. For the rest, under his tender care any sickness could take on the character of a chronic condition. The dark prognoses that surrounded his patients lent drama to the success of the ensuing treatment.

The members of the diplomatic corps knew him and even liked him, for he assured them from the first that all sicknesses reside in each body, that what mattered was only to discover modes of coexistence. In that enterprise a double whiskey with ice was remarkably helpful, taken after sunset, of course.

The dosage of whiskey he prescribed linked the number of years the patient had spent in the tropics to the height of a box of matches. In the first year he laid it flat beside the glass, in the second he put it on its side, in the third he stood it on end. After that, one could push out the center of the matchbox with a finger as one saw fit, and fill the glass to the prescribed level. “For if three years in India does not make you my patient for life, whiskey will certainly do you no harm,” he jokingly assured the embassy staff.

“I must come and see you, doctor,” Terey began. “It has been eight months since I was inoculated against smallpox, and there are many new cases.”

“There is nothing to be perturbed about. We always have smallpox among us, someone always falls ill with it, but they don’t put it into the newspapers because it bores readers. If there is a large outbreak — several hundred dead — in the vicinity of Delhi, then they set up an alarm. The team goes out, they inoculate people, they burn the victims’ belongings, they sprinkle the lodgings with creosote and it’s all over. Call me and I will get some vaccine from the hospital cooler.”

The man who was sitting on the edge of his chair, leaning toward the rajah — almost kneeling like a penitent — suddenly rose to his feet and walked away with his head down, as if he had been granted absolution. His rapt eyes slowly began to focus on what was around him; he smiled apologetically at Istvan. He pulled aside the lapel of his jacket; from the inside pocket, where the wallet is usually carried, protruded a row of metal holders.

“Perhaps you smoke? These are healthier than cigarettes,” he urged, opening an aluminum case. He shook a thick brown cigar with a little crimson and gold band out onto his palm and involuntarily pushed it under his twitching nostrils, savoring the aroma.

“Havana. Havana,” he said elatedly. “The whole secret of the perfection of those cigars is in the hand work. Girls roll the leaves on their bare thighs. The hand moist with spit, the perspiring thigh, create the variable fermentation which decides the flavor of each cigar — not chemists, not machines. Please feel free. I have more of them.” He pulled aside the other flap of his jacket with the gesture of a man being searched under a warrant. The cigars stood in their holders like cartridges in the dress uniform of a Cossack. “Americans bring me any number of them. I get them straight from the embassy, duty free.”

He took out a little cigar cutter and trimmed the end.

“Wait—” he raised a match and held it in midair. “Do not spoil the taste with sulfur. Now there is a red flame; we may light it,” he said imperiously, then pressed for encomiums, “Well — how is it? Was it worth it?”

They inhaled for a moment, concentrating deeply on the smoke. Finally Istvan raised the cigar, which exuded thick, aromatic fumes.

“Excellent,” he had to confess.

“Please take a couple more, for later. Give me the pleasure.” He thrust his pocket forward, but Terey mistrusted the sudden cordiality. Instinctively he felt that it concealed a desire to put him under some undefined obligation.

“Do you go to Pakistan sometimes? Above all, I mean to Karachi.”

“No. I have no reason; we have an embassy there as well.” After a pause Terey added, “And I can hardly afford it.”

“Or to Hong Kong?”

“Not there either. It is beyond the range of my posting.”

The Hindu seemed to be turning something over in his mind. He moved the end of the cigar around his thin purplish lips.

“But might you not have reason to go there? The means could be found. It is very easy to get money. If the occasion arose, would you think of me? I am in need of a favor.” He looked at Istvan gently, as if he were an uncomprehending child. “Why are you always so resistant? They are strict with you. It is easier to communicate with the Americans.”

“What do you have in mind?” Istvan inquired. The man smiled, his lips forming an indulgent, slightly disgusted grimace.

“Don’t worry; not intelligence. Ordinary business. I am, like Rajah Khaterpalia, a businessman. But since you are not going, for the time being there is nothing to talk about,” he snorted superciliously. “Don’t rack your brain about it. Here is my card. If you go, please let me know. I do not think you will regret it.”

He handed him a cream-colored card and suddenly, as if he had lost all interest in Istvan, went into the part of room where the rich ladies in varicolored saris sat on the couch and in leather chairs.

“A. M. Chandra,” the counselor read. There were multitudes of Chandras; it was a common name. Beneath it was written in small letters, “Philanthropist.” And in the corner an address, Kashmir Gate, office of legal counsel, the telephone number. Yes; Old Delhi. Istvan had to smile, it struck him as such a highflown designation. Philanthropist: it reminded him of the card they printed as a joke on the birthday of one of the editors, who was always sitting around in a coffeehouse nearby, with the name in large type—“Founder”—and below, in nonpareil, “and Chairman of the Bored.” But here the eccentric designation “philanthropist” must have a particular significance — to establish a position, to attract certain persons, to arouse respect?

Since Vijayaveda and his son-in-law had been left alone, Terey took the opportunity to ask confidentially what Chandra’s occupation really was.

“Everything that is not allowed. He is an excellent lawyer, he knows thousands of gambits. He can call on precedents from fifty years back. He handles cases that are impossible to make disposition of, that drag on for years. He pulls witnesses out of hell. A man drowned in a swamp — well, a very rich owner of a copper mine — and because there were no remains, no one could take possession of the inheritance. Chandra managed to produce remains. It was said that gold fillings were put into another dead man so the dentist could identify him as his patient. He is a careful fellow: he never leaves his fingerprints on anything. He knows how much to give someone to move the case along, to obtain the indispensable signature and seal on the decision,” the rajah said reflectively. “Everyone is ready to take, but they are not so eager to work. He knows who gets things done, he knows people,” he added approvingly. “Such knowledge is invaluable. Did he propose anything to you?”

“Yes — rather vaguely,” Istvan said hesitantly.

“He is worth taking seriously,” the rajah said reassuringly. “I have lent him large sums and he has always paid them back on time. He inspires confidence. One never knows when such a man might be useful, and for what. If I were in your place, I should keep up the acquaintance.”

Through the pleasantly shaded room Grace sailed toward them. She walked with short steps, carried forward with a slight movement of her hips, her head tilted as if under the weight of her luxuriant black hair. On her neck she wore a gold chain in the form of leaves and lotus flowers, set with rubies. A servant with a tray of glasses walked behind her.

“Are you happy, Grace, to be receiving guests in the old home?” the rajah asked.

“My home is where you are,” she answered, lowering her dark-tinted eyelids.

This expression in the presence of a listener pleased her husband. Istvan thought with relief that that was the end of it, that it was as if the incident had not taken place. Suddenly he felt as though he were choking: he stood still for a moment with the cigar, now extinguished, in his uplifted hand, looking around at the faces, studying the movements of hands and bodies, the rippling of white dhotis, the impeccable cadences of sentences spoken in English. The large fan whirled above him, scattering ashes from the cigar.

He had had enough. What had he expected? What had he found here? Nasal, languid voices, enormous, flashing eyes, theatrical gestures. He bowed to Grace and the rajah, pointing to his wrist watch, and walked out without a word. The bored monkey hobbled along behind him. They stood, he and the little animal, at the top of the stairs, surveying the abyss of sunlight. Dry, twisted leaves drifted from the trees; the tobacco-like aroma of dying greenery rode on the air. A lone cicada chattered on a leafless acacia. He could see its lucent wings like trembling slivers of mica.

Hot breezes sprang up, driving the shriveled leaves around the asphalt. Tires ground them to a dust that was wafted through the air and into the faces of passersby. Istvan had just driven to the gate when a taxi with an unkempt Sikh at the wheel stopped, its tires screeching. He put his head out and was ready to berate the man when he noticed the passenger. Miss Ward alighted, holding a raffia basket full of peaches.

“Why didn’t you let me know you would be here?” she reproached him. “And I waited and waited at Volga. After all, you could have called.”

Her sudden fit of pique gave him pleasure. He liked her with tight lips and a threatening flash in her eye.

“I’ve had a rotten day. Since morning nothing has gone right. I needed you very much — needed a shoulder to cry on — and of course you weren’t there. Go on!” She dismissed the taxi driver with a gesture of her hand in a green nylon glove; her suntanned fingers were half silhouetted as if seen through water.

“Madam has not paid yet.” The Sikh thrust out his hairy lips and, gratified by her discomfiture, scratched himself under his arm.

“Oh, sorry!” She hurriedly retrieved her purse from the bottom of the basket. Two peaches rolled out and vanished under the taxi.

“Why this anger? I am not Dr. Kapur; I cannot marshal my powers of concentration and divine that you are sitting in Volga. I can only envy you. Strong coffee, ice cream.” He tucked some money into the driver’s hand. The man started up his rattletrap sluggishly.

“Where are you rushing off to?” He stopped Margit. “The at-home is still going on.”

“I wanted to wash. I’m sticky all over. And so tired! I’m sorry that you got the brunt of that”—her lips trembled like those of a child who can hardly keep from crying—“but if you knew what I’ve had to contend with, you wouldn’t wonder at it.”

He took the basket out of her hand and put it down beside him. Before she noticed, they were moving down the avenue.

“I must look horrid!” She peeped at the mirror. “Where are you taking me? I can’t be seen anywhere in this rumpled dress.”

He said nothing; he only looked far down the road. The air, veined with tremors of heat, threw a haze over the trunks of trees near the pavement and blurred the brown leaves at the tops. A pool of blue gleamed like spilled water on the asphalt. Around them stretched empty fields full of soil of a vermilion hue; the stubble was not plowed. Only patches of sugar cane stood like a green wall. In a ditch a pair of storks walked about, irritably snapping up brittle grasshoppers. In the blank sky a vulture glided like a black cross on invisible currents of air, reconnoitering.

“You won’t bother to talk to me? Have I annoyed you?”

“I’m taking you out of the city. We’ll sit in the shade, by water. You’ll rest a little. You don’t mind my abducting you?”

He drove with his left hand, putting his right out the window. The air whipping against the car was refreshing as it flowed over his body, ruffling his shirt.

“I had about thirty patients today, almost all of them children. Why do they deserve to suffer like this? Swollen eyelids oozing pus. Pupils that can’t bear bright light…the sun jabs them like a needle. Do you know, tears have made furrows on these tykes’ cheeks. Over and over I perform the same treatment: put the hook in place, pull away the eyelid, scrape, remove ingrown eyelashes, which are irritants; they lacerate the eyeball. The nurse holds the child’s head, and the mother sinks to the floor and embraces my legs as if to plead with me not to hurt the little one.” She flung the words out angrily, not looking at Istvan, only at the vacuousness of the parching fields and the bluish sky that seemed full of hot ash. “But maybe this disgusts you? Have you already had enough?”

“I am happy to hear about the Dr. Margit Ward who is unknown to me.” He leaned on the horn, for a flock of peacocks was crossing the road, their iridescent green and gold tails sweeping the dust and leaves like brooms. “Until now I have only known Miss Margit.”

“Every mother loves her child, but here love injures, blinds, sometimes kills. I rub the inside of the eyelid with ointment, I put in drops — and later I see through the window how the mother rubs the child’s eye with the border of her skirt, spits on her finger and wets the inflamed edge of the eyelid. And she will take the sadhu into her house and let him intone spells, she will apply amulets from sacks with dirt caked on them, or cow piss. I could show her what to do a hundred times, but she will not do it. She will repeat my instructions as if she were in a trance, and I will see in her eyes that she is promising in order to placate me, but when she is on her own again, she will not carry them out. She will get her friends together and tell them what it was like in the clinic, and when they have finished their oohing and aahing, she will take to painting the child’s eyelids with that disgusting grease of coconut oil and soot.

“Oh, it’s my fault, because I washed the child’s eye and it has eyelids white as a vulture’s, and it is supposed to be beautiful! You know, I would like to take the sick children from their mothers by force, because the whole treatment is all for nothing! It’s enough that the eyelid heals over a little; right away they stop taking the treatments seriously; they even stop coming. Now and then I’m overtaken by a rage like this one today. And I’ve taken it out on you. I apologize.”

“It’s nothing. Nothing,” he soothed her. “Go on.”

“Yesterday a girl was brought in. Believe me, I truly wanted to help, but I’d treated thirty patients and my hands were shaky. I gave an order for her to come with her mother this morning. I wanted to take her first, while I was still full of confidence that I could save her sight. I waited. I sent away other mothers. There was no trace of her! She didn’t come. You can’t even imagine how I reproached myself for letting her go yesterday, until I questioned the nurse.

“The nurse, who was trained in an English school, knows what hygiene is. She calmly explained to me that the mother bought a black goat, made an incision in its throat and walked it around the altar of Kali. The blood flowed out, and the pus. Now that whole cataract will come out of the child’s eye. And if not, why treat it, since the goddess wants it that way?

“Until then I had looked at the nurse as someone who was on my side, as an ally. Then she said with a sweet smile, which I would have liked to wipe off her face”—she bent the fingers of both hands down to the trimmed, unpolished nails—“‘Yes, I advised her to do it myself, for why should madam doctor wear herself out for that dark peasant girl?’”

“Do you understand? She put her up to it — so how can I count on the mothers to follow my directions? It’s hopeless!” she cried in despair. “Worse, it’s foolish. And I believed that I could help them.”

“You want too much too soon. You will see; you will adjust, you will get used to it.”

“I’ve already been here two months. Istvan, I can’t work without having faith that there is some sense in what I’m doing.”

They were quiet for a moment, listening to the even hum of the motor. Then he turned his face toward her with a truculent gesture.

“Have you saved even one child’s sight?”

“Of course!” she burst out.

But he went on without heeding her indignation.

“That child will be able to distinguish colors, shapes. You have given him the whole world. Is that a small thing? Wasn’t it worth it to come here even for the happiness of one child?”

“Don’t let my bitterness upset you. Something has come over me today. I’m mad as a hornet.”

“Look.” He pointed to the silvery-white sky. “Sand clouds, charged with electricity. A dry storm is on the way. The birds are taking cover, the cicadas are quiet, and we feel the tension, but we have lost touch with our instincts and don’t know what’s threatening us. We only feel an uneasiness.”

They turned between the spreading trees. Wagons were standing there, and motorcycle rickshaws with blue-striped canopies. Drivers in unbuttoned shirts dozed in the shifting shade. Horses with yellow teeth tore at the dry, dusty leaves of bushes and switched their tails over hindquarters stung by horseflies.

“Entry prohibited.” She pointed to a road sign.

“Not for us. For the Community Development vehicle.” He steered over the crunching gravel under the ruins of the palace of the Grand Mogul. Flies like bullets that had been blown into the moving car and battered against the rear windshield now took flight with a loud, desperate buzzing, beating against their faces and foundering in Margit’s hair.

“Dreadful!” She shuddered as she combed them out with her fingers.

The hot, listless hour had emptied the park. They stood at the foot of the reddish thirty-story tower, which seemed to reel among the silvery streaks that were spreading through the sky — to totter as if it might fall on them.

In the dark gateway a half-naked beggar slept with his head on his chest. His bony black hands had fallen between his parted thighs. His toenails were as long as a dog’s. He did not wake when they walked through the little passage leading to a winding stone stairway worn by innumerable footsteps.

Nebulae of whitish light shone through the narrow guard windows. They climbed the stairs, almost groping their way. In the tiny flame of a match, greasy streaks of dirt could be seen on the wall. Hundreds of thousands of sightseers had leaned on it with their hands and moved sweaty fingers over it, lending a patina to the plaster. The interior reeked with the musky smell of bats and urine passed stealthily by pilgrims. From the higher flights of stairs came the squeals of young girls, amplified by the echo.

“Shall we go all the way up?” he asked. “Eight hundred and sixty-two steps.”

“I would never forgive myself if we didn’t go up.” She quickened her steps. “I must reach the top.”

A line of girls in loose pantaloons, colorful tunics, and light scarves with ends hanging down their backs passed them on the stairs. Their shrieks and titters and the clatter of their sandals could be heard long afterward.

They paused more and more often, out of breath. Margit put a hand on her heart.

“It’s pounding.”

They startled a couple in white who were embracing. Pouting, the young people joined hands and began to descend, but the sound of their footsteps died away quickly; they were in no hurry to leave their stony retreat.

“Did you see? They were kissing,” he said, amused. “The censors cut scenes like that from the movies.”

“It’s remarkable to me, as well, that men here show greater feeling, that they walk around embracing each other, they hold each other’s hands, they plait flowers into their hair. I haven’t seen a boy and girl walking hand in hand. And if that does happen, they are marching in the company of the whole family. Oh, it’s not far!” She was elated by the light from the summit of the tower.

They saw an arid plain with strips of smoldering thorny brushwood and clumps of yellowing trees. Under the turbid sky, like streaks of distant rain, veils of dust were carried on the air along with the rhythmic mutter of thunder. In the copses the domes of old graves darkened, like the shells of gigantic turtles, stripped by a sacrilegious hand of their ceramic scales. Nearer the tower, a few white mud cottages caught the light in a banana grove, and in a pond, like boulders come to life, the black bodies of buffalo wallowed.

Istvan held Margit by the waist as she pulled herself from the brick shaft. Over the smooth, steep wall, one could look straight down, past two small balconies with white figures of men, to the ground, the stone tiles and reddish dirt sprinkled with gravel. Then came a tingling under the skin, and the thought that a person could fall with a scream of despair which would summon no one until the dull collision of body and earth silenced it forever.

“Careful, please,” warned a guard in a military uniform and creaking hobnailed boots. “Two days ago a girl threw herself off here. The marks are still here—” he showed them dried black spatters on the steep slope of the wall. “When they lifted her, she was like a bag of wet wool; all her bones were broken. Just after the feast of Diwali, as well, a couple jumped. They were holding hands. It was love, and the parents would not permit it, for he was a Brahmin and she was from a village. It is strange how this tower attracts suicides. It is better not to lean out: the earth lures, it draws, one feels dizzy, and before you know it — tragedy!”

The guard shot Margit a look full of suspicious concern.

“They posted me to watch over this place,” he added. “But when someone makes up his mind to jump…I turn my back, and he is somersaulting in the air.”

The wind grew stronger; the narrow windows of the tower whistled like flutes. A cloud of dust, torn grasses, and dry leaves was rising below them. A gust of wind tugged at their hair and they felt a warm stream of air flow over them. Margit huddled down, pressing her swelling skirt around her knees.

“There is going to be a powerful storm,” the guard warned. “It is better to go down.”

“No,” she insisted. “A moment more.”

There was a roaring in the trees below. Their tops lashed in the wind; handfuls of leaves flew off them. A red smoke rose from the parched fields.

“Don’t be afraid, sir. There will be no trouble with me,” Margit assured the guard. She was drinking in the sky, as violently, like a hallucination, it went gray, with swellings dark as ink. A rose and yellow flash kindled on clouds pulsing with light; the lightning heralded dry weather hot as brimstone.

She tried to smooth the hair that had blown about her forehead with a comb, but it was charged with electricity and rose on the air, giving off sparks.

“And it will hit like a thunderbolt.” Suddenly she was frightened. “I have no desire to perish at the hands of the gods. I have outgrown the years when one thinks of death without fear.”

She was silent. After a moment she spoke with an unnatural calm:

“There was a time when I wanted to kill myself.”

She looked him in the face. “I was very young then, and very silly.”

He said nothing. The stale taste of the desert was on his lips. A loud hum and a flapping noise rose around them. Grains of sand hit their cheeks, pricking like pins.

“I loved a cousin. We kissed in corners, like that couple. A splendid fellow. It was pure joy. He went as a volunteer. I vowed I’d wait for him. He was going to write. I never got a single letter. It was 1943. Burma. He died on that hellish road to Mandalay. The Japanese murdered him.”

She moved nearer to him because the wind was carrying her words away. She stood so close that her skirt fluttered around his knees. He caught the smell of her overheated body.

“I wanted somehow to be with those who were fighting. I was working then in a hospital in Melbourne. I still knew nothing about the war. We didn’t have many of the wounded. Neither the ocean nor the jungle were sending back victims,” she said in a passion of remembered grief.

The wind whined loudly. They heard the hum below them. At moments Terey lost her words and caught only the harsh tone of her voice.

“When someone told me, ‘Sister Margaret, someone from the army is waiting for you down below,’ I was sure it was Stanley. I ran down the hall. I can still hear my heels clattering. It was as if I had wings. But a strange man was standing there. He said with a heartiness that appalled me, ‘Be brave, madam. Stanley is dead.’

“I had nothing to remember him by. Nothing. If that man had had any heart at all, he would have given me even a button of his own and said it was Stanley’s. A good lad, but without imagination. And the same evening I gave myself to that man. With Stanley I hadn’t. And the man went back there. All the time he was kissing me, I thought, after all, it means nothing. Stanley is gone, gone, and I don’t want to live.

“I knew the flesh could defend itself, could rebel. Perhaps they would bring me back to life. I remembered one thing: if I got poison into my muscles with a syringe, nothing could help. I had easy access to the ampule. But I didn’t do it immediately after the man left, and I wasn’t able to do it a week later. Perhaps that first one, even unwittingly, saved me? My lover—” she laughed mockingly. “He didn’t even take account of the fact that he was the first; he regaled me with hideous stories of what the Japanese did to prisoners. The next day he telephoned to say goodbye. Perhaps I should have sent him flowers?”

The whole sky trembled above them. Dry lightning flashed three or four bolts at a time. Breathing was difficult; the storm gathered force. Sand lashed them.

“Go down, please.” The guard came up to them again. “It may be dangerous here,” he warned.

They could not see the ground. Below them brownish-red dust gathered in clouds, blotting out the trees. Flurries of dust surged above the ruins of the palace.

“We must listen to him, after all,” Terey urged. “It’s becoming unpleasant. My eyes are full of sand.”

“All right. And I’m sorry I brought this up. You must have thought, she’s a hysteric. Time soothes everything, and life is too short. One shouldn’t throw it away. We must have the courage to see it through to the end; so I think today, at least.”

The guard was grappling with the door, which the wind was jerking about. With difficulty he pushed the bolts into place. Istvan and Margit stood beside each other in the darkness. A white stain of lantern light slid around the wall.

“Why have you not married?” he asked suddenly. “You are pretty, well educated, and, well, you have money.”

“It gives me independence. I don’t have to work. I exercise my profession because I want to be of some use.”

“That explains nothing,” he persisted, taking her arm. The wind keened inside the tower; it forced puffs of dust through the narrow windows.

“I am not yet intimidated by the word ‘alone.’ To marry — there is still time for that. Understand: I have not yet renounced love.”

“I didn’t mean to force you into confessions,” he said quickly.

“I am saying only as much as I want to. You are a person one can be friends with. You are not demanding. Are you disappointed that we haven’t slept together? You probably understand that that first man was not the only one. After him there were a couple more, equally unimportant — I mean, not worth remembering. I noticed soon enough that though it wasn’t difficult to have my choice of men, I didn’t feel happy, even satisfied, the next day. I’m telling you frankly how it is so as not to spoil this comradeship between us.”

They started down the stairs in silence. He saw her graceful legs, bare in the light of the guard’s lantern; the corridor cut its spiral down the thick wall of the tower. They made their way down the monotonous curve until their heads were spinning.

“Surely you aren’t put off by my frankness?” she asked in a breathless voice as they stood at the bottom.

“It was your courage that took me by surprise. Women don’t talk that way about such matters. At least I never knew one who did.”

“Perhaps you never knew women at all.” She laughed in the darkness. “Except as companions in the bedroom.”

The force of the wind drove it through the narrow passage like a draft in a chimney. The hot, dry air had a coppery taste. The old beggar sat stoically with his back turned to the entrance. His arms encircled his legs; his forehead rested on his knees. The wind tousled his hair and showered his bare back with dust.

Istvan was worried about the car. Squinting, he looked at the palace yard. The Austin stood nearby like a faithful animal. It seemed to quiver before the hoofbeats of the charging storm. He was thinking that even if they didn’t drive away, it would be best to wait out the storm in its comfortable seats.

He ran over and unlocked the door. It pushed back against him violently. He struggled until Margit sank into a seat, then settled in beside her.

“The clouds are boiling around us. It’s like being in the cockpit of an airplane.” He rolled down the window and dust poured in. In the wild torrent of sand they saw a green parrot. The wind was bowling it along by its outspread wings, breaking its long flight feathers.

“Poor bird.”

“Poor people! Think of the huts the wind will pummel to bits — the sheets of tin ripped away, the cane supports — the sand that will be strewn through the roofs the wind pries open, and into pots of rice and babies’ mouths. It whips the face.”

The storm droned around the car. Thick grains of sand rang on the roof like a pelting rainstorm. A yellow glare pierced the undulating grayness. The wind flung up a disc of fire, large as a soccer ball and spraying sparks. It made three great jumps and struck the trunk of a tree. Malignant zigzags of white light flashed, then grounded themselves in the earth with a roar like a cannon shot. It seemed to Istvan and Margit that the whole world trembled. Terrified, she seized his hand.

“What was that?”

“It must have been globular lightning.” He saw her green-clad figure indistinctly; he was half-blinded by the lightning.

“Let’s get out of here. If you can drive.” Her voice broke. “The tower attracts lightning.”

He started the engine and released the hand brake, but before he could put the car in gear it began to roll lightly, pushed by the gale. In front of them something dark was being flung about in the clouds of dust. The wind was dragging a severed branch, inflating its thick clusters of leaves as if they had been a sail.

“There’s no sense in this, Istvan,” she pleaded. “The highway will be blocked by broken trees. Let’s take cover in the ruins of the palace.”

The thick walls offered shelter. He turned off the engine and put on the brake. His forehead was sticky with sweat. There was not enough air in the car.

“Were you afraid? It was very unpleasant to me, too — the way that ball of lightning flew toward us.”

“Give me a cigarette,” she answered tersely. “Let’s open the window a little.” They smoked in silence, watching the wind rush over the tiles in the palace courtyard, welter among the enormous dry leaves, and split the cherry-red pods, long as sword blades, that had been blown from the thorn trees.

“I know that moment must come. Yet that invitation to the darkness alarms me,” she said reflectively, quietly, as if it did not matter whether he heard.

Only after a moment did he understand, to his great astonishment, that she was speaking of death. A wave of shame swept over him; he had seen in her only an Australian with a pretty face, unseasoned to life, bored and amusing herself a little by treating Hindus. Now it seemed to him that with these confessions she had exposed herself — more than if she had flung off her dress and invited him to touch her breasts.

“For can one still be oneself there, and remember?” She sat musing, her eyes following the streaks of dust that seemed to swirl like smoke among stone tiles rubbed to a sheen by the feet of generations. Her head was tilted down a little and her lips were tight as if with some suffering not expressed. He wanted to help, to comfort her, if only by showing that he understood her feelings.

“The war affected both of us. I had my bad times as well. They drafted me from the university; I couldn’t get a deferment even for a couple of months, so I could take the examinations and have my year’s work count. They sent me to Ukraine, to the front, and in 1944 fighting was going on by the Danube, on Hungarian soil. Today it’s easy to say: the capitulation of an ally of the fascists. That’s not the way we felt then.”

He took a deep pull on his cigarette and exhaled the smoke, startling the flies that were creeping around the windowpane.

“You fought the Russians?” Her small face with its heavy wave of chestnut hair turned toward him.

“Yes. I knew then that the Germans were losing. I was full of rage and despair that we had been drawn in. But we fought to the last ditch. For the Germans, Hungary was only a point of retreat — to me, this was the end of my homeland. I wanted you to know: I was your enemy then.”

She nodded.

“I saw when the Germans fired at the withdrawing Hungarian divisions, though the position was impossible to hold and they themselves were retreating. I hated them. But I was afraid of the Russians. When Budapest fell, I wanted to kill myself. I thought it was the end of Hungary, that we were a lost nation. By chance I came upon a family — I was wounded and hungry, my strength was gone — and they gave me clothing, they took me in. I left after a couple of weeks to finish my studies, as if none of it had happened. There is always time for death. And it will come without being invited. It appeared that we had to begin all over again. There was work for all. At that time they didn’t ask many questions about who you were. They didn’t rummage through your past like a policeman going through your pockets.”

She nodded again and he spoke on.

“Naturally you don’t know much about my country. How would you? We are a small nation, surrounded by a Slavic sea. It seemed that we would never raise our heads again, that we had to resign ourselves to the outrage perpetrated by history, which would enter the fact in its dry record. I thought that that was the verdict and that we would be quartered, divided among those whom we had invaded. That we would cease to exist as a state. But it happened otherwise. We have a republic.”

Before them the arcades of Akbar’s palace came into view: broken columns in a rain of sand, their outlines unclear as in a worn-out film.

“And how is it now in Hungary?” She put out her cigarette.

“It is possible to live.”

She brooded a moment before gathering her courage to ask, “So things are not good there?”

“No. You are thinking that it is our fault. It certainly is. The Russians came, bringing people who had lived among us at some time or other — people who were model Hungarians to them, but not to us. They said they came to teach us, to mold us in the spirit of equality and freedom. Some had gotten out of jail through the good graces of Stalin. Others, even if they had managed to avoid prison, were morally stunted, were easy tools. They knew very well how to intimidate the resistance.

“Prisons! They were eager to build them. The shadow of prison walls fell on everything we undertook. They had very little in common with our country. They knew nothing about it. They frightened people even with their pronunciation of words, their strange accents, the clumsy idioms that reminded everyone of where they had come from and who was behind them.

“Unjust verdicts, coercion, hardships beyond people’s strength — they were so careless that they counted all that as part of the cost of building. They didn’t imagine that it could be any other way, that they shouldn’t be the leaders, speak from the rostrums, have their faces on busts and portraits. They! They! But then something arose that was a people’s republic after all. Workers came to understand the mechanism of politics. Laborers in the countryside began to read. New forces came into being, forces they had to deal with.”

She looked at him with heightened curiosity. What was he driving at?

“What kind of achievement is this — to assure oneself a comfortable situation, to placate the more powerful, to beat down the weaker with impunity so as to enhance one’s sense of well-being? To write so as not to interfere with anyone, to win approval? I want to live, but I want a life worth living — to influence things, not to flatter the powers that be.

“I love Hungary. Time mixes us as a baker mixes a cake. I search for leaven, for what is good for the nation; I want justice and freedom. They exist, and notwithstanding those plaster busts, they force changes, since socialism is what it is. And these changes are irreversible. Have no illusions: this would not have been the Hungary that was my homeland.”

“So you give them bricks when they build the prison walls,” she said with an indulgent smile, looking at the tips of her dusty shoes. “You serve those you don’t consider worthy of respect.”

“Only if I plant my hands in my pockets and say: No, I will change nothing, not even myself. There was a time when I thought it was enough for me only to write in Hungarian, a beautiful language. Now I know that that is not enough. Many forces lie dormant in the nation. Socialism awakens them; that’s not just a platitude. Often those people themselves are not aware of what they have unleashed.

“The time will come when the intermediaries must be gone. The changes began in Russia, from Khrushchev’s time. We still have the old, proven system: suspicion, informing, fear. They already think differently in Poland. A thaw, a breaking of the ice; the politicians speak so euphemistically, it’s as if they had all become poets. A storm is coming. It must come to us. It must. And the struggle must not go on without me. Otherwise I would have to blame myself — to despise myself.”

She looked at him; in her blue eyes was a stubbornness that seemed to match his own. “So you don’t see a life without politics,” she whispered bitterly.

He shook his head.

The sky cleared and suddenly they felt the low sun, now a bright blur in the triple curve of a rainbow, as it looked out from beyond the horizon. The wind stopped. It had become unbearably hot; warmth radiated from the desert sand the storm had showered on the roads and the trees.

A sympathetic silence fell between them. He drove the car out onto the road. Sand, swept into waves as if by the current of a brook, covered the asphalt. Shattered branches and piles of leaves parched by drought lay on the road.

“When I shake my head I feel sand falling on my neck. I must have a bath. Take me home.”

“All right. As you wish.”

He turned the car toward the suburban villas. A few minutes later he was being informed by the watchman that a window was broken in the hall. Led by some mysterious instinct, the cook appeared.

“Where have you brought me?” Margit asked, wiping her dirty face.

“Home, as you ordered. I’ll give you a towel in a minute, and a bathrobe. I warn you: the tap marked cold is actually hot. Well, why are you looking at me like that? First you say so much about friendship, and then you seem taken aback.”

She went into the living room and her eyes fell on the rust and dark green carpet as it glowed in the western light. She stood still.

“Beautiful colors!” She nodded with approval. “I like it.”

“So do I. It reminds me of you.”

She looked askance at him.

He showed her the bathroom and threw her a fleecy towel. “If you’d like me to soap your back—” he offered facetiously.

“When I want that, I’ll call, but then don’t you be taken aback,” she interrupted, locking the door.

“Pereira!” He summoned the cook. “What do you have for dinner that’s good?”

“Rice with sauce and a piece of chicken in the ice box.” He threw out a furtive, helpless glance, but seeing that Terey was impatient, added hastily, “We have Hungarian salami and plum vodka. I will run to the market right away and buy something else. You gave us no notice that we were having a guest.”

“Do you have green pepper? Onion, tomatoes?”

“We have!” he cried joyfully.

“And bacon and eggs?”

“Those also.”

“Good. You are free. I will cook a Hungarian dish myself.”

“I understand.” The dark eyelids were lowered knowingly.

“You understand nothing!” Terey’s anger kindled suddenly. “That lady is an eye doctor. We were caught in a sandstorm outside the city. She came to get cleaned up.”

“I understand,” the Hindu repeated, wiping his hands on the hem of his untucked shirt.

“Set the table. Don’t forget flowers.”

He was exasperated at having made excuses to the cook.

Pereira disappeared. Shouts floated back from the kitchen, and the patter of running feet. Istvan peered into the corridor. Pilgrims’ canes and bundles were lying there. When the cook returned with a tablecloth and silverware, he asked abruptly, “What is that crowd in the kitchen?”

“My relatives arrived from the country. They are in the city for the first time. They wanted to see how richly we live, sahib and I. They are not disturbing anything, and they can sleep in the barsati. There is enough room on the roof.”

“Istvan, come here.” He heard Margit’s voice from behind the door.

She was sitting in a chair, her skin clean and golden, her freshly brushed hair a silken river.

“It went very well without your help. Take a shower; you’ll revive immediately. I heard how you gave the cook his orders. I was hungry at once. Well, jump into the tub. I won’t sit at the table with a dirty man.”

The cook brought in a brass tray on which tall glasses clinked, flanked by a bottle of whiskey, ice cubes, a blue siphon, and two glasses of Coca-Cola.

“I can help myself,” she said, motioning him away. “Go.”

The warm shower was a relief. The streams of water ran red from the desert dust; his skin began to breathe. He dried himself, deliberately leaving a little of the delicious moisture. He put on a clean shirt. He looked in the mirror and saw a face with cheerless eyes and set lips. One short hair still stuck up, forming a cowlick.

He was unexpectedly moved at seeing a strange comb lying beside his shaving kit. What whim of mine is this? he thought. He shook his finger at his reflection; a wave of warm feeling came over him.

“Here’s your lost property.” He dropped the comb into the girl’s lap. With a glass in her hand, she looked at the picture on his desk of a woman and two boys with a dog.

“My sons. My wife.”

“You’ve never spoken of them.” She took the photograph in her hand and looked at it closely. “A beautiful woman,” she said thoughtfully.

“You didn’t ask. I must leave you for a while. You’re probably not hankering for Indian cuisine?”

“All right. I can wait now until midnight. Drink up.” She handed him a cool glass. “You remember — that’s how our acquaintance began.”

He took her hand and kissed it. They were quiet for a moment. See, you have her, he thought. You drew her out of the crowd of guests the night of that wedding; you got to know her, you are happy together. What more do you want?

“I’ll be right back.” He put the glass down.

The smells of spices and perspiring bodies hovered in the kitchen. Pereira had spread tomatoes, white globes of peeled sweet onion, and strips of pepper like green icicles on the table. He looked around with knife in hand, as if waiting for the command to attack.

Istvan took bacon from the refrigerator, sliced it, and threw it into the frying pan. Before the fat melted he cut the center out of the pepper, shook off the seeds, and chopped it fine. The cook followed his lead; the work progressed as adroitly as a piano duet. The green chopped pepper was covered with brick-red slices of tomato, then overlaid with white onion, which was topped with round cuts of bacon. Juice oozed from the vegetables and the pan bubbled pleasantly. He added salt and a pinch of hot pepper. Then he waited until the vegetables were tender.

“But don’t you dare let the onions turn brown,” he warned the cook. “Keep the cover on. Before you serve it, beat in two eggs and mix it well. Be careful not to burn it. Serve red wine.”

All the time he thought he was hearing throaty whispers from behind the thick window screen, but he could not make out the cook’s kinsfolk in the darkness that had descended all at once.

“I wasn’t long, was I, Margit? You weren’t bored?”

“No. I was thinking.” She raised her eyes to his. “I’m never bored. I don’t have to be amused. What were you making?”

“Lecso. Our simplest dish. If you take up with a Hungarian, you have to try it.”

“You got me to eat cake with silver sprinkles. I might as well take another chance.”

“And then we have Bull’s Blood.” He was amused when she made a face. “Never fear. It’s a red wine.”

Outside the window lights in the villas went on, and yellowish street lamps still dusty from the storm.

“Is one lamp enough for us? Shall I turn on the higher one?”

“Let it be. I like low light.”

“You’re not angry with me for bringing you here?”

“I am not angry at all. I don’t know myself how it came to this, that I am perfectly happy to wander around Delhi with you. You are kind. Sometimes at the hospital it occurs to me: I must tell Istvan about this!”

There was a knock at the door.

“Well, what is it?”

But the cook discreetly declined to enter. Istvan had to open the door to hear his whisper, “Sir, everything is ready.”

“Good. Serve it.” He saw that Pereira had put on a white linen jacket and white gloves; he was appearing in full regalia.

“Come. Now you will see my better side,” he invited her. “No more whiskey. We will move on to wine.”

The table was covered with an embroidered cloth. Fruit in a straw basket gleamed in the ray from the hanging lamp. The cook had put a branch with curly masses of orange-colored blossoms into an earthenware pitcher. They had hardly seated themselves when Pereira brought in a tray with the steaming frying pan and placed it in front of Margit.

“Oh, it smells lovely!”

“Be brave. Take some and try it. You may compliment me.”

The cork popped loudly. He took the bottle from the cook and filled the glasses. He felt Margit looking at him with inexpressible astonishment.

“What is it? The dish is not good? Did he manage to botch it just then?”

“Look around.”

He turned his head. Behind him, next to the wall, four men in white and a young girl sat with their legs folded under them, staring with wide eyes. They saluted the couple with folded hands. At a sign from the cook they came closer, walking barefoot without a sound.

“What are they doing here, Pereira? Take them to the kitchen and let them have something to eat. Have you gone mad?”

The cook stood his ground, full of dignity, holding the tray with the frying pan as if it were a sacred relic.

“They have already eaten. They would not put this to their lips. They are believing Hindus and there is meat in it. I promised to show them how sahib eats; they have never seen such a thing. To them it is a true art. They say that indeed we have fingers to mix everything, to knead it and to eat it, as people eat. But sir and madam eat altogether differently, with knife and fork. That is an art which I promised to show them.”

“Did you hear?” He turned to Margit. “He is making a sideshow of us. I have to chase them away.”

“Leave them alone,” she laughed, carried away with the humor of it. “You shouldn’t disappoint them. What’s the harm? And the cook counted on you so! He is anxious, like a theater director before a premiere. Don’t be angry, don’t mind them.” She raised her glass and a little red flame flitted over the tablecloth. “Your health. Remember, we are in India.”

“We are in India. We must amaze and excite them.”

“Do you speak English?” she asked, looking toward the figures in white.

“No, madam,” the cook answered. “These are dark peasants, and that little girl is my youngest son’s fiancee. Sahib has seen him.”

“How old is your son? Eight?”

“Ten, and she is fifteen. She is already mature. She will care for him, work like a slave for him. It is a great honor for them to be connected with such a man as I.”

The lecso was a success; the dry wine brought out the pungent flavor of the dish. Nevertheless the conversation foundered. They felt the eyes of their mute audience watchfully trained on their faces and hands. The dinner became a torture.

“I will give him a piece of my mind.” In his thoughts Istvan was already threatening the cook. “His head will spin.”

Pereira switched on the device that connected the rotors of both ceiling fans. The peasant family was enchanted, impressed by his technical skill. Margit finished her coffee. She lit a cigarette and choked restlessly.

“Take me home,” she requested. “I’m beginning to feel tired.”

When they were sitting in the car, she took his hand.

“Don’t be angry. Think what pleasure we have given them. The cook has gained new authority. They will have something to tell: they have been where they are normally not received, they have seen something they have not seen before. Surely you will invite me again? I thought the lecso was delicious.”

The watchman’s upraised truncheon flashed in the glare of a headlight. He called to the neighbors’ guard in Hindi:

“My sahib is driving out — with the woman.”

That much at least Istvan heard. He gripped the steering wheel hard. Rage swept over him. Quite an event! Sahib drives out with the woman who was with him in his house.