Stone Tablets

Chapter IX

The high-walled corridor in the ministry, inlaid with stone, was alive with the soft chiming of bracelets. Slender Hindu women draped in silk moved about with short, restrained steps. Preparations were underway for a convention of the World Women’s Congress. Under orders from Budapest, Istvan had to acquaint himself with the composition of the Congress’s slate of officers and its positions and statements. It was feared that right-wing elements would stage a demonstration; in that case it would be better for Hungary not to send delegates, to limit its involvement to blandly worded telegrams with greetings and wishes for fruitful deliberations, than to be forced into statements of protest and end by having its representatives leave the hall.

A few ladies, however — including the vice-minister’s wife — were insisting on seeing India. That had led to a lively exchange of telegrams with the embassy and a demand for detailed information. The convention was scheduled for the middle of October, only six weeks away. The ladies had asked if it would be appropriate, at least at the opening, to appear in Hungarian folk costume.

Miss Shankar, gently smiling and pressing her heavily braceleted wrists to her bosom, had assured him that she was working with the organizers and had not noticed any efforts to turn the convention into a rally. Of course there might always be an unexpected development; and then someone from the South American delegation might bring forward a troublesome resolution. But it could be suppressed, mired down in procedural disputes, so that the audience would be wearied and the final action on the matter delegated to the officers — with the hearty agreement of those in attendance. The issues to be discussed would be equal rights and higher wages for women. If equally qualified, they should not earn less than men.

“So there will be nothing of a sensational nature?”

“There will be.” She raised her almond-shaped eyelids and fluttered her long lashes. “We are preparing a pronouncement against the traffic in women.”

“They sell themselves, after all. How can you forbid them to do it?” he laughed.

“I am speaking of slaves — little girls kidnapped here and in Pakistan and carried away into harems in Arab countries. And to Africa. Entire criminal organizations work almost openly. It is difficult to ascertain the number of young captives, for if their parents themselves sell them, they certainly do not boast about it. Oh, Rajah Khaterpalia”—she motioned with a hand lithe as a flower—“you know, his brother died, the one who had been miraculously returned to life.”

The rajah had just spied them. The corner of his lapel was wound with crepe once more. He received expressions of sympathy with dignified satisfaction.

“What happened to him?” Istvan asked.

“Nothing. His heart simply weakened as it had previously, and he died. This time we stayed to the end, until his ashes were scattered to the Ganges.” His face had taken on an unhealthy puffiness, and greenish shadows ringed his glittering eyes. “Only then did I truly feel grief for him. That terrible scarred face frightened me, but it was my older brother.”

“You think that he really was your brother? After our conversation I also had begun to have doubts.”

“No. That was certainly my brother. I could swear to it now. We are completely different in character. He was meek, a dreamer. He was easily moved; you know, such a—” he groped for a term—“a poet.”

Miss Shankar tittered and looked Istvan in the eye with an unaffected, childlike smile.

“Oh, I beg your pardon.” The rajah put a hand on Istvan’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to offend you. Anyway, what kind of poet are you, when you are sticking it out at this remote post? You are a good embassy official, and that means something.”

“Thank you for that endorsement.” Terey bowed and the beautiful young woman laughed again, covering the bottom of her face with a silk shawl of iridescent peacock blue. “At least one person appreciates me. In the embassy I still have a reputation for being a poet.”

Still chatting, they went out to the wide stone stairs.

“Won’t you stop in and see us? Grace has been complaining because you do not come.”

“I can’t. I have some work, and I must be worthy of your compliment. Don’t forget: I am an official. May I take either of you anywhere?”

“I have a car.” Miss Shankar placidly gave Istvan her hand. “Thank you.”

“My chauffeur is waiting. Do not forget about us. Come — even tomorrow night. There will be a few people, acquaintances from the club. You ought to look in. People are beginning to say that India has changed you.”

“Yes.” Istvan seized on the point. “Tell them that I have taken up yoga and I concentrate for hours in silence.”

“Really?” the girl marveled, covering her bare arms with the shawl so as not to tan like a peasant woman.

“Yes. Doesn’t it show?” He looked out at the wide square around which cyclists swarmed in colorful wide trousers and untucked shirts, and into the air that quivered with veins of sunlight. He breathed in the smell of dust and heated stone and the light fragrances of girls’ perfumes. For an instant he forgot about his companions and was absorbed in the summer afternoon.

“You really have changed,” she whispered timidly. “And we thought you were in love.”

“No,” the rajah smiled triumphantly. “He was faithful to Grace; he must trust to future incarnations. Well — goodbye!”

He hurried to the large green car. A driver in white leaped out to open the door for him.

In the Austin Mihaly sat with his hands on the steering wheel, wearing an expression of enormous gravity. Three Hindu boys were peeping through the lowered windows. At their request the little fellow solemnly blew the horn. He had learned Hindi in preschool, whole phrases together, and it gave him pleasure when, as he talked with Krishan in the garage, his impatient father asked, “What are you two running on about in there?”

He raised the big, pensive eyes beneath his parted bangs to the counselor, brushed the bangs off his forehead and said:

“Uncle, they don’t know where Hungary is. They think it is so small that there is no point in learning about us.”

“And what did you tell them?”

Sulkily he confessed, “I told them they were stupid. They wanted me to start up the motor, but I didn’t have the key. So I only told them I would toot the horn if they would shout, ‘Hungarians are the smartest nation on earth!’ They shouted and I blew the horn until a lot of people came around.”

They rode along the wide avenue, dazzled by the glare from the glass and nickel of automobiles passing them on the right. Above the fresh dark green of the trees rose clusters of the red flower “Flame of the Forest.” The thin white haze in the sky promised more sunny weather.

“Uncle,” whimpered the little boy, “let’s go to Krishan’s for a little while. I haven’t seen him for four days, for I get a scolding right away if I go away from the embassy. Papa is always in a bad humor now. He says I have to stay home.”

“In a bad humor about what?”

“Because the ambassador comes even at night and shouts at him because there is no answer to his dispatches. Now papa sleeps in his room with the iron door, and mama is angry, too.”

They drove up in front of a building like a gigantic wooden barrel, covered with a bulging striped awning. The stammering, rising roar of a motor had already reached them, and a babel of voices full of delight tinged with fear. A band of children stood in an enclosure formed by a net of ropes secured to steel stakes beaten into the turf. Amid a cluster of bicycles leaning on each other and guarded by a bearded Sikh, vendors squatted with shallow baskets of peanuts, mangoes, and small, candy-sweet seedless grapes on which swarms of flies grazed when they were not waved away with a fan made of horsehair.

“I don’t need a ticket,” Mihaly informed Istvan. “Here is how I will get in.” He said something to an attendant in a white uniform with a wide green sash and scampered upstairs to the gallery.

“What did you say to him?” the counselor asked when they were leaning on the railing and looking into the black pit of worn boards.

“That Krishan is my uncle!” he said impatiently. “Look, he is coming up. He saw us!” The little boy jumped up and down, clapping. “Krishan! Krishan!”

“Be quiet.” Istvan put a hand on the back of the child’s neck, though he knew that Krishan could not hear him over the thundering of the motor.

Krishan, fastened into a suit of gleaming black leather and wearing a silver helmet and rectangular goggles, spun his wheels in the arena, trailing a fleeting blue streak of gasoline fumes. Strips of greenish leather a meter long hung from his arms like a tippet that rose as he gathered speed. The roar intensified. The motorcycle moved faster and faster, in wider and wider circles, until it reached the walls. The vibrating whine grew louder and the machine carried the rider onto the wooden casing of the barrel. The big boards throbbed in a dull bass as he flew around them with greenish wings growing out of his arms. There was a spine-tingling metallic whistle as he rocketed forward. Istvan’s jaw tightened as he remembered the screeching of airborne bombs.

Krishan sped by so quickly that they felt the onlookers’ heads turn to watch him. He leaned far to the side, defying the law of gravity, ever climbing in a spiral toward the edge of the wooden pit. He was already so close that they jerked back their heads when fumes of gasoline exhaust and scalded oil struck them in the face. The whistling leather wings almost lashed them.

Krishan bounced like a pea in a bottle someone was shaking with both hands. It seemed that he would reach the edge and shoot out between the ropes into the fluttering treetops, into the glare, into the sky like a stray comet. Mihaly squealed excitedly, caught up in the madness of the stunt.

Suddenly Krishan jerked his right hand from the handlebars and raised it toward the people as if to salute them. Then he took away the other hand. The motorcycle was hardly touching the ground. From the crowd leaning through the railing came a rapturous howl. Istvan’s throat tightened at the needless bravura; after all, the least tremor — the slightest skipping of the wheels on the boards — and the machine would go out of control. In this situation, at this speed, that would mean certain death.

But Krishan lowered his hands, seized the handlebars as if he were curbing a vicious stallion, and, they saw with relief, began riding down. Applause broke out. People leaned over and shouted into the wooden well, which amplified their voices. They clapped with all their might when he spread his legs, planted himself in the very center of the arena, and raised his head toward them as if surveying with disbelief the height to which he had soared a moment before.

“Krishan! Krishan!” Ecstatic viewers standing in the circular gallery like foliage on a wreath leaned down, shouting rhythmically. He stripped off one black glove and brandished his swarthy open hand amid the blue fumes.

“Come on!” Mihaly tugged at Istvan. “He will come to us.”

They began pushing through the crowd in which sellers of golden-brown potato chips sparkling with salt crystals moved about. From a box of ice that hung on a vendor’s belly they took slender bottles of Coca-Cola. The caps rolled, clinking, around the corrugated gangway.

The boy led the counselor behind the gigantic wooden tub to a clump of spreading trees. A kind of tent, flimsy and airy, had been set up there. An Indian bed with a pair of flat pillows in a red and yellow flower pattern stood inside it. A woman, hunched over and half kneeling, gazed at the entrance.

A group of young men, beside themselves with delight, pushed the motorcycle over the heavily trodden lawn. Krishan strode behind them issuing commands, his leather costume creaking to the tempo of his buoyant step. The girl rose and at once Istvan recognized the sister of Krishan’s dead wife — the same languid grace, rather like an animal, the same wide mouth with two points on the upper lip, challenging and childish. Krishan oversaw the placement of the motorcycle and the boys clustered around him for a moment more, holding out photographs of his flight with streaming leather wings — photographs which had been sold in front of the entrance — for his autograph. The picture must have been taken from below, by the furled roof, for the figure of the frenzied rider was seen against a background of clouds.

“Ah, sir, it’s you!” He held his hand out to the counselor without his former air of deference. “Please sit down.”

With one shout he frightened the boys away from the enclosure. He unzipped the costume that sheathed him like black armor and peeled it off, exposing a dirty, oil-stained tricot shirt. His lean chest heaved beneath it. He was perspiring profusely.

“I must stretch out for a moment.” He sat on the bed and the leather of his narrow pants squeaked. “I have a few more appearances.”

Only now did Istvan notice that pent-up tears thick with sweat were gathering in the red furrows Krishan’s goggles had made on his cheeks.

“Will you smoke?” He held out an open pack of cigarettes.

“No.” Krishan shook his head. “The ventilation in there is no good, and I inhaled fumes until my head was spinning.”

The woman knelt by him, poured boiling water from a thermos onto a towel, and with great tenderness rubbed his face. He yielded to her touch as to a caress, closing his eyes. She must love him a great deal, Istvan thought.

“You came to see the show?”

“Yes. I see that you are very successful.”

“The ambassador was here also. I knew what he wished for me. But he can kiss my—”

“You’re taking too great a risk. You shouldn’t let go of the handlebars.”

“They pay extra for that.” A small, bitter smile played over his tightly compressed lips. “After all, everyone hopes they will see me break my neck. What a sight it would be! It would give them something to chatter about for a year.”

The wall of the tent bent in the breeze. The machine twittered as the motor cooled. The rising hum of the leaves seemed to shift with a circular motion above their heads.

“That’s no good, Krishan. It’s nerves. Do you think that way often?”

“Lately, yes.”

“Are you afraid?”

He raised himself on one elbow and looked so contemptuous that the counselor lowered his eyes.

“I would like to see something that could frighten me! And you?”

Smiling, Istvan shook his head.

“It comes over me when I am in the pit and I see where I was, how high I had gone. I feel a numbing pain in my thighs, as if someone were squeezing me with pincers. Then I say, Enough. This is the last time. Take the cash and say goodbye to the managers, those old thieves. Turn the motorcycle into a rickshaw. You will earn a living that way as well.”

“A sound idea.”

They heard boisterous music from megaphones and the deep voice of the barker, who was promoting Krishan’s next show through a bullhorn: “Neck-breaking! Your blood will run cold!”

The girl sat on her heels, gazing at Krishan like a guard dog.

“When I begin riding into the circle, I really want to climb to the top as fast as I can and get out of that smoke pit. It chokes me.”

“The motor burns oil?”

“No. The fuel is specially formulated for effect. The management demands it.”

“You can’t trust that machine, Krishan. Who looks after it?”

He sat up and looked at the counselor alertly.

“And can I trust those people? I inspect it myself. I would not let anyone touch it. I know whether it is in proper condition.”

Mihaly squatted on his heels, Hindu-fashion, in the entrance to the tent. A flap rippled and nudged him in the back, but he did not notice. His eyes were riveted on his hero.

“How I hate them all!” Krishan lay with his head thrown back, beating his fist against the bed frame.

“Whom?”

“Those people waiting in there.” He lifted his chin defiantly. “Those people in the gallery. Hundreds of times I’ve thought: You want a terrifying spectacle — all I need to do is pour out a canister of gasoline and those dried-out boards would go up like paper. The narrow aisles — they would trample each other to death if the fire blocked their way. I know those voices, I know how they would shriek. Look: impregnated wood, heated by the sun. A splendid funeral pyre!”

“Krishan, you must stop doing this for a while.”

“No. Not yet. They are just waiting for an accident, so I can dream of evening the score.”

The noisy music and the gongs clamored; the reverberation drifted around the treetops. Sometimes the glare of the sun burst through a chink in the greenery and kindled like a fire on the walls of the tent. The reflected light glided quickly over the footworn grass.

“The ambassador would be very happy if I died. He would even give ten rupees for wood for my pyre.”

Istvan looked around. Mihaly was listening with his mouth open, frightened. It seemed to Istvan that the boy was absorbing knowledge about the dark side of life — that Krishan’s words were sinking into his heart.

“Buy us some candies or nuts, only choose well.” The counselor threw the child a coin; the little hands caught it in the air. When the boy had run out, he leaned toward Krishan. He sensed that the man was eager to get something off his chest.

“Now, Krishan, tell me what really happened. Only speak quickly, before the little one returns. Surely you needn’t be constrained on her account.” He nodded toward the young woman.

“No. She will not understand half of it.” The chauffeur made a wry face. “And you will keep silence as well, because the honor of your embassy demands it. We drove to Uttar Pradesh at the invitation of the governor of that state. I do not know why the boss was dawdling. I waited for a long time in front of his residence, and then we rushed as if to make up for the delay. First we were held up on the bridge over the Yamuna. Then on the Ganges, narrow bridges, one lane of traffic. I saw army supply columns, carts, and tongas moving along opposite us and a wide line of foot soldiers walking in front. ‘Push ahead of them,’ the ambassador shouted. ‘We have the right. I am traveling with the insignia, on official business.’

“And they were already coming onto the bridge. I knew they would not let us through, for what did they know about who we were? We waited, and they crawled along. Crawled along. Sometimes there were breaks in the lines and it would have been possible to shove in, but a sergeant with a flag was leaning back against the hood. He paid no attention when I blew the horn, and when the ambassador jumped out he told him to sit quietly or he would catch it! I know these Gurkhas. They are not joking. What they will do to a soldier with a chest full of medals…Would they block our way out of anger?

“Finally the last tonga rolled by and they let us go. The boss was furious. He pushed me away with his elbow, roared like a buffalo, and sat down behind the wheel. As soon as he started the car I knew that something would happen. He was running it at better than eighty miles an hour. Even in the villages he never slowed down. ‘I will show you how to drive,’ he wheezed.

“And then the cow scrambled out of the bushes. She walked onto the middle of the highway and looked around in our direction. She felt that something was wrong. She hesitated; should she turn back? ‘Pass a woman from in front, pass a cow from behind’—I remember the ambassador saying that to himself, not breaking his speed, aiming for the tight space between her hindquarters and the ditch. I was afraid a wheel would go onto the sand and pull us down. He must have thought of that, too, for he pushed harder on the gas, and then that man jumped out—”

“Man?” the counselor asked hoarsely, and a chill went down his spine.

“He wanted to drive the cow away. He waved a stick and stared at us. It all happened in a fraction of a second. We knocked the cow’s hind legs from under her. Glass shattered on the road. I did not even feel the car strike the man. He hit his head lightly and was thrown into the ditch like a cat. We drove a hundred meters more, perhaps farther, before the boss put on the brakes. We leaped out. The cow raised herself on her front legs and dragged her broken back. A little feces dribbled from her. She opened her muzzle but no sound came out.”

“And the man?” he asked, hardly able to breathe.

“I ran to him, but I knew at once that he was done for. He lay twisted, with his head down, in the ditch. The boss knew, too, for he stopped a long way from the ditch and stretched out his hands as if he wanted to push away what had happened. ‘Don’t move!’ he cried. ‘To the car!’ Peasants were running from the field with rods and hoes. They had only seen the cow, but that was enough to put them in a frenzy. They would have beaten us if they had caught us. They threw stones but we got away.

“The ambassador ordered me to drive. He did not even look around; he only swallowed very noisily. Then he said, ‘Krishan, you were driving. I will protect you. We will get a good lawyer. I will make it worth your while.’ I was afraid of him then and I agreed. He wheezed again and seemed to be planning something. Then he laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘There will be no problem,’ he said. ‘Only be quiet and listen to me. You will not regret it.’”

“I got some anise candies, uncle. Try one!” Mihaly burst in. Gleams of sunlight played on his bare legs, and his eyes were full of happiness. He looked with surprise at the somber men and the woman who was curled up, resting her elbow against the edge of the bed. The tent breathed lightly under a wave of humming noises punctuated by clanging cymbals.

“Well done. Have a munch. Don’t bother us just now.”

With the candies in a little horn of twisted leaf, the boy went over to the bed on which the stunt rider was resting, but Krishan forestalled him.

“No, Mihaly. I told you about the horoscope. I have to beware of sweets. Give them to her. She will eat for me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before, Krishan?” The counselor steered the conversation back to the confession Mihaly’s return had interrupted.

“I wanted to. I tried. But you said that you knew the whole truth, sir, so what was I to do?”

“It’s well that I know now.” Terey sighed deeply. “But what can be done? They will believe him, not me.”

“And that is not all,” said the driver, sitting cross-legged on the bed. “We went straight to the governor and the boss filed a complaint that the peasants had been lying in wait for passing automobiles and throwing stones. He named me as a witness. We went outside so the governor could look at the broken headlight and bent fender. He apologized profusely and sent out a truck with police. I sat by the driver. I had to show them where it had happened.

“The peasants were still standing on the road. Some were praying. The cow was lying under a canopy with garlands of flowers. Little lamps were burning all around her. When they saw us, they began running toward us and shouting. They surely wanted to make accusations. But the driver charged at them with the truck and they had to move aside. When we had barely passed them he stopped, and the police jumped out of the truck with bamboo sticks and began beating. I only heard cries and the thwacks of the sticks on their backs. People were running in all directions. I stole a look at the ditch — the man was not there. Probably his family had taken his body.”

He breathed uneasily as he relived the incident, and rubbed his forehead and the back of his neck with a towel. “Just as they had chased the peasants away, the officer summoned the head man of the village and filled out a report. The policeman shouted at the man so that he could only bow and apologize. He spoke endlessly about the cow — well, because that to them is the most sacred object—” he thrust his lips out scornfully and rubbed his brush-like mustache with one finger—“and I eat that sacred object.”

“Perhaps that man is still alive?” Terey asked without much confidence.

“No. I heard what the women were saying. I wrote down his name and the surname of his father. They were poor people. They did not even know that they could institute a claim for damages. All their lives they have had their noses in the dirt. When we went back, I told him everything.” He looked at Mihaly’s rapt face and wrinkled forehead. It was clear that the little boy was struggling to understand the meaning of what was being said, so he did not mention the ambassador, but looked significantly at the counselor. “He only said, ‘I will not give a penny. It is very bad to begin that way, for then I will never extricate myself.’ He reminded me, as you did, that I had signed a statement — that I should not change it, because it was there in black and white — that I was driving the car. And then, as if he had lost his trust in me, he set Ferenc on to throw me out at the first opportunity.”

“But why did he do that?”

“Because then if I retracted the statement, it would seem that I was getting revenge for being fired from my job. That is perfectly clear.”

The counselor sat hunched over. I know the truth, he thought bitterly. That is what I wanted. And I could have lived on without knowing anything. Ignorance is bliss. After all, I cannot change anything! I have no proof. They will believe the ambassador, not me.

And who would benefit, now that the matter was closed, if an investigation were begun all over? To be silent so no one would speak ill of us, of the embassy…to be silent for the good of Hungary? He clasped his hands and clenched them until it hurt. When all was said and done, this was evil! Does the law in this world always serve to entrench the injustices of those who know how to use it to their own advantage? And suddenly he thought of Chandra and was tempted to lay the whole affair before him. There was the man, he felt, who would be able to catch the culprit by the throat, perhaps force him to request to be recalled, to flee. The man who would flay him, fleece him of his last rupee, poison his life.

They gave a start: shrill, imperious bells clanged. The requisite number of viewers had arrived and it was time for Krishan’s next appearance. He raised himself reluctantly. His wife handed him his jacket, gently pulled it together in front, and did up the zipper. He stood suddenly stiff as if in a suit of armor, adjusted his helmet, and put on his goggles. The wings, the fluttering strips of leather, rustled dryly.

Before he left the tent Istvan saw that the young woman knelt, seized her husband’s hand, pressed it to her cheek and kissed it with her eyes closed.

As he was sitting behind his desk reviewing some newspapers and periodicals, the door opened discreetly and Ferenc walked in.

“I am not disturbing you?”

“Since when do you have to concern yourself about the value of my time? Surely there is no hurry; the reports have been sent out. The boss is waiting for the Indonesian, for his return visit, so relax. We can chat. Sit down. Tell me what brings you here.”

Ferenc turned his slender face toward the window, frowned, and thought for a minute as if he had forgotten why he had come. Then instead of taking a chair, he pushed the stack of publications aside and sat on a corner of the desk. Istvan saw himself reflected in the man’s sunglasses as in a fun house mirror, with large hands and a little head like an insect’s thrown back in expectation.

“Don’t you smell a foul odor?” His nostrils twitched and he looked Terey closely in the eye.

“Here, among us? Or are you thinking of our country?”

“No. I smell the stench of war in the world.”

“Big news.” Istvan waved belittlingly. “It has been smoldering for years. Time to get used to it.”

“I am thinking of something worse.”

“Of a third?”

“And probably the last.”

“You must have slept poorly last night or eaten something spoiled,” Terey jibed. “Why are you favoring me with this discovery? Go to the boss, that consummate politician. He will shout at you, he will give you a shot of plum vodka to relieve the pressure, and the evil premonitions will vanish like magic.”

“I came to you as one man to another.”

“I have risen in your estimation.”

“I, too, have moments of weakness.” He looked with irritation at Terey lolling in an armchair.

“Well, speak, though of course I never know if you have come of your own volition or if the boss sends you to keep a covert watch on me.” He put a hand to his temple.

But Ferenc turned away again and looked through the window at the wall of the storage room over the garage. It was covered with plaited vines and shaded by leaves which, like water, the breeze alternately smoothed and ruffled. “You were not born yesterday,” he said. “You know how to read.”

“And even how to write. Word of honor. The critics acknowledged it. It is no idle boast.”

“Stop clowning. Lay out a couple of news items from the last few days — not from the front pages of the newspapers,” he said reflectively, still looking at the flickering lights and shadows on the fleece of greenery.

“What do you see there?” Istvan asked edgily.

“The wall. Look,” he pointed to the rippling mass of leaves, “over the surface, the soft tremors, beautiful to the eye, and underneath it, the wall. One man said to me — a man who had stood with his face to such a wall—‘You have thick, grainy plaster under your nose, and you see perfectly the whole configuration of things; you see your whole life. Then you know what you could have done with it. And it is too late.’ Say — what can you do so that someone, someday, does not suddenly shatter your life? So that it will not become evident that those little tricks, that promotion, that perquisite or that excessive obligingness, obscured the fundamental concerns that make it worthwhile to live? And do you think that you are the only true Hungarian? That you have a monopoly on honest impulses? Istvan, I don’t want them to shove a gun barrel into my back and march me away because the time has come to pay for the actions of those who chose the right moments to duck, who hauled down the flag.”

Istvan looked at the secretary, uncertain if he were encouraging him to make a confession or share a confidence in order to accuse and stigmatize him publicly at some later time. “Well? Well?” Ferenc urged.

“You who are several years older had a war. You are proven — to yourselves, at least. You know by now what you are capable of. Today we walk along together, but you can use that experience as a point of reference anytime, and we…We give way one step at a time. We acquiesce to compromises, we bungle things, we founder. Ah, if we even knew the depth of our mediocrity! Don’t pretend not to understand in order to spite me. You know what I’m talking about.”

Ferenc took off his glasses and toyed with them like a woman at a costume ball playing with her mask, but his eyes were full of strain and apprehension.

“I repudiated comrades, not for a career. I cannot live without the party.” The admission carried the ring of sincerity. “I was young. I believed blindly. Now I am crushed that Beria’s gang, that criminal clique, sent our best sons there.” He motioned with his chin toward the wall hidden under leaves full of uneasily shifting light.

“What has come over you?” The counselor tilted his head back, resting it on his clasped hands, and watched as Ferenc raked his fingers through his thick, wavy hair.

“What do you think about as you read the newspapers?” He leafed through the pile of publications on the desk. Throwing some of them open, he ran his eyes over the headlines as if he wanted to assure himself of something. Then, evidently dismayed, he crumpled them carelessly.

“A day after the report that Nasser had seized the Suez Canal, a hundred million pounds were lost on the London stock exchange. And the crisis continues. Stocks are plummeting. France and England put on pressure to no avail. What does a strike by the lock operators and a revolt of the pilots prove? We sent our ships, ships that were under contract, and the canal worked. The West has no cause to complain that transport will shut down, that there will be a stoppage. So they are trying an inside tactic.

“Yesterday in Cairo several Englishmen were arrested. Intelligence agents. There was an inquiry. I heard on the radio today how they stopped an Israeli troop transport vessel and before they escorted it to harbor, it sank for no visible cause. What was the cargo? Cement. Do you understand? A wreck loaded with cement to block the canal. Do you want blood? Scuffles on the border between Israel and Egypt. Of course those killed were Arabs; they pounded the fellaheen. Did you notice that there is an English fleet on Cyprus? The Greeks protested; that was suppressed instantly. To cow them, to silence them, the English shot eight. There had not been such verdicts there in the past.”

“So you think…”

“And why did Queen Elizabeth call up two yearly army-lists? They are shifting the commandos to Cyprus. Look — today’s short communiqué: ‘Bomb squads on Malta at full complement.’”

“You will say next that it is autumn, the crops have been harvested, so a war could begin.” Istvan forced a laugh.

“You absolutely remind me of our peasants, those born politicians, especially when they are sipping their fruit brandy. You, consummate politician, will overlook the Soviet Union and the United States, powers not inclined to jump at each other’s throats, for they know what the other side has up its sleeve. Heavy. Very heavy. The wrestlers pat their muscles, they flex their biceps, they garner applause from the audience and listen to those who shout to urge them on, but they themselves are cautious.

“Look”—Ferenc slapped an open newspaper—“and think like a politician, not like a poet! They are waiting for a moment of weakness on our parts; they want to exploit it. If they intend to seize the Suez, to stifle Nasser, it can only be now, when things are at the boiling point in our camp, when we are hard at work imposing order and sweeping out the rubbish…They are not well acquainted with the Russians. They think that Khrushchev talked away all that concentrated energy, that he dismantled the engine piecemeal in order to inspect it and change the screws and gaskets. They do not know that there are people who can be called up in a flash, that in the face of a threat the party and the nation would be one. Let Russia shove its fist under their noses and the West will soon come to its senses and be polite.”

He is right, Terey thought. We have more knowledge, wit, and resourcefulness than character. That is why he speaks so freely: because he does not have to take me seriously. He feels that he has the upper hand. He knows that I write, but only poetry, not notes on private conversations, not confidential reports.

“What do you say about the nuclear weapons tests announced by TASS?” Ferenc threw out.

“Well, they have made it clear that they are ready to stop if the United States signs a treaty. Many Americans cannot get it through their heads yet that someone else holds the atomic dragon on a leash, and sometimes pulls its tail to force it to growl. They were accustomed to think that all the superlatives — the largest, the best, the deadliest — always belonged to them. Now a rival appears and not only goes neck and neck with them, but in rocket technology surpasses them.”

“The experimental explosions are a warning. So they are taken by the Pentagon, at any rate.” Ferenz waved a hand. “You are right: they did not believe the seismographs. They sent a plane to take samples from the stratosphere, to see if there was dust. Well — there was. Perhaps they are beginning to think and to include this in their calculations.”

“Enough of this discussion of the global picture.” The counselor clapped a hand on his thigh. “No guessing games. What brought you here? Are you giving a lecture to the locals? Doing a review of international politics?”

Ferenc looked closely at him. A little smile of approbation flitted over his lips.

“No. No. Now you are not such a poet.” He sighed approvingly. “You do have your feet on the ground. But you would rather we took you for a poet, for you are more comfortable that way. You have greater leeway. You see, Istvan, there is an official communiqué about the removal of the minister of internal affairs. They have thrown Farkas in prison. He bullied our people. The Central Committee surrounded him on tiptoe; I know something about it because…” he hesitated, looked Terey in the eye again and waved weakly, as if he were brushing away an untimely impulse to make disclosures.

“Because you went from them to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

“How did you know that?”

“Are you afraid? Or do you envy him, because in the end — before the procurator, at least — he may talk about what pains him, may spew it up and feel relief?”

Ferenc trembled like a man caught in the act of committing a crime. He leaned over the desk and cried, “No one has a right to accuse me! I believed. I was under orders. Moreover, they explained to me that it was necessary, that it was essential for the good of the party.”

“Believe, listen, don’t think, and we will meet there.” Terey pointed to the wall outside the window.

“And what do you have to do with this?”

“The information came and I did not believe it. I did not want to believe. Those being led to their deaths screamed in the hope that I and others like me would hear. I heard; the secrets leaked out. But I said, it is impossible, at least among us, in Hungary. I thought I knew Hungary.”

Ferenc stopped playing with his glasses and hitting them against his pursed lips. He put them back on as if to camouflage himself. In their green lenses Terey saw only a curved likeness of himself, like the abdomen of a carrion-eating fly, and something like a star belching fire: the reflection of the glare-filled window.

“You know, Terey, I’m glad they sent me here. Budapest is seething; I feel it in my bones. If I could do anything there, I would want to prove myself different — better. I would jump like that grasshopper and any hen would peck me up. I tell you, it is better for us to wait out the hottest time here.”

The counselor was almost lying in his chair with his hands under his head, watching with profound concentration as a blade on the large fan turned slowly under the white desert of the ceiling.

“I tell you, Ferenc, neither God nor the world likes the lukewarm. I’m afraid we will not attain the grace of absolution. And you will have no opportunity to know what gifts you have. Who you really are.”

They sat for a moment in silence. The secretary turned abruptly and moved toward the door. As he gripped the handle, he thrust out his lips and said sarcastically:

“Likewise, you had better beware lest God send a test beyond a man’s strength. So why raise a clamor, why be keen to volunteer?”

“You have caught the Indian disease. That’s a comfortable philosophy, especially for a Marxist.”

The secretary did not reciprocate but quietly closed the door behind him.

He writhes like a fish on a reel, Istvan sighed. Conscience. A fearful premonition of the truth about oneself, which He Who knows us reveals. Ferenc came here hoping that we would exchange secrets as hostages used to be exchanged, to be certain the conditions of peace would be observed. He thought I had heard more about him than he wanted to disclose to me. He does not know, and I will not tell him, that I am weary in my harness, I am struggling. No — it is not even the matter of that peasant they ran down. How to find his family and help them without casting suspicion on the embassy? Krishan will not agree to take that on himself a second time. Margit. The problem of Margit. If Ferenc knew about that, how much calmer he would be.

I am robbing her, he accused himself. I am a miserable little — I am taking advantage of her weakness for me, her defenseless yielding. When it seemed that she had freed herself from me, I went, I abandoned the embassy, I lied — anything to be sure she was still mine. She comes to me, simple and trusting. She makes no stipulations. She has no plans. But I had already had a warning. I whisper: I love you. I love you. But that justifies nothing. She surely knows that. It is better that she knows. Until now she has not asked what would happen with us. She entrusts the matter to me to decide, with the calm reliance of one who deposits money in an armored bank vault. What is she counting on? Only on my love for her? Or on this — that we will be together. Together. Two joined in one; a shared life. And only death can part us.

More than once in the night, after all, I felt for her in my sleep. I wanted her to be there — always, always. And that wretched fear when she told me she was expecting a child! Did I love her less then? No. So what alarmed me? Would I have been afraid to tell the world that I had chosen this woman, that she was the one I loved? Was that a feeling that could not bear the light of day and witnesses? That flees in the face of “complications?” Even those who have not lived with their wives for a long time, who have mistresses, will be eager to play the role of accusers; they will judge and condemn me. Well, what of it? Can’t I withstand pressure? A year will pass and the world will forget. Love that does not outlast such a time is not worthy of the name.

If she really had a child, I would get a divorce, he thought, wishing to soothe his conscience. Now that it has happened — a child — if only I truly want it, I can have it. A little red-haired girl with dark eyes, a little Margit.

He did not think of a son, perhaps because he had sons already, only of a daughter. She would love me; in his dreams he felt the tiny hands on his neck, the touch of the cool nose and the warm breath on his cheek. He even seemed to hear words of playful irritation: “Daddy, you’re poking me!” He caught himself thinking in English. But she would have to know her father’s language. Would he allow her to grow up far from Hungary? In Australia?

Divorce: it was easy to say. From here, from New Delhi, from India I would write, forewarn Ilona, prepare her somehow. “You see, I have fallen in love”—that hardly sounded serious. Better to go to her, to put his hands on her shoulders, step back so their eyes would meet, and lay out the whole truth. “I have found the woman with whom…” “And what about what we had together?” Ilona would ask. “And what about me, and the boys?”

“I made a mistake,” he would say then. And suddenly he was trembling as if he had heard her say simply, a little sternly, “No, Istvan. I made a mistake, because I married someone else.”

There would be no tears, no scenes. Ilona would be silent. She would grow somber. She would look for the fault in herself, not in him. She was like that. She would nod her head as if she pitied herself a little.

In her letters there were hardly any questions about his work, or indeed about him at all. The writing of verse — it was a kind of malady that might occur in the best of families, but it was well not to make too much of it. He writes, his work is printed, why, fancy that! They even pay him for it; good.

Her letters were filled with reports of trivialities: what the boys were doing, how they were studying, how they passed their time, the state of their appetites and what they were eating. He found them touching and a little tedious. Her heart belongs to our sons. I have a place in it only inasmuch as I am their father. He felt that she was not doing him justice.

It was easy to say, I will get a divorce. If the information found its way to the ambassador, he would order him to be recalled immediately, and a notation would go out about Margit: she would never get a Hungarian visa, and they would not let him out of the country. They would be cut off. Passport…To go abroad for whole years was only a dream for many. How the few who spoke of Paris or Rome were envied by their less happy rivals, and what slurs were whispered at the expense of those privileged ones! He had a feeling too deep for argument that he must keep Margit out of sight or he would lose her. His throat tightened at the very thought, and he clenched his fist as if to defend himself.

I must have her. All his fiber stiffened. I want to keep her.

To get a divorce and legitimize the new relationship, I ought to return to Budapest and obtain Ilona’s consent. And then they have me like a bird in a cage; they can do as they please. I can count on no support. How could I? The wider world smelled sweet to you, in particular the Australian woman, they would say; are our women inferior? You singled her out for yourself, they will say, because she is an only child and her papa has money. You want to cross over, Comrade Terey? We have had our eye on you for a long time. Be reconciled to your country; we will keep you in the bosom of the fatherland. You will have time enough not only to write your informational pieces, but poetry as well.

In his mind’s eye he saw the official who would conduct an investigation of his intended flight and, perhaps, of allegations that he had betrayed state secrets.They knew that it was impossible to go over to the other side empty-handed, that one had to have a financial base. They also liked to pump people for information. The face he saw was amazingly like the ambassador’s: puffy, yellowish, with a grimace of good-humored shrewdness. It was a good thing that Grace had married the rajah when she did; in Ferenc’s eyes that friendship was already a count against him. Information leaks from various sources, but since they would not see him among foreigners, it would be harder to form suspicions and accusations.

The telephone rang. It was Ram Kanval, timidly probing for information about whether the counselor had filed a statement supporting his request for a stipend to travel to Hungary. An exhibit in Budapest, perhaps even a courtesy purchase for a museum of contemporary art, and he would be able to see Paris. His voice rang with barely concealed fervor as if he were saying, I will immerse myself in glory.

Terey reassured him, explaining that the matter was in progress, that he could count on the ambassador’s endorsement, so nothing more than a little patience was needed before a decision would come from Hungary. Then they would establish the most convenient schedule, for it would be necessary to transport several dozen canvases; to find an available exhibition hall; to print invitations and a catalog. It all required time and synchronization.

The counselor heard a sigh of relief. In his mind he saw the painter looking down with the receiver at his ear, drawing lines on the dusty coffee-house carpet with the tip of his sandal.

“Have new problems arisen?” he asked cautiously. “Perhaps you will call on me. No, not today. In two days I will have more time.”

He was afraid there would be a desperate request like the clang of an alarm bell: Save me, I am in dire need of money. But either the artist was restraining himself from following up his request for sponsorship by pressing for a loan they both knew would be a gift, or someone was standing near him, for his reply was short and wry.

“Problems?” His chuckle was like a hiccup. “No greater than usual. My wife demands that I set about finding some work, that I begin earning money. Would you mind asking your colleagues at other embassies if they could use someone to make drawings and graphics when they publish their bulletins? I do not need much money, only somewhat more than a housecleaner, and certainly less than a cook,” he said ironically.

“I will speak to them. I will find out,” Istvan promised, full of good will.

He was not very hopeful, however. The diplomats were not especially trustful, and each was concerned about his own group of “foundlings” who had to be fed crumbs of gainful employment simply to give them a livelihood. He hung up, then called Judit to ask if a document concerning Kanval had passed through her hands. To fill stomachs, to have enough money for the daily rice: that was the fundamental problem. The bellies importune, the children scream, the wife weeps because she married an idler. This is real drama, not your romantic perplexities…

If such a document had gone out in the last mail, Judit did not remember it, so he called the ambassador.

“What news of you, counselor? You are obviously avoiding me. No cultural developments worth telling me about? No book? No film, play, concert, no other impressive event? Or perhaps some celebrity hanged himself? Not that, either? So what are you calling about? That painter? He is no painter in my book. I did not sign the request. Do you think, Comrade Terey, do you really think that in Budapest they have nothing more serious on their minds than arranging an exhibition for that shirker from Old Delhi?”

“It is a matter of humanity. The man is very well disposed toward us. He is a distinguished painter.”

“‘Well disposed,’ my backside!” the ambassador growled. “‘The man’—spare me! There are four hundred million of them! If we began slobbering over every one of them, we wouldn’t have time to blow our noses.”

“I did what is precisely spelled out in my job description. He is a good painter. I attached press clippings.”

“You were an editor. Don’t you know how such packs of banalities are fabricated? Coffee and cognac are all it takes. The newspaper lives a day; why not heap on the praise? All right, all right, Terey. I will sign if you say it is worth it. Let him make his trip and you will take the responsibility. Only do not run to tell him right away. Don’t make a to-do. This Kanval can wait. Do you know what I am going to tell you? Take a towel, fold it twice, wet it, and put it to your head.”

“Thank you, my head is fine. In fact, I understand quite a few things very well.”

Bajcsy was silent for a moment; he was unaccustomed to resistance. Finally he said in a completely different tone, “Give me a moment of your time, counselor.”

Istvan heard the receiver fall heavily under the ambassador’s beefy hand, with its patches of thinning black hair. I must use my better judgment, he thought. I must not exasperate him, for everything may have consequences that affect Margit. He has me in his hands.

“Sit down.” Kalman Bajcsy seemed immersed in work. Newspapers open to the pages with economic reports and stock market quotations lay before him; he had underlined some items in red pencil. He remained in his chair, in his shirt sleeves, with his collar open and his tie loose and crooked. He was smoking a pipe; involuntarily he pushed the mouthpiece between two of the buttons on his shirt and scratched his chest with an expression of relief. As was his habit, he left the person he had summoned to his own anxieties, as the confessor leaves a penitent to a moment of concentration so he may discern his hidden faults.

“Terey,” he began carelessly, “you gave me a timely warning that a law prohibiting the transfer of rupees was coming into effect. I failed to take it seriously, I counted on diplomatic privilege; unfortunately, I was asleep at the switch. We are about to go to Ceylon with the minister of trade. I would like to feel free, you understand.”

The counselor nodded sympathetically.

“You spend time among those who may have similar problems: the rajah, that father-in-law of his, the wealthy members of the club. Do you not know someone who could shift a few rupees over to Colombo to be exchanged for pounds?” He looked at Terey from the corner of his eye and sucked on his pipe with smacking noises.

“For a decent fee, of course,” he added cautiously. “Can you do me a service and ask, without mentioning for whom or what the sum in question is? But perhaps you already have such a person within reach.”

“Yes,” Istvan answered in spite of himself. With devilish delight, as if he were pointing the way to a trap, he gave him Chandra’s name, adding, “People I am acquainted with have used his services, and no one has complained.”

“What does he have to do with Ceylon?”

“I don’t know. But he is a man of discretion. Not long ago I heard at a cocktail party that he was asking members of the American embassy staff if one of them were flying to Colombo, because he had a little packet to send. It seemed that he would let others in on profitable transactions.”

He noticed that Bajcsy raised his head and blew a wavering veil of smoke upward.

“So it’s your belief that this Chandra could—”

“I believe nothing,” Terey said firmly. “I am repeating what came to my ear. You know very well, comrade ambassador, that these are business transactions that are carried on face to face. If they were very much talked of, that would mean that the intermediary was not to be taken seriously or that the methods mentioned had been abandoned long before, and were alluded to only for the pleasure of it, like a historic battle a man comes out of without a scratch.”

If Chandra gets him in his clutches, he will square accounts with him. He will repay him for everything. I really don’t know why I gave him Chandra’s name. But perhaps he will not trust him or use his services. He is a free agent.

“Why don’t you ask Ferenc, ambassador? Rather he, I think, than—”

“How do you know I have not asked him?” He leaned over the desk, but added after a moment, “No, Terey, I have not asked him and I will not, because he is too smooth, he gives way too easily. And then I say to myself, Be careful, Kalman, that they do not ease you out without your noticing, while thanks to those obliging fellows who say Yes, yes, you make some blunder that will have you packing your bags and shuffling off to retirement, to the scrap heap. I even like you, Terey, for your scrappiness, for your own interest doesn’t come into it. If you strain at the leash, it’s for our sake”—he tapped his chest with his pipe—“for the sake of our country.”

The state and he are the same, Istvan thought fleetingly, but already I feel that he hasn’t much longer to go. He is at the peak of his career; he will not be a minister, they will transfer him, they will send him somewhere, but a couple of years and then it is the end. For him, retirement will be worse than death. He is beginning to be anxious about what will be left to him when they edge him out, what he will live on. The pension, even the pension given those who have served meritoriously, in relation to his needs, to the verve with which he is accustomed to live, would not seem enough to save him from privation. That situation creates a genuine moral crisis for some of those who were active in our national affairs. When they arrive at a certain age, they reach the ceilings of their careers, and then they become vulnerable to the temptation of fast money: to pluck something, to wrest away something for themselves, to drag it home to the den, to have some independence. If he is planning something, Chandra already has him.

“Perhaps I am bothersome now and then, Terey,” the ambassador said meditatively, thrusting out his thick lower lip, “but, remember, I have the prerogatives of the captain of the ship here, for the embassy is like a little ship on strange, perilous waters, is it not?”

“Except that when a man disembarks, I assure you, ambassador, he will not drown,” the counselor smiled. “It is easy to feel the ground under one’s feet.”

“What did you say?” the older man bristled, indignantly rejecting the analogy. “Do you suppose it is possible to disembark at any moment?”

This had a strange ring. Istvan realized that a perverse impulse toward repartee had led him to say, unintentionally, something that might have been taken as an audacious affront.

He walked out of the office feeling displeased with himself. Judit, who was bent over her typewriter, lifted her hands from the keyboard. The sudden silence of the machine and her look full of encouragement did not stop Istvan, so when he opened the door to the corridor she asked in a low voice:

“Did anything happen?”

“No. Don’t worry.”

“What did he want?”

“Oh, some boring business.” Seeing that he was putting her off, she began striking the keys quickly and irritably, as if to say, No, then. All right; we will see who will be sorry.

Vengeful satisfaction lay on his heart like a layer of slimy silt. It seemed to him that he had only fulfilled the decrees of eternal law, that he had been the intermediary in that cry for justice: blood for blood. Through his agency the reckoning would come. After all, he had washed his hands of the matter; he had not dared to bring judgment on Bajcsy himself. He had usurped no prerogatives.

The death of that Hindu? Along the way Bajcsy had run over more than one person; he had crushed others, not with a car, exploiting his friendships, his position, his past. Without hesitation he had pushed and shoved, had broken people. Now his time was drawing near. Fate had lavished gifts on him, had indulged his desire for power as if it were allowing him to be elevated, even to thrive in an unexpected career, in anticipation of this heart-wrenching fall and the attendant abasement. It was as if destiny were mocking him: you want this, you have it, take it — and see how far you have come from that zealous activism for the good of those who believed in you, who entrusted the leadership to you.

Yes, he was betraying them even by not taking account of every aspect of this matter. Today, years later, he assesses those maneuvers with the political acumen derived from participation in a hundred collusions, in the gymnastic exercise of raising hands that is called voting when he knew already who wielded the power, knew whom to follow in speaking or how to remain silent at someone’s expense — the silence heavier than the stone slab marking a grave after the innocent were condemned. No; Istvan brushed away these thoughts that clung like spider webs. Don’t be God’s policeman. Look to yourself; see that you don’t make worse mistakes. “Let each perish through his own folly”; the old words echoed with bitter wisdom. And that applies to me as well; he felt the thought soothe his conscience. I too have my black card file; I do not even want to look at it.

He closed his desk. He reached for the last swallow of cold coffee, but two half-drowned flies were twitching in the thick sludge at the bottom of the cup.

I was suffocating in that embassy, he thought, exhaling deeply in the radiant azure of the day. The green fringes of the palms swayed, stroking the luminous sky. As he drove the Austin he was still deliberating about whether his conversation with the ambassador had been beneficial or whether there was cause for worry. But he fell under the spell of the sunny afternoon, dazzled by the clusters of flowers that drooped from behind low garden walls: sprays of little roses, the scarlet and purple of feathery bougainvillea. His eyes began to clear after laboring through swarms of black print, through columns of information crowding against each other in newspapers and periodicals — accounts of violence and unrest in a world tormented by anger, covetousness, and hate. He saw the red earth, the hot greenery of burgeoning trees, the bluish-brown ribbon of baked asphalt. The warm air stroked his temples and he recovered his peace and equilibrium.

It was a beautiful time; he savored the moment of oneness with that exotic earth. How good it was to be alive. It was almost like prayer, this deep thankfulness for that gift beyond price. How good it was to love the world, to retain the capacity for delight in the beauty of this sunny hour.

When he arrived at his house and drove the car to the garage, he was surprised at the behavior of the cook, who was sitting on his haunches like a fired clay statue, deep in blue shade.

“Is dinner ready? Why do you look so troubled?”

“Everything is in order, sir,” the man muttered without looking him in the eye.

“Everything is in order,” affirmed the watchman in his linen hat like a boy scout’s, striking the paving stones with his bamboo rod. “I am keeping an eye on it.”

Passing through the dining room, Istvan saw the table set for two. He felt a rush of hope; he hurried to his room and nearly collided with Margit. At once he understood why the servants had been acting so strangely.

She threw her warm, bare arms around his neck and reached up to kiss him on the lips. “How I have missed you!” she sighed heavily. “I have dropped in for such a short time…and I have waited for you for so long!”

“You should have called.”

“I didn’t want to. You can’t even guess how good it was to sit in your room and wait. I ordered the servants not to say a word to you, because this was going to be a surprise. Did they manage to keep quiet?”

“Yes, but there were two places at the table.”

“That silly cook — he had to give me away!” She laughed joyfully, like a mischievous girl.

They stood locked in a close, tender embrace. Her red hair, warmed by the sun, gave off a light fragrance. Through the thin linen she wore he felt the pressure of her breasts, her belly, and her thighs, could almost feel the light pulsing of her blood. He fell on her lips, pushed them apart and kissed her.

“I’ll tell the servants to go away.”

“Don’t leave. Don’t leave,” she begged in a whisper, pressing him hard with her fingers. He did not even notice when she managed to unzip her skirt; it slid off easily. She jumped out of it with a nimble movement like a child playing hopscotch.

“I’ve already told them to leave,” she murmured as she unbuttoned his shirt and laid her cheek on his sunburned chest.

“I must have a wash. I’m wet all over.”

“If you knew how I like you that way, hot, sticky…well, pull this off.” She tugged at his shirt sleeve.

Their desire was wild, unrestrained, as if they had only one short minute to themselves and would never be together again. When her fevered breath burned on his neck and she stiffened, moaning with delight, he realized that mutual possession is like a struggle — that he was pressing her down with his arms as if she were an opponent, hurting her, leaving her breathless. Slowly, very slowly he became conscious of her again, and she too recovered her awareness, felt the coolness of the stone floor under one dangling hand. At last he rolled over hard, as if he had been hit, and lay supine with the back of his neck on her hand, feeling her pulse as he pressed against the blue veins under the golden skin. They rested; each one’s fingers found the other’s, entwined with them and remained locked there.

Margit pulled her numb arm from under him and leaned toward him, resting on her hands. Two waves of hair brushed his cheeks. He saw her straight nose, her smooth forehead, the opaline blue of her eyes, her slightly swollen lips. He wanted to have her lolling above him like that for all eternity. A stream of light falling through a chink between the curtains kindled like fire on her hair and lent a glow to the little drops of sweat on her upper lip. He knew her mouth would be fresh, spiced with the aroma of cigarettes, and that her skin would be salty to the taste, and he did not hurry to kiss her, to confirm these things. He remembered and did not remember; it was enough to bend her toward him, and he did not kiss her. He was happy; he felt peace, a deep satisfaction like swarming flecks of light at the bottom of a gushing spring. Exultation filled with gratitude: Margit, Margit, sang his speeding blood, from you, in you is my great, joyous silence. I will never, never have too much of you. And that thought was confirmed by ineffable delight.

He disengaged himself from the lustrous shower of her hair. He reached for a glass and a bottle of vermouth and dropped in some ice. Lightly shaking the glass, which was growing cooler, he looked at Margit, still lying nude on the carpet. Her body was golden brown, but the rosy tan changed to a white with violet shadings on her slim chest and the flat curve of her belly. He thought of the flesh tents of Renoir’s nudes — of the magnetism that made the hands long to encircle those lazy, elongated shapes. He saw her face, with the large blue eyes that made his heart beat faster. The eyes, wide open, wandered around the ceiling, following the languidly rotating blades of the fan. The breeze disturbed her hair, which was strewn in a rust-red circle around her head. How intimately the body of the young woman blended with the rug — the forest greens, daubs of blue, and interwoven floral motifs in coppery red! He had dreamed of such a moment. It seemed to him that it was for this very composition of line and color, free from all sensuality, for pure beauty, that he had acquired this carpet of rust and green — as if half-consciously expecting that he would savor her loveliness against that background. She is beautiful, his inner delight told him; she is changed, she is different. It is as if I am seeing her for the first time. She is worthy of self-effacing adoration and desire.

Margit raised her glass and drank with small sips — uncomfortably, for she was unwilling to make the effort to lift her head, now lavishly covered with swirls of chestnut hair shot through with a streak of light.

“Why don’t you say something?” She turned toward him with a worried air, leaning on her elbow.

“I am looking at you,” he answered in such an altered voice that Margit caught his internal tremor — caught it unerringly, as the varnished wood of a violin intensifies the tone drawn from the strings.

“What is it? Why have you gone so far away from me?” She pushed heavy locks of hair away from her face.

“Stay there, just as you are,” he begged. But instead of speaking from his heart—“I want to hold you this way in the core of my mind, to fix in my memory this mosaic with flecks of light and color, this moment beyond naming”—he said too simply in this foreign language, English, “I want to remember you this way.”

The girl looked troubled. But seeing that he smiled gently at her, she fell back with relief on the rug with its autumnal colors. Slowly she curled up and seemed to be falling asleep, with her coppery hair still rippling luxuriantly around her face. Then for the first time that day Istvan heard the ringing of the cicadas and felt his heart wrenched by the flight of time, for it could not be stopped, nor the past retrieved. The glass he raised with a trembling hand struck dully against his teeth, and premonition sent a tremor through him.

When Margit had smoothed her skirt and was looking around with a perplexed air, hobbling on one sandal, Istvan, who was helping her search for the other under a chair, broke into a loud laugh.

“Look!” The sandal was hanging on the door handle, shielding the keyhole from the servants’ eyes.

“For the life of me, I can’t remember doing that!” she exclaimed, embarrassed.

“All the worse if you do such things reflexively.”

“Don’t be a nuisance,” she said, rubbing his cheek with her forehead.

They went to the kitchen together and brought out the half-cold dishes. He uncorked a bottle of wine. They ate, teasing and joking. They drank wine and peeped into each other’s eyes like students in love.

“Why were you looking at me so strangely?”

“When you were on the rug I discovered you again. You were terrifyingly attractive to me.”

“Oh, you’re laying it on a bit thick. After all, you know me to absolute boredom. What did you see there that was new?”

“You looked like Eve in a Flemish tapestry.”

“You like that rug.”

“I like you.”

“I wonder how much it cost.”

“I didn’t pay very much.”

“I wasn’t thinking of money”—her eyes were bright; he was drinking in their light—“but of the children who wove it. Have you, expert on India, seen how carpets are made?”

He shook his head. Incessantly, like the droning of bees, happiness sang in him: I love her neck, her lips, her little ear brightened by a streak of rose-tinted sunlight. He was choking with a tenderness beyond measure.

“But I have seen it. There was a shed of woven trunks and branches with a clay roof so overheated from the sun that even the vultures stepped from one foot to another on it. The warp stretched from the ceiling to the ground. Six children sat on the clay floor, pulling colored wool from spools as fast as they could and tying tight knots. The old master read out something from the great book; I glanced over his shoulder. The pattern of the rug, the floral motifs, were written in secret signs. He knew how to decipher the old book, and he sang out: red, red, yellow, black, black. To keep the work going at a steady tempo he beat a drum with a rod.

“You can’t imagine how fast those little fingers tied that yarn! The children’s eyes brimmed with tears; they were smarting. Time after time they rubbed their irritated eyelids, but the old man quickened the rhythm. The knots had to be set in closely and evenly; the more knots per centimeter, the more they get for the rug. The little ones are not paid, only their parents, and sometimes the value of their work is simply taken in lieu of an installment on rent for a field or interest on an unpaid debt. The children have a moment’s rest when the old man has a coughing fit and spits between his callused feet. They must be glad that his old lungs are diseased; anyway, that is the most common ailment among weavers.”

“Where did you see this?”

“I was in a village doing surveys. Cottage weaving workshops are still transmission sites for trachoma. I wonder how many eyes have been ruined to create the beauty of the old pattern, the paradisiacal blossoming tree on that carpet.”

“Are you going to issue a decree prohibiting child labor? Will anything help?”

“No. It is certain that they would weave clandestinely, and in Europe and the States there are enthusiasts, connoisseurs of the traditional patterns. Prohibitions would only drive the profits to the middlemen, the dealers.”

“What then? Not to buy them? Then we push them to the lowest level of misery,” he said bitterly. “Margit, forget for a moment that you are a doctor. Don’t think of the suffering of this starving country. At least let me enjoy the beauty of the rug, for they create it mechanically and are unable to delight in it.”

“I have hurt you.” She held out a hand and he took it in his. “I know, art is born of inspiration and difficulty; suffering heightens the work’s greatness. But understand: there is anguish here that is undeserved. Neither the children nor their parents know the price they will have to pay. When the weaving is carried out under these conditions, eyes sting and children cough. It was always so and will be so for a long time yet.”

“We are both unsuited to this country.” He stroked her hand as it lay on the tablecloth embroidered by diligent fingers. “We were brought up differently. For us, to love means to act, to help, to transform, and here it means only to be together in a somnolent trance, to accept, submissively, the verdicts of fate. Here one can make a fortune — there are enough hands and labor is dirt cheap — or a revolution. Everything else is temporizing, a sleep of one’s conscience.”

“Connoly says that India will make a communist of him. And I, before I traveled around the villages, didn’t think people could be so cruel to each other.”

“The conditions force them into it. To live means to stifle others.”

“Istvan,” she said, “truly, they are good. Gentle. And they work so hard.”

“That goodness is their weakness. Undernourished for generations, hobbled by faith that in some other incarnation it will be better for them, beaten down by heat, they wait, they hope.”

“I would so like to help them.” She clasped her hands. “Do you know why? Because I am happy here, thanks to you. I almost feel guilty when I think of them. I am from a wealthy family; I don’t have to be concerned about money. I only have the obligations I set for myself. And I have you…I want to pay with good for this undeserved good. I would give a great deal to help even one person here, to save him, to give him joy.”

She spoke so ardently that he walked around the table, entwined his fingers in her red hair, leaned over, and kissed her.

“You have given me joy,” he whispered tenderly.

“All the more reason why I must work, I must treat them. Do you understand? I am afraid for us.”

He looked adoringly at her. “But, Margit, you do that.” He lifted her hand and moved the tips of her fingers around his lips.

“Not enough. Nothing is enough.” He felt the pain in her words. “Istvan, indeed I’m not a silly girl in the throes of her first attraction. I know what I’m doing. I’m not talking with you out of cowardice. Why should I distress you? You have a wife and sons, after all. You are alone here by chance, a chance that was favorable for me. But I haven’t forgotten about them. I am the other woman, a stranger.”

“Why are you torturing yourself? For the time being nothing is threatening us.”

“For the time being.” She sighed bitterly. “Don’t tell me not to look farther than two months ahead. I must think about what will happen to us later. The stronger my attachment is to you, the more anxiety I feel about our future.”

He was ashamed that until this moment he had not spoken with her about the possible solutions he had thought of, and what they would risk if their relationship were known to the world.

“Margit, until I have a divorce, I have no right to begin this conversation. I can get a divorce when I return to Budapest. I want to make the decision alone with my wife, with no intermediary. She has a right to expect that she will learn about it first from me. They cannot let me out of the country. Are you prepared to come to me there? To remain there, perhaps for whole years—”

“Istvan!” she cried, her voice ringing with gratitude and readiness. After a moment she added, “After all, I will be with you.”

“Remember: a foreign language, unfamiliar customs, different conditions. I don’t earn much. You will be cut off from your family — sentenced to be with me.”

“My father will not disinherit me. I have a profession; I can work. It would not go badly with us.” She clasped his hands, eager to embrace what lay ahead. “But — will she agree?”

“I cannot answer for her. She is brave. And she loves me. Yes, for just that reason she should not create difficulties. There is a different issue, much harder.” He stopped speaking and looked her in the eye. “I have never mentioned this to you. I have been silent, for it was more comfortable for me. The pronouncement of the court is merely a formal dissolution of the marriage. I am a Catholic, and for us there is no release from vows we have called God to witness.”

“Is that so important to you?” She pulled her hand away in astonishment and held it to her head, entangling her fingers in the coppery strands of her hair. “I am a Christian as well, but I don’t understand such scruples.”

“I vowed, ‘Till death do us part.’ Only death severs the bond of marriage.”

She looked at him uncomprehendingly. At last her face broke into an indulgent smile.

“So it is said. Surely you are not telling me to wait for her death. You would not want me to wish her that. There must be a solution. And perhaps you are looking for an artful way to hedge yourself from me; your love is not strong enough. Can you think of the future, of your life when we are not together? If you really loved me, there would be no obstacle that we could not overcome together. Istvan, Istvan, it would be better not to talk about this, not to make plans — to live as they do here, taking what comes and hoping—” She covered her face with her hands.

It seemed to him that she was weeping. He hurried to her and took her in his arms, kissing her hair and the back of her neck. He whispered entreaties and begged her forgiveness. He knew he had caused her pain.

She lowered her hands and her eyes sparkled. Her lashes were plastered together by tears, but she was smiling. “I won’t let you go,” she said doggedly. “For how long did they send you here?”

“Two years. Three. This is my second year.”

“Well, we have a year ahead of us, at least. What is there to worry about? We Australians don’t give up easily. If only you also want—”

“How I want you. I desire you,” he whispered straight into her parted lips.

“I promised the professor that I would be back today. If you want to be with me longer, drive me to the airport.”

“Stay the night,” he pleaded.

“I can’t. I had to see you. That’s why I dropped in for just a couple of hours.”

Incredulously and with a trace of hope he asked, “Do you have a ticket?”

“I have, I have. I had that to begin with. Well, are you coming or must I call the Excelsior for a taxi?”

Her hair was dazzling in the sunlight that was stealing into the room. The sadness had gone from her eyes.

“Let’s go.” She tugged at his hand. “I don’t like to rush.”

When they were off to the city, driving on asphalt that glowed with the reflected fire of the sunset, he accelerated the engine. They crested out on the summit of a barren hill overgrown with large thistles that seemed hewn from silver. Far ahead of them, irradiated by the low sunbeams, a half-naked Hindu alternately walked and fell. He raised his hands as if pleading and collapsed on the ground, only to rise immediately, take three steps and extend his arms again as if seeking support. Then he dropped to the ground at the edge of the road.

“What has happened to him?” she asked worriedly. “Slow down. We must take a look.”

The lean man, wearing a dhoti and a strap from which hung a jug made from a bottle-gourd, fell down and rose to his feet like a broken toy.

Istvan caught up with him and put on the brakes. They both got out of the car and waited hand in hand until he drew near. He paid no attention to them, but rose and fell as if he were using his body to measure the distance he was traveling. His forehead and chest were gray from the ash that had been smeared on them. His face was serene and full of concentration; his dark eyes flashed with a look of such rapt attention that it was disturbing.

“A sadhu,” Terey said softly. “A holy pilgrim.”

“Is he demented?” she asked. “His movements are orderly, rhythmical. There is something about this that is unsettling to a normal person. Why is he making his walk so difficult? What sense does it make? He must be mad.”

She spoke out loud, certain that the man did not understand English. They trembled when the wayfarer said calmly, even with a tinge of irony in his tone, “No, Mr. Terey. Please explain to your companion that I am no more mad than you or she.”

The counselor went up to the man and peered into his eyes, but the Hindu only dropped to the ground again with his hands outstretched. Terey could not recall the hollow, hirsute face. Drops of sweat made furrows on its dusty cheeks; the gray forehead rubbed with ashes made a strange mask of it.

“You know me?”

“Yes. You came to the ministry. You are from the Hungarian embassy. And I…The official with whom you still had business not long ago died, and I was born.”

“I don’t understand.”

Still holding hands, they walked beside him, by now somewhat accustomed to the throwing up of the arms and the sudden falls. Their long shadows lay on the asphalt and the red line on the side of the road.

“I was called,” he said in a mild voice, as if he were translating into a children’s language. “A light entered into me. I understood the senselessness of the work in my office. I realized that I was squandering my life instead of perfecting myself. So I closed my portfolios, shut the books, and walked out. I am going to meet the source of light.”

“But why in such a strange way? Isn’t a pilgrimage on foot enough?”

“I will show my body that it is subject to me, as a corporal teaches a recruit discipline — as you, sir, give an order to a recalcitrant servant. For a long time I myself was the servant of my body, so it did not try to rebel. It pretends that things are bad — difficult — that sharp gravel pricks it. It begs for food and water, and I force it into a longer march. Now it is quiet. It listens meekly. Once again it has taken its proper role in my life.”

He stood up, then fell forward as far as his outstretched hands could reach. He allowed himself to take three small steps and raised his arms again as if to measure off a section of road.

“But this insanity — you are exhausting yourself. You are doing a disservice to yourself and your family, if you have one.”

“I have. My wife and sons accepted my decision, for neither tears nor anger altered it. They do not beg me to come back. I am not compelling others to do as I am doing. If I am injuring anyone, it is only myself. This is my body and I have the right to do as I please with it,” he said calmly, his even voice at odds with the rhythmic steps and falls that resembled the movements of a mechanical clown. “Leave me at least a little freedom. If I perish, it is only I; and you? In your world there is not even a place for such a journey as mine. And all your technology and science — to what do they lead humanity but to violence, fear, and annihilation? I am harming no one. Respect my will.”

Suddenly Istvan remembered an official sitting in the corner of a room, behind a table with a large fan, tidy, even-humored, smiling agreeably. But that man had worn spectacles.

“Did you wear glasses?”

“Yes. By now I do not need them. I do not look for the truth in books. I make my way toward the light, I go to the East—”

“You are Balvant Sudar!” Terey cried. He was about to seize the callused hand, covered with grains of sand, but the man continued his seizure-like movements without even noticing Istvan’s friendly impulse.

“Sudar died some time ago, and I was born, thirsting for truth. I know what I desire, and you do not know. You wander, you are tossed about. I walk my own road toward the light, and you must return to your automobile and race on. You will pass me, but I have already passed you. I have outdistanced you. I am the spark which consciously returns to the fire while darkness envelops the others.”

“Let’s go, Istvan.” She pulled at his hand. “The airplane doesn’t wait.”

They turned and hurried toward the car, which stood on the edge of the highway. The sun was setting; the sky burned a blinding red.

“Do you think what he said about us should be taken as an omen?” she asked with superstitious foreboding.

“No. We may not wallow in the dust, but we, too, pursue our truth, Margit, and I tell you, we will find it.”

They sped past the gaunt, half-naked figure stretched on the ground.

“And what is between us — isn’t it all the will of the flesh?”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” he smiled. “Anyway, that’s probably not so bad.”

The corrugated aluminum roofs of the hangars flashed between the trees. The blue and white windsock rode the shifting streams of air.