“Very good. Here you are.”
“This is too much, sir.” The cook cocked his head on his slender neck like a magpie that cannot lift a bone in its beak.
“Take it all. Because you used your head.”
“Ah! Sir, your happiness is our happiness, you know. The watchman is getting married because he has a good job. All my family, sir, blesses you. And the sweeper’s family, and the gardener’s. You are like a strong tree and we are like birds who weave nests in your branches. You have an open hand and do not ration rice as they do in other houses. Sir”—his speech took on the rhythm of an incantation and he raised his hands toward the leafy fringes of the climbing plants—“may the goddess Lakshmi visit this house with gifts for you and madam.”
Long shadows fell on the walls. The air smelled of hot oil and candles, like the interior of a temple. The assembled servants bowed to them.
“And we wish you great success,” he answered. “I leave the house to your care. Manage our home wisely. Tomorrow I go to the south.”
“For how long, sir?”
“For a few weeks.”
When he found himself in the living room, he went up to Margit, amazed and anxious. She sat hunched over, hiding her face in her hands.
“What’s happened?” He opened her hands and saw that her face was damp with tears.
“Nothing.” Under wet lashes that clung together, her eyes were shining brightly. “For the first time you said ‘our home.’”
He bent over her, taken aback. Gradually he began to understand, and to feel compassion. She needed so little — an impulsive word — to build the whole edifice of the future. She loves me — the thought recurred like an accusation — loves me.
“I want to hear that always, until my last day,” she whispered, nestling against him with damp, flushed cheeks.
Swarms of lights on the neighboring villas shone in blurs through the window screens. An acute sadness seemed to have settled over the city, like crepe over the plots in a village cemetery on the day people light candles in memory of the dead.
“We will go tomorrow.” He pushed away painful thoughts. She leaned toward him, rubbing her cheek and blinking with happiness, like a little girl who has no words to express her joy and thankfulness for an unexpected gift.
They lay on fine white sand, close enough to touch each other. A few yards from their feet, turbid waves died on a shore that had been battered and swept smooth as an enormous bowl wreathed with heaps of pungent-smelling seaweed. The ocean swelled gently and tilted, driving water toward the coast. Yellow and reddish sails, appearing almost motionless on the horizon, stood like triangles with their points resting on the gray water.
It was not easy to find a name for the few loosely connected beams, forming something like a beak, that opened like a fan with slits to create a channel for foaming seawater. There were no boats to be seen, only the slowly revolving triangular sails, patched and dimming in the sun, that wandered on the edge of the sky like kites ripped from their strings.
He turned his head and fixed his gaze on Margit’s austere, chiseled profile, veiled by her windblown hair. Her bluish-green eyes, squinting a little, glittered with happiness. Her lips parted slightly with her deep breathing. Her small breasts under her wet bathing suit, barely covered, challenged him.
The choked alleys of Old Delhi dissolved and vanished: the crowd pressing blindly, the mass of bodies one had to rub against to walk along the street, the stifling odor of drains, urine, pastilles, fermenting fruit peelings, incense, the smells of flaming butter in votive lamps and palm oil that permeated hair and lingered on clothing.
Here on this great sweep of beach they were alone, deprived of all resources but each other — joyful castaways. Free of obligation to the world, they rested, not even hearing the groaning of the surf that doggedly spilled onto the shore, raking with it the coarser sand and the pink shells. A damp breeze blew over them, allaying the sweltering heat of noon. The air over this expanse of sand untrodden by anyone’s feet was veined with flashing green. The leaves of battered palms rose, swelling as if in flight, shaking their leathery fringes.
“Don’t sleep.” Her fingertips brushed his side, which was plastered with smooth, fine-grained sand.
“I’m not sleeping. I’m thinking,” he answered, stretching. “Do you know that in two days it will be Christmas Eve?”
“Are you counting the days? Do you know exactly how many have passed?”
“What for? Our time here will be too short that way. I know about Christmas Eve because I got a letter from the hotel management asking what we would like for the holiday dinner.”
“Don’t they believe that Daniel will repeat our order accurately? He’s a clever chap.” Daniel was a young man whose services came with their rented cottage.
“The entire menu was written out. I only had to underline our choices.”
“Why did you do it without me? You should have consulted me.”
“It will be a surprise for you.”
“I’m sure you ordered something awful, as you did in the Chinese restaurant that time. When the chef explained what it was made of, I felt something inside me protesting!”
“But you liked it. As long as you didn’t know, you enjoyed it. I’ve ordered seafood for us.”
“And where is the turkey with dates and chestnuts?”
“It’s still alive, but there is enough of it to order six servings. They have it figured very closely: chicken, two servings; duck, four; turkey, twelve. Apart from us, there are only two old English ladies. Amazing how empty it is. I expected a crowd.”
“Do you wish for other women? Am I not enough?” She scooped up a handful of white sand and watched as it trickled through her fingers.
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
“I’m glad you rested a little. The solitude will do us good.”
“For the time being there aren’t many people here because the Suez Canal is blocked. But they will be here for New Year’s. The beach will be filled with them.”
“I don’t need them at all. It’s fine with me as it is.” She sifted sand through her fingers; it made a little mound on his chest. “I love the sea. There is such peace about it.”
“Even though I was half dead from driving, the first night here I couldn’t sleep. I heard it,” he whispered. “It has so many voices. It chats and it lures. It rumbles as if it were impatient. It seemed to me that it was taking advantage of the darkness to creep onto the shore, scour the dunes, submerge the beaches, and circle around us, all very cleverly. The roar of the water intensifies in the dark.”
“You got up. I heard you go out onto the veranda. But I didn’t want to open my eyes.”
“I saw how it shone. The land was black and the waves glowed like phosphorus, as if they were full of drowned stars. I was as frightened as a little boy for fear the tide would wash us away, cottage and all.”
“I’m not afraid of the ocean.” She thrust out a cocky lip. “I like the way it carries me along.”
“You swim out too far. I call you and you pretend not to hear.”
“You swim alongside me”—she peeped into his dark eyes—“and I think you would swim as far as you could go. It’s hard to decide when to turn back. It’s easy to swim out. It’s much harder to go back to shore.”
“I saw a map in the harbormaster’s office. The bay has shore currents. It’s best to remember that. They could carry us a long way out.”
“You wouldn’t leave me, though.” She laid her hand on his suntanned chest. “I wouldn’t be afraid to swim away from the shore with you.”
“I don’t like this train of thought!” he shuddered. “It’s silly.”
The sea soliloquized more loudly, surging and washing the smooth sand on the shore with its thick tongues.