“But there are some disturbances at night,” she said, engrossed in playing with the sand, which was as clean as sugar. “The night before last I heard shouts and something like a chase. Last night there were shots.”
“I asked Daniel. He said the police had set a trap for smugglers. Think of these empty cottages. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if gold or opium was stashed in them. The water near the beach is deep; they could sail close to the very shoreline with a cutter. Anyway, those boat-rafts of theirs can scud about for days.”
“You have imagination,” she said approvingly. “You are always ready to reconstruct the whole story. It is enough that someone was running along the coast. One rocket fired; perhaps it was for practice?”
“They also smuggle people — refugees from Pakistan. Daniel told me while you were asleep.”
“They are fleeing. They will not escape themselves. Freedom is in us. We must muster all our courage and determination and break out of the iron band that was forcibly imposed on us.” She turned toward him; he felt her sandy hand resting on his thigh.
“Not forcibly imposed, unless what you mean by ‘forcibly’ is that you have a birthplace, a language and a fate shared with others whom you should not abandon. The rest of our obligations we undertake voluntarily, and you know very well that they are part of ourselves.”
“Primitive blood ties.” She lowered her head with aversion.
“No. I’m speaking of the deepest community of interests with the world we find at birth, which we ought to change, to transform.”
A wavering trill from a flute could be heard in the distance. At the foot of a layer of rocks, between the leaning coconut palms, they saw the dark torso of a conjurer playing his song. He seemed to have no head, for his white turban was indistinguishable from the bright sand milled from under patches of turf parched by the sun.
“It’s easier to change the world than to change yourself,” she whispered bitterly. “The world, the world! And what is that but a game in the sand? You’ve already seen how much of that remains. It’s a lesson you should learn.”
“And you? What role are you marking out for me?” He raised himself on his elbow and looked into her eyes. The ends of her curled eyelashes glittered in the sun.
“Be yourself at last. Free. Write as you like. Don’t be hampered by anyone.”
“Even you?”
“Even me,” she insisted. “Write about your Hungary, but free yourself from that dog collar that’s choking you — from the time you’ve lived through, from its improvised systems. You don’t have to be a bureaucrat whose masters’ words are law. Think of what is yours, your own, unique. What do you have to say? To people, not just Hungarians.”
“My masters’ words are not law to me,” he smiled. “They change too often. And what I would like to say to Hungarians ought to be important to everyone who thinks and feels responsibility for the collective fate.”
“Time — yours, ours, we must submit to it. Don’t let yourself be weighed down. Don’t become involved in collusions for a year or two. Your mind is full of words that are not your own. You put out your hands and they are poised to applaud. It’s not even like a circus, for force doesn’t require dexterity.”
“Stop,” he said. “Don’t torture me.”
“I?” She pretended to be surprised. “This hits home because you think the same.”
Again they heard at a distance the birdlike squeal of the beggar’s flute, until it was swallowed up by the roar of the surging water.
“What is he expecting?” Istvan gazed at the naked body growing still darker among the gnarled, half-exposed roots of the palms. The motionless fronds hung down like roosters’ tails in the sky full of trembling light.
“He is like me,” she said broodingly. “He wants to attract someone’s attention.”
“Why has he been sitting so far away?”
“He doesn’t want to be obtrusive.”
“Do you think he’s waiting for us?”
“He is a beggar, not as shameless as I am, but undoubtedly a beggar. We recognize each other at once.” She drew curves in the sand with a finger and watched vacantly as a breeze sweeping the beach pushed the sand before it grain by grain.
He turned around quickly and pulled her to him.
“Don’t talk like that. Better to hit me. It would hurt less.” He kissed her, breathing hard. “Everything I have is yours.”
“Except you yourself.” She shook her head. “I’m poorer than that beggar, for he doesn’t know what he could have, and I know what you have deprived me of, what you withhold from me.”
“I?”
“You. You don’t want me.”
He kissed her bluish eyelids and smoothed her eyebrows with his lips. He found coarse traces of sea salt on her shoulders. He tried to smother her despondency, to dispel it with tenderness, but he made his argument only to the body warmed in the sun that lazily coaxed caresses from him like a tame animal.
“Don’t,” she begged as he was uncovering her white chest and pressing it with greedy lips. “That man—”
“He is far away.” He laid her gently in a warm hollow in the sand, a white cradle. She threw out her arms and he rested his hands on the palms of hers, entwining their fingers until it hurt. They heard the distant notes of the flute, the cries of birds, and the deep restless groaning of the ocean, which crescendoed until the perpetually washed sand received its baptism by water and the foam soaking into it sizzled.
They rested side by side, languid, sleepy, as the glare of the invisible sun bore down. At the touch of each other’s hands — the affirmation that they were together, bonded in the amicable communion of bodies — a deep, peaceful joy pulsed in their blood.
“Are you going in the water?” she drawled lazily.
“I must!” He sprang up, seized her hands in a tight grip, and raised her from the sand.
Holding each other, they ran over the level strand of beach, which was licked clean by wind and water. The ocean glittered blue and silver so that it hurt the eyes. It drew back, luring them on, only to raise them on a tall wave that churned up sand from the bottom. The swelling water bathed their heated bodies with its coolness and passed them easily to the next wave. The shore withdrew imperceptibly as if at their wish. It all grew more and more distant: the cottages squatting on pilings as if on little legs, poised for flight; the palms shifting their places. They felt as if they had been cast adrift among these hills of water while the shore was slowly wandering, freed of their presence and their watchful looks. Istvan felt the light pressure of the current.
Around him he heard something like provocative applause — the clapping of wet hands — and the greedy smacking of the waves. He grew alert. Margit’s green cap jumped high, then dipped into the deep troughs. She swam calmly, boldly, a few yards ahead of him. She turned her head, frowning as the salt water made her eyes smart. He saw that she meant for him to follow her. She was testing him, courting danger.
They heard the guttural groaning of the buoy, pounded by a wave, engulfed and then floating again with a dull moan of relief.
“Margit!” he shouted. “That’s enough! We’re going back.”
His voice was snagged in the morass of sound that came from the heaving, rustling water. He was not sure that she had heard him. He swam to the buoy and grabbed the ring, which was rough with blisters of rust. A wave dragged him; it tried to wrench him around, to pull him away. He had to be careful to keep it from forcing him against the metal covered with sharp shells.
“Margit!” he cried angrily. She heard; her body shifted, hovering in the deep water. She raised a hand that glistened like a flake of tinfoil as a sign that she understood. He saw with relief that she was turning around.