They drew near the little blue house in silence, reconciled, leaning on each other. Through the open door came the slow tapping of typewriter keys. They stood still, smiling indulgently. Turning his head back and forth, utterly absorbed, the attendant was striking the keyboard with two fingers. The breeze lightly ruffled the bundled mosquito netting. Daniel was alert; he looked around and, startled, jumped away from the typewriter.
“I am very sorry.” He cringed like a dog that has gotten into mischief and now waits for a hiding.
“What are you writing?” Istvan looked over his shoulder, but the boy quickly pulled the paper out of the machine.
“Nothing. Really, nothing.”
“Show us.”
It looked like a song written in English, not polished but fresh and full of feeling. Its subject was the star of Bethlehem that shone in the eye of an ox and on the silver neck of an ass. Their breath warmed the bare, helpless feet of the baby. The animals sympathized with him, for they knew the world: the stony roads, the long journeys in the dust and heat, the blows falling on the back, the lashes with the whip and the burdens too heavy to bear, the premonitions of death when even a damp sponge does not moisten the cracked lips. The few beasts pity the newborn who desires to conquer the world with love.
“Well, what next?” Istvan asked, surprised.
“Only wishes. Joyous holidays—” he was embarrassed. “I wanted to lay the letter on the table with the present for memsab. It was going to be a surprise.”
He pulled out of his shirt a long strand of tiny opalescent shells, well matched and strenuously polished. He laid them on Margit’s outstretched hand. The necklace retained the warmth of his skin.
“Who taught you the song?”
“No one, sahib. I composed it myself. I am sorry for disturbing the machine. I thought it would be more elegant this way.” His gentle eyes were soft with humility, his long, dark fingers entwined pleadingly. “I wanted to prepare a gift, for I will be receiving something from you, after all,” he explained with childlike candor.
Terey was ashamed; he had not thought of a gift for Daniel.
“And what would you prefer? A gift, or money to buy yourself something you want?”
Daniel raised his shapely head. He looked troubled. Margit shook the string of shells softly; they chattered and tinkled. Outside the window the ocean was keening. White streaks of foam rushed toward the shore and dissolved on invisible beaches. Dunes swept by the sea wind glinted uneasily. Now and then the dry rattle of palm fronds, as if someone were ripping oilcloth, drifted into the room.
“Of course Daniel wants both.” She dispelled the young man’s worry. “You will give him a tie — the mango-colored one. And a few rupees, as you said.”
“You will go to church? At midnight there is a Christmas mass. Many fishermen will come. And there will be a crèche in which everything moves. The people have been working on it all year.”
“Let’s go, shall we?” Margit suggested. “There is nothing to do here. And you’re probably tired of this solitude — just the pair of us.”
“We’ll see.” He felt trapped and defensive. He had forgotten, completely forgotten. Was this a subtle invitation from the One he had pushed from his thoughts, driven away from the sunny beach and shut into the chapel, as a troublesome suitcase is left in a baggage room? “And where is it?” he asked rather coldly.
“Not far from here. Beyond the village, in the palm grove. And the priest is from Europe. A real monk with a beard.”
“Of what nationality?”
Daniel’s long eyelashes fluttered helplessly and he threw up his hands.
“I don’t know. White.”
Margit said encouragingly, “We’ll go and we’ll see.”
Outside the window figures appeared with flat baskets on their heads. They spoke in husky voices. Daniel answered them, and announced with a smile of satisfaction that displayed his charming dimples, “They have brought the star. I ordered a star of the sea for you from the fishermen. I told them to catch a big one. I can dry it so it will not lose its color. You can fasten it to the hood of your car as the English do when they drive away.”
Leaning on the railing of the veranda, they could see into the baskets. Crabs half a meter across, tied together and strewn with seaweed, fumbled with their legs. Yellow cuttlefish swelled like living money bags, rippling arms that seemed both animal and vegetable. Like the leaves of the century plant, Istvan thought. Sometimes from under the seaweed a goggling lashless eye flashed disquietingly.
“They ask you to buy lobsters, sir. They can prepare them in the hotel kitchen. Freshly caught; live.” He took them carefully in his hands and raised them to show how the tails fluttered in their hard shells. “Not costly, sir. A very good dish.”
The women stood still, not even raising their faces toward Istvan. They seemed to be intermediaries. The glare of the sun fell on the shallow baskets and kindled rainbow-tinted points of light on the wet scales of the fish and the crabs’ shells. It flashed on bare breasts, empty, sucked-out bags hanging from under saris carelessly thrown on.
“Surely you will not force me to eat these appalling things.” Margit stepped back. “Especially after what we saw on the shore.”
They raised their heads and looked at the long expanse of beach. A smudge of smoke rose from among the dunes: a body was being burned. A tall man swathed in white stood there, guarding the unseen fire. The funereal chirping of flutes floated back to them. “The sadhu apologizes to the sea,” Daniel said drowsily and began, without aversion, to rake through the seaweed with his hand. He selected lobsters and held a whole cluster by their long antennae.
In the silence they heard the crunch of the shells, the rattle of the angry tails. The intonation of the sea was fainter, as if it were farther from the land. Squeezing Margit’s hand tenderly, Istvan whispered, “To your next holidays — in Australia.”
“I want to be there sooner,” she replied impatiently. “And with you. Well, please — say it again. It’s terribly important.”
In a low-necked white dress accented by a necklace of irregularly shaped hunks of turquoise that complemented the color of her eyes, she was captivating. Her hair glowed with coppery highlights like tiny living, shifting flames from a candle; it cast a shadow on her forehead. A light shawl with gold threads was slipping from her arms.
“You know that’s what I want, too,” he whispered, gazing into her cool eyes, which were now sparkling with joy.
“But say it again,” she insisted, leaning toward him as if drawn by an irresistible force.
“With you. With you.”
On a silver tray sat a dish with leftover shells and the crisp red husk of a lobster. Its antennae threw a darting shadow on the white of the tablecloth, while the painstakingly arranged claws the color of coral wallowed among leaves of curly kale. They ate filet of turkey breast with fragrant nutmeg stuffing, sweet and biting, and pineapple salad, washing it down with chilled wine. Far away over a sea burnished with shifting light a row of golden points glided along: a passenger ship making its way south. It was sailing to where Margit wanted to go. In the quiet they followed it with their eyes until it was lost in the darkness.
“I would give anything for you to be happy.”
“I will be. You know very well that it depends on you.”
Under palm fronds the cheery English ladies raised their glasses, forgot for a moment the coolly expectant young Indians in white dinner jackets who were leaning solicitously over them, and called to Margit, “Merry Christmas!”