The glassy clink of the bottles struck with metal made Margit shudder. The hoarse voice with its cry for the country all the hungry so longed for was unnerving. The singer seemed to forget his hearers; his unerring strokes fell harder on the bottles, and with the uplifted face and white eyes of a statue he lamented to heaven and the distant sea.
Daniel crouched beside him and translated in a whisper. He did not hinder the blind man, but conveyed the sense of the cry which reverberated in them both — as if they were remembering it — in a secret language. Margit’s hot, dry fingers pressed Istvan’s hand hard, like the fingers of a child who hides behind its mother so as not to see something frightening. The music in the restaurant stopped; they did not notice at all. Only the voices of the ocean seemed nearer, as if they had been called as witnesses.
“I wanted to go down into the water, but they held me back. They ordered me to be silent. They had been good to me, after all; I believed that they would take me to the shore. The ship sailed lightly without people. And then the first moan floated from over the waves. The betrayal was discovered: there was deep water farther on, and the shore was distant — the shore, or perhaps smoke. I heard weeping, shrieking, pleading. Already the sharks were cutting the wave that surged toward them. They beat as if with oars. They snorted like oxen. They smacked like pigs at the trough. So the partners blotted out the traces, drowning the cry that died away beneath the sky of Lanka.”
Suddenly the light blinked and the glare began to leak from the bulb. It was only a red wire; at last it went out. Istvan wanted to go for a candle but Margit held him lightly with her arms around his neck.Then he remembered that to the singer, darkness was no hindrance.
The bottles jangled like gravel on a windowpane as he hit them. He struck without hesitation; the chords sang in the dusk. All at once they were overtaken by a dreadful suspicion that the tale they were hearing was true. The night encircled the walls of the cottage, murmuring and humming. Among the distant stars the lighthouse blindly waved its yellow sword like a giant at bay.
“Before a wave extinguished the last voice, the helmsman paced up and down, looking out. They must have watched the spectacle; I thanked the gods that I was blind. I heard the sharks thrashing. I felt death near. I did not fear dying, only the rending of the body that is alive, pulsing with blood, terrified, naked and defenseless. Those who had been devoured had paid for their faults. Whimpering from ignorance, free of the past, they would be born anew in the beautiful land of Lanka. I waited for death — and the helmsman demanded that I sing to them. The vessel quivered in the fair wind and the lines creaked. They gave me fish to eat; no one refused the water that smelled of mildew.
“That night I heard the bargaining for my head. The helmsman swore he would not betray a blind man. They landed here and threw a stone instead of an anchor. When I heard the sounds of the shore amid the clatter of the surf, I waited for night. The water carried me onto the hardpacked sand, but the sea, not satiated with victims, suddenly changed its mind and dragged me back. Nevertheless I emerged and ran through the dunes in fear that it was pursuing me. And you are the first I have told of that flight to the earthly paradise — of the people who will never accuse the living, for they, reborn, are unaware of the fate that met them at the very gates of Lanka.”
He struck one clear note. As its tremolo hung in the air, he clapped his hand on the floor boards twice with a dull boom like the sound of a drum. Then the deep silence was only measured by the sighs of the drifting sea. The singer hung his head in inexpressible weariness. Daniel trembled with emotion, as if he had only grasped the meaning of the ominous narrative as he translated its final words.
“Ask him if he will tell the police all this tomorrow. I’ll take him in the car. No one will find out.”
“No, sahib. He says he will not speak. The police will not believe him.”
“But is this possible?” Margit squeezed Istvan’s hand so hard her fingers seemed to be biting it. “Is what he is saying true? It’s not just a poem?”
“That is the truth concerning earthly flights to paradise,” Daniel answered, still thrilled and appalled by the blind man’s recital.
“Where is this isle of happiness?” she demanded.
“It is Ceylon,” Istvan said, adding hastily, “We cannot leave him like this. We must…”
The blind man spoke insistently to Daniel, demanding something.
“He asks that we hide him until his brother arrives. Two days. Three. He is certain that his brother will put aside everything and come. He swears that the gods revealed this secret to him so he would sing of those who were swallowed up by the ocean, devoured by the sharks.”
“Damn it! Nothing will save those people. The pirates must be caught and hanged!” Istvan stormed.
“He says: We leave justice to the gods. The pirates only enforce the will of the one who gave them ships and enabled them to engage in smuggling. Sahib,” he added after a moment, “we do not have a death penalty. Even Gandhi forbade us to execute his murderers.”
“I’ve had enough of this ‘he says,’ ‘he wants,’ ‘he doesn’t want.’ I make the decisions here. Is that clear?”
Daniel and his countryman spoke rapidly to each other. At last the young man rose and said earnestly, “I have heard nothing, sahib. The blind man gives good advice. Before there would be a proper investigation they would poison him, and me as well. Best to be silent.”
“Who would poison you?”
“The pirates. The smugglers of people.”
“Do you understand any of this?” Istvan turned to Margit in helpless exasperation. “How can we help them when they don’t want help?”
“Night is not a good counselor. He should not stay here. They will surely be looking for him.”
“Where can we hide him?”
“I would take him to the mission now that it is dark,” Daniel advised. “Let the fathers attend to him. Perhaps you will go with me, sahib. I am afraid.”
“I’ll go, too.” Margit rose, then quickly gave up the plan. “Go. I’ll wait. I’m terribly tired. Go yourself.” She sat slumped and weak in the darkness under the looming white bundle of mosquito netting.
“Lie down.”
“All right,” she agreed easily. Alarmed, he touched her forehead. It was hot. Her hair was damp with sweat; it clung to her temples. He was seized with a fear that she was ill — very ill.
“There’s nothing wrong with me. A little fever,” she insisted. “It’s giving me a pain in my joints. I’ll take an aspirin and it will go down.”
“And the blasted light had to go out. Can you find the aspirin?”
Daniel took a flashlight from under his dhoti. A stream of white glare hurt their eyes.
“Turn it out,” she begged in a whisper. “The aspirin’s in the drawer. Well, go on. I need to be alone now. The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll be back.”
The blind man stood up, jostling the bottles so that they chimed briefly. They listened: it seemed that in the echoes of the sea they could distinguish muffled noises, the stamping of many feet. It was so quiet that they could hear grains of sand dropping from the man’s wet rags and scattering on the floor. Their own pulses beat painfully in their ears. The blind man whispered something. Daniel translated, “He says that we can go. That is only the sea grumbling.”
“Take this. I’ll be calmer,” she breathed into Istvan’s ear. He felt her push a long, cold object into his hand; it flashed in the dark with a moist, vitreous sheen. “Be careful. It’s a lancet.”