“It’s good for me, with you.” She put her arm under the back of his neck and rocked it lightly. “Very good.”
To be part of the pulse of his blood, to anchor myself in his memory. I must be very tender to him. If ever I must lose him, I will still be part of him. He will know that I loved him. One may have a wife, may have women and not be touched by love, not know that great sense of devotion, of oneness. After all, I’ve awakened beside other men — she thought with a jarring clarity — and it was good with them, but none of them gave me what he has. If he reached out for another woman, he would have to judge her by me, compare her with me, remember, remember.
But she did not say a word, for she was afraid that it would annoy him, that he would misunderstand. She felt powerless; she only snuggled up to him and pressed her cheek on his chest. And he, roused from brooding, at this beckoning kissed her eyes as if she had only that moment returned from a long journey — as though after yearning for her through a long absence he had found her again.
“Sahib. Sahib.” Daniel, standing on the veranda steps, clapped. “The chaprasi came with the mail.”
How did he know that he shouldn’t come in? Terey thought approvingly. Intuition, or tact? Perhaps just good English training. He freed himself from her arms, which fell away slowly and lay like torn vines that have lost not only their support but their sense of existence. He felt for coins in the pants that hung in the wardrobe. He threw on a robe and went out barefoot to the veranda.
“Give it to me.”
The boy came up the steps and with a deep bow laid a telegram on the railing. He was from the lowest caste. He believed that he might defile even a European by his touch, Istvan thought.
He opened the rough paper with its inelegant lettering and, turning his back to the sky with its failing light, read with difficulty:
Istvan Terey. Cochin. Hotel Florida. Imperative that you return to Delhi Stop Serious personal matter Stop Ferenc.
He went back to the bedroom, turned on a little lamp, and handed her the message. He read it over her shoulder, wondering what could have happened.
“Will you go?” she asked as if expecting him to say no.
“I must. I’m still an official with the embassy.”
“You’re with me, at the very tip of India. You could say now, ‘I’m staying. I’ll be there in two weeks to settle my affairs.’ Tell them goodbye — if they deserve that courtesy.”
“You forget that this is just a furlough. It’s only decent of me to go back.”
“Shall I wait here?”
He was silent. He lowered his head.
“How long will you make me torment myself?” she whispered. “Perhaps you would prefer that I go with you?”
“Yes.” He brightened. “Definitely. We’ll go together.”
“I’ll be following you around to the end.” He was struck by an alien, unwilling note in her voice.
“What do you mean?”
“And if they want to send you back to Hungary?”
Anxiety froze his face like ice.
“No. They would have made that announcement with joy.” He set his lips. “They wouldn’t begrudge me a friendly kick.”
“Call, at all events. Demand an explanation.”
He dressed hurriedly. Before he drove the car around she was already standing by it, self-possessed, ready to offer help and advice.
When they reached the asphalt highway, he put the brake on hard. A long black car was hurtling out of a palm grove. Its driver saw the danger and slowed down a little too late. In the raw glare of their headlights, which flooded the interior of the other car, they spied the old Hindu, the sadhu who had been serenading the sea with his flute. The look on his shaggy face with blinking eyes brought to mind the grimace of an enraged cat. The automobile sped away; its red taillights brightened and then faded.
“Did you recognize him? The peasant dhoti looked like a disguise. And I didn’t believe Daniel.”
“Keep going.” She clasped her hands. “They told us to wait at the post office.”
Great moths glowed in the stream of light, crunching against the hood like chestnuts from slingshots, leaving spatters on the windshield.
The town greeted them with distant plumes of smoke and the odors of burned oil and stagnant drains. Lights glowed in little shops here and there, then more frequently, before they drove in among brick houses. The low post office stood dark and empty; only one frosted window was illuminated. Istvan knocked once and again. Someone uttered a hoarse question but did not step forward.
Suddenly the blind screen was raised with a hard shove and the mustachioed face of a clerk peered out. “Oh, I am very sorry.” He assumed a ceremonious smile. “I did not know.”
He handed Istvan a form to be filled in: from whom, to which state, which city, how many minutes. “Delhi,” he read, shaking his head. “That is far away. You will have to wait.”
They sat in the stuffy room on a grease-stained bench, speaking in whispers. The man lowered the window and seemed to have gone back to dozing when the phone rang unexpectedly.
“Sahib will go to the booth, or speak from my telephone, for it is better. There where the riffraff speak, they have to do something with their hands, and they pluck at the cord as if it were a dhoti, they pick at the receiver as they pick at their ears. In the booth the connection breaks off.”
Eager for his conversation with the capital, Istvan glared at the telephone. In spite of the clerk’s assurances that it was a good one, he barely succeeded in forcing a distorted voice out of it.
“Hello! Hello!” he shouted. “Istvan here. Istvan Terey. Do you hear me? What’s happened? What do I have to come back to Delhi for? Something serious?”
At last through the hum and crackle they understood each other and Ferenc realized who was speaking.
Margit sat motionless on the bench, pressing her hands together and resting her chin on them. She listened in suspense, trying to guess from Istvan’s shouted words what the voice at the far end of the wire was saying, since its responses might affect their future.
“I don’t understand. I’ll start tomorrow. I’ll be with you on Thursday. But what does the boss want with me?”
The clerk’s face looked as if he were sucking juice from a lemon, he was so worried for fear the words would be lost, would not reach the receiver at the end of the wire.
“Tell me, though: is it good news or bad? Tell Judit hello for me. I’ll be there on Thursday without fail.”
He held on to the receiver as if deluding himself that now he would hear what was most important. That Ferenc would change his mind and blurt out the whole truth — would perhaps dispel misgivings and burst out laughing. Then his eyes met the girl’s anguished look and he forgot about the Hindu, who waited as if in ambush. He hung up hastily and thrust the telephone through the window as into the maw of a ravenous animal that could not close its jaw.
“What did you find out?”
“Nothing. When you come down to it, nothing. He said that it would be a surprise. That I should come without delay. The ambassador had instructed him to say that. You heard what I asked him. He said that there was important information for me. That I would not be alone. What do you make of that?”
He paid impatiently, though the clerk was still checking the bill, which seemed staggering to him. The telephone call had cost a quarter of his monthly salary from the post office, so he was alert for information that confirmed what he imagined to be the earnings of foreigners from the capital, and the revenues of large businesses.
When they were sitting in the car, Margit, filled with grim premonitions, put her hand on his arm.