“Margit!” he shouted. She opened her eyes reluctantly; the sun hurt them. “Sit up!” He gave her his hand and lifted her. She clung to him; he felt her weight and the coolness of her skin.
“Look! There, around the white stone. It looks like a root with the current breaking over it like glass, but it moves on its own and is ready to spring.”
Startled, she pulled in her legs. The moisture on her breasts, her bare, paler belly and her brown thighs dissolved in the hot breath of the red rocks as if she had rubbed her skin with oil. Istvan reached for a stone.
As if sensing his intention, the snake vanished under the water. The surface, veined with the current, pained the eye with its bright silver sheen and the crimson reflections of the mountainsides.
“It disappeared,” he said without anger, skipping a pebble that threw up glittering droplets.
“Do you think it was poisonous?” Margit hastily pulled on her dress; the hot fabric clung obstinately to her wet back.
“Shall I find it and check?”
“Let’s go. You’ve spoiled it for me.”
Istvan soaked his shirt in the water, wrung it out, and slipped it on. In the opposite lane garishly painted, overloaded trucks were rolling up and stopping in the center of the riverbed like oxen at a watering place. Disheveled drivers climbed down into the water and drank from cupped hands; snorting, they rinsed their noses and mouths. All the gorge rang with their shouts. They watched curiously when the Austin moved out onto the broken rocks, but the engine, after its rest, carried them out effortlessly. The truck drivers began to splatter water on each other like romping children. They had already forgotten about the foreigners.
The smell of mildew and dry grass rose from the superheated marl. On the trees by the road, which were red with dust, the throbbing chime of cicadas drilled the air. The road twisted, sinking between the hills, rising, falling again into large valleys, forcing him to be alert. He concentrated; he kept a hand on the horn. It was hard to tell if, beyond the next clump of trees, they might not meet a truck charging along, piled high with cargo.
He slowed down. Women with round vessels on their heads were coming down a steep path toward the road. They wore only skirts; their suckled-out breasts dangled like drying socks on their sun-charred torsos. Three-layered necklaces of silver flashed in the sun. They pointed to Margit’s coppery hair and spoke to each other rapidly, shielding their eyes with their hands and immersing their faces in the deep shade. The curve of the road carried them behind a sparse clump of bushes.
“You’d have liked to photograph them.” He turned toward Margit. “They had beautiful adornments that you don’t get at the goldsmiths’, but you still see them in the villages, in places far from the cities.”
“No.” She peeped drowsily into his eyes. “I won’t buy anything. I don’t need cheering up.”
“They had ugly breasts,” he added a moment later, as if it had just occurred to him.
“You managed to notice?”
“I was thinking of you.” He drove on casually, holding the wheel with one hand. With the other he touched her thigh and the hand that lay limp on it. His dry shirt puffed out and fluttered in the hot wind. He withdrew his fingers, fearing that their sticky weight would be hot and tiresome.
In Bangalore they found themselves stuck in a crowd of automobiles invaded by swarms of bicycles. Gardens seemed to doze; dust tarnished the lacquered surfaces of leaves. Only the white walls of villas glared in the sun. They wanted nothing to eat. They drank strong, sweetened coffee boiled with milk. The seller cooled it by pouring it in a long, narrow stream, as if he were juggling the copper vessels and spinning out viscous threads.
It was still too early to settle in for the night. They checked their route on the map. The racket in the city was wearing; the air carried the odors of fermenting rubbish heaps, the smell of grease from frying, the sweetish reek of excrement. They decided to travel on toward Hyderabad. Istvan knew night would overtake them in the mountains; he thought they would stay in some village inn. When he went to fill the gasoline tank and the spare canister, Margit, wanting to stretch her legs, walked across the street, which was crowded with dark-skinned figures in blue and white shirts hanging over carelessly fastened dhotis. Young men accosted her gently but persistently, offering to help her, to accompany her, to advise her. They gazed at her, remarking on her gestures, her clothes, the color of her hair. The narrow shops exuded a strong, spicy fragrance. Dust and streaks of smoke from little stoves hung in the air, and the sour stench of heated cow dung.
In a kiosk she found local newspapers in English and old illustrated weeklies from abroad. She bought cigarettes and matches; undecided, she spread yellowed pages of print and her eyes fell on the headline “Demonstrations continue in Budapest.” She checked the date; the information was ten days old. The correspondent reported that a crowd of workers had gathered before Parliament demanding that those arrested be freed. She was happy to read the commentator’s opinion that protest rallies were still going on, and that Kádár would face many difficulties before he gained the confidence of a society outraged and embittered by recent events.
She began rifling through the files of newspapers, perusing page after page, searching for news from Hungary. She bought several papers, rolled them tightly and pushed them into her travel bag.
They drove for a long time through a thirsty valley. The sun reddened; when once they let it out of their sight, it retreated among the shaggy ridges of a jungle faded from drought. Among the huts — clay nests clinging to rocks — they looked for water. A half-naked old man with a face of ebony led them to a well, or rather a deep stone cistern. The water was drawn with a leather bag. The rope scraped as it wound; water spattered heavily into the stone throat, jangling and singing, and the sounds of its generous pouring whetted their thirst. They pushed the spokes of the winch impatiently with the full weight of their arms.
“Don’t drink it!” Margit blocked him. “See? That’s not water, just a soup of drowned beetles.”
“It won’t hurt me,” he insisted, feeling a delightful coolness trickling through his outstretched hands.
But the old man raised a warning finger. He pulled the bag onto the wide brim of the cistern and drew out round, almost black watermelons. A knife plunged deep with a crunching sound, cutting out a juicy pink half-moon. The refreshing juice trickled over Istvan’s chin and chest. He bit in eagerly, slurping and smacking. Swarms of red midges swirled over him, pushing blindly into his eyes and mouth.
“The best I’ve eaten in India!” he said with profound conviction, rinsing his hands in a stream of water that leaked from a hole in the leather bag.
The old man would take no payment. He gave them two more watermelons for the road. But an hour later, weary with the ride, they tried another and had no taste for it. The unpleasantly tepid flesh, souring in the heat, was repulsive. Even the juice had spoiled; it gave off an odor of fermentation, like the offscourings of fruit.
The sky hovered close to the earth; its glow faded. Languidly, as if with a sword, the distant blaze of the sunset pierced the violet. The ground still panted from the heat of the day. He drove without turning on the headlights. On the horizon the sun was burning out, and though its light spurted in long radiant streams like a despairing call for help, a low moon ambled out and steeped the valley in a bluish afterglow.
“Drive carefully now. Shall I take over?”
“No. My sleepiness has passed.”
A stooped elderly man hobbled along the edge of the road, leaning on a long stick. He raised a hand in the glare of the headlights, but lowered it when he saw that this was not a truck. Istvan gradually slowed down. They passed him standing behind a clump of trees with trunks that gleamed as if they had been whitewashed.