“And has your campaign brought results?”
“Yes. They must allot pastures, pave the watering places, set the healthy animals apart — I do not dare say the farm-bred animals — and remove the sick for the time being, for treatment. The veterinarians’ assistants must be Muslims, for their religion counts it no sin for them to kill without hesitation. And everything takes place with all protocols observed, painlessly. The animals must be coddled so that a fanatical crowd armed with sticks, stones, and sickles does not beat us to a pulp. I know that I am acting against the will of the people; any of them would joyfully sacrifice his own life to save a half-dead cow. If they saw my true intent, I would be a demon to them, a destroyer of the source of their sanctification. The cow, mother of goodness, the nourisher. The cow, which cleanses from guilt. It is enough to receive, to swallow—Panchagavya! — five ingredients of magic medicine that come from her: sweet milk, sour milk, butter, dung, and urine.”
“You are an unbeliever?” Istvan leaned toward him, surprised.
The man opened his shirt and showed him a sacred thread that made a loop on his chest. He was a Brahmin — perhaps a rebellious one, but still a member of the highest caste.
“I want to help people, to save their lives,” he said reflectively.
Istvan noticed that he was smoking a cigarette, puffing with his fingers wrapped around the end of it so as not to touch it with his lips, and he smiled almost imperceptibly. Even this iconoclast was afraid the cigarette might have been made by a machine operated by one of the unclean, or packed by one, and he preferred to avoid contamination.
In front of them the moon went its way, foundering in the tops of trees hewn from old silver. Its round face shone, then seemed to dim; it pulsed with radiance like a living thing. Jackals wailed, choking with spasmodic sobs. Yes — this man with his English education, bold, resolved, valued people’s lives above the lives of cows, but those he wanted to save from hunger he preferred to keep within the old divisions of caste — in the place birth, fate, and the gods had appointed for them.
He saw on the Hindu’s slender fingers the red reflection from the burning tip of the concealed cigarette when he pressed it to his lips. The dog in its armor sat in the middle of the yard; raising her head, she echoed the jackals’ whining note. Then, as if frightened by the dead face of the rising moon and worried about her pups, she scratched at the door. It opened slightly under the pressure of her paw: with a jarring clank the metal spines caught on it.
An overwhelming vision of this world in its captivating wholeness came over him and he loved the man, the enemy of cows, who sat crosslegged beside him; loved the dog, who was forcing her way into the sleepy dimness of the shed; loved the old man, though he was a slaughterer of chickens; loved the living chickens who squeaked in their sleep, awaiting their turn. He even loved the voices of the jackals, as if their lament, wrested from their famished entrails, was part of that world’s entreaty. The actions of all living things seemed incalculably precious, though he knew they were like words written with a stick on a path trodden by feet and hooves and sprinkled with dust by the wind.
For he was convinced that one must undertake the troublesome task of transforming the world, and carry on until the last heartbeat, the last breath. He felt that he was close to a great, enchantingly simple secret that would be revealed to him that night so that he would tremble with amazement that he had not guessed it long before. A few minutes more…The silver mask with its obliterated features seemed to rustle in the treetops in the gap between the mountains, to shatter the boughs. He had never been so close to the truth; he longed for it, and he feared that it would change him.
And then the roosters in the village began to crow raucously, as if with alarm. The younger ones in the shed chimed in in immature, broken voices. From inside the building came Margit’s voice, filled with sleepy alarm.
He went inside. When he pushed aside the mosquito netting, she seized his hand and pressed it to her hot chest. Her heart was pounding.
“Were you afraid? After all, I’m here,” he whispered. She relaxed and fell back on the bed with relief.
“Something was crawling near the bed. Probably a rat. I called and you were nowhere to be found. I was frightened. Outside the screen in the door I saw that dreadful moon and someone sitting hunched over, lurking there as if to tell me something awful,” she mumbled, not letting go of his hand.
“That’s our neighbor.” He laughed lightly. “It’s the full moon. An exceptionally beautiful night. We chatted for a while, sitting on the threshold.”
He noticed that her breathing was regular, that already she had ceased to hear him. Though she held his hand involuntarily, she was in a deep sleep. He went to his bed and undressed slowly under the netting. Mosquitoes flew over him and bumped into the screen. Their neighbor shuffled in, cleared his throat for a long time, and spat. Istvan fell asleep, still hearing a light splashing; he remembered with relief that water was spattering from the barrel a few drops at a time. He closed his heavy eyelids, then half-opened them. The light still glowed through the holes in the wallpaper.
It frightened him that this moon, bathed in its own glow, was merging with the whole world and overlooking, displacing, the woman he truly loved. He listened to her calm breathing. The scratching of the rat’s feet, the scraping and rustling, disturbed him. The truth. What is the truth in my case? Did I love less when I pledged to be faithful to Ilona? Perhaps in a different way, and I was different, he thought, hoping to justify himself.
He saw the white river, full of its own sheen, and someone warned him that that was just the truth. Simply to spite himself, he made his way to the water with an angry fearlessness, plunged a foot into it, and was appalled to realize that that white-hot metal, moving as from a blazing invisible furnace, would cool in unknown forms. He had seen such a pouroff of steel in Csepel, in Budapest. He felt no pain except that the leg with which he had stepped so confidently, which he had trusted not to fail him — a part of his very self — gave way and he lost his balance. He flew toward death in blinding light.
He woke, involuntarily feeling with his hand to be certain he still had a leg. His foot stung; he must have thrust it out from under the netting when he pushed himself onto the mattress. He scratched himself for a long time, happy that he had a leg. He dozed and dug at the bites with his nails again. The mosquitoes must have squeezed in under the mesh, for it seemed to him that they were trumpeting straight in his ear, grazing him, tickling him with their wings. But he did not fight them; he only covered his head with his hand and slept.
In the morning they drank strong tea and in delightful weather drove to Hyderabad. Their Hindu acquaintance had already risen at dawn so as to perform his ablutions on the steps of the temple above the smooth surface of the cistern, over the edge of which the sky seemed to have been poured. Though they had not slept through the night, they were not tired. The sun, not yet in full glare, sparkled through the trees beside the road and seemed to breathe in their faces.
At noon Margit took the wheel and something like a daze, a somnolence, came over him. His head drooped. He knew they were riding through plains tufted with sparse clumps of trees. Real images blended with dreamlike visions and he slept, breathing in the fragrance of dry leaves, fires dead in their ashes and the girl’s light, elusive perfume.