Suddenly he seemed to see the ambassador in Budapest, walking with the shuffling steps of an old man. He stopped and leaned on a tree, oblivious to people who looked at him as they passed by, gasping through parted purple lips. Light air washed by a spring shower, wet, gleaming pavement and sparkling leaves, wrought iron garden fences, a boundless sky — and a man unable to get his breath. His feet slid along the ground, which had long since ceased to be a battlefield and become, in spite of the paving stones, soft and slushy. He shuffled, and if he still felt the earth under the soles of his shoes, it seemed unfriendly; it had become insistent. It reminded him that it was there, that it was waiting.
A servant brought a tray with coffee in two small, brittle cups. “Drink.” The boss’s tone was peremptory. Roused from his thoughts, Istvan looked at Bajcsy’s crumpled face. The older man reached for a cup and lifted it to his open lips. His hand trembled and drops of brown liquid fell onto the rug.
“So I shouldn’t go back to work?”
“That would be best.”
He looked back from the doorway. He saw the bulky, stooped figure, in a jacket hitched up too high, crammed between the arms of the chair.
“And my letters?”
“I ordered that.” He took the responsibility for everything on himself, certain that he was equal to it. “They are in the safe. Tell the cryptographer to give them to you. I don’t need them. I think we understand each other.”
Istvan passed through the shadowy house and walked out between the pillars on the porch. He sighed deeply and inhaled the clean, fragrant air as if he wanted to escape the dust, the weightless suspended particles, the ashes blown from the pipe that was stifling the ambassador. The watchman pulled aside the heavy gate; the garden seemed to be sleeping in the winter sun.
Fragments of sentences came back to him and he brooded over gestures and tones of voice, thought of more pertinent, incisive answers, marveling that they came to mind only now. He shrugged with a dissatisfied frown, like a man who should have provided crucial information but procrastinated, and an evaluation was written. But Ferenc didn’t pin the business he had going with the whiskey bought with the diplomatic certificates on me, and he could have; I wouldn’t have been able to explain. They would have believed him. In the end he preferred that nothing be said about it; he was saving his own skin. Unconsciously Istvan wanted to see his colleagues in a better light. He was hungry for goodness and congeniality.
His feet scraped on the paving stones; the sound echoed from the embassy walls. The working day was over. The caretaker stood among the palms in green-painted pots, keeping an eye on the Indian sweepers to make sure they took up the matting that served as a walkway and beat it, rather than simply brushing its surface as the usual cleaners did.
“Is it you, counselor?” The caretaker lunged toward him with such unfeigned joy that Istvan could not push away his extended hands. “I said I would bet my head that you would come back.”
“But you accused me in the matter of the bottles.”
“How could I be quiet when they all pounced on you? I spoke because no one else gave me a wretched bottle. I told them what kind of man you are, and right away they turned it into something to blame you for. I meant to defend you. A person has to bite his tongue before saying a word. I, after all…Surely you believe me,” he said pleadingly, pressing his hand.
“I believe you now — but it was painful for me.”
“I would have been on your side, comrade counselor. But when the ambassador said that he knew from a certain source that you had bolted, I kept quiet. I had my tail between my legs.”
“And you signed,” Istvan said bitterly.
“I signed. And not only I. It happened in such a way that there was no holding one’s own ground.”
“Very well, old friend. There is no more to say. The most important thing is that you didn’t go back on me.”
“The way it came out it was as if we had been slapped in the face.”
“Is the cryptographer still here?”
“Yes. In his office. The secretary is in, too.”
He hopped over the roll of matting that lay in the middle of the steps as if it were a threshold that was too high. He had hardly opened the door when Judit rose from her desk and threw herself on his neck as if he had been saved from impending death. She kissed him. He did not hug her; he stood with his hands lowered. He felt her warm, ample, friendly body against him. He saw, close to his face, her blue-painted eyelids and mild hazel eyes.
“Are you angry? Won’t you forgive us? Understand, Istvan, Bajcsy had information from some woman, absolutely certain information that you had sailed from Cochin with that Australian. Listen! I called you at the shore. They told me at the hotel that no such person was there. They always mix things up, mispronounce our names. They said — though I persisted — that a married couple had been there and gone away. No doubt they said that to get rid of me. A call from Delhi startled them. Then there was the meeting. The ambassador was so sure when he said that he knew the facts, that he was notifying us…that woman…”
Grace. It flashed through his mind. Grace, surely.
“I was with her.” He put a hand on Judit’s arm.
“Istvan, do you love her?” she asked in alarm. “What will happen to you both?”
He stood without a word, as if he had been struck by a hammer. Only now did the question cut him to the very heart. He turned around reluctantly, brimming with bitterness. He caught her look; it was full of pity and kindness, as if she understood — as if she had the same kind of test behind her and, feeling her own scars, wanted to buoy him up, to whisper: You see, I eat, I dress, I work, I live, do I not?
When he drummed with his fist on the armored door, he felt a hard spasm in his belly, as he had in wartime before an offensive. I’m wounded. The mournful refrain repeated itself. I’m wounded.
Little by little the door opened. Smoke billowed from behind it as if the room were burning. When he saw the metal box full of crumpled cigarettes on the table, the fumes suspended in the air — the tilted blue layers the other man stirred as he moved about — he realized that something serious had happened.
“I’ve come for my letters.”
The cryptographer looked around alertly. He asked no questions. Taciturn as usual, a little sleepy and absent-minded, he opened the safe and took out a thick envelope with a number.
“Was it a disciplinary recall?”
“No. At your own request. The date of your departure is at the discretion of the management of the mission. Have you spoken with the ambassador?”
Istvan opened the envelope and shook a handful of letters out onto the table. He recognized Ilona’s handwriting at once. He was enraged to see that they had all been opened. On some he saw something written with a red marker on one corner: the letter P.
“What I got I’ll give back.” His anger leaped ahead of events. “What does that mean?” He pointed to the marking.
“To photograph it. You probably want the films and the pictures. I have them in a separate place. Please just sign for them. I must do things by the rules.”
It isn’t his fault, Istvan thought. He only got an order and carried it out. Controlling his feelings with difficulty, he wrote his name in the open book. He saw the other man’s tremulous blink and suddenly it dawned on him that the cryptographer had deliberately not asked on whose authority he was collecting the papers and photographs. He had simply obliged him by returning them. Perhaps he had even taken a risk.
“Did you read the letters as well?”
“I sit here. I wait for hours. I get bored. I read them. Have a look at the ones that are marked. The parcel was waiting for the couriers. You withdrew it just in time.”