I stand in the darkness, naked before the sea, the sterile earth and the stars — alone, as in the moment of death. Let me count the days that are left to me and stifle the thought of myself, of the body’s joy, of approbation fleeting as foam.
As if he were feeling around him those who were departing the world that night, as if he were one of them, he dared to raise his head. Great stars hung like the points of raised spears.
Help me, so I may accomplish even a part of that which You began, from which You stepped aside — so I may advance a few steps farther on the road You abandoned. Take my eyes if they see only superficial things.
A sacrificial flame kindled in his heart.
Change my tongue into a coal if it speaks idle words. Let me have one thought, one desire: to give myself without calculation, without receiving a word of gratitude, even without hope, to the last spasm and the bottom of my heart, to the renunciation of myself in Your name, Who are love. To serve You by giving myself over to the most miserable, to those who never know satisfaction, to the jealous, to those with a cruel thirst for love and those who don’t believe in it. They wait for me, though they know nothing about me. They: those nearest me, those from my country and those from distant continents. I see them as if with one face, breathing hoarsely through its open mouth, pouring with sweat — a work-worn, sorrowful human face. Yours.
He was accustomed to the darkness now. On the smooth, gleaming sand he saw thousands, hundreds of thousands of crabs no bigger than peas, rolling yet smaller globules from the mud. Another wave came. If it were not to engulf them and wash them away, this was the last moment to burrow in and hide — to wait until the stream of water retreated. They emerged from the packed sand and began again. He thought of time and generations, arduous human building, creation in the face of destruction. All the shore teemed, glimmering with phosphorescence from the unabating, hurried activity.
Though the cry he had flung into the dark went without an answer, in the slow billowing of water white with crests of foam and the swarming of the crabs, which did not pause from their labor, he found new strength.
He went in to Margit, who shivered in her sleep when she felt the coolness of his body. He lay with his eyes open, his muscles contracted with pain.
“What have you come for?”
Margit’s whisper. It seemed to him that he was still seeing her at the shore.
“I had to be with you.”
The bitter curl of the lips. The shadow, the memory of her smile.
“You were afraid that…”
“Yes.”
“Did you come out of concern for me or for yourself?”
In the twilight of the avenue her hair gleamed like copper under the streetlights; he could not see her face. He opened the doors of the Austin. She hesitated, then bent over and got in without looking at him. Her eyes evaded his by gazing into the street, toward the long line of trees interspersed with the greenish glow of the lamps.
“That would have been simpler,” she said after a while. “For where do I start? You took everything from me.”
She said no more. She was overcome by weariness. Suddenly she raised her head and their eyes met in the mirror.
“How little you know me. Don’t be afraid,” she said in a hard tone. “I won’t do that. You can’t free yourself from me now. I’ll be a weight on your heart through all the nights we won’t be together. It’s terrible, Istvan, but even after what you’ve done, I can’t hate you. I can’t.”
“I had to do it,” he ventured in a whisper as pain pierced his heart.
“You had to. You had to.” She bent her head. “How I hate Him. The cursed idol, faceless, infallible, for He is not material, like us.” She was blaspheming, spasmodically clenching her hands. “You’ve sacrificed us both for Him.”
He listened. Every word burned, then turned to ashes. She had cut him to the quick; she could not have wounded him more deeply.
“I will not kill myself, do you hear? Don’t torture yourself, go, rest…Go to sleep,” she whispered, laying her hand forgivingly on the back of his bowed neck. He bit his lips and trembled under her touch. Suddenly a sob wrenched itself from him. The tears of a man broken by pain; it is most charitable not to look at them.
“Will you ever forgive me?” he moaned. “Me…You should accuse me, not Him.”
She contradicted him with a slow movement of her head.
An approaching car cast a sharp glare over her. Her eyes were wide, as if she were blind. She was numb; she saw days like voids before her, a desert impossible to wade through, time when she would be alone as a stone among stones.
“Go now,” she whispered. “End your vigil over the dead.”
“Let me stay. Let me take you to the plane. I want to be with you to the last.”
“When the porter rang and said the gentleman was waiting, I cried, ‘Who?’ ‘The one who always comes…’” She repeated the phrase through clenched teeth. “I sent him to check. I didn’t think you’d have the courage. But it was you. And everything came back. You’re here.”
Timidly he made out the outline of her face in the dark, the straight nose, the pale, narrowed lips — lips he remembered as full, parted, expectant.
“When you go back,” she breathed in the voice of one who is dying of an illness and in exhaustion whispers, “When you bury me, I want you to…”
He waited, quivering and ready, vowing to himself to do anything she might demand.
“Don’t let them crush you. Stand up for yourself. Be hard, cruelly hard, as you are to me.”
To the last she was thinking only of him: he and his writing were important. She believed that he was a creator. That with a word he could call things to life, revive them, stop time.
The old peanut vendor shook his smoky stove on its bamboo slat. An imperceptible breath of air bent its five red flames. As if she could not bear for anyone to go away disappointed that night, she let him hand her nuts in a little cone of twisted newspaper that smelled of kerosene. She did not open it; it lay between them. The old man caught the money and walked away a few steps. Then, as if his honesty had gotten the better of him, he turned back and held out another bag.
“I had a premonition that it would end this way.” She opened her hands spasmodically as if she were trying to grasp an elusive thread. “And I didn’t want to accept it. I couldn’t believe it.”
“Do you regret everything? Would you rather we had never…”
“No.” For the first time, she looked at him. “Without you I would never have known how it was possible to be the happiest woman in the world. Should I thank you? Do you want to wring that from me? You gave me a gift and then took away all the joy. You shattered it.”
The words lashed him. He cringed and took the blows.
Beggars, some of them women and children, came out of the darkness squealing like hungry birds. They peered into the car. They stood patiently for a long time with fingers outspread. She dug the last of her change out of her pocket. They crowded in, shouting and pushing. In the light from passing cars he saw their thin legs, their tattered, threadbare clothing. They could not shake off the whining crowd; the mendicants shoved their faces through the window and tapped on the car with their fingers. Great flashing eyes gazed from under matted hair, waiting for the hand that sprinkled coins.
“Give them something.”
“They’ll never leave us alone,” he said. When she threw a whole handful of coins onto the walk, he turned on the headlights, blew the horn, and drove on — escaped.
“I’m poorer than they are,” she whispered. “I have nothing.”
They rode along the Yamuna. Below them the funeral pyres were burning out. He drove her through Old Delhi. On the sidewalks the homeless lay like headless cocoons, wrapped in soiled sheets. Garlands of colored light bulbs blazed as if in derision; gigantic figures of film heroes swung on cables. We were here, he thought bitterly as each place they passed evoked a memory. We visited Krishan’s wife in the little room behind the tailors’ workshop. We bought sandals. We took our first walk, when I pushed her into the smoke of dried cow dung as if it were deep water — the stench of burned bodies, the smell of unleavened bread baked on tin plates. She was immersed in the real India.