“Go away,” Terey said calmly. “Leave me in peace for a while.”
He waited until the door closed, then turned back to his letter.
I am not writing clearly. Everything will depend on the mood in which you read.
The heat is wearing. At night the pillow sticks to my back. I turn it over but that gives no relief. The sheet is thick and scratchy. I can’t sleep. My hair sticks to the back of my wet neck; it’s disgusting. I set the fan to blow straight in my face, but it is impossible to breathe. It’s like a hothouse. My colleagues come to work sleepless and on edge, the sick people are quarrelsome, the help tire us out with complaints. We search the newspapers frantically for the bulletin about the monsoons. The Hindus say, to comfort us, that they will come before long. May those winds drive you to Agra — though I know you are chained to the embassy, you have obligations, as I have to this flock of the blind and those who are becoming blind.
Grace wrote, but I have not mentioned you to her, not a word. How good to have you, to think of you, to wait. If you keep me waiting too long, I will come to Delhi. Don’t be surprised if you find me there one day.
Then you left me. I know you were right to, but…it was enough, that you…
The words were written on the very edge of the sheet. They broke off and he looked for what came after, but found only a signature on the side:
Margit
The envelope was postmarked three days earlier. His first impulse was to take the car and go; then he remembered that he had an appointment. He read the letter a second time, brooding over every sentence. The mention of Grace disturbed him. But he was at a loss as to how to warn Margit, for he wanted to avoid a confession about that wedding night. Grace was like a receding vision, fading, diminishing. Perhaps he had dislodged her from his memory. That evening he must call Agra.
The taste of dust was in the air. At moments the windows quivered from top to bottom and a dull moan came from the panes as the noon heat advanced in a wide wave. He went to his bedroom and slumped into a chair.
Margit — he saw her crown of red hair, remembered its light warm fragrance in the sun; the radiance of her great blue eyes pierced him with sudden delight. She has tasted suffering, she distinguishes the perpetually unappeased hunger of the body from love that leaves one a slave. With what joy we accept its bonds! With secret pride we subject ourselves to the longed-for tyranny. What happiness, to give ourselves with no thought for our own interests and to be assured that submission and lamb-like defenselessness will not be turned against us, for the other also loves.
Is it possible to love two women at the same time, each in a different way? he thought with his head thrown backward, feeling the frame of the chair warming and sticking to his back. It is not difficult to accept the possibility when the other one is a thousand kilometers away. My wife, my children: indeed, I am not going to disown them. Ilona in a simple dress with rose-colored stripes, dark as a gypsy; her heavy chignon which took unbearably long to undo; he saw her head crisscrossed by her fingers as if it were in a golden frame, heard the clink of hairpins on the stone floor. It was cool in the old house, and bright; the walls were a good, gleaming white from the painting that had been done for the holidays. The meadow smelled of freshly mown hay which they had been spreading with rakes, for fun, since the dewy sunrise.
“Well, why do you love me?” He looked deep into her eyes.
“Because you chose me.” The shadow of a smile flitted over her opulent lips, the full lips he had smothered in kisses. It was as if she had said, “Because you awoke me; there was a readiness in me, an expectation, but I did not know it yet.” And in that she was like the earth: she belonged to her conquerors, then she took possession of them, lavished herself on them. They were certain of their dominion over her. Earth; earth. When they went away, they carried her image before their eyes. They dreamed of her at night. Even dying, they dreamed of resting in her.
Ilona’s swarthy body was steeped in the beauty of the great steppe. He had even told her, “I would like to live in the twilight of your hair.” He slept — after he had run half naked until he was gasping, when the tall herbs grazed his chest; he still remembered the touch of the moist buds — and woke to her kiss, feeling the precious burden of her head, and then they fell on each other with their lips as the thick, dusky wing came down. Their faces immersed themselves in her hair as in a tent that shut out all the world. “I will be with you always, always, for better and for worse,” she whispered, and it had the ring of a vow. His own voice spoke clearly, “And I will not leave you until death.”
Bees crept over the stems of the spring catkins, with which vases on the altar were filled, until he was sprinkled with dust gold as honey in the sunlight. He did not say that to her when she was bent under a veil as if under the remains of winter hoarfrost, which melts instantly in a breath of warm air. He did not say it before the priests or the witnesses; their mustaches glittered like beetles’ shells and their cheeks were flushed dark from fruit brandy. In those companions of pleasure in the pasture, there was a deepening impatience: they wanted dancing, wine, perhaps even a brawl, which would give vent to pent-up energies, and then an occasion for making up, calling it even, embracing and getting enormously drunk. “And I will not leave you until…” he said, taking God as witness.
Margit did not want to be nothing more than an adventure; she had been honest enough to warn Istvan of that. He felt rather like a man who has usurped someone else’s rights. Her fiance had died as a soldier. But who could know what might have been hidden behind his death? What did he think of in his last moments? Perhaps he blamed himself, wanted to live, whimpered for mercy. Where did his pride end? For to the last he had had his audience before him — his own soldiers, who failed to honor his heroism. But was it decent to suspect him of pride when he had been burned alive? Perhaps he had only tested himself to the limit, discovered strength he had hardly suspected he had.
That was how they remembered him. That is how she remembers him.
And what if some Japanese had cut him down in time? What if he had fallen, scattering sparks, into the hot ashes, dragged himself on to escape the pain that tormented him? What if he had survived, his face scalding and glistening with scars? Margit would have stayed by him. But, seeing himself in the mirror one morning, would he not have shot himself in the head to free her and end all her self-abnegation, devotion, and sacrifice? For that would not have been the old love that they had pledged…Yet it might have been a love unlike what is usually called love, though to those looking on from outside it would have seemed a perpetual hospital duty, a charity.
How dare I accuse him of pride, Istvan thought. Only because I want to take what belongs to him? Am I afraid she might think me inferior, less worthy, greedy for spoils, like a jackal? She writes, “I wanted you to know about him; it is important to you as well.” To know that I come into someone else’s entitlement, into privileges the other man could not enjoy? That I have a chance to show myself a worthy successor? Hero, martyr. Would too much be demanded of me?
He sprang up and rubbed behind his ear; a drop of sweat was crawling like an ant. I want to love her and not to suffer. I must have her, I must — he shook off the thoughts that vexed him — then I will see. Life itself will sort things out.