Over lunch, Tibor tells George that his lack of ideas isn't just his own ailment: "It's the terminal illness of our culture." With the fall of the Iron Curtain, there are infinite worldwide media outlets for "noise" and opinions, and the natural allure of the censored, repressed idea--and the creativity which repression counterintuitively engenders--has withered and died. Therefore, allowing all ideas to be broadcast or expressed means they will all go up in puffs of smoke, and--.
"Talk, talk, talk," Maria declares (in English), tucking into a slice of cake. George, one eye trained on Alicia Hunt's swimsuit photo shoot, demands to know what the "unusual event" was that brought her and Tibor together. "Maria's awakening as a woman," says Tibor. Maria disagrees. She was drowning, as it happens--but "like all writers," Tibor was seeking out deep meaning in an ordinary event. "Art," he retorts, "is the discovery of hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life.".
"There!" she counters triumphantly. "You were talking about art when I was dying!" Besides, how does he know George really wants to hear the story? Tibor points out that George is at the resort to make a film about a woman's body, and "Maria's story is also about the body." Maria, apparently won over by this fact, laughs and lets him proceed. Elsewhere on the beach, Sarah--now dressed and with piano accompaniment--begins rehearsing a sultry version of "Summertime.".
"You must understand," Tibor begins, "that before the incident, she was not the woman she is today.".
Maria and her husband were a working-class couple, on what was for them a very extravagant vacation, but her husband suddenly had to return to the city at once. Staying on alone, since they had already paid for the room, Maria decided one morning to go swimming, putting on a new, two-piece red bathing suit. At the beach, in the midst of so many strangers, the new suit suddenly made her feel uncomfortable and exposed; once in the water, however, she felt much freer in her movements.
