Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“A couple of hours ago.”

“That is impossible! A moment ago he was still warm.”

“When you lay him on the fire, he will even be hot. But that is a corpse. It can be burned.”

Then he went to the wall where the half-naked peasant sat wounded in the chest. He took out the twisted tubes of his phonendoscope and listened to the man’s heartbeat.

“How did this happen?” he asked the elderly woman who was clutching the copper jug.

“How did this happen?” the orderly repeated. “Tell the truth.”

She began rapidly; his translation could hardly keep pace. From time to time he stopped to search for a word, but when the professor urged him forward with a wave of the hand, he persevered.

“He was with us for two days. He ate and drank. My son received him like a brother. It all happened because of that she-devil.” She pointed to the young woman, who by then had crept near the threshold and was leaning on it with both elbows. Her wrists glittered with bracelets of silver wire, and she sniffed like a dog as she looked at the distant clumps of shrubbery.

“He wanted vodka. He sent my son to the village — not to this one, to the one farther away, by the river. He gave him a few bracelets to sell. He said he would repay us. My son had to go, for the man had a gun and a knife. He boasted that he had killed two policemen and cut off the nose of a spy who was hunting him down. He was a terrible man, worse than a demon, but she liked him. My son had hardly left when she climbed up to the roof where he was, for he had called her. I know what they were doing. I strained my ears. I know every sound. I heard something different: she was beating her heels into that swine’s backside. I called to her to come down, but she would not. She only shouted, ‘Mother, come here,’ so I would see that she had him and the accursed girl could laugh at me.”

“It is not true!” the girl shrieked from behind the threshold. “I called to you for help! He was raping me!”

“And my son learned at the silver merchant’s that they were already looking for that bandit, that the police were abroad in the villages, and that he might descend on us. He was afraid they would charge him. When he met the patrol, he told him who was in our house.”

“The reward tempted him!” the girl shouted. “He sold out a friend, though he paid him back for every handful of rice!”

The man sat motionless, his head propped against the steaming wall on which Istvan saw bulletholes. His eyes were half closed, as if the world were of no interest to him. He seemed conscious only of what was happening inside him.

“The police approached the house very quietly,” the old woman went on.

“Because the betrayer was leading them. But the horses snorted and jostled each other in the dark,” the girl said. “And on the roof we did not sleep. We were stargazing.”

“Quiet, bitch! They rolled around the whole roof. She lured him on and played fast and loose with him. She gave him no rest. She was insatiable. I heard everything. If I had had his gun down below, I would have shot, but he took it up with him, the coward—”

“Because he is nobody’s fool,” the girl cut in.

“When they began to close in, he fired from the roof. The police stopped and began firing as well. Then my son shouted for us to run away, and the police would kill that other one. But they came down from the roof and tied me up and gagged me. She helped him.”

“How do you know that I did that? It was dark.”

“It was very dark, and one policemen climbed a tree so he could see all over the roof, and shot over and over until he wounded that bandit in the leg.”

“He did not wound him!” The girl beat her fist on the doorsill.

“Then why did he scream?” The old woman craned her lean neck toward the door.

“For joy. He shot the policeman in the tree and heard him drop his rifle and fall through the branches.”

“The bandit was happy!”

“There were many of them and one of him. He was the bravest.”

The policemen smoked cigarettes, looking indifferently at one woman and then at the other. Only the scrawny chest of the wounded man quivered as he sighed briefly.

“Another policeman went into the tree and shot again and again, until they had to hide inside. Then other officers came running up to the house and gouged out holes in the walls — with sticks, for the clay crumbled easily. They pushed their gun barrels in and shot. He was lying with her under the place where the barrels pushed through, and he paid no heed to the shooting.”

“He pushed you aside, too, because he did not want you to die!” the girl cried. “Mother, you traitor! You are ungrateful!”

“And when they started to make holes from the other side, she began shouting to them not to shoot because she was coming out.”

“Because he was afraid for me. He did not want them to kill me,” the girl corrected her angrily.

“And then she gave him her skirt and shawl. She lay there just as she is doing now. She shouted, she howled on the threshold like a dog, ‘Don’t shoot, it is I, Lakshmi.’ And that one, that wicked creature, went running out. My son thought it was she and leaped out to meet her, and he stabbed him with the knife and got away…got away, though they shot at him. The police waited until morning before they had the courage to go in. And that one never told them they could; she only cried and cried. I could not tell them. I had a rag over my mouth and I was tied up.”

“It is not true! I did not cry! I laughed. I thanked Kali that he was saved.”

“And my son will not live.”

“He will live — translate that—” the professor said to the orderly—“if there is no damage to the trachea. The lung is pierced but the heart is whole. He should live.”

“Better if he had died,” the young woman said with calm cruelty. “For my Mandhur will come and kill him as punishment. He must kill him for betraying him. It would be better if he had died.”

The mother could not endure this. She raked the earth with her nails and leaped up. She sprinkled a handful of mud in the girl’s face, blinding her, struck her in the head with all her might, then kicked her where she lay.

Istvan moved toward the girl, but the professor stopped him.

“Best not to interfere.” He pointed to the police, who had watched the entire incident with complete detachment. Cigarette smoke swirled tremulously and horseshoes clicked on the soaked ground. The horses whisked their hindquarters with their tails.

“I will go to the council of elders. They will punish you!” shouted the mother-in-law, flailing aimlessly like a drowning swimmer.

“Mother,” the son said suddenly.

The hoarse voice restored her presence of mind. She fell on him and, kneeling, stroked his temple with its high hairline and caressed his ear. He raised a hand from his thigh and pointed to the door. He shook his head lightly as if to say, No. No.

Then the young woman darted from the shadowy interior and ran with her bare feet pattering toward a sugar cane field next to a clump of thornbushes. The police rushed out in pursuit, but the girl, in full flight like a frightened animal, was nimbler than they. One officer tore the plastic from his saddle and leaped onto his horse, but as he plunged into the thornbushes, he saw that the barbed mesh was impenetrable.

“Stop! Stop or I will shoot!” he called, rising in his stirrups and aiming into the thicket, from which they could hear the crackling of branches; she must have been creeping along the bottom like a lizard.

But he did not shoot. The police returned to their commander, who gave them orders as to how to redeploy themselves.

“Let her be. She will guide us to him,” he said. “Surely they have agreed on a meeting place. She has lost her husband and now she will lose the object of her infatuation,” he added calmly. “She is crazed with love.”