Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

Sliding into muck greasy as lard, he scrambled out onto the shore. His legs seemed to be covered with red lacquer. He washed them for a long time, cursing. Finally he agreed that six Hindus should carry him onto the grass. There they were happy to smoke the cigarettes he offered them as treats.

All the village came down to watch the expedition. They cheered the driver on by shouting rhythmically, in chorus. The Land Rover rolled along slowly, accompanied by a pack of boys who clung to its sides. In an excess of zeal they even waded ahead of the hood, showing that the bottom was even.

They managed the fording without incident. It appeared that the oxen waiting at the ready had not been needed.

“As of today I pronounce you captain,” Istvan said to the professor as he climbed into his seat in the Land Rover. “You cut a splendid figure in the automobile in the middle of the river, just as if you had been on the bridge of a sinking ship.”

“Thank you. We made it,” Salminen muttered. “You know, I loathe rivers. They always remind me of cemeteries. And custom, to say nothing of parsimoniousness, leaves some remains unburned.”

On the other bank, as if a new journey had begun, they rode along with no difficulty. After an hour they came upon a column of tongas loaded with sacks. The wheels, hewn from thick boards, whined mournfully.

“What are they carrying?” Istvan asked the orderly.

“Sand. They are swindlers. They are making good money.”

The heads of the swaying oxen hung low; the animals breathed heavily. The drivers shouted rather from habit than from hope that they would move faster.

“Sand from the old river bed. The funeral company sends it in small bags to devout emigres so they can mix the ashes of their dead with it before they scatter them into strange African rivers. There are a couple of firms in this business,” the orderly explained matter-of-factly. “This sand is whiter and more beautiful than sand from the Ganges. The living like it better, it reminds them of their old dreams, and the dead do not complain. It is all the same to them.”

The hot breath of the desert blew into their faces. A sparkling white ocean of sand ran in delicate ripples to the horizon. The glare from the dunes hurt the eye. Grains of sand spun about on the wind, as if a light smoke were rising from the tops of the dunes, then scattering onto the perpetually shifting ridges. The desert, in spite of its lifelessness, seemed full of sinister motion.

They had to wait their turn. A line of tongas stretched ahead of them, moving in the opposite direction, and a horn tooted from a stray truck painted with flowers and elephants.

Istvan saw that the wheels of the Land Rover were rolling over black strips sprinkled with sand — two iron tracks laid in the very heart of the desert.

“During the war the English built this railroad,” the driver explained. “The tongas will make way for us and we will cut over to the village. To our Dr. Ward.”

“I feel as though we have come terribly far from Delhi,” Terey said reflectively, “and hardly a day has passed.”

“We are around a hundred and twenty kilometers from Agra.” The professor measured the distance with his fingers on the outspread map. “Under normal conditions, on a good highway, it is a two-hour trip.”

Above the blinding white dunes they saw a pole with a long, writhing tatter of orange fabric. Low cottages appeared, and a large water tank painted white. A windmill, flashing in the sun, pumped water without stopping. Mats were stretched over the entrances to the cottages to provide what shade they could. Women draped in red and blue went with jugs for water. Suddenly they caught the smell of smoke and a nauseating odor of human excrement. This was the village they had labored to reach.

Istvan thought his heart would burst with anxiety. He moistened his dry lips. He did not know how he would be received. What would he hear? He was like a prisoner awaiting a verdict.

“I see them!” the driver cried suddenly. “Madam Doctor!”

He began honking the horn like a man possessed, forgetting that from that distance no one in the village would hear.

They sat erect; searing heat blew into their faces, drying their sweat. With blinking eyes they gazed at two small figures in white as they passed between the cottages, blurring in the light, flashing in the shadows, then disappearing.

“How much longer will she be here?” Istvan asked the professor.

“A week. Ten days. But I would like to look over the results, glance at the bacteria culture, and start back — to get away, for if high winds set in, we are trapped.”

Like the black skeletons of unknown beasts or the bold outlines of modern sculptures, half-buried tree trunks with a few branches chopped off protruded from the ground, polished by the sand to a shining ebony.

They drew near the low cottages and sheds knocked together from pieces of tin barrels and crates. There were more than a dozen houses, clustered like shrewd hens alarmed by a hawk. White, glassy sand trickled through the wattled fences.

The vehicle drove up and stopped near a jeep covered with oil-stained canvas strapped to pegs. Istvan jumped out, landing up to his ankles in a pile of gravel that scorched him through his shoes like ash from a smoldering fire. A low breeze made the canvas flap and blew the odor of gasoline vapor, lubricants, and overheated iron into their faces. The drivers were chatting, tracing a route in the sand with their fingers. It appeared that if they had gone thirty kilometers farther and turned onto a road through the fields, then toward the river, there would have been not only a ford but even a ferry.

“The professor ordered, above all, that we find the tracks,” the chauffeur told his colleague to justify himself, “and we arrived here successfully.”

Istvan had already seen the white flag with the red cross on one of the sheds. He walked toward it first, then slowed down so the professor could catch up to him. The desert heat surged toward them in an unbroken burning wave. He saw Hindus lying inside the cottages, almost naked and wet with perspiration, arms outspread. Two dogs with dingy coats pawed through a rubbish heap, raising clouds of ash. As the men approached the sheds, Istvan spied the three-cornered muzzles of jackals. They scurried away one after the other, moving in their own shadows along the dazzling white slope of a dune.

A girl came out of one of the buildings, led by her mother in a voluminous skirt and unfastened caftan. The woman’s long, heavily suckled breasts looked like dying tumors. They greeted the men diffidently as they passed. Istvan noticed the child’s swollen, oozing eyelids and the streaks tears and pus had left on her cheeks. Enormous desert flies sat on her face, crawling and grazing with legs hairy as spiders’. She did not even try to whisk them away.

“Hello, Miss Ward!” the professor called impatiently. “At last we have waded through to this hell.”

He saw Margit. She was a little slumped as she walked out, but immediately held herself upright as an old campaigner at the sight of his general.

“Salve dux.” She raised a hand with forced cheerfulness. “So you have exhumed me from the sand!”

Asserting the privilege of his age, the professor took her in his arms and kissed her cheek.

“Hello, Margit,” Istvan said, timidly reminding her of his presence.

“Istvan!” She held a hand out to him joyfully, as if there had not been almost two months’ ominous silence between them. He pressed her hot, slightly sticky fingers and his heart contracted with emotion.

“I couldn’t wait,” he whispered. He wanted to look at her. He raised his dark glasses but the sun streamed into his eyes, unexpectedly blinding him.