Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

As he was sitting behind his desk reviewing some newspapers and periodicals, the door opened discreetly and Ferenc walked in.

“I am not disturbing you?”

“Since when do you have to concern yourself about the value of my time? Surely there is no hurry; the reports have been sent out. The boss is waiting for the Indonesian, for his return visit, so relax. We can chat. Sit down. Tell me what brings you here.”

Ferenc turned his slender face toward the window, frowned, and thought for a minute as if he had forgotten why he had come. Then instead of taking a chair, he pushed the stack of publications aside and sat on a corner of the desk. Istvan saw himself reflected in the man’s sunglasses as in a fun house mirror, with large hands and a little head like an insect’s thrown back in expectation.

“Don’t you smell a foul odor?” His nostrils twitched and he looked Terey closely in the eye.

“Here, among us? Or are you thinking of our country?”

“No. I smell the stench of war in the world.”

“Big news.” Istvan waved belittlingly. “It has been smoldering for years. Time to get used to it.”

“I am thinking of something worse.”

“Of a third?”

“And probably the last.”

“You must have slept poorly last night or eaten something spoiled,” Terey jibed. “Why are you favoring me with this discovery? Go to the boss, that consummate politician. He will shout at you, he will give you a shot of plum vodka to relieve the pressure, and the evil premonitions will vanish like magic.”

“I came to you as one man to another.”

“I have risen in your estimation.”

“I, too, have moments of weakness.” He looked with irritation at Terey lolling in an armchair.

“Well, speak, though of course I never know if you have come of your own volition or if the boss sends you to keep a covert watch on me.” He put a hand to his temple.

But Ferenc turned away again and looked through the window at the wall of the storage room over the garage. It was covered with plaited vines and shaded by leaves which, like water, the breeze alternately smoothed and ruffled. “You were not born yesterday,” he said. “You know how to read.”

“And even how to write. Word of honor. The critics acknowledged it. It is no idle boast.”

“Stop clowning. Lay out a couple of news items from the last few days — not from the front pages of the newspapers,” he said reflectively, still looking at the flickering lights and shadows on the fleece of greenery.

“What do you see there?” Istvan asked edgily.

“The wall. Look,” he pointed to the rippling mass of leaves, “over the surface, the soft tremors, beautiful to the eye, and underneath it, the wall. One man said to me — a man who had stood with his face to such a wall—‘You have thick, grainy plaster under your nose, and you see perfectly the whole configuration of things; you see your whole life. Then you know what you could have done with it. And it is too late.’ Say — what can you do so that someone, someday, does not suddenly shatter your life? So that it will not become evident that those little tricks, that promotion, that perquisite or that excessive obligingness, obscured the fundamental concerns that make it worthwhile to live? And do you think that you are the only true Hungarian? That you have a monopoly on honest impulses? Istvan, I don’t want them to shove a gun barrel into my back and march me away because the time has come to pay for the actions of those who chose the right moments to duck, who hauled down the flag.”

Istvan looked at the secretary, uncertain if he were encouraging him to make a confession or share a confidence in order to accuse and stigmatize him publicly at some later time. “Well? Well?” Ferenc urged.

“You who are several years older had a war. You are proven — to yourselves, at least. You know by now what you are capable of. Today we walk along together, but you can use that experience as a point of reference anytime, and we…We give way one step at a time. We acquiesce to compromises, we bungle things, we founder. Ah, if we even knew the depth of our mediocrity! Don’t pretend not to understand in order to spite me. You know what I’m talking about.”

Ferenc took off his glasses and toyed with them like a woman at a costume ball playing with her mask, but his eyes were full of strain and apprehension.

“I repudiated comrades, not for a career. I cannot live without the party.” The admission carried the ring of sincerity. “I was young. I believed blindly. Now I am crushed that Beria’s gang, that criminal clique, sent our best sons there.” He motioned with his chin toward the wall hidden under leaves full of uneasily shifting light.

“What has come over you?” The counselor tilted his head back, resting it on his clasped hands, and watched as Ferenc raked his fingers through his thick, wavy hair.

“What do you think about as you read the newspapers?” He leafed through the pile of publications on the desk. Throwing some of them open, he ran his eyes over the headlines as if he wanted to assure himself of something. Then, evidently dismayed, he crumpled them carelessly.

“A day after the report that Nasser had seized the Suez Canal, a hundred million pounds were lost on the London stock exchange. And the crisis continues. Stocks are plummeting. France and England put on pressure to no avail. What does a strike by the lock operators and a revolt of the pilots prove? We sent our ships, ships that were under contract, and the canal worked. The West has no cause to complain that transport will shut down, that there will be a stoppage. So they are trying an inside tactic.

“Yesterday in Cairo several Englishmen were arrested. Intelligence agents. There was an inquiry. I heard on the radio today how they stopped an Israeli troop transport vessel and before they escorted it to harbor, it sank for no visible cause. What was the cargo? Cement. Do you understand? A wreck loaded with cement to block the canal. Do you want blood? Scuffles on the border between Israel and Egypt. Of course those killed were Arabs; they pounded the fellaheen. Did you notice that there is an English fleet on Cyprus? The Greeks protested; that was suppressed instantly. To cow them, to silence them, the English shot eight. There had not been such verdicts there in the past.”

“So you think…”

“And why did Queen Elizabeth call up two yearly army-lists? They are shifting the commandos to Cyprus. Look — today’s short communiqué: ‘Bomb squads on Malta at full complement.’”

“You will say next that it is autumn, the crops have been harvested, so a war could begin.” Istvan forced a laugh.

“You absolutely remind me of our peasants, those born politicians, especially when they are sipping their fruit brandy. You, consummate politician, will overlook the Soviet Union and the United States, powers not inclined to jump at each other’s throats, for they know what the other side has up its sleeve. Heavy. Very heavy. The wrestlers pat their muscles, they flex their biceps, they garner applause from the audience and listen to those who shout to urge them on, but they themselves are cautious.

“Look”—Ferenc slapped an open newspaper—“and think like a politician, not like a poet! They are waiting for a moment of weakness on our parts; they want to exploit it. If they intend to seize the Suez, to stifle Nasser, it can only be now, when things are at the boiling point in our camp, when we are hard at work imposing order and sweeping out the rubbish…They are not well acquainted with the Russians. They think that Khrushchev talked away all that concentrated energy, that he dismantled the engine piecemeal in order to inspect it and change the screws and gaskets. They do not know that there are people who can be called up in a flash, that in the face of a threat the party and the nation would be one. Let Russia shove its fist under their noses and the West will soon come to its senses and be polite.”