Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

He closed his desk. He reached for the last swallow of cold coffee, but two half-drowned flies were twitching in the thick sludge at the bottom of the cup.

I was suffocating in that embassy, he thought, exhaling deeply in the radiant azure of the day. The green fringes of the palms swayed, stroking the luminous sky. As he drove the Austin he was still deliberating about whether his conversation with the ambassador had been beneficial or whether there was cause for worry. But he fell under the spell of the sunny afternoon, dazzled by the clusters of flowers that drooped from behind low garden walls: sprays of little roses, the scarlet and purple of feathery bougainvillea. His eyes began to clear after laboring through swarms of black print, through columns of information crowding against each other in newspapers and periodicals — accounts of violence and unrest in a world tormented by anger, covetousness, and hate. He saw the red earth, the hot greenery of burgeoning trees, the bluish-brown ribbon of baked asphalt. The warm air stroked his temples and he recovered his peace and equilibrium.

It was a beautiful time; he savored the moment of oneness with that exotic earth. How good it was to be alive. It was almost like prayer, this deep thankfulness for that gift beyond price. How good it was to love the world, to retain the capacity for delight in the beauty of this sunny hour.

When he arrived at his house and drove the car to the garage, he was surprised at the behavior of the cook, who was sitting on his haunches like a fired clay statue, deep in blue shade.

“Is dinner ready? Why do you look so troubled?”

“Everything is in order, sir,” the man muttered without looking him in the eye.

“Everything is in order,” affirmed the watchman in his linen hat like a boy scout’s, striking the paving stones with his bamboo rod. “I am keeping an eye on it.”

Passing through the dining room, Istvan saw the table set for two. He felt a rush of hope; he hurried to his room and nearly collided with Margit. At once he understood why the servants had been acting so strangely.

She threw her warm, bare arms around his neck and reached up to kiss him on the lips. “How I have missed you!” she sighed heavily. “I have dropped in for such a short time…and I have waited for you for so long!”

“You should have called.”

“I didn’t want to. You can’t even guess how good it was to sit in your room and wait. I ordered the servants not to say a word to you, because this was going to be a surprise. Did they manage to keep quiet?”

“Yes, but there were two places at the table.”

“That silly cook — he had to give me away!” She laughed joyfully, like a mischievous girl.

They stood locked in a close, tender embrace. Her red hair, warmed by the sun, gave off a light fragrance. Through the thin linen she wore he felt the pressure of her breasts, her belly, and her thighs, could almost feel the light pulsing of her blood. He fell on her lips, pushed them apart and kissed her.

“I’ll tell the servants to go away.”

“Don’t leave. Don’t leave,” she begged in a whisper, pressing him hard with her fingers. He did not even notice when she managed to unzip her skirt; it slid off easily. She jumped out of it with a nimble movement like a child playing hopscotch.

“I’ve already told them to leave,” she murmured as she unbuttoned his shirt and laid her cheek on his sunburned chest.

“I must have a wash. I’m wet all over.”

“If you knew how I like you that way, hot, sticky…well, pull this off.” She tugged at his shirt sleeve.

Their desire was wild, unrestrained, as if they had only one short minute to themselves and would never be together again. When her fevered breath burned on his neck and she stiffened, moaning with delight, he realized that mutual possession is like a struggle — that he was pressing her down with his arms as if she were an opponent, hurting her, leaving her breathless. Slowly, very slowly he became conscious of her again, and she too recovered her awareness, felt the coolness of the stone floor under one dangling hand. At last he rolled over hard, as if he had been hit, and lay supine with the back of his neck on her hand, feeling her pulse as he pressed against the blue veins under the golden skin. They rested; each one’s fingers found the other’s, entwined with them and remained locked there.

Margit pulled her numb arm from under him and leaned toward him, resting on her hands. Two waves of hair brushed his cheeks. He saw her straight nose, her smooth forehead, the opaline blue of her eyes, her slightly swollen lips. He wanted to have her lolling above him like that for all eternity. A stream of light falling through a chink between the curtains kindled like fire on her hair and lent a glow to the little drops of sweat on her upper lip. He knew her mouth would be fresh, spiced with the aroma of cigarettes, and that her skin would be salty to the taste, and he did not hurry to kiss her, to confirm these things. He remembered and did not remember; it was enough to bend her toward him, and he did not kiss her. He was happy; he felt peace, a deep satisfaction like swarming flecks of light at the bottom of a gushing spring. Exultation filled with gratitude: Margit, Margit, sang his speeding blood, from you, in you is my great, joyous silence. I will never, never have too much of you. And that thought was confirmed by ineffable delight.

He disengaged himself from the lustrous shower of her hair. He reached for a glass and a bottle of vermouth and dropped in some ice. Lightly shaking the glass, which was growing cooler, he looked at Margit, still lying nude on the carpet. Her body was golden brown, but the rosy tan changed to a white with violet shadings on her slim chest and the flat curve of her belly. He thought of the flesh tents of Renoir’s nudes — of the magnetism that made the hands long to encircle those lazy, elongated shapes. He saw her face, with the large blue eyes that made his heart beat faster. The eyes, wide open, wandered around the ceiling, following the languidly rotating blades of the fan. The breeze disturbed her hair, which was strewn in a rust-red circle around her head. How intimately the body of the young woman blended with the rug — the forest greens, daubs of blue, and interwoven floral motifs in coppery red! He had dreamed of such a moment. It seemed to him that it was for this very composition of line and color, free from all sensuality, for pure beauty, that he had acquired this carpet of rust and green — as if half-consciously expecting that he would savor her loveliness against that background. She is beautiful, his inner delight told him; she is changed, she is different. It is as if I am seeing her for the first time. She is worthy of self-effacing adoration and desire.

Margit raised her glass and drank with small sips — uncomfortably, for she was unwilling to make the effort to lift her head, now lavishly covered with swirls of chestnut hair shot through with a streak of light.

“Why don’t you say something?” She turned toward him with a worried air, leaning on her elbow.

“I am looking at you,” he answered in such an altered voice that Margit caught his internal tremor — caught it unerringly, as the varnished wood of a violin intensifies the tone drawn from the strings.

“What is it? Why have you gone so far away from me?” She pushed heavy locks of hair away from her face.

“Stay there, just as you are,” he begged. But instead of speaking from his heart—“I want to hold you this way in the core of my mind, to fix in my memory this mosaic with flecks of light and color, this moment beyond naming”—he said too simply in this foreign language, English, “I want to remember you this way.”