Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

The girl looked troubled. But seeing that he smiled gently at her, she fell back with relief on the rug with its autumnal colors. Slowly she curled up and seemed to be falling asleep, with her coppery hair still rippling luxuriantly around her face. Then for the first time that day Istvan heard the ringing of the cicadas and felt his heart wrenched by the flight of time, for it could not be stopped, nor the past retrieved. The glass he raised with a trembling hand struck dully against his teeth, and premonition sent a tremor through him.

When Margit had smoothed her skirt and was looking around with a perplexed air, hobbling on one sandal, Istvan, who was helping her search for the other under a chair, broke into a loud laugh.

“Look!” The sandal was hanging on the door handle, shielding the keyhole from the servants’ eyes.

“For the life of me, I can’t remember doing that!” she exclaimed, embarrassed.

“All the worse if you do such things reflexively.”

“Don’t be a nuisance,” she said, rubbing his cheek with her forehead.

They went to the kitchen together and brought out the half-cold dishes. He uncorked a bottle of wine. They ate, teasing and joking. They drank wine and peeped into each other’s eyes like students in love.

“Why were you looking at me so strangely?”

“When you were on the rug I discovered you again. You were terrifyingly attractive to me.”

“Oh, you’re laying it on a bit thick. After all, you know me to absolute boredom. What did you see there that was new?”

“You looked like Eve in a Flemish tapestry.”

“You like that rug.”

“I like you.”

“I wonder how much it cost.”

“I didn’t pay very much.”

“I wasn’t thinking of money”—her eyes were bright; he was drinking in their light—“but of the children who wove it. Have you, expert on India, seen how carpets are made?”

He shook his head. Incessantly, like the droning of bees, happiness sang in him: I love her neck, her lips, her little ear brightened by a streak of rose-tinted sunlight. He was choking with a tenderness beyond measure.

“But I have seen it. There was a shed of woven trunks and branches with a clay roof so overheated from the sun that even the vultures stepped from one foot to another on it. The warp stretched from the ceiling to the ground. Six children sat on the clay floor, pulling colored wool from spools as fast as they could and tying tight knots. The old master read out something from the great book; I glanced over his shoulder. The pattern of the rug, the floral motifs, were written in secret signs. He knew how to decipher the old book, and he sang out: red, red, yellow, black, black. To keep the work going at a steady tempo he beat a drum with a rod.

“You can’t imagine how fast those little fingers tied that yarn! The children’s eyes brimmed with tears; they were smarting. Time after time they rubbed their irritated eyelids, but the old man quickened the rhythm. The knots had to be set in closely and evenly; the more knots per centimeter, the more they get for the rug. The little ones are not paid, only their parents, and sometimes the value of their work is simply taken in lieu of an installment on rent for a field or interest on an unpaid debt. The children have a moment’s rest when the old man has a coughing fit and spits between his callused feet. They must be glad that his old lungs are diseased; anyway, that is the most common ailment among weavers.”

“Where did you see this?”

“I was in a village doing surveys. Cottage weaving workshops are still transmission sites for trachoma. I wonder how many eyes have been ruined to create the beauty of the old pattern, the paradisiacal blossoming tree on that carpet.”

“Are you going to issue a decree prohibiting child labor? Will anything help?”

“No. It is certain that they would weave clandestinely, and in Europe and the States there are enthusiasts, connoisseurs of the traditional patterns. Prohibitions would only drive the profits to the middlemen, the dealers.”

“What then? Not to buy them? Then we push them to the lowest level of misery,” he said bitterly. “Margit, forget for a moment that you are a doctor. Don’t think of the suffering of this starving country. At least let me enjoy the beauty of the rug, for they create it mechanically and are unable to delight in it.”

“I have hurt you.” She held out a hand and he took it in his. “I know, art is born of inspiration and difficulty; suffering heightens the work’s greatness. But understand: there is anguish here that is undeserved. Neither the children nor their parents know the price they will have to pay. When the weaving is carried out under these conditions, eyes sting and children cough. It was always so and will be so for a long time yet.”

“We are both unsuited to this country.” He stroked her hand as it lay on the tablecloth embroidered by diligent fingers. “We were brought up differently. For us, to love means to act, to help, to transform, and here it means only to be together in a somnolent trance, to accept, submissively, the verdicts of fate. Here one can make a fortune — there are enough hands and labor is dirt cheap — or a revolution. Everything else is temporizing, a sleep of one’s conscience.”

“Connoly says that India will make a communist of him. And I, before I traveled around the villages, didn’t think people could be so cruel to each other.”

“The conditions force them into it. To live means to stifle others.”

“Istvan,” she said, “truly, they are good. Gentle. And they work so hard.”

“That goodness is their weakness. Undernourished for generations, hobbled by faith that in some other incarnation it will be better for them, beaten down by heat, they wait, they hope.”

“I would so like to help them.” She clasped her hands. “Do you know why? Because I am happy here, thanks to you. I almost feel guilty when I think of them. I am from a wealthy family; I don’t have to be concerned about money. I only have the obligations I set for myself. And I have you…I want to pay with good for this undeserved good. I would give a great deal to help even one person here, to save him, to give him joy.”

She spoke so ardently that he walked around the table, entwined his fingers in her red hair, leaned over, and kissed her.

“You have given me joy,” he whispered tenderly.

“All the more reason why I must work, I must treat them. Do you understand? I am afraid for us.”

He looked adoringly at her. “But, Margit, you do that.” He lifted her hand and moved the tips of her fingers around his lips.

“Not enough. Nothing is enough.” He felt the pain in her words. “Istvan, indeed I’m not a silly girl in the throes of her first attraction. I know what I’m doing. I’m not talking with you out of cowardice. Why should I distress you? You have a wife and sons, after all. You are alone here by chance, a chance that was favorable for me. But I haven’t forgotten about them. I am the other woman, a stranger.”

“Why are you torturing yourself? For the time being nothing is threatening us.”

“For the time being.” She sighed bitterly. “Don’t tell me not to look farther than two months ahead. I must think about what will happen to us later. The stronger my attachment is to you, the more anxiety I feel about our future.”

He was ashamed that until this moment he had not spoken with her about the possible solutions he had thought of, and what they would risk if their relationship were known to the world.

“Margit, until I have a divorce, I have no right to begin this conversation. I can get a divorce when I return to Budapest. I want to make the decision alone with my wife, with no intermediary. She has a right to expect that she will learn about it first from me. They cannot let me out of the country. Are you prepared to come to me there? To remain there, perhaps for whole years—”