Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“It’s not good.” She looked troubled. “If he thinks you are a threat to him, he will want to have you out of the embassy.”

“Oh, no. Krishan is dead, after all. There is no witness who knows which of them was driving then, and there is a report written by the police that says the driver was Indian. The case is closed and I will not touch it. Who would benefit? I will not sit in judgment on him.”

“Istvan”—she swung her head with its heavy helmet of hair—“I worry so about you. This concerns not only you, but both of us.”

“I know,” he answered after a long silence

“We must be careful. The world is not on our side. Who will help us? There are a few people who would feel great satisfaction if things did not go well for us.”

“Oh, yes. But we will not allow ourselves to be separated.” He spoke with bumptious assurance. “He won’t dare touch me. I know too much.”

“You are a child. You build an unreal world for yourself. It’s more comfortable for you. But the one we live in is different: jealous and cruel. Don’t be a poet.” She laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. Be a poet, be yourself, but I have a premonition that difficult moments are in store.”

With a quick, impatient drumming of fingers on the door the cook tactfully signaled that the table was set.

“Yes. And remember about Grace.”

“Why?” She stopped and then, as if penetrating to the depths of his silence, pulled up the truth. “She loves you?”

“No!” He denied it vehemently. “She does not love her husband. She married him out of obedience. She has no one.”

“She will have a child.” Her voice rang with something like envy.

They sat down to the table. Istvan poured grapefruit juice with ice cubes. The cook stood in the door with his hands crossed on his chest, looking satisfied, like a matchmaker. At a rebuking glance from Terey he disappeared into the kitchen, emphasizing his presence there with a clang of the frying pan, which he threw onto the floor for the sweeper to wash.

“Grace told me that you cried when she told you about it…”

“What could she understand?” Margit said with a wry look. “Too much was happening at once. A letter from Melbourne, from my father: my stepmother is expecting a baby. He was so glad, it cut me to the heart. Happy Grace, who put my hand on her belly so I could feel how the little one was kicking, and my situation — well, you know how it was then.”

“I understand.”

“You don’t understand anything. Only women know, women who have counted the days as I did. No man knows what it’s like to keep a watch on your own body, to feel as if you are pleading with it.”

“But you could have come to me.”

“And right away you would have felt trapped, hemmed in. I’m not one of those who beg and whimper for sympathy. Don’t deny it. Could you have helped? Would you have held my hand and watched me cry? I could have done, well, anything, even break my contract, abandon the sick and go home. They would have taken care of this for me there; I have doctors as colleagues. Or I could give birth there. I may yet decide to do that. Well, don’t look at me like that. I’ll tell you; you have the right to know.”

He gazed at her intently. She came of hard, stubborn stock; he surveyed the boldly drawn eyebrows, the lines of her chin, her open look. She belonged to a race of women who knew what they wanted, who stood shoulder to shoulder with their men when they compelled respect for their property rights with guns in hand, defending their freedom as settlers. He felt enormous gratitude that she had yielded to him, that she had chosen him. His attachment to her was powerful. He was moved by the outline of her lips, not just because they were his for the taking, but because of their varying expressions; by the gleam that wandered over her hair when she shook it impatiently; by the pure, trusting blue of her eyes, in which he bathed as in a mountain stream.

“Why didn’t you trust me then?” he whispered reproachfully.

“Because I don’t really know you. I don’t know what you are like when you are tested. I don’t know where my imagination ends and you begin — the real man, with your own past, which is pushed aside, relegated to forgetfulness, but will return in dreams. There are whole landscapes of your life, and they are important, for they reveal things about you as a poet, and they are impenetrable to me. Your creations. Don’t frown, I will put it more modestly: your writings, your verse. I’m jealous of it all; I can’t be your companion in it, the first to hear it as you read. Couldn’t you write in English? You speak it, after all, so fluently, so properly.”

“Yes — properly. Of course I could write in English, but it would always be a translation from Hungarian. I am bound to that language. I named the grass under my feet in it, and the stars over my head. I know it is the language of a small nation, that it hedges me in from the world, but it is my language. I feel every tremor, I express everything in it, and I am certain that I speak it unerringly even to you in our closest moments.”

“You’re wrong.” She blinked at him archly. “As often as I can remember, you have whispered to me in English — and very prettily.”

“I was translating involuntarily,” he admitted with embarrassment.

“You were translating,” she said broodingly, putting a hand to her lip. “If neither you nor I noticed that, I swear that the language barrier can be crossed, can disappear. Only you must really want that. You must not avoid speaking, not keep things from me. Oh, Istvan! I would be so happy if I saw your poetry published, even in the Illustrated Weekly of India.”

He felt her joy.

“I promise to try to translate it myself, but you must help me. You must look it over with an editor’s unsympathetic eye.”

“You can’t even imagine what a great moment that will be for me.” She rose, gratified. “A step closer to you.”

They went back to his office and settled comfortably into armchairs. The lamplight fell on the stone head; its polished surface seemed to smile sleepily. Istvan thought of Chandra, their disturbing conversation, the grimace of pride on that sleek, undampened face when he had handed Istvan the gift: “…one must summon the courage to say, ‘I am a god…’” It was interesting to think what fate would overtake him. The only truly evil person I have met here. A man who, as a kind of mockery, tries to do people good. He wants to be bad, while others who know they are in error struggle, suffer, and grieve.

He looked at Margit. Her hair was almost black in the dim light; her hands, fixed in a gesture of weariness, looked as if they were sculpted in dark gold. There is no hesitancy in her; she is happy, though she knows she is taking a risk. She is counting on me.

“Do you know what’s missing here?” Her eyes ran over the walls. “A clock. A big clock that would chatter and grumble. In the hall of our house there’s an old clock in the shape of a woman, with a clock face instead of a woman’s under a wooden hat. Don’t laugh. I know it’s an extraordinary eyesore even if it is an antique. My great-grandfather plundered it from some Dutch brig. But just listening to that unhurried ticking makes the silence of the evening delightful. Anyway, you will hear it and find out for yourself.”

“Are you sure?”

She lowered her eyelids in confirmation.

“How nice.” She clasped her hands under the back of her neck; the light glowed on her trim bosom. She listened to the distant jangle of cicadas outside the window. “I don’t want to go anywhere else, to see anyone else’s face. I will have some leisure. I will forget about the sick, treatments, quarrels with Connoly. What peace!”