Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“I?” Istvan chuckled harshly, indignantly. “Rubbish! You must have misheard.”

“So I thought. Pity. You would have managed it. She said something about your plans to marry, your intimacy with the English.”

“Did she mention a name?”

“Well, but this has struck a nerve!” It seemed to Istvan that the attorney’s lips were half parted in a soundless, mocking smile. “In my presence, only Major Stowne’s…”

Istvan breathed easily. His jaws relaxed.

“That means nothing. A retiree. Of course I know him.”

“He was an officer of the Intelligence Service. Such service never ends; it is almost a calling,” Chandra remarked discreetly.

“I didn’t know. Stowne is a man of few words, though he is fond of drinking.”

“One must not trust appearances,” the lawyer admonished him gently. “If we walk confidently, it is because we do not know what traps are hidden around us.”

“Did she say anything about—” Terey began, then abruptly went silent. No! Chandra could not know about Margit.

“Well, speak up.”

Istvan moved easily like someone who wants to stretch his legs after a day’s work, to fill his lungs with cool evening air. With his steps he measured the silence that was lengthening, deepening between them. Chandra waited, then ventured as if to encourage him, “I do not know what she had said before my arrival, but you have an enemy in her. A dangerous one. She is not a docile Hindu. English blood…She is calculating. Well, will you tell me? No?”

Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen, he counted. Automobiles filled with party guests still in high spirits flew past them. Bright light washed over lawns wet with dew.

“Madam Khaterpalia ought not to be leaving home. She is expecting a little newcomer,” Chandra continued. “But perhaps it is more important to her to do someone harm. How have you offended her?”

Istvan shrugged. He wanted to forget the incident on her wedding night. He had pushed it aside; he had thought little of it for so long that it seemed insignificant to him, but it remained, like a festering splinter.

“I told you about the miraculous rescue of the dead brother of our mutual friend, the rajah. Surely you heard that the matter was successfully concluded. For all parties, the deceased as well. He lived for a few months a life that he had not known, which the gods had not given and will not give him. Pity you did not hear the negotiations. The father-in-law and the man’s own brother demanded my assurances that he would never return, for he was even ready to go out to his place of seclusion. Do you understand what their idea of assurance was — what could ease their minds once and for all? Delightful bargaining—” he laughed quietly. “And all for the good of the yet unborn child. How can one not believe in predestination? It will come into the world burdened with guilt, for Grace heard all that passed without a word of protest. She loves that little one. She prefers that it not be forced to share its wealth with anybody.”

“And you talk about this with complete freedom?” Istvan bridled. “You did this for them?”

“Impossible cases are my specialty. I did it, and I was remunerated. The rajah and rani, I must say, knew what they wanted; the honorarium they paid left them fully conscious that they were requiring me to violate the laws of God and, what is more difficult, the laws of man. Your holy book speaks of Cain. Nothing is new! Properly speaking, does humanity know any other kind of homicide? People ought to be brothers, but dress them differently, give them a stick with a varicolored rag on it, and they are ready to murder each other.

“What is happening in your country? Before they overran you with tanks, Hungarians were disemboweling Hungarians who had been hung by their feet from streetlights. What do you call it? A just verdict,” he sneered, “which makes a man fighting for freedom an executioner. If you were there, I wonder where you would find yourself: among those trampled on the pavement, or among those they hung because somebody didn’t fancy their faces or the identity card with the star? And what right do you have to judge and condemn me?”

He spoke with an ominous mildness, but Istvan felt that he was incensed. “Is it because I am frank with you and your friends are not, although they are a close-knit family and make up a most hospitable circle: the rajah, his father-in-law, and the charming rani Grace, full of expectation and absorbed in the fruit of her womb? You had best try to remember how you got off on the wrong foot with her. Then I will try to rectify matters.”

Istvan caught his breath. He felt as if he had been beaten about the face. And he could not strike back, for one does not fight with a reptile, one only kills it. Or shuns it, walks around it at a distance.

They walked in the darkness under a sky like a net knotted with glittering stars. They stepped in rhythm. He sensed that Chandra had told him about the matter of the dead brother to encourage him to make confessions of his own, to admit faults — to feel that in this moral twilight they were accomplices. Confess without absolution? The joy of the condemned that there are so many of them, the dense throng with despair biting into it like pincers.

Be careful: he is pumping you for information. He wants to trap you, an inner voice warned. In spite of himself he slowly formulated sentences, evading the disturbing truth.

“Did rani Grace say where I wanted to escape to?”

“Yes.” The blow fell. “It was difficult for us to believe; she chose a strange place for you. She seemed to overlook Paris and London. Do you want to escape to Australia?”

Istvan’s shoulders hunched as if he had been hit in the chest. He walked like an automaton.

“You wanted to know. Now you do. Well, you have heard the truth. Someone has given you away. Now you must beg for mercy.”

“Oh, God!” he barely breathed, but the other man, whose head was tilted toward him, caught it.

“You have remembered after all!” he said triumphantly. “Well, you must not take it all so seriously. You have only to say to me, Help me, and mean it, and I will do everything you wish. Or almost everything,” he corrected himself. “At any rate, I will surely help you. Not for nothing do they call me a philanthropist. There is no predicament with no way out; it is only necessary to make up one’s mind. To know what one wants. For oneself. You should think of yourself, of yourself exclusively. For no one loves us but ourselves. No one; you may be sure of that.”

They were walking amid the caustic smell of swirling smoke. From both sides of the path countless fires appeared, a few with sharp red tongues licking at the night. Others hardly glimmered pink from under cooling ashes. Now they saw bodies wrapped in sheets like grayish cocoons, lying like unborn infants with knees tucked up.

“What have we come upon?” Suddenly Terey was conscious that the lights of the city were far behind them. “Do they bury the dead here as well?”

“No. But it is natural to think so, though those people are still living. It is a cool night. They sleep by the fires. These are the homeless. The poor — beloved of God—‘Harijan.’ That is what Gandhi named them,” Chandra sneered.

They stood for a moment, gazing at the vast encampment. They heard the far-off crying of a baby and the snoring of the sleepers. Little flames seemed to whisper curses and bite hastily at the thorny branches and stalks that were scattered over gray ash. “A cold night.” Chandra shivered.

Istvan looked at him. In the low reflection of a fire his white shirt front, his jacket, and the gloves he had doggedly pulled on created the impression that he was disguised as a magician — that in a moment he would appear on the dais, cheap, not worth the price of the ticket, not even worth applauding.