Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

He smiled shrewdly. He looked at his hands as if to be certain they were not dirty. “I gather up the trash…”

“Haven’t you been drinking a little?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “I can tell you, sir…everyone here has a mouth full of high-sounding words. They fight for socialism, but in the soft way, with their comforts, for good money. And I, with this very hand”—with his left hand he struck the open palm of his right—“I killed four fascists. That much I know for sure.”

“When?”

“When I went from Sallaumines to the Reds, to Spain. I did it in a mine with Poles, Italians, Algerians — the rag, tag, and bobtail. We had nothing to sell but ourselves.”

“And what happened there?”

“By the Ebro? Those I killed? One was a Spaniard, an aristocrat, a very handsome fellow; when I blindfolded him, he spat at me. I understand: an enemy is an enemy. And three Moors…they were skilled at fighting with knives.”

“What has brought on this deluge of memories?”

“I cannot speak English very well. I do not read the newspapers. Sometimes the cryptographer will tell me how things are, but he looks around three times before he speaks. Maléter has been shot. I knew him.”

“Would you have preferred that he shoot himself in the head?”

The caretaker looked nonplussed.

“Do you think there was no way out, sir?”

“My friend, I don’t know. I can only speculate. It’s wearing me out as well. Do you think it’s easy for me?” Terey sprang to his feet. “What if that death saved thousands of other lives? Think of it as a loss sustained in battle.”

The man tilted his head and scowled at Terey. His lips twisted in a bitter grimace. “No, counselor, I cannot. That would be putting too good a face on it. You people, as soon as something happens, will always get around a fellow with your talk of how there must be different ways of making sense of it. I know my own.”

He looked at his own hands again with a sternly appraising glance, as a father looks at his sons when they return from work in the field.

“Though I have killed, I have clean hands.” He straightened his back. “I go around the embassy and I look at the comrades. They feel that there are changes and each one thinks of how to find a place for himself.”

“That’s human, after all.”

“And I don’t worry that they will let me go because a better set of people come. I can always manage. Only I would like to be certain to the end that what I do not only puts food on my plate, but serves the nation. I would not measure out my blood drop by drop; what is needed is needed. What more can I give, except for my life?”

Terey went over to him and gripped his hand — a broad hand that even after many years was knobby and hard.

“I think as you do. So do thousands of others.”

“Why is it so hard for them to speak up and stamp out these lice who are crawling all over us? All my life I thought that one party — eh! We have seen how it is.” He raised his chin abruptly. “You may say that it depends on such people as I. I would rather go to the weapons depot and shoot one of them. For what am I or you or the ambassador? It is Hungary that is important! Hungary must be protected. And they have already shrunk us so that you cannot spit or it will fly over the border and annoy good neighbors.”

He moved toward the door and said, bowing half facetiously, “I beg your pardon, counselor, for being so forward. I am not well educated. Perhaps I have offended.”

Terey listened attentively as the caretaker’s footsteps sounded down the long corridor. If he himself had not had words with Ferenc, this man would have taught the secretary a lesson! He began to pace around his office as if it were a cell, moving diagonally from the door to the window. He looked through the window at the blind wall of the garage, which was covered with a shaggy blanket of dusty leaves.

How many times they had jeered at the caretaker, calling him a drunkard who deserved well of his country. And he was one of those who could be counted on when sacrifices had to be made. It is not with “comrades,” but with nails, he thought, that you hammer into place, join, reinforce the walls of the house. They go into the soft wood and hold it, and they do not even ascribe it to themselves as merit. They simply consider it the reason for their existence. And we? And who am I? he reproached himself. What right do I have to teach him?

Suddenly he felt that he had not yet reached the crossroads — that a test was before him, a test he had tried not even to think of. The face of a man aged beyond his years, rigid as a fist, was reflected in his mirror. “You are thinner, Istvan. You are torturing yourself, and I can’t help you. I can’t give you any relief, though I know what is preying on your mind.” Margit’s voice, full of deep, caressing kindness, came back to him and he felt her fingers moving over his tightly set cheeks, which were bluish from the razor. At the thought of her his eyes closed like a cat’s in a streak of sunlight and his tension eased.

I ought to master myself, or for some trifling reason there will be a quarrel and it will grieve me. I must always remember not to exasperate Margit. I must use my judgment. I must fight for her and for every day I share with her.

In his dreams Budapest collapsed in ruins, full of the smell of burning. He was choked with vague, inchoate images that brought on an unbearable sense of helplessness. He woke as if someone were tugging at his arm. He listened, terrified, to hear the telephone if it should ring. His heart contracted violently. With inexpressible relief he found Margit beside him, felt the pressure of her thigh, smelled the beloved fragrance of her skin and the hair at her temples. He knew that she was not asleep, only pretending to be so he could rest, if only for a little while — so he could forget this anguish. She lay as one who lurks in wait, watchful, her wide-open eyes gleaming in the flood of darkness. He was grateful upon discovering that she was keeping vigil over his nervous dozing, his abrupt disconnection from consciousness, as if a switch had been pulled. He wanted, after all, to satiate himself with her presence forever, to hear her breathing. The rhythm of it gradually calmed him, though sighs still went through it like ripples on windblown water, and spasms of choking, as if she were holding back tears.

Suddenly his head sank deeper into the pillow and he slept. But in his sleep he lost her, though he had vowed to stay awake, to accept that hour of oneness in the dark as an affirmation of their love. Far away beyond a corner of the window loomed the greenish, cratered autumn moon. “Sleep,” she begged gently, her hand tracing lines over his wide chest. “You must try to rest. I know this is dreadfully hard for you, but try to sleep.”

Full of gratitude and ashamed that he had abandoned her, he kissed her drowsily and, without a word to express the tenderness that overwhelmed him, fell instantly asleep.

He woke, assuring himself that there would be long nights when they would be truly together, like man and wife. The certainty nourished his heart and quieted the hunger of body which was never satisfied, only fleetingly muted by the caresses, the yielding, when Margit opened to him like a book of warm secrets.

He dreamed of long nights unshattered by the crowings of roosters like brass trumpets, of sleeping, then waking only to assure himself that she was there, that she was steadfastly beside him. He had passed, had crossed at one bound the obstacle which had long ago ceased to be important, had diminished, changed into a dry ear of corn broken across the path, not worth noticing when one is quickening one’s step, marching in double time. In these dreams Ilona was lost, pushed into the past among bygone experiences, like aged, faded photographs that remind us that we camped under the trees, sang beside the campfire, but all of that is past, remote from the present, of no consequence.