Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“The hope of an excursion to Europe is a powerful engine. Tomorrow half of Delhi will be talking about it, and he will begin waiting for what he is boasting of to come true. They will sympathize with us a little for allowing ourselves to be duped, or perhaps, conversely, a rival will be miffed and send him so as to get ahead of us — Poles, or East Germans? He has a beat, like a beggar who circulates through his town not too often, trying to milk the inhabitants even-handedly.”

“Why didn’t you put me on my guard? I would not have received him.”

“He announced himself at the secretary’s desk; everything happened over my head. He had had enough of me. He wanted to knock at the door of someone higher up. I didn’t even mention him because — what for? After all, my job is to filter out the truth about people and the country and spare you difficulty.”

The ambassador took his face in his hand. His plump fingers were tufted with dark hair; the folds of his fat jowl oozed between them. His look was saturnine and disapproving.

“Tell me one thing: must you sit around at the club until all hours? I have been told that at Khaterpalia’s wedding as well, everyone had gone and you stayed because the bar was still open. Aren’t you drinking too much?”

“It depends on the circumstances.” Istvan spread his hands.

Bajcsy huffed.

“Give me just one piece of evidence that you are not pulling my leg.”

Terey thought coolly: don’t hurry. Don’t give way. Someone must have been telling tales.

“During that wedding I found out that the law prohibiting the transfer of pounds will go into effect half a year earlier than expected. That will have a serious effect on importing, and will limit the scope of our activities as well,” he flung out as if he were reluctant to speak.

“That is information of the first order of importance,” the ambassador said, raising himself in his chair. “And you only tell me about it now? Is it certain? I don’t ask the name.”

“I looked into it. I sought confirmation. Only as of yesterday am I certain. It checks out. They are barring the doors. My original information came from an officer of the president’s guard. He himself was an interested party. He wanted to get some capital out of the country.”

“Terey, write me a memorandum about this.”

“I have it with me as we speak, but, comrade ambassador, you have not let me get a word in edgewise.” He put a sheet of paper with a few sentences in typescript on the desk.

Bajcsy read slowly, moving his thick lips. Then he looked suspicious, as if it had just occurred to him that he had been drawn into a game against his will. But Terey calmly closed his briefcase and sat unassumingly in his chair, smoking a cigarette.

Exiting, he met Judit’s glance. It was full of camaraderie. He raised a thumb to signal that all was well. She had been waiting behind the door like an anxious mother when her son is taking a test.

“The ambassador asks that you send in the cryptographer.”

“Did he give you a dressing down?” Her tone was solicitous.

“For what? I live modestly, I do my work. You see me like a goldfish in a bowl. What do I have to hide?”

“You know very well.” She wagged a cautionary finger. “Be careful not to get yourself in trouble.”

In spite of the wheezing of the big fans, agonizing moans made their way in through the windows. His face contorted as he heard them.

“Who is wailing so?”

“Krishan’s wife. Go through to Ferenc’s office. It’s enough to break your heart, the way that woman is wearing herself down.”

“What’s happened? Is she sick?”

“I don’t know. Krishan only laughs and shows his teeth. A bad lot, that one.”

“Perhaps we could look in? We can’t let her suffer like that.”

“What do you want to drag me along for? I’m afraid of sickness. To my taste, life is too short here. I detest the way fourteen-year-old girls become mothers. Children bearing children.” She shuddered. “Every smell here carries a waft of something putrid, a stench of burning bodies. No, I will not go.”

He stepped out of the embassy and was immersed in a thick suspension of dust and sunlight. At once his skin was covered with sweat. He blinked: the air was filled with rainbow-tinted sequins. They rose and pulsed as if in rhythm with the contractions of a breaking heart.

He walked around the corner house with its clumps of trees brandishing vermilion torches; their dark green leaves held sprays of blossoms garish as flames. A large lizard, covered with iridescent scales, stood on his hind legs, gazing at Terey with a sharp, unfriendly yellow eye. The spikes on its back bristled at every breath. It looked like an antediluvian monster in miniature.The old gardener, in an unbuttoned shirt, threw a clod of earth at it. It only hissed and disappeared up a tree.

“It spits, sir,” he warned. “You can go blind.”

The light cut through his mesh shirt, glancing off his ribs and the back of his wrinkled neck. His legs were black and covered with clots of dried mud like rusty iron.

“Sir goes there?” He motioned toward a building in which the ground floor rooms had been made over into quarters for the servants. “She calls for death — such a pretty, plump woman,” he mumbled. “For the second day she prays to Durga.”

“But what is the matter with her?”

“Who can know?”

“Has a doctor been here?”

The old man leaned on his hoe. The edge, worn to silver, threw specks of bright light onto his lean, knotted calves. He looked at Terey; his dull, cloudy eyes were full of sorrow.

“And why a doctor? A yogi was here. He broke the spell, but now he does not want to look in. He only gave her an herb, and then she slept all night. Death alone will help in this case.”

“Blithering nonsense! We have to make sure Krishan takes her to the hospital.”

“She has been there, sir. They were going to cut her. But she doesn’t want to be burned bit by bit, but all at once. For then where would she look for the next birth?”

The moaning could be heard more and more distinctly; Terey could distinguish pleading, singsong cries of prayer. The white walls in the house blinded him; the masonry trapped the sultry air. The door had been taken off its hinges and carried away to the garage. In its place hung only a muslin curtain, tied back.

On a bed a stout woman dressed in a sari lay with her legs spread. He saw her feet, which were painted red. A roll of fat was exposed at the waistline above her distended belly. The navel, with a small piece of colored glass set into it, peeped out impudently. A little girl was sitting beside her, waving a fan of peacock feathers to chase away the flies that crawled insistently into her eyes and nose and pushed themselves between the lips open in moaning.

“To die!” the woman howled.

“But where does it hurt you?”

“Here—” she touched her abdomen “—and my head, my head is splitting.”

“You must go to the hospital,” he urged. “To a proper doctor. The embassy will pay.”

“No. I want to die or give birth.”

She raised her flushed face. The dyed mark on her forehead was dissolving in perspiration and running into her eyebrows like blood. The parting of her hair, which was colored red according to the custom of married women, looked like an open wound.

Istvan recalled dying people, shot in the head by snipers, but they had not screamed with such despair; they expired quietly. At first he had been relieved to come in under a roof, but now he was unable to breathe. He was choking on the sour smell of smoldering manure under the little clay stove, on stifling perfumes and the odor of sweat.

Feeling himself at his wits’ end, he went back to the embassy. He knew the customs here; nothing could be done by force. The sick woman did not want to take his advice — that was her right, to make her own determination. No physician would touch her; he had no right to. Probably the woman would lose consciousness, and even then her will was binding if it had been clearly expressed.