Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“Good!”

“And Sunday?”

“For a few days now Nagar has been after me to go out for duck with him. But not a real hunt. A club picnic.”

“So much the better. Everyone will see you.”

He only sighed.

“You don’t have to murder ducks. Let them live,” she whispered. “And in the evening I’ll come to you and you will tell me everything. Remember — it must be a cheerful story. Do you hear?”

“Yes.”

“And now kiss me,” she murmured, pretending that she was brave, that she had already forgotten about the night’s conversation — that she was thinking only about the next few days. That she was carefully forming plans, believing that there would be many such days, so many that both of them would begin to speak not of days to come, but of years.

The Yamuna flowed languidly through a wide valley. Its moving surface sparkled with scales of light. Its shoals were overgrown with willow and clumps of reeds three meters high, with tassels of violet seeds curved like cocks’ feathers. The marshes dozed, their slimy pools like windows surrounded by a wall of bulrushes — a wall partitioned by miry streams that could hardly be seen under clumps of matted grass. The sharp edges of the rushes attached themselves to clothing; the hand careless enough to catch one was cut as if with a razor. Even on the tops of the high hunting boots there were white scratches.

These thickets were the ducks’ breeding grounds. Their only enemy was the jackal who, lured by sleepy squeals, could steal the young from the nest. But when the mother led them to the water, they were safe in the shadowy corridors of streams hidden by the mane of riotously overgrown grasses, and the fecund slime assured them of plentiful food.

The birds that were not shot burst into flight reluctantly. They liked to forage among the rushes and bide their time while the hunters wandered along the streams, plunging into the labyrinths of grasses, into the tall reeds, which emitted the fusty odor of rotting weeds — the sickeningly warm, heavy stench of decay.

Under a high sky dimmed by a melancholy autumn fog, the shotguns popped without echoes. They sounded almost harmless, as if someone were shooting into a paper bag for a joke.

“Hold the dog. Don’t let her go!” Nagar squealed, and two servants dragged along the spotted Trompette, who tugged at her leash after every shot, barking frantically. Her eyes were bloodshot and her teeth chattered as saliva leaked from her muzzle. “She is like a wife who does not see the ducks that have been shot, but only scolds at every miss,” he said chattily to the Partridge twins.

Fanny, freckled, plain but energetic and full of the journalist’s temperament, wrote for women’s magazines and traveled a great deal. Her specialty was exotic customs — in short, erotic practices of Papuans and Polynesians, wooden codpieces elaborately carved by tribes in Borneo, matters bordering on witchcraft, primitive medicine and poisoning, which very moral, wizened Englishwomen read about with blushes.

Her sister was always in her shadow, a homely, obliging girl whose blue eyes were perpetually wide with astonishment, whose frizzy hair was the color of straw and whose name was Anna, though everyone called her Moufi — even her sister — and she placidly assented. She helped her famous twin; she was something of a photographer. She adored Fanny, whom she regarded as a woman with no equal. Neither shot; they only helped start up the birds. Fanny stepped watchfully, beating about the high grass, while Anna waited for her sister’s orders with her camera at the ready.

Nagar, in a light linen hat and carrying his bag, wearing field glasses on his chest and a belt gleaming with the brass cartridges he had tucked into it, seemed most impressive to them, particularly with his endless narrative of tiger hunting. They exchanged significant looks. Moufi signaled to her sister: there’s a story for you, and Fanny responded: I already noticed that, but you remember, too, because it might come in handy.

The twins had never parted since their parents had died in the bombardment of London. Rumors circulated about the pair: they were called “the Partridges” like a married couple, and one was never invited anywhere without the other. Jokes at their expense they took in good part, and often told racy anecdotes about themselves that made them almost universally popular.

In the listless air, sluggish lines of smoke spread like gray cobwebs. Cooks, surrounded by a cluster of people from the villages, squatted by the fires, stoking them with thorny branches and sheaves of stalks. Vultures kept watch from the bare tops of old trees, clapping their sides with their hard wings after the shots as if registering their approval of the slaughter of the birds.

Istvan had not brought his cook, since he assumed that Nagar would insist that he join him for dinner. He had come with Dorothy Shankar, who was turned out in hunting garb. Instead of a sari, she wore a plaid flannel shirt with pockets over her small breasts. Her outfit, completed by a belt and riding boots, aroused general delight. In her hand she carried a light single-barreled fowling piece. She was excited; she talked so unstintingly of her home and family that Istvan did not need to exert himself to entertain her. The driver, a gloomy Sikh, kept looking in the mirror to see what Terey was doing, since he was silent while the girl burst into seductive laughter. Her huge eyes were a velvety black; her cherry-colored lips and the dimple on her swarthy cheek lured with a virginal freshness.

Yet it was with relief that he left her to the Partridges, who, delighted with her beauty, unceremoniously forced her to let them take her picture with the gun raised.

“I’m ordering photos!” From behind a strip of tall grass the American reporter raised two fingers. “I’d rather have them than ducks.”

“I’m not giving you any, Bradley!” Fanny declared. “You’ll use them to impress your friends and tell them that she is your fiancee.”

Miss Shankar listened blushing, with the barrel of the gun aimed at the sky, paralyzed from waiting for the click of the shutter. “Is it over?” she asked, like a child playing hide and seek. “May I move now? I would like to shoot one round at least. Mr. Nagar is cracking away like a machine gun, frightening the ducks for miles.”

Terey slipped quietly in among clumps of plants with wilting leaves; the fermenting vegetation smelled like tobacco. He waded through grasses, yellowed from the summer drought, which crunched under his steps. He made his way toward an old stream bed where rapids glistened like a freshly sharpened sickle through the dun-colored weeds.

The spongy quagmire, streaming with water that made sucking noises, gave under his rubber soles, but on the layered webbing of enormous grasses it was possible to step securely. Through denim pants that fit closely around his ankles he felt the rough, sticky edges of the grass scratching like innumerable claws. Sometimes something rustled in the reeds; his ear caught the fluttering and then it subsided again. Only the crickets twittered in two tones as if commanding him to be watchful.

I’ve lost the knack for socializing, he reproached himself. I’ve grown unused to being with people. It’s just as well they haven’t noticed yet how much the last months have altered me. I really am avoiding everyone! I’m not looking for ducks, only the chance to be alone.

Behind him walked a young Hindu in a turban formed from a soiled rag, carelessly wound. The end fell to the back of his neck, shielding it from the maddening flies. He followed at a distance of a dozen paces or more, now dropping back, now moving forward, always keeping Istvan in sight but never intruding. Even his footsteps created no distraction.