Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“We’ll hit Nagar up. I’m ready to give him my ducks if he’ll just break out the whiskey. The king of the hunt must stand everyone a drink.”

“I like you, Terey. One must make sacrifices for the future. Especially when it smells so good.”

A joyful hubbub greeted their appearance. Girlish voices asked how many birds they had shot. Istvan shook the few undistinguished ducks that hung from his belt, and Bradley roared, “I shot a great big bird, but it flew beyond the river—”

“The Air India plane, no doubt,” Nagar said. “And you certainly didn’t hit it…I have fourteen ducks.”

“Long live the king!” Bradley called in a thunderous voice. “Hey, fill the bumpers! Only — can Comrade Terey drink a toast like that?” he asked in a stage whisper. “Maybe I’ll drink for him.”

The guests lay on blankets under shady trees, relaxing. Nagar dismantled his gun and tried to impress them by tooting on the barrel as if it were a trumpet, but the sound was not at all similar, which sent Bradley into spasms of laughter. Fanny Partridge added to the merriment by proposing to the American, announcing that it would be a marriage with something extra, and pointed to her blushing sister. Even the Hindus smiled, though with restraint.

“I have to eat first,” Bradley stipulated. He sat crosslegged, balancing a tin mess plate on his knees and eating rice soaked in spicy sauce with a spoon. “When I have eaten, you will draw straws”—he licked the spoon with a knowing wink—“to see which one of you will have the honor of chasing flies off me when I’m lying down.”

Major Stowne leaned toward Terey and said an undertone, “A gentleman does not behave this way.” He shook his head ruefully. “Many things may be said, but not in front of the servants.”

The villagers who had retrieved the ducks stood in a group under the trees. Each had a ladleful of rice in a bowl made from a leaf. They ate with their fingers, looking over the faces of the picnickers with eyes full of astonishment and bovine mildness.

“Soon, soon, sahib,” a cook assured Terey. “I am heating the meat.” He squatted, blinking, and blew on the ashes of the dwindling fire. White flakes of burnt stalks flew up, swirling. “The rice is surely warm. I wrapped the pots in thick coverings of newspaper.”

Rattling their wings, the vultures jumped to the ground and walked about, moving their long necks up and down. They were looking for bones, for scraps scraped from mess plates. They plucked shreds of greasy paper from each other’s beaks.

“Why don’t we just shoot at them?” Bradley made a face. “They stink when I’m trying to eat.”

“That isn’t done,” Stowne scolded him. His face was red from alcohol. “They are repugnant but useful, in contrast to journalists. Wherever there is shooting, straight away there are plenty of you. But the vultures — they truly clean the world.”

The sun shone benignly. Veils of haze hovered over the broad river bed with its sandy shoals. Ducks flew overhead, settled amid the rushes, slid softly into the water, shook their rumps and quacked as if for joy that the hunt had stopped.

“Trompette!” Nagar said anxiously. “Where is Trompette?”

She was running with great bounds, carrying a teal in her mouth. She trotted up to her master and looked him in the eye for a long time, not even wagging her tail.

“One more that I shot but we could not find. Fifteen,” he exulted. “Put her here — here, at your master’s feet.” His finger pecked the air, pointing down.

The dog hesitated, then moved a step forward.

“That is the only one he managed to shoot!” Stowne whispered.

Istvan, lying on his side, reached for a little pot of rice packed in newspaper and took off its wrappings. Steam rose from under the cover. He took a helping and waited for it to cool.

Suddenly his eye fell on the grease-smeared headline of a short item of news: “Death of a Hungarian Journalist.” He reached for the paper.

“UPI. The well-known Hungarian journalist Bela Sabo was shot yesterday as he attempted to cross the Austrian border. Though he received assistance, he died. Bela Sabo, born Bela Fekete, was a distinguished reporter; his book on liberation movements in Africa, Where the Devil Is White, was translated into many languages. Sabo’s tragic death has evoked an outpouring of grief in the world of journalism…”

He stared at the rumpled, soot-stained newspaper with the circular indentation made by the bottom of the pot. Without knowing what he was doing he smoothed it, trying to find the front page.

Bela is dead. Killed.

Stupefied, he gazed at the great blue smoky space above him and the flashing current at the bends of the crawling river. The glare from it made his eyes smart.

“Here, Trompette, little doggie, dear,” Nagar coaxed, reaching for a collar to restrain the resisting bitch.

Bela killed. The dog lays the duck at Nagar’s feet. Bela is not there. Not there. And never will be. The duck opens its wings, springs onto Nagar’s chest, flutters in his face, and from his shoulder flies into the air. Bela killed. What is that roar of laughter? Everyone is going off in gales of giggles, howling and clapping. With his hand Nagar wipes his muddy cheeks. The dog watches with reproachful bloodshot eyes; her muzzle is full of feathers. Where did the feathers come from? Why are they laughing? Bela is dead.

“She wanted to save the honor of our king of the hunt!” Bradley bellowed. “She grabbed him a live duck!”

Bela. Bela. Why did I have no premonition? He buried his face in his hands.

“You’d hardly call this a hunt,” he heard Major Stowne beside him murmuring and smelled the aromas of curry and whiskey, “but I must confess, it’s been a first-rate frolic. Even that sad Hungarian is about to choke from laughing.”

Istvan walked away, staggering. The Indian attendants stepped aside at the sight of his blanched face. He walked blindly; he stumbled into a tree trunk. He wanted to hurt himself, to feel physical pain, since anguish was tearing his heart so that he was standing with his mouth open, hardly able to breathe.

Over the smooth bark of the tree, white as if it had been bleached, ran a little line of red ants. They crept to his hand, which was grasping the trunk. They gathered, seemed to hold a council, and then circled around, peeping and examining the spaces between his spread fingers with their antennae. Bela is not there. Whom could he talk to? Whom could he talk to, who would understand? They had sworn to be together always.

He went back to where he had been sitting. He did not believe this. He must check. Perhaps he had made a mistake. Perhaps there was another surname, another first name. Only a pack of vultures, crunching torn paper in their beaks, were walking over the pot and rolling it, shaking out the remains of the rice.

He wanted to kick the birds, to take them by their nude, squirming necks and strangle them. Around the rattle of wings rose the stench of carrion. He stood over the tatters of the newspaper, the overturned pot. He heard Bradley’s easygoing laugh:

“They ate it all up. There’s nothing left.”

In neither of Ilona’s letters was it possible to find an evocative image, or even a sense of the climate created by developments in Budapest. He had the impression that she had written cautiously, conscious that her letters would be read by many eyes before they reached the hands of the addressee. The most important thing was that all the family were still alive. Only Sandor was ill, with flu. He had gotten a chill because it was hard to get a glazier. Windowpanes everywhere were broken. There was no lack of food; bread was supplied in timely fashion, meat could also be found, and they were not suffering severe shortages because her parents had sent a large parcel from the country with real salami, salt bacon seasoned with paprika, mutton, and a tin box of eggs which arrived without breaking, having been half buried in sawdust.