Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“I was eating my ice cream,” the boy stammered, curling up on the seat of the Austin, “and suddenly I was afraid. His eyes seemed to suck the life from everything, even your smile and the taste of my ice cream. Because of him my heart seemed to stop and even the spot of sunshine on the table went dark. Something cold comes from him. He’s like a dead man.”

“No. He’s just an unhappy man. He has a great deal of money. He helps people.”

“His money is a part of the plot,” the boy whispered with fear in his eyes. “It takes more money from other people’s pockets and it returns to him before midnight strikes. And if you tried to stop it, it would turn into dry leaves or cockle shells.”

All at once Istvan realized that Mihaly had a gift he would look for in vain in his own sons: fantasy, the ability to create. He was moved by the receptiveness of the boy’s imagination. Perhaps India had embedded itself in him so that in years to come, when he was a grown man, he would remember today’s encounter and a feeling of dread would creep over him, with Chandra in the character of a servant of dark forces. Were his instincts already telling him that? After all, Istvan himself also had moments of unmitigated loathing for the attorney who was so ready to be helpful.

The sky took on a green tint and began to cool. A gust of wind shook the huge papaya leaves. Young Sikhs with topknots like girls’ released a red kite in the form of a vulture. A pair of spotted puppies nipped at each other’s tails. A benign chill rose from the earth; the brief twilight came on and the first stars, as if just washed, appeared above the horizon as the heat dissipated.

I would like to live on in this boy’s heart…Suddenly it seemed to him that it was not in his sons but in this child that his legacy would remain — that it was not through blood or genes, but through words spoken in confidence, intimate revelations, that the boy could inherit his traits, his desires and hopes. I am like a cuckoo, pouring into the absorbent mind of the child my own restlessness, goading him to spread his wings. Indeed, Mihaly had once said with a rending sigh, “I want to be like you, uncle.” Anyway, he doesn’t know me, he thought, smiling to himself. He creates his own version of me. He imagines someone much better, much purer: his ideal.

Or was he always missing his sons? He stole a glance at Mihaly, who was now in a sunny humor as his gaze followed the kites. Two — three — they glided like fish, falling through the glowing sky toward the darkening ground.

“Uncle, can we stand here and watch for a while? Oh, that big one is flying over to eat the others! It will bite holes in them.”

They got out of the car. He put his arm around the boy, and with upturned faces they watched the dance of the orange and yellow kites dragging tails like garlands. The strings were invisible, so the motions of the kites, diving in the afterglow from the west, were like the motions of toys in free play — toys of childhood off on a spree, full of a life of their own.

Through the thin fabric of his clothing he felt the warmth of the confiding little body. He heard his cries of delight when the paper vulture lost altitude and fell among the trees. The two smaller kites seemed to climb higher and higher on the mild breeze, over the first beaming star with its greenish twinkle, its light wavering as if it were uncertain of its place in the evening sky.

When he had taken the boy home and returned to his house, he saw two figures nestled together on the steps of the veranda: the watchman and his girl. The man sprang up officiously and turned on the light; it glowed from among the leaves. His fiancee darted into the shadows like a lizard. Passing the soldier, who stood at attention but moved his turned-up mustache as if he wanted to say something, he saw a small body curled up in a thick cluster of climbing plants. Only the deer-like eyes flashed in the shadows of the branches.

“When is the wedding?”

“In a week, sir. The best day. The horoscopes have been checked. The stars favor us.”

Terey shrugged and grasped the door handle. The cook had already come running up and turned on the light in the hall. By mistake he had started up the fans, which were whirling under the ceiling.

The stars? And what did they have to do with this? How nice for them that they can foist off the responsibility for their own lives, can pray to the stars or shake their fists at them, and they hang above us, they revolve in the freezing heights, stony, indifferent.

“Madam is not here,” Pereira announced, scratching the graying stubble on his face. “Madam will not be staying here tonight.”

Istvan nodded as a sign that he knew this, though for a moment he had deluded himself that he would find Margit watching for him in her chair, a little drowsy — that she would take him in her arms, that he would feel her fingertips pressing him before he managed to push the light switch, and he would kiss her for a long time, a long time, resting his forehead against her temple.

The cook seemed to float in the darkness, barefoot, noiseless. He lit the lamp on the desk. The masks with bared teeth grinned from the wall. “There is a letter, sir.” He motioned toward the air mail envelope with its striped edge.

Istvan recognized the round letters: Ilona’s writing. The envelope opened easily — he hardly had to pry it with the little opener — as if it had been trained to give up its contents. Inside were a sheet of paper and photographs. Ilona: the high forehead, a little childish, framed between wings of black hair. Strong eyebrows; frank, straightforward eyes, eyes that have nothing to hide. Full lips prone to smile. Pretty; very pretty; lovely, he told himself; probably even prettier than Margit. He gazed at her face as if he wanted to remind himself why he had singled her out among so many others, why he had loved her. She is like a Hindu woman, he thought with astonishment. In his imagination he drew a point between the eyebrows, darkened the eyelids, hung a thick silver necklace around the throat.

He set the picture down outside the circle of light and began to read the letter. It was concerned with commonplace matters, like her other letters: stories about their sons’ doings, about Sandor’s throat, about Geza’s dream that his father would bring home a monkey, even a very small one. Then he came upon this sentence: Do you ever have time to think of us when you think of home? I wish you were here with us. It was not a cry of longing or a confession of love — only a reminder that he belonged to them. She did not like overt gestures, or light when she lay resting in the nude, or even a mirror when he kissed her in the foyer before he left for the office; he had noticed her sidewise glance at that mute unwanted witness.

He had gone away. He had become a stranger. He surveyed his own past dispassionately, as if it were a book about someone else’s life.

Once more he took the photograph in his hand. As he admired the young woman’s beauty, a feeling of satisfaction came over him. She can still begin a new life, he thought complacently. She will not be broken. She will easily find a man to console her.

What does she think of me? That really makes no difference. And suddenly, pitying himself and his own anguish, he found himself believing that when friends learned of his departure and began to condemn and stigmatize his betrayal, Ilona would defend him. He could hear her calm voice: Perhaps it is better for him this way. Perhaps he believed that he would be able to write in a different way. Who knows what drove him to this? It is not easy for him, either.

Ilona’s large, dark eyes, shadowed by her lashes, looked out without blinking. That angered him: her insistent, inquiring gaze. That’s what the fool of a photographer told her to do, he thought irritably, dropping the little piece of cardboard on his desk, for he heard steps on the veranda and the voice of the watchman assuring someone that the counselor had been home for an hour. It must be Trojanowski.