Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“Hello! Why are you sitting there with a dry snout?” the Pole called from the threshold. “Open sesame—” he pulled at the handles of a carved box with both hands and greeted approvingly the necks of bulging bottles that emerged from under the lid.

“You walk in with no greeting?” Istvan asked.

“Would you like a Chinese ritual? ‘Hello’ is not enough? Well, allow me—” he folded his hands as if in prayer and bowed low. “ Namaste ji. Be praised, oh noble one!”

He settled into a chair, stretched his legs and crossed them. He lit a cigarette. “Does the watchman lighten your loneliness by bringing in girls?” He peeked alertly from under his lowered eyelids to see whether he had hit his mark. “He just hid one from me.”

“No. That is his fiancee. They will be married in a week.”

“Well, well. Now I understand. Mountain people from Nepal have different customs. An Indian groom would not even be allowed to see the girl before the wedding, so he would not defile her with a glance. Parents and matchmakers look over the goods. A photograph is enough. And with us they would want to go off right away to bivouac together with a tent and a kayak. To test things out, to examine them in detail. And they break up almost without regret. There! Just another experience.”

The cook poked his head in and, having assured himself that the wine was poured, carried in a tray of hot, peppery meatballs bristling with toothpicks.

“It’s looking grim for you.” Trojanowski bit into the appetizer. “Today a crowd of workers gathered at the parliament demanding an end to repression. They insisted that Nagy be returned. They took their time about it. Kádár spoke to them. He promised that those who had been driven out would return. The people believe that he will attend to that, but it has been difficult for him in the beginning.” He drank a little of the golden plum vodka. “And what do they write you from home?”

“Nothing of interest, really.” Istvan threw up his hands. “Everything is all right. They are alive. My wife is working. The children are studying.”

“That means that things are hard.”

“Why the devil did he call in those people? Couldn’t it be the way it was in Poland?”

“Don’t be a child. First, they already had their hands on you. Second, Kádár was summoned. I must confess that his courage impresses me. He took on himself the responsibility for Hungary’s fate. He feels, after all, the aversion that surrounds him,” he said reflectively, “but he has a goal, a great cause, that enables him to withstand pressure. He knows what he has rescued. The struggle for a nation, for the future, is that much more difficult because it is lonely. Well, he has people. But many attached themselves to him for tactical reasons, all the while suspecting that he seeks power, that he wants to pay himself back for being in prison. However, the motives of their actions are not important; only the effects are. The thing is for him to have time — a year or two. Then they will begin to respect him.”

His eyes wandered around the room as if the silence had just begun to make him uneasy. “Let’s put on a little music. It’s dismal here.”

He turned on the radio. A melody from some American film about white immigration gathered volume: Anastasia . His foot swayed in time to the music; he liked the plaintive song crooned in a soft, husky female voice.

“So you think Khrushchev rushed Nagy’s ouster?” Istvan asked, turning down the radio.

“He wanted to make things easier for Kádár”—Trojanowski curled his lips—“to clear the decks for him. He did not take the effects into account. Now he has strikes in Hungary. But that will pass. To eat, they must work.”

“I don’t like that way of getting things done.”

“Who does?” Trojanowski smiled sarcastically. “Agreements. Guarantees. We are grown people. Agreements stand if the conditions under which they were signed do not change — well, and if the stronger party wants to abide by them. In adult terms, if that party still has something to gain. Everyone operates this way except us, except Poles. We defeated the Turks at Vienna, rescuing the nation that invaded us later. We were with Napoleon until the end, though everyone else left him, and at least half of Poland could have been bargained away from the czar. Faithfulness to the end! To the last shot. The world marvels at us for that, and takes us for fools. Crazy Poles, eh!” He waved an angry hand. “Our communists are romantics as well — but they have their feet on the ground,” he added as if to himself. He sucked meditatively at the plum vodka.

“If it were not for them, our People’s Republic of today would not be,” he added, setting aside his glass.

“And you are like that,” Istvan mocked gently. “A chip off the old block.”

“What can I do? At birth I was burdened with this inheritance,” Trojanowski sighed with affected regret. “At times I am even proud of it.”

“Certainly Mindszenty would be to your liking. A cardinal, a voluntary prisoner in the American embassy. He did not abandon Hungary.”

Trojanowski leaned on his elbow and ran his hand through his dwindling shock of blond hair. His blue eyes glowed belligerently.

“I don’t trust such pathetic gestures. Is that a test of my intelligence? We must get this straight: he left Hungary — he left because he is on American territory though he is still with you. He understood nothing about the situation in which he found himself after he left prison. He thought it would be as it had been. Suddenly he felt himself to be not a spiritual leader, but a political one. He urged people on to the struggle. And then he boasted—” Trojanowski looked around for cigarettes, which Istvan pushed toward him in an Indian copper case. “No Kossuths? I prefer strong ones. But the Church has experience. It is a wise institution. It does not approve of desertion.”

“You can’t demand that anyone push themselves into martyrdom,” Istvan protested. “They would have shot him. He’s an old man.”

“Well, yes. It would have been a worthy ending for his life. The Church acknowledges two solutions for its dignitaries in such cases: endure with the faithful to the end and go to the wall when the end comes. The Church values the sowing of blood. It does not go to waste. As a matter of fact, the communists think the same way: an idea that is not worth dying for is not worth living for.”

“And the other solution?”

“It is more difficult, for it requires not only zeal and heart, but good sense. It is a wise, circumspect pact with the victors, for in the end it must come to that, and the Church values that, perhaps even more. But for that it is necessary to love one’s flock more than oneself.”

“Are you a Catholic?”

“You might say so,” he said as if the question troubled him. “In all sincerity, I was. One can renounce it, but it trails after us: tradition, habit, almost magical gestures. I have kept up the hope that the problem exists.” He blew smoke at the ceiling. “It would be better if it did. One pushes away these thoughts; there is no time for them. We do anything to deaden that insistent voice.”

“And so — only after death?” Istvan whispered, listening intently.

“We are inured to death. We know that life is a fatal illness. But who wants to remember that every day? I tell you, I cannot imagine not lying in the cemetery under a cross…Don’t tire me. Surely you didn’t invite me here for this.”

“I wanted to ask for your help,” Istvan ventured. Trojanowski turned toward him, surprised. “I have a painter here.”

“A Hindu?”

“You know him, so it will be that much easier for you to talk to him. Ram Kanval. He was going to go to Hungary. But you know what those imbeciles call it: decadent art.”