Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“Uh-oh. Something unpleasant comes back to me when I hear that scientific term,” the journalist drawled. “Well, go on.”

“Bajcsy refused to approve his stipend. You have the greater freedom: take him. He’s going to waste here. He tried to poison himself in a fit of despair; I mention that only for your information. Well, think of something. Will you help?”

Trojanowski sat silent with his eyes closed.

“Listen. I’m going away. I put this to your conscience,” Istvan insisted. “Try for once not to do this like a Pole, for you wax sentimental, you promise, and the next day your zeal passes and you forget altogether.”

“All right. I will speak to our cultural attaché,” he agreed at last. “You may count on me, though I can’t vouch for the result.”

“That’s all I ask. Thank you. I know he will be to your people’s liking. Enough now. Let’s go into dinner. What’s your pleasure? Wine? Plum vodka?”

“Let’s stay with the same.” Trojanowski took the bottle and, still holding his glass, moved toward the dining room. “Ah — the smell! All the time I was missing something: it’s just that I’m hungry.” He clapped Istvan warmly on the shoulder.

Istvan spotted a notice in the press that two well-known journalists who had escaped from Hungary had appeared in Calcutta and Bombay. None of the embassy staff, however, could remember any newspaper or other publication at which people by those names had worked. He would gladly have talked with them and listened to their accounts of the uprising, even if it had inculpated him in the ambassador’s eyes. But the route taken by the self-exiled representatives of Hungary bypassed New Delhi.

In bold type on their front pages, the Hindustan Times and the Hindustan Standard sounded alarms about scuffles between patrols on the border of Kashmir and riots in Tibet. They accused the Chinese of invading territory that had been Indian from time immemorial, though only lightly manned forts on two main caravan routes marked out the zone in question, with its barren highlands and arid valleys in which bands of herdsmen wandered freely, grazing yaks and sheep, or pilgrims on their way to Lhasa or the Buddhist monasteries of Kullu passed to the beat of gongs and the birdlike whistle of fifes. An exchange of fire that was actually insignificant reverberated in the press, conveniently for the government, which welcomed the interrogatories of members of parliament demanding new appropriations for arms.

Hungary had vanished from the front pages, displaced by developments in nearby Tibet. In reports of the deliberations of the United Nations Istvan spied a note to the effect that the representatives of Kádár’s regime had been subjected to procedural hostilities instigated by Argentina or by the regime of Chiang Kai-shek, but that it was clear already that the communists had won — had forced the West to acknowledge the new government.

Istvan wandered around the embassy, began conversations, scrutinized his colleagues, only to tear himself away suddenly, escape to his office and shut himself in. It seemed to him that they knew more than he did, that they had access to inside information — that they belonged to the circle of the initiated and he was left out.

“Don’t lose your wits. Stop looking for a fight.” Ferenc put his hands on Istvan’s shoulders. “I swear to you that nothing is going on. I would have told you right away. You are the source of your own anxiety. Take yourself in hand or your nerves will do you in. Go away. Rest up. The boss approved your leave.”

“Don’t chase me away. I’m going of my own accord.” Full of suspicion, he broke away from Ferenc’s grip.

“When?”

“In a few days. Understand — I’m always waiting. It seems to me that as soon as I leave Delhi, something will happen to spoil my plans.”

“That is the best evidence of nervous exhaustion,” Ferenc said triumphantly. “Nothing will happen, I assure you. You are simply overwrought. Otherwise you would not be a poet, only a bookkeeper.”

“You’re probably right.”

When he returned to his house, he was overtaken by fresh misgivings and a feeling that something was threatening him. But the days passed monotonously, one like another, with no surprises. He must be hysterical, he thought. He wrote letters to Ilona, explaining with consummate cruelty that he loved someone else and wanted to begin a new life, and asking her to understand even if she could not forgive. Then he tore them up in disgust, knowing that he was lying in spite of his best intentions, and that the pain he would cause would provide no closure, would not end anything. He sat across from Margit with a glass in his hands and tried to find assurance in her eyes. He drank a great deal, though alcohol did not furnish him the anodyne he wished for.

He nestled close to her. As he dropped off to sleep he felt her knee on his thigh and clasped it sleepily with his hand, only to wake after a short doze. He was instantly conscious; he listened in alarm to her even breathing and the wails of jackals scavenging in the yards of the villas.

Margit did not urge him to leave the city, but she believed that the farther they were from New Delhi and the embassy, the easier it would be to divert him, to tear him away from the centripetal force of his country’s anguish.

“I’ve finished the lectures,” she said calmly on the day before the feast of Diwali.

“Well, what of it?” he bristled, as though she had accused him of something.

“Nothing. I’m free.” Her eyes were so clear and trusting that he was ashamed of his angry retort.

“Do you want to go?”

“I want to be with you,” she said gently. “I have more time for you now. I thought you would be glad.”

“All right.” He turned his head away as if she had pressed him for a decision. “We will clear the account at the hotel. Pack. Leave a suitcase here. It’s time to go.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to take everything with us?” she said, weighing her words.

“Do you think we won’t be coming back to Delhi?” He looked her aggressively in the eye.

“Perhaps that would be best,” she whispered, “but I will do as you like.”

Under his hostile look she inclined her head as if it were drooping beneath an excessively heavy burden. Her red hair fell in a wave, shielding her face. She did not gather it back with the usual gesture but let it fall in a languid cascade. Finally she said, “Everything you would come back for can be bought. Leave part of the baggage. I understand that you want it to appear that we are only going for the holiday. Do you find it calming that there is still time for a final decision?”

“And you think…”

“I don’t think anything. I know. I would only like to help you. But you must decide for yourself. Otherwise you would hate me.”

In the deep silence they heard the shouting of the cook and the clank of the mortar in which he was beating the spice. Vines worried by the evening wind were scraping the dusty screen in the window beside him.

“All right. Let’s go tomorrow,” he said suddenly.

A new vitality surged through her. She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and her eyes began to sparkle.

“Tomorrow. At dawn,” he declared, now decisive. “We will be off to the white beaches I’ve dreamed of. The water will cleanse me of these worries. We’ll bury them in the sand. Margit, help me.” He bent over her. She put her arms around him and pressed him tightly to her.

“This is all I want, after all.”

He buried his face in her disheveled hair with its familiar fragrance, which he drank in until his blood hummed. “You are good for me,” he said, kissing her neck.

By the time the bellboys carried her luggage to the car twilight had fallen. On balconies and the stone parapets of terraces leading to gardens, hundreds of small lights twinkled. Little gold tongues licked the darkness. Houses were already lit for the ceremonial opening of Diwali. On roofs, in windows, even on the steps of houses, lights flickered. Wicks in oil blazed in metal boxes before beggars’ shanties. Everyone hoped to lure the goddess of happiness to their homes; they marked out the path and lighted the way in. Istvan found it painful. He was supposed to buy flat candles and clay sentries with oil lamps, but in the press of business before the journey he had neglected to prepare for the Indian holiday.