Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“We will never know what happened to him. I cannot think of him only as a decaying material object. There is the imperative to attend to him, to bury the dead,” she reminded him in an undertone.

“To burn them,” he corrected her. “There has been no storm for the last week. He must have drowned, or died of natural causes and been thrown overboard.”

“But then they would have wrapped him in a winding sheet and attached a stone.”

“They would have had to have a sheet.” He shrugged. “He was naked. There wasn’t even a loincloth.”

Another large jellyfish, pecked to shreds, gleamed on the sand. Farther on lay several, then a dozen or more — a burial ground for masses of fibers like short-lived fossils under domes, all dissolving in the sun to a sticky, stinking soup.

They turned and took a shortcut across the beach, which was glowing with heat, wading to their ankles in white sand like the ash from a fire that had just gone out. Turning away from the shifting views of the ocean and of the bay, which seemed to be covered with fragments of mirrors, they pushed wearily along toward the pavilion. The hotel staff were setting tables on the shady veranda; through a sunny chink white napkins flashed, artistically folded. The melody played by the Hindu sitting among palm roots led them along. Women in faded saris with flat baskets on their heads passed them, bowing and moving with small steps toward the sea, their silver bracelets tinkling.

When they reached their cottage, the slender, boyish servant hurried out to meet them, smiling broadly and handing them bathrobes. Margit went into the shower first; the water, warmed by the sun, dissolved the salt that had pasted her eyelashes together.

“Come quickly! We seem to have run short of water again,” she called. “Use it while you can.”

When he walked out to the veranda, dressed in linen trousers and a light shirt, Margit was chatting with Daniel. In a simple green dress with white edging she looked girlish; her red hair, tied with a white ribbon, flowed onto her right shoulder, and her skin was rosy with sunburn.

“Smugglers of people won’t turn back for one dead man, especially a foreigner,” the young man told her with incomprehensible exhilaration. “They dissect him so he is unrecognizable and throw him into the sea.”

“Who attends to human remains?” Istvan pointed to the flashing silver crescent that was the bay.

“They will call from the hotel. A policeman will come and order the elders of the village to burn the body. He himself will not touch it, for it is not known what the man died of — perhaps plague — and he is educated and knows what bacteria are.” The young man’s white teeth showed in a winsome smile.

The blistering heat from the sand burned through their sandals and seemed to scorch Margit’s calves. As they reached the central pavilion, Istvan saw that Daniel was hanging the rinsed bathing suits on the railing. The air quivered as it rose; the melody of flutes mingled with the hiss of grasshoppers, the buzz of swirling flies, and the rippling fronds in the palm grove in a mellow symphony of holiday leisure. When they walked into the delightful shade of the hotel veranda, it seemed to Istvan that the opulence of summer was dripping like a honeycomb when a breeze fluttered the pages of the big calendar and revealed a date: December twenty-third.

“Pardon my boldness, but sir and madam are very careless.” The maitre d’hotel, dressed in starched white linen, was leaning over them. “I was observing through field glasses. You swim out too far.”

“Are you thinking of sharks?” Terey said, making light of the man’s warning. “We have become accustomed to your sign: Beware of sharks. Well — what of it? After all, we came for the swimming.”

“It is difficult to return to the shore.” The maitre d’ was still bending over them worriedly. “The current pulls hard. I was not even thinking of sharks. They have never yet attacked a white person.”

“If not to the shore, surely we could swim to a fishing boat. Its men would pull us out.”

“Unfortunately, they would not.” The man’s concern was not to be turned aside as he summoned the waiters to serve the meal. “If the sea takes a victim it desires, it also reaches for a member of the family of anyone who rescues him. After someone is drowned the catch is always better. The sea shows its gratitude. The fishermen would not rescue you, for they want to be in the good graces of the element from which they draw their livelihood. They believe this. They want to propitiate the sea.”

“Nothing is as you imagine,” Margit sighed, but just then her attention was drawn to the dish placed on the table and the beer, poured from cans, that left a cool fog on their tall glasses. “And perhaps that sadhu who was playing the gourd fife is not a beggar.”

“I don’t mind saying that it would have been just my kind of gaucherie to give him alms,” Istvan fretted. “I wanted to, but not in my bathing suit.”

“That is fortunate. He is a very rich gentleman. This hotel belongs to him, and so do a large number of fishing boats. He has warehouses for coconut meat and houses in the port.”

“And he sits by the sea and plays like a pauper waiting for pennies.”

“That prayer of his is a hymn of worship to the sea. He sees divinity in it.” He explained this as he would to children who comprehend none of the wisdom of adults.

When the waiters had left the table, Margit exchanged greetings with two elderly Englishwomen in the other corner of the veranda and asked them if they liked the place. Looking indifferently around the vast blue sky, they answered that its attractiveness, like that of the other places in the brochures, had been exaggerated. It was true that the weather was good, but it was empty and cheerless. Immediately after the holidays they were going to Colombo.

“Why did you get involved with them?” he said, quelling her friendly impulse. “We won’t be able to get rid of them. Eat.”

“I don’t think they’re happy.”

“They have bank accounts. They travel. They do as they like.”

“Too late. Everything came too late: wealth, acquaintance with the world, even the pleasures of the table. They don’t digest their food well; I heard them ask for rice gruel. But they hope to find a chink through which to escape their age. It distresses them. They don’t want to resign themselves to it. Sad.”

“And they are funny in those girlish dresses, with garish lipstick. Pearls on turkeys’ necks. They follow every Indian man with their eyes. Don’t they see how they look?”

They walked toward the blue cottage.

“They’re terribly unhappy,” she said with conviction. “They don’t believe in love even if they once experienced it. By now they only trust money.”

“And that is dreadful.” Contemptuously he kicked a coconut shell that rolled like a monkey’s skull. “They buy men’s attentions.”

She was silent, stepping lightly along the firmly tamped path covered with streaks of sparkling sand. She shook her head reproachfully and whispered almost to herself, “Everyone buys love somehow. I do, too.”

He whirled around, took her by her arms and looked deep into her eyes, where he saw the lustrous reflection of the clear sky.

“Is it so bad for you, being with me?”

“No. You know that very well,” she answered soberly. “I want only one thing: that we go to Australia and this seesawing finally ends.”

They stood in the full glare of the sun. The warm wind ruffled Margit’s skirt. Curving, feather-like palm fronds swayed above her red hair. He felt the pulsing of her blood, the fragrance of her skin, and the slow, infuriatingly calm hum and rumble of the ocean.