Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“Margit, you’re wise, after all.”

She gazed with anguish into his dark eyes. He looked forthrightly, defenselessly back at her. She saw the heavy line of his eyebrows, his tanned forehead, his windblown hair.

“Wise?” she repeated reflectively. “Do you mean that I feel nothing? When someone drowns, he calls for help, he thrashes about. Even when he goes under, you can see his hand grasping at the air. I know, Istvan, that you would rush to rescue him. To rescue anyone. But you don’t notice me. I eat, I drink, I sunbathe on the beach, and I sleep with you, but I’m drowning. Understand, Istvan! I’m drowning.”

He was silent. He hung his head. Their shadows joined and formed a single silhouette on the white sand at their feet.

“I understand.”

“No. At least spare me that. If you understood, you would not leave me in uncertainty. After all, I dragged you to the very tip of India. My strength is exhausted. Let’s go to Colombo. Decide on that one step.”

He looked at her with profound tenderness.

“That’s why you attached yourself to the English ladies. They are flying there.” He patted her and whispered, “Don’t distress yourself. I’ll go with you.”

Though it was a beautiful day, her eyes were clouded with sadness.

“You must not talk that way. You know it isn’t true. I am buying you. You have my body; you forget about me. You say, You are good, you are wise, you love me. And then it goes against me. You want me to end it because you don’t have the courage. I know what lies behind all those reasons you invent: Ilona, the boys. I only veil her at the moment because I am here.”

“Please understand.”

“I understand more than you.” She pushed his hands away. “That’s why this is hard for me.”

“But I’m with you,” he cried, clenching his fists in a gesture of powerlessness.

“Do you think that a condemned person is much happier if the sentencing is delayed?” she said in an undertone, turning her head toward the ocean, which advanced tirelessly toward the white beaches.

He took her, resistant and upset as she was, and kissed her temple. Gradually she relaxed and, leaning forward a little, let him lead her toward the cottage. He felt a tremor run through her; her lips were hot and dry. The sun, he thought. We lay in the sun too much. It seemed to him that she had a slight fever.

They drew near the little blue house in silence, reconciled, leaning on each other. Through the open door came the slow tapping of typewriter keys. They stood still, smiling indulgently. Turning his head back and forth, utterly absorbed, the attendant was striking the keyboard with two fingers. The breeze lightly ruffled the bundled mosquito netting. Daniel was alert; he looked around and, startled, jumped away from the typewriter.

“I am very sorry.” He cringed like a dog that has gotten into mischief and now waits for a hiding.

“What are you writing?” Istvan looked over his shoulder, but the boy quickly pulled the paper out of the machine.

“Nothing. Really, nothing.”

“Show us.”

It looked like a song written in English, not polished but fresh and full of feeling. Its subject was the star of Bethlehem that shone in the eye of an ox and on the silver neck of an ass. Their breath warmed the bare, helpless feet of the baby. The animals sympathized with him, for they knew the world: the stony roads, the long journeys in the dust and heat, the blows falling on the back, the lashes with the whip and the burdens too heavy to bear, the premonitions of death when even a damp sponge does not moisten the cracked lips. The few beasts pity the newborn who desires to conquer the world with love.

“Well, what next?” Istvan asked, surprised.

“Only wishes. Joyous holidays—” he was embarrassed. “I wanted to lay the letter on the table with the present for memsab. It was going to be a surprise.”

He pulled out of his shirt a long strand of tiny opalescent shells, well matched and strenuously polished. He laid them on Margit’s outstretched hand. The necklace retained the warmth of his skin.

“Who taught you the song?”

“No one, sahib. I composed it myself. I am sorry for disturbing the machine. I thought it would be more elegant this way.” His gentle eyes were soft with humility, his long, dark fingers entwined pleadingly. “I wanted to prepare a gift, for I will be receiving something from you, after all,” he explained with childlike candor.

Terey was ashamed; he had not thought of a gift for Daniel.

“And what would you prefer? A gift, or money to buy yourself something you want?”

Daniel raised his shapely head. He looked troubled. Margit shook the string of shells softly; they chattered and tinkled. Outside the window the ocean was keening. White streaks of foam rushed toward the shore and dissolved on invisible beaches. Dunes swept by the sea wind glinted uneasily. Now and then the dry rattle of palm fronds, as if someone were ripping oilcloth, drifted into the room.

“Of course Daniel wants both.” She dispelled the young man’s worry. “You will give him a tie — the mango-colored one. And a few rupees, as you said.”

“You will go to church? At midnight there is a Christmas mass. Many fishermen will come. And there will be a crèche in which everything moves. The people have been working on it all year.”

“Let’s go, shall we?” Margit suggested. “There is nothing to do here. And you’re probably tired of this solitude — just the pair of us.”

“We’ll see.” He felt trapped and defensive. He had forgotten, completely forgotten. Was this a subtle invitation from the One he had pushed from his thoughts, driven away from the sunny beach and shut into the chapel, as a troublesome suitcase is left in a baggage room? “And where is it?” he asked rather coldly.

“Not far from here. Beyond the village, in the palm grove. And the priest is from Europe. A real monk with a beard.”

“Of what nationality?”

Daniel’s long eyelashes fluttered helplessly and he threw up his hands.

“I don’t know. White.”

Margit said encouragingly, “We’ll go and we’ll see.”

Outside the window figures appeared with flat baskets on their heads. They spoke in husky voices. Daniel answered them, and announced with a smile of satisfaction that displayed his charming dimples, “They have brought the star. I ordered a star of the sea for you from the fishermen. I told them to catch a big one. I can dry it so it will not lose its color. You can fasten it to the hood of your car as the English do when they drive away.”

Leaning on the railing of the veranda, they could see into the baskets. Crabs half a meter across, tied together and strewn with seaweed, fumbled with their legs. Yellow cuttlefish swelled like living money bags, rippling arms that seemed both animal and vegetable. Like the leaves of the century plant, Istvan thought. Sometimes from under the seaweed a goggling lashless eye flashed disquietingly.

“They ask you to buy lobsters, sir. They can prepare them in the hotel kitchen. Freshly caught; live.” He took them carefully in his hands and raised them to show how the tails fluttered in their hard shells. “Not costly, sir. A very good dish.”

The women stood still, not even raising their faces toward Istvan. They seemed to be intermediaries. The glare of the sun fell on the shallow baskets and kindled rainbow-tinted points of light on the wet scales of the fish and the crabs’ shells. It flashed on bare breasts, empty, sucked-out bags hanging from under saris carelessly thrown on.

“Surely you will not force me to eat these appalling things.” Margit stepped back. “Especially after what we saw on the shore.”

They raised their heads and looked at the long expanse of beach. A smudge of smoke rose from among the dunes: a body was being burned. A tall man swathed in white stood there, guarding the unseen fire. The funereal chirping of flutes floated back to them. “The sadhu apologizes to the sea,” Daniel said drowsily and began, without aversion, to rake through the seaweed with his hand. He selected lobsters and held a whole cluster by their long antennae.