Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“Well, and what about it? Were you happier?”

“This is not the time to talk about it. You are coaxing confidences about lost love from me. Believe me, for those few people, and I can count them on the fingers of one hand, it was worth it to live.”

Out of the embassy walked Lajos Ferenc, still immaculate and fresh after a day’s work, with the bow tie between the points of his starched collar perfectly straight. His long, wavy hair was slightly tinged with silver. He had the good looks of a mannequin in a clothing store window.

“Will one of you be in town today? I have a little work to do, I must be at home, and I have films to pick up.”

He would never have admitted that he wanted to lie down, to look through the magazines or play bridge with his wife and neighbors. No — he always had to sit down to work, to attend to something, broaden his knowledge; he never broke free of work, but he achieved his goals.

He avoided meetings with friends; when everyone agreed to meet at Volga just for ice cream, he turned up as well, but ate ice cream at a different table, on the watch for an interesting contact that would add to his understanding of the political situation in the country to which he had been posted.

“I will be at an exhibition of children’s painting. Old Shankar invited me to be on the jury. I can pick up the films,” Istvan spoke up.

Ferenc handed him the receipts for the films and thanked him effusively. He walked with perfectly erect posture down the path toward his house.

“I’ll take you, Judit. Wait.” Istvan drove the car out of the slightly shaded parking space. “Oh, what an oven!”

Even through its linen cover, the plastic seat was hot on his back. He slowed down as he passed Ferenc and with a gesture invited him to get in the car. But the secretary only thanked him, slightly raising his Panama hat. It occurred to Terey that they wore hats like that at the Russian embassy.

“Do you know what he said today when I asked him if he weren’t bored sometimes?” Judit began. “‘A man who works with integrity has no time to experience loneliness.’ I tell you, he will go far.”

“And he will not get on anyone’s bad side,” Terey agreed, “not because he has no opinions — but why should he express them, since one can simply repeat the ambassador’s weighty pronouncements?”

“Confess: do you envy him?”

“No. I prefer to be myself and have time to experience loneliness.”

“And I prefer you that way. Well, goodbye. If you go to the cinema this week, think of me — an hour’s kindness to an aging woman,” she joked cheerlessly, tapping his hand.

He didn’t drive away in a hurry. He watched her as she went down a path under enormous trees with leaves that seem to be lacquered.

I know very little about her, he thought. And she also covers over the lacunae in her biography. If she learned languages before the war, she could not have been from the proletariat. Who is she, really? She says that kindness is a form of weakness…

In front of Terey’s house stood a two-wheeled cart with a pony harnessed to it. The cart was loaded with rolled carpets; a fat trader was sleeping on them. The hiss of the braking tires woke him. He started up like a spider emerging from its hole when its web twitches, nudged by its prey.

“Babuji,” the man called, “I have brought carpets.”

“Not today,” Terey said roughly as he passed him. “Another time.”

“A week ago sir also promised. After all, I want nothing. I only ask you let me show you my treasures from Kashmir.”

“I will not buy.”

“Who said buy? Sir don’t have time to look at the whole collection. I brought only one carpet I chose special for you. We don’t talk about money. I have one dream; I want to spread it out for you in a room. You like it, it stay. If no — in a week I bring another one until we find the right one. No. Not a word about money. Is important my little joy when sir pick out something. All right? Please, do me favor,” he begged, holding out his hands.

The watchman blocked his way, holding a thick bamboo stick crosswise.

“Not today. I don’t have time,” Terey rebuffed him.

“That is bad for sir. Americans take the best, but do they know carpets? And I was so happy. Let me spread under feet one rust color, short pile, flower pattern. A true treasure. I saved special for sahib.”

The clusters of climbing plants were parted by dark hands and the vulturine head of the cook in his starched blue turban appeared.

“Sir,” he advised, “it costs nothing. His rugs are beautiful, old. Let him spread it out.”

Istvan suddenly felt tired. So the trader had suborned the cook to aid in the entrapment! The watchman, too, was looking around, making a barrier, with a theatrical gesture, of the bamboo stick. The trader had a pained expression on his face such as one rarely saw even at a funeral. The pony gave a quick shake of its close-clipped mane; horseflies stung him and he stamped the cracked red clay until clods spattered. They were waiting. Can I disappoint them all? he thought. In a couple of days I will tell him to take the carpet away. I am under no obligation because he unrolls it today.

“All right. Show it.” He waved assent. “But quickly. I have no time.”

Then something inconceivable happened. The diffident merchant shouted imperiously; the watchman leaned his stick on the low wall and jumped to lift a thick roll of carpet on his shoulder. The cook disappeared into the house; his commands floated out as he prodded the sweeper, and together, with scraping noises, they pushed a table out of the way, dragged chairs about and cleared a place.

“Who of us has time to lose, sahib?” sighed the merchant. “But worth it to look a moment at this carpet. I go away. Sahib look at it today, tomorrow sit in chair, smoke cigarette, and think why this carpet now the nicest place in the room. Not only nice for the eyes, needs bare feet. Take time and decide. I don’t push. I go away.”

Heavy, sweaty, his puffy, starched white trousers rustling, he walked to the gate as if the outcome of the inspection were of no concern to him.

“Sir—” he turned around as if making a confession with tenderly half-shut, lachrymose eyes “—I cannot make profit off sir. I know sir’s soul. It hungry for beauty.”

Soul? What can he know of me? Istvan wondered. He questioned the neighbors, he got some opinions, he made sure I can pay. He has nothing to lose. He promised the servants a handful of change, he drew them into the scheme. They worked out the tactics and the timing.

He went inside. In that short instant, when he opened the screen door, a little swarm of flies squeezed in and glided around, following the alluring aromas from the kitchen.

The cook and the sweeper stood chatting with their heads hung down like two parrots in a cage, admiring the carpet. It was handsome: rust and brownish-green, with a small, bluish motif of a tree and yellow-green blossoms. The tones were soft, harmonious, the pattern the work of no common artist. The rug pleased Terey, and that exasperated him. The trader must have been a good psychologist, or perhaps they had let him in on the sly, and he had glanced around the walls, spied out Terey’s favorite combination of colors in the pictures.

The sweeper squatted and with a gnarled hand stroked the short nap of the carpet, as if he were afraid he would wake the dyes from sleep.

“The merchant admitted,” Terey said on a hunch, “that he gave you five rupees each to show him the house.”

“He is lying, sahib,” the cook said indignantly. “He only promised me half a rupee. He had to give the watchman twenty naye paise at once or he wouldn’t let him in at the gate. I have still gotten nothing.” His speech had a reproachful ring as he looked with his black eyes from under bristling, grizzled eyebrows.