Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

Women crept forward on their knees, suddenly stood erect, then sank down with their foreheads to the floor, hunched, breathless. A crowd of figures draped in white surged to the altar. The men shuffled on bare feet; the bundled fabric that secured their dhotis swung to the rhythm of their walk, falling like loose skirts below their knees.

Are they truly aware of what is taking place here? Do they understand the mystery? I believe. I know — but I have cut myself off, I am not being nourished from the source. In that moment he was stricken at the thought that he was excluded from this community, that he was under indictment. He himself was the prosecutor and judge. As long as I am with Margit, there is no forgiveness.

The Lord will not afflict his servant, will not retract the word that saves for eternity.

He raised his hand and covered his face, which was contorted with stinging remorse and anger at himself. Indeed, I knew all this, or should have known, if I feel so superior to fellow Catholics from this village in Kerala, fishermen, gatherers of coconut meat and fiber, peasant women wading in rice fields, girls bending under the burden of little brothers and sisters. Each of them could come here in a trustful spirit for the blessed bread; I alone cannot, as long as…Of his own will he condemned himself to estrangement, he abandoned them: yet another betrayal under the pretext of gaining freedom.

Margit slid closer to him and leaned gently against his arm. He felt her touch through his light clothing and his pain intensified. “That was beautiful,” she whispered. Her hair tickled his neck.

Does she comprehend nothing? She looks at the altar and the praying crowd as if it were a pageant full of light and color. And I will not try to explain it to her; I would have to say something detrimental to myself. He exists — we are even prepared to reconcile ourselves to that — so He can serve as a cane to lean on and then put in a corner so we have both hands free to seize the world. To visit in church as in a museum. We admire the statuary, the stained glass, conceived in a transport of humble adoration. His memory was bursting with images from tours of churches; he saw the upturned heads of people gazing at the frescoed vaults, hardly hearing the smooth recitation of the guide, who was extolling the choreographed gestures of the baroque saints or the agonizing tension of the dark figure at the moment of death.

He pulled Margit close, as if he were afraid he would push her away. She turned toward him trustfully, tenderly. She is good, he thought.

“Are you here for long?” the missionary queried in English. The light that fell on the open gates made a yellow blur on the edge of his frayed cassock and his bare feet in worn sandals.

“Two weeks. We would be happy to visit you.” She extended a hand. “It is so peaceful here. And it would be so nice for Istvan to speak his own language.”

“Will you come?” The monk spoke directly to Istvan, for he was troubled by his silence.

“No,” he said in an undertone. Ignoring Margit, he turned around and plunged into the deep twilight among the palms, where the elongated figures of Keralan fishermen disappeared amid whispers and the light jingle of bracelets. The warm light of swaying lanterns slowly floated away.

“What is it?” There was a note of anxiety in the girl’s voice.

“Why did you drag me here?” he burst out, knowing his anger was unjustified. “I had a feeling it would go badly.”

“I thought it would give you pleasure. What did he say? What did he want from you?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s my problem.” He took her hand and raised it to his lips. “I’m sorry.”

“What is it all about?”

He turned so unexpectedly that she almost bumped into him. “Do you really want to know?”

The tone of his voice gave her pause. “If it’s something painful,” she said hesitantly, “perhaps not tonight. But I’m with you. I can share the burden. It won’t overwhelm me.”

“We have to talk about this sometime.” His voice was subdued. The attendant walked a little way behind them; he knew the paths, so he put out the lantern, but his finger played with the button. Bright patches of light exposed rough palm trunks running toward the sky, clumps of dry grass, and dusty, almost black branches of shrubbery.

“After all, there is always — a solution.” He could hear weariness and a drowsy sadness in her voice. “But don’t demand that of me. Let’s leave it to fate, like the Hindus.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If I weren’t alive…”

He clamped his fingers on her arm and shook it desperately. “Don’t even think of such a thing!”

He kissed her forehead and her eyes, pressing her eyelids hard with his lips and ruffling her eyebrows. Her cheeks were flushed and salty, her mouth dry under her lipstick.

“My life,” he breathed, rocking her as she clung to him.

“And Ilona?” she whispered. “Please, Istvan, at least don’t lie to yourself. So many times we’ve talked about the future without taking her into account, as if she were already dead. Well — be brave enough to think that I might leave and release you.”

“I don’t want to. I can’t.”

She trembled as if a chill had run through her. A salty breeze from the sea carried the smell of rotting heaps of plants and wet sand. They heard the reluctant drumming of the waves. She pressed his hand to her lips and cheek. He felt her tears.

“Here is the path, sahib.” White light spurted between the bristling dry grasses.

“Go first, Daniel,” he ordered, letting go of Margit.

“You did not see the crèche, the three kings, the elephants. They shake their trunks,” he said proudly, speaking very low. “After mass the villagers turn the winch and all the figures walk around the manger. The star shines. Saint Joseph smokes a hookah just like a Hindu.”

“Madam doesn’t feel well.”

“I have a little fever,” she admitted, licking her dry lips.

“Memsab lay in the sun too much,” the servant murmured admonishingly. “Too much time in the sea. The sun and water sap your strength. Sahib should not allow it.”

They stepped in among the dunes and floundered in the deep sand, which squeaked under their feet. The white eye of a lighthouse winked far away in the dark. Long ridges of talus glimmered like rotted wood in the breeze. Daniel put out the light. The darkness was not impenetrable; in the sand, washed to a sheen, they could see their half-effaced footprints.

They made their way, unhurried, toward the orange-tinted windows of the hotel restaurant. The guttural voices of the bay drowned out the barely audible tinkle of music from the pavilion. They caught the blare of a saxophone, the syncopated beat of percussion, like lost radio signals. Daniel walked confidently and, it seemed, faster. He took off his sandals and held them in his hand. Margit followed suit. Under its surface the sand had not cooled; it gave under the pressure of their feet, and warmed them.

It seemed to Istvan that this had happened before — that he knew this landscape, obscured by darkness and sprinkled with glassy stardust, knew the figure of the guide outlined by the warm glow of the distant lamps. Perhaps he had waited in a dream for a friendly hand to lead him away from his fears, to point out a refuge. He took Margit’s hand. She trembled.

“Are you cold?”

“I’m sad,” she answered thoughtfully. “I’m sorry. I’m not good company.”

They were near the cottages, whose rear walls rested on the steep bank; their fronts were raised on poles that faced motionless waves of gray sand. In the windows, as if in black mirrors, whirled a rain of stars. The shrill voices of cicadas pursued them like alarm bells. They bored into the ears; they were a torment.