Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“They touched the heads of their sleeping children. They chose victims. They sold their daughters as slaves to houses with no doors, only curtains of clattering bamboo rods, houses in which a woman does not sleep. Their sons they sold to peasants who felt their arms and inspected their teeth with their fingers, as they do with oxen. Their money, their treasure — and you could have held it in your fist — they gave the nocturnal visitor. He laid out a receipt which they could not read, but they trusted him, they believed. It was not the first load or the last of pilgrims longing for paradise, for the island of Lanka.

“I wanted to sail with them. To walk in the footsteps of Siddhartha, the prince who did not fear death. They did not want to take money from me. They knew me; I paid with a song. I listened to their quick breathing. I touched their hearts. We were led by night; the grass clutched at our feet, the branches snagged our hands as if to call: Do not go! But I was with them. In front of me, women carried their little children; men marched behind me with bundles of rice and clothing. We walked into water that slowly rose. I held the hand of a friendly wanderer bound, like me, for the land of plenty, the Kingdom of Lanka.

“‘Do not fear.’ They took me by the arms. ‘It is not deep here and the boat can be seen.’ I was not afraid. I had already heard the wave boom against the ship. I was pulled into its wooden bottom and tucked tightly into the passengers’ quarters. I felt the warmth of their bodies; they were overcome by sleep. The sail, swollen with the sea wind, creaked on the mast. The helmsman took me under his care. He ordered me to sing about the battle Hanuman waged with a pair of giants. The yardarm whimpered. I smelled the odors of tar and of the beneficent sea. When I was silent, they gave me milk from young coconuts. They fed me rice in a leaf twisted like a buffalo’s horn. They were good to me; they asked only that I sing again of the land of Lanka.

“We sailed two days, for I felt the sun’s breath, and the third night, when the gulls squealed like wakened children to greet the dawn, the helmsman ordered us to disembark. They tested with a pole; the water around the ship was shallow, the land not far. They left the ship quietly. They lowered themselves into the waves without the clink of a bracelet, blessing in whispers those who had smuggled them to paradise, to the Kingdom of Lanka.”

The glassy clink of the bottles struck with metal made Margit shudder. The hoarse voice with its cry for the country all the hungry so longed for was unnerving. The singer seemed to forget his hearers; his unerring strokes fell harder on the bottles, and with the uplifted face and white eyes of a statue he lamented to heaven and the distant sea.

Daniel crouched beside him and translated in a whisper. He did not hinder the blind man, but conveyed the sense of the cry which reverberated in them both — as if they were remembering it — in a secret language. Margit’s hot, dry fingers pressed Istvan’s hand hard, like the fingers of a child who hides behind its mother so as not to see something frightening. The music in the restaurant stopped; they did not notice at all. Only the voices of the ocean seemed nearer, as if they had been called as witnesses.

“I wanted to go down into the water, but they held me back. They ordered me to be silent. They had been good to me, after all; I believed that they would take me to the shore. The ship sailed lightly without people. And then the first moan floated from over the waves. The betrayal was discovered: there was deep water farther on, and the shore was distant — the shore, or perhaps smoke. I heard weeping, shrieking, pleading. Already the sharks were cutting the wave that surged toward them. They beat as if with oars. They snorted like oxen. They smacked like pigs at the trough. So the partners blotted out the traces, drowning the cry that died away beneath the sky of Lanka.”

Suddenly the light blinked and the glare began to leak from the bulb. It was only a red wire; at last it went out. Istvan wanted to go for a candle but Margit held him lightly with her arms around his neck.Then he remembered that to the singer, darkness was no hindrance.

The bottles jangled like gravel on a windowpane as he hit them. He struck without hesitation; the chords sang in the dusk. All at once they were overtaken by a dreadful suspicion that the tale they were hearing was true. The night encircled the walls of the cottage, murmuring and humming. Among the distant stars the lighthouse blindly waved its yellow sword like a giant at bay.

“Before a wave extinguished the last voice, the helmsman paced up and down, looking out. They must have watched the spectacle; I thanked the gods that I was blind. I heard the sharks thrashing. I felt death near. I did not fear dying, only the rending of the body that is alive, pulsing with blood, terrified, naked and defenseless. Those who had been devoured had paid for their faults. Whimpering from ignorance, free of the past, they would be born anew in the beautiful land of Lanka. I waited for death — and the helmsman demanded that I sing to them. The vessel quivered in the fair wind and the lines creaked. They gave me fish to eat; no one refused the water that smelled of mildew.

“That night I heard the bargaining for my head. The helmsman swore he would not betray a blind man. They landed here and threw a stone instead of an anchor. When I heard the sounds of the shore amid the clatter of the surf, I waited for night. The water carried me onto the hardpacked sand, but the sea, not satiated with victims, suddenly changed its mind and dragged me back. Nevertheless I emerged and ran through the dunes in fear that it was pursuing me. And you are the first I have told of that flight to the earthly paradise — of the people who will never accuse the living, for they, reborn, are unaware of the fate that met them at the very gates of Lanka.”

He struck one clear note. As its tremolo hung in the air, he clapped his hand on the floor boards twice with a dull boom like the sound of a drum. Then the deep silence was only measured by the sighs of the drifting sea. The singer hung his head in inexpressible weariness. Daniel trembled with emotion, as if he had only grasped the meaning of the ominous narrative as he translated its final words.

“Ask him if he will tell the police all this tomorrow. I’ll take him in the car. No one will find out.”

“No, sahib. He says he will not speak. The police will not believe him.”

“But is this possible?” Margit squeezed Istvan’s hand so hard her fingers seemed to be biting it. “Is what he is saying true? It’s not just a poem?”

“That is the truth concerning earthly flights to paradise,” Daniel answered, still thrilled and appalled by the blind man’s recital.

“Where is this isle of happiness?” she demanded.

“It is Ceylon,” Istvan said, adding hastily, “We cannot leave him like this. We must…”

The blind man spoke insistently to Daniel, demanding something.

“He asks that we hide him until his brother arrives. Two days. Three. He is certain that his brother will put aside everything and come. He swears that the gods revealed this secret to him so he would sing of those who were swallowed up by the ocean, devoured by the sharks.”

“Damn it! Nothing will save those people. The pirates must be caught and hanged!” Istvan stormed.

“He says: We leave justice to the gods. The pirates only enforce the will of the one who gave them ships and enabled them to engage in smuggling. Sahib,” he added after a moment, “we do not have a death penalty. Even Gandhi forbade us to execute his murderers.”

“I’ve had enough of this ‘he says,’ ‘he wants,’ ‘he doesn’t want.’ I make the decisions here. Is that clear?”