Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

Daniel and his countryman spoke rapidly to each other. At last the young man rose and said earnestly, “I have heard nothing, sahib. The blind man gives good advice. Before there would be a proper investigation they would poison him, and me as well. Best to be silent.”

“Who would poison you?”

“The pirates. The smugglers of people.”

“Do you understand any of this?” Istvan turned to Margit in helpless exasperation. “How can we help them when they don’t want help?”

“Night is not a good counselor. He should not stay here. They will surely be looking for him.”

“Where can we hide him?”

“I would take him to the mission now that it is dark,” Daniel advised. “Let the fathers attend to him. Perhaps you will go with me, sahib. I am afraid.”

“I’ll go, too.” Margit rose, then quickly gave up the plan. “Go. I’ll wait. I’m terribly tired. Go yourself.” She sat slumped and weak in the darkness under the looming white bundle of mosquito netting.

“Lie down.”

“All right,” she agreed easily. Alarmed, he touched her forehead. It was hot. Her hair was damp with sweat; it clung to her temples. He was seized with a fear that she was ill — very ill.

“There’s nothing wrong with me. A little fever,” she insisted. “It’s giving me a pain in my joints. I’ll take an aspirin and it will go down.”

“And the blasted light had to go out. Can you find the aspirin?”

Daniel took a flashlight from under his dhoti. A stream of white glare hurt their eyes.

“Turn it out,” she begged in a whisper. “The aspirin’s in the drawer. Well, go on. I need to be alone now. The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll be back.”

The blind man stood up, jostling the bottles so that they chimed briefly. They listened: it seemed that in the echoes of the sea they could distinguish muffled noises, the stamping of many feet. It was so quiet that they could hear grains of sand dropping from the man’s wet rags and scattering on the floor. Their own pulses beat painfully in their ears. The blind man whispered something. Daniel translated, “He says that we can go. That is only the sea grumbling.”

“Take this. I’ll be calmer,” she breathed into Istvan’s ear. He felt her push a long, cold object into his hand; it flashed in the dark with a moist, vitreous sheen. “Be careful. It’s a lancet.”

He shrugged. What was she imagining? We are on the hotel’s beach; the staff are sleeping alongside us. A patrol is even walking the shoreline. The mumblings of the sightless visionary have frightened Margit; the night and the fever have conjured up phantoms. We are in no danger.

Irritably he took the bare arm, which was still caked with sand, and helped the blind man down the steps. The cool skin, rough with sand, reminded him of the lifeless form the waves had left on the beach.

He turned around and saw with relief that Margit had disappeared under the tent of mosquito netting.

Gripping the lancet, he waded across the beach as if the sand were cold ashes. He smelled the greasy, briny odor of the blind man’s windblown hair. What have I become involved in? Certainly I’m not going to fight anyone. A diplomat with a knife, at night, on the dunes…A smuggler runs from a pirate ship: a madman’s story. He would gladly have thrown away the lancet, but he was afraid he would not be able to find it later. The roar of the sea crashing against the beach soothed his anxiety with its measured rhythm.

As they passed the last cottage, which was empty and bolted shut, Istvan laid the lancet on the step. Under the sky with its burden of stars, the whole tale seemed no more than the raving of a fevered mind. Another day, he thought, and I’ll be laughing at my gullibility.

He waited, hidden among the palms in darkness black as thick smoke, until Daniel had given the blind man over to the care of the mission. He heard the dry clashing of the great ragged leaves, the sleepy grunting of the tall trunks. He was worried about Margit. He was already eager to go back when the servant slipped silently out of the shadows.

“I told the fathers that it was at your direction, so they took him at once,” he began in a whisper. “His brother will pay.”

“If he has a brother,” Istvan muttered skeptically.

“I believe him. He does not lie.” After a moment’s hesitation Daniel added, “Fugitives from Pakistan came, then left, and no one worried about their disappearance. They had a layover in the port. They begged; now they are gone. They are nowhere to be found. So much the better. Now there is no more trouble. Ceylon protects itself against people from India, but there are chinks, so they leak through.”

“And no one knew of this?”

“Perhaps something was said about it, but who would believe? To believe is to kill hope, sahib. And that is to acquiesce to death — a slow death from hunger.”

They walked in darkness filled with stars. The sand crunched under their feet. The sea groaned like a mute, trying clumsily to utter something with plaintive rumblings and splashes. All the coast was dark. Only one lighthouse nodded toward them, beckoning with a stream of brilliance.

“I think they all perished, sahib,” Daniel whispered. “That is why no one brought an accusation against the pirates.”

“But there was no confirmation that anyone had sailed safely to port. What about their sons and daughters?”

“They did not want to write, for it would have betrayed them. Or perhaps they did not know how. And where to write? They waited for word, and then they forgot. When the parents sold their children into slavery, they foreordained them to ruin.”

“And you can think so calmly of all this?”

“That is human life, sahib. We all delude ourselves that where we are not, it must be better.”

Istvan was furious. He could have taken the man by the arm and shaken him. You fool. You damned fool. Why don’t you rebel? All the servant’s logic seemed senseless to him, yet he acknowledged that his explanation of the crime they had stumbled upon might be correct.

“Think, Daniel! Is it worth it to kill for a handful of silver — a pair of rings and necklaces?”

“They do not do it for the booty. They must collect the fee or no one would believe that they would take them,” the servant whispered, holding on to Istvan. “They offered those people to the sea.”

Istvan strode on with clenched jaws. The insane lie: one devised it and the other stupidly believed it!

“The sea gives fish, the sea feeds us. We must assure ourselves of its good will. Otherwise it will be angry and reach for victims itself. Fishermen for generations, their fate depends on the sea, so is it any wonder, sahib, that they want to propitiate it?”

“And you are a Catholic?” Istvan tugged angrily at the young man’s arm. “Don’t you understand that this is a crime and those thugs are ready to lure new victims?”

“The runaways would have starved to death. And so — I did not push them into the water. They themselves wanted to go away. Best not to meddle. I am a Catholic. I also want eternal life. Let each save himself as he is able. Everything that happens happens because God permits it. If He had not willed it, He would not have allowed them to die.”

Daniel understands nothing, and certainly thinks that I understand nothing. Caste and fate. He does not think of such people as his neighbors. He manages to anesthetize his love for God in Indian style. To anesthetize himself from cooperating with God, from co-creating himself and the world that exists, which after our death can be better, more beautiful because of what we leave behind.

From the long beaches washed by waves drifted a wet odor like the smell of a dog being chased in the rain.