Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“Listen.” Margit was worried. “Did you send holiday greetings to your people?”

“To the boys? Quite a while ago. Two weeks ago.”

“I was thinking of your colleagues in Delhi. Of the ambassador.”

He shrugged. “They’re not thinking about me, either.”

“But you should be thinking of them. Send New Year’s cards. You’ll shame them.”

“You’re a good girl.” He rose, for he heard footsteps on the stairs to the veranda.

“Sahib!” Daniel called softly. “He took me with him on a special errand. I am to give you a present. He has already gone.”

“I told him I didn’t want any presents.”

“He was certain that you would accept this trifle.” Daniel grimaced in the glare of the low sun and held up the round green center of a young coconut. “Perhaps you will drink the fresh milk. It is very healthy. Shall I cut into it?” he asked, reaching for a knife.

Istvan looked undecidedly at the smoothly gleaming green heart of the coconut, which was the size of a soccer ball. Several scratches could be seen in it — evidence of the coconut’s having been cut with a chopper. He raised it to his ear and shook it. There was a soft splashing inside.

“The blade has to be driven in three times at the base, where the shell is still soft. You remove the piece you cut out like a three-cornered cork.” The servant demonstrated; the fibrous tissue crunched under the point of the knife. He brought a tall glass and Terey poured in the cool, cloudy liquid. Suddenly something emerged from inside the coconut: a gold chain with a pendant in the shape of a leaf like a hand.

“Margit!” he called, then asked in astonishment, “How was that so cunningly placed in the center?”

“A surprise, sir.” Daniel doubled over and slapped his thighs with excitement. “He is wise. He knew that you would accept the coconut. We stuck in two knives and pushed apart the pulp. The chain slid in as if it were an alms box and the nut closed with hardly a trace. Sir, a medal with the hand of Buddha brings luck.”

“Go and give it back to him right now.” He fished out the necklace with a knife. Drops of coconut milk trickled from the metal.

“I told you, they are gone. Perhaps memsab likes the necklace?” he suggested with a friendly, knowing wink.

“Do you want it for a souvenir?” Istvan held the chain on his fingertips. The gold hand with the lineaments of a lotus flower flashed red in a stream of sunlight.

“Beautiful work.” She was holding up her hair with one hand and trying to do up the zipper at the back of her neck.

“They touch it up, they polish it, because they have time. The form has been consecrated for ages. Do you like it?”

She nodded, drew Istvan to her, and kissed him on the cheek. He sat on the edge of the bed and held her as she rested against his chest. They listened to the dry scraping of the palm leaf broom as Daniel swept the veranda, the angry buzzing of flies drunk on sticky drops of Coca-Cola and the protest of one trapped in an empty bottle — the shrieking vibrato of a terrified insect. The sea, as if exhausted, emitted sleepy wheezes. He held the girl tightly; his lips were on her tangled rust-colored hair, which shone in the glow of the setting sun. The fly played its quivering treble note. Margit must have heard it as well, for she whispered, “Go. Let it out. Or kill it.”

He did not hurry. He sighed tranquilly.

“And bring the coconut milk.”

Reluctantly he stood up and turned the bottle on the tray so its neck faced the westering sun. The fly found its way out of the bottle. The desperate buzzing stopped. As he carried the glass, he stealthily sampled the refreshing, slightly salty liquid. Margit drank it in large gulps. He saw the trembling of her tense neck.

“The taste reminds me of tears,” she whispered. He saw the clear blue of her eyes and almost moaned.

For three more days he did not let her lie on the beach. Though the breeze from the sea tempered the heat, the invisible sun would have sapped her strength. He himself only plunged into the water briefly and swam out for short distances, knowing that she watched him constantly, apprehensively, half-hidden in the shade, resting her head on the warm wall of the veranda.

He hurried toward the cottage through the dry exhalations of fire that came from the white sand. He brought her a rose-colored shell as big as two hands, a crab shell, a green fragment of bottle glass, its roughness rubbed smooth by the waves — frosted, as if every trace of civilization and mechanical production had been rubbed away, leaving a glassy pebble through which the world appeared completely different than before. The crab shell, bristling with spines around the edges, served as an ashtray for them. The rose-tinted shell lay on the windowsill; the glass, like a bookmark, was buried in a volume laboriously read.

These acquired treasures Daniel cleaned away without their noticing, removing them from view, and they forgot about them like children who abandon their pails and shovels when they are called away to other enjoyments.

On New Year’s Eve automobiles arrived and powerfully built men in clowns’ caps, with balloons fastened to the backs of their trousers, ran between the cottages in the twilight, trumpeting squeaky notes on paper horns. Elderly ladies with dyed hair sprinkled with gilt offered bare arms to young men, hoisted the edges of their long gowns as if they were fording a stream, and pulled their escorts along, tittering and hopping about like little girls. The dining room was ablaze with yellow lights and alive with quickened rhythm and jarringly loud conversation. From the cicadas in the bushes came a frenzied jangling, as if they were trying to be heard above the music.

In the night he sat on the veranda with Margit. They felt no wish to be part of the crowd that was shouting in defiance of the music. When in the pearly glow from the sea they spied roaming couples, silhouettes locked together as in mortal combat, they smiled indulgently. Istvan found Margit’s hand and stroked it lightly, nourished by the peace in his heart. They sat late, gazing at the little lights of passing liners, so far away that they seemed to mingle with the enormous stars. They talked without hurry; the undulation of the water measured off long spells of silence. Only the mosquitoes, lured by the fires at the restaurant, finally drove them into the cottage and under the netting.

But the next morning was, as before the holiday, quiet and empty. The guests got into their cars almost unseen and stole away toward the town, as if they were ashamed of their escapades the previous evening. The cottages stood open on the shore; he could hear the thumping of wicker furniture in rooms from which mattresses had been dragged out, and the singsong lament of the staff as they restored order.

Adroit as a circus performer, Daniel carried in their breakfast on a tray on his head. Margit settled into a chaise longue, propping her bare feet on the railing of the veranda. Her cretonne dress, in a geometrical print with green and violet fish, was unfastened from top to bottom, revealing her close-fitting turquoise swimsuit and her body, which in the scorching sunlight seemed to be made of reddish gold.

They talked of the future — the future he wanted to believe in.

“You will write about your Hungary and no one will stop you. You forget that you won’t have to support me,” she explained as if he were an obstinate child. “At last you can be yourself, not looking over your shoulder at the jury box, the self-appointed authority on what you ought to write and how.”

“You said that I am taking Hungary with me.” He spoke quietly, reflectively. “That’s true. A movie cut short. I can look back at it all, write my commentary on images recalled, be moved that I was there — a participant in those events. Up to the time of my leaving. And then I’ll begin to collect, to fish short bulletins and notices out of newspapers — traces of events, so I can imagine what’s going on in my country. The rest will be guesses. And if predictions are misleading and my people show themselves different than my cherished image of them, I will not be able to understand their behavior and may begin to feel hatred or contempt for them.”