Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“What are you afraid of? You’re so impatient.”

“Perhaps you could call it that,” she whispered, running her fingers over the lumpy excrescences of the coral. “But I’ll be calm now. I won’t cause you any more trouble. I swear it.”

Suddenly he was jealous of that piece of coral that she was caressing with her fingertips. The tender pursing of her lips, the hungry concavities of her cheeks, were so familiar. The red liquid evening had spread over the sky; he heard the soughing of the sea of molten copper, the challenging cries of gulls who were settling down to sleep.

“Anyway, I’m with you.” He kissed her, opening lips that clung greedily to his, and found the taste, bitter from nicotine, of her tongue. She huddled close to him, not letting the spiky branch of coral out of her hand. It jabbed his arm.

He bore down on her with his bare chest as if he were smothering her. They were oblivious to the open door that framed the violet sand, the red water of the bay, half motionless as if clotting, and the lazily wavering sun, small as an orange. He took her with angry impatience, forcing his way. She tried to resist, then against her own intentions gave caress for caress. When she threw back her head and moaned melodiously, he rose on a wave of immeasurable delight. He had drawn from her a voice as of a string tightening to the utmost — to the breaking point, the brink of a great silence.

They rested; they were tired out. He stroked her breasts, tasting her arm with the tip of his tongue. It was as salty as if she had come out of the sea.

“You think it’s enough to pat me, to kiss me, to caress me and forget about everything worrisome,” she whispered with drowsy rancor. “And you’re right. I forget, though only for a little while, when I’m filled with you, when I can take you into me. And afterward the anxiety returns, all the keener because I know what I might lose. Istvan, Istvan, I want to sleep by you even if it were the last sleep, the sleep with no waking.”

He stroked her in silence, feeling a vast emptiness. He could not find a word of comfort that did not ring false. Despair closed in on him.

The sun had fallen until it seemed half submerged. Its molten light blazed on the horizon. Nestling together, they pushed aside the netting that gleamed rose in the sunset and watched the last beam as it plunged behind the water. At once the early evening came on, and their eyes, still dazzled, were full of rainbow-colored sequins; in the sudden dusk, they oriented themselves by touching each other lightly, like the blind.

“It’s good for me, with you.” She put her arm under the back of his neck and rocked it lightly. “Very good.”

To be part of the pulse of his blood, to anchor myself in his memory. I must be very tender to him. If ever I must lose him, I will still be part of him. He will know that I loved him. One may have a wife, may have women and not be touched by love, not know that great sense of devotion, of oneness. After all, I’ve awakened beside other men — she thought with a jarring clarity — and it was good with them, but none of them gave me what he has. If he reached out for another woman, he would have to judge her by me, compare her with me, remember, remember.

But she did not say a word, for she was afraid that it would annoy him, that he would misunderstand. She felt powerless; she only snuggled up to him and pressed her cheek on his chest. And he, roused from brooding, at this beckoning kissed her eyes as if she had only that moment returned from a long journey — as though after yearning for her through a long absence he had found her again.

“Sahib. Sahib.” Daniel, standing on the veranda steps, clapped. “The chaprasi came with the mail.”

How did he know that he shouldn’t come in? Terey thought approvingly. Intuition, or tact? Perhaps just good English training. He freed himself from her arms, which fell away slowly and lay like torn vines that have lost not only their support but their sense of existence. He felt for coins in the pants that hung in the wardrobe. He threw on a robe and went out barefoot to the veranda.

“Give it to me.”

The boy came up the steps and with a deep bow laid a telegram on the railing. He was from the lowest caste. He believed that he might defile even a European by his touch, Istvan thought.

He opened the rough paper with its inelegant lettering and, turning his back to the sky with its failing light, read with difficulty:

Istvan Terey. Cochin. Hotel Florida. Imperative that you return to Delhi Stop Serious personal matter Stop Ferenc.

He went back to the bedroom, turned on a little lamp, and handed her the message. He read it over her shoulder, wondering what could have happened.

“Will you go?” she asked as if expecting him to say no.

“I must. I’m still an official with the embassy.”

“You’re with me, at the very tip of India. You could say now, ‘I’m staying. I’ll be there in two weeks to settle my affairs.’ Tell them goodbye — if they deserve that courtesy.”

“You forget that this is just a furlough. It’s only decent of me to go back.”

“Shall I wait here?”

He was silent. He lowered his head.

“How long will you make me torment myself?” she whispered. “Perhaps you would prefer that I go with you?”

“Yes.” He brightened. “Definitely. We’ll go together.”

“I’ll be following you around to the end.” He was struck by an alien, unwilling note in her voice.

“What do you mean?”

“And if they want to send you back to Hungary?”

Anxiety froze his face like ice.

“No. They would have made that announcement with joy.” He set his lips. “They wouldn’t begrudge me a friendly kick.”

“Call, at all events. Demand an explanation.”

He dressed hurriedly. Before he drove the car around she was already standing by it, self-possessed, ready to offer help and advice.

When they reached the asphalt highway, he put the brake on hard. A long black car was hurtling out of a palm grove. Its driver saw the danger and slowed down a little too late. In the raw glare of their headlights, which flooded the interior of the other car, they spied the old Hindu, the sadhu who had been serenading the sea with his flute. The look on his shaggy face with blinking eyes brought to mind the grimace of an enraged cat. The automobile sped away; its red taillights brightened and then faded.

“Did you recognize him? The peasant dhoti looked like a disguise. And I didn’t believe Daniel.”

“Keep going.” She clasped her hands. “They told us to wait at the post office.”

Great moths glowed in the stream of light, crunching against the hood like chestnuts from slingshots, leaving spatters on the windshield.

The town greeted them with distant plumes of smoke and the odors of burned oil and stagnant drains. Lights glowed in little shops here and there, then more frequently, before they drove in among brick houses. The low post office stood dark and empty; only one frosted window was illuminated. Istvan knocked once and again. Someone uttered a hoarse question but did not step forward.

Suddenly the blind screen was raised with a hard shove and the mustachioed face of a clerk peered out. “Oh, I am very sorry.” He assumed a ceremonious smile. “I did not know.”

He handed Istvan a form to be filled in: from whom, to which state, which city, how many minutes. “Delhi,” he read, shaking his head. “That is far away. You will have to wait.”

They sat in the stuffy room on a grease-stained bench, speaking in whispers. The man lowered the window and seemed to have gone back to dozing when the phone rang unexpectedly.

“Sahib will go to the booth, or speak from my telephone, for it is better. There where the riffraff speak, they have to do something with their hands, and they pluck at the cord as if it were a dhoti, they pick at the receiver as they pick at their ears. In the booth the connection breaks off.”