Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

The telephone rang again, but he did not pick it up. He was sure that it was Judit, wanting to make him see things her way. She is not bad. And Ferenc? And the cryptographer? None was bad in his own right, but taken together…One goads the other, making sure no one hesitates. They are not bad, but they are not good, not only to me but for each other or for themselves.

He came into the hall, followed by the servants’ watchful looks. “It’s one,” he said, looking at his watch. “Don’t bother with lunch. Put on an early dinner, at five. A good one; make an effort. For two people. Here’s some money.” He laid out a bill, forestalling the cook’s wheedling. “I’ll pay you tomorrow.”

“For the whole month?”

“Even if I leave.”

There was no need to explain that. He walked out to the car, which was still unwashed and bore traces of the long drive. The watchman obligingly opened the door, stamped one foot, and stood at attention. On the grassy square his wife was waving a branch, chasing away a goat that had climbed onto the garden wall and was savoring a little flower. His tension was gone; release had come suddenly. Had the issue taken on its proper proportion and stopped tormenting him?

Margit is right. Nothing has happened. He smiled at himself unexpectedly in the dusty mirror. Nothing — yet.

He made his way, unhurried, through the streets of Delhi toward the ambassador’s residence. He passed motorcycle rickshaws with little canopied roofs. Hirsute Sikhs with puffy cheeks, leaning on their steering wheels, squeezed their pear-shaped horns with languorous smiles.

He left the car at a distance from the gate. The white columns of the residence were garlanded with passion flowers; the Bajcsys’ younger son was careening around a flower bed on a bicycle. Crinkled leaves rustled under its wheels and flew among the melodiously humming spokes. The boy nearly collided with the counselor.

“Look out!” Istvan exclaimed, jumping out of the way.

“You look out!” the little daredevil answered. “This is my yard.” He sped on along the paths, lowering one foot to steady the bicycle at the sharp turns.

Hidden in the shade behind the palace stood a car carrying a small white flag with a red circle in its center. The luncheon with the Japanese ambassador was not over yet. The guard, a short man with sinewy bowed legs, blocked Istvan’s way. The sun flashed on the handle of a knife thrust into his belt.

“Whom do you wish to see, sir?” he asked. Seeing that Istvan was moving confidently toward the stairs, he became disconcerted. “The ambassador is not free,” he said.

Istvan felt as if he were trespassing. He did not know this new, recently hired watchman. A thought stabbed him: had he really found himself excluded from the group, set apart, stigmatized? The boy on the bicycle flew straight at them, forcing them apart.

“Let him in!” the child shouted. “He is one of ours.”

He went up the stairs to the spacious hall and sat in a comfortable armchair. He decided to wait until the guest had left; he wanted to talk with the ambassador alone. From the open door to the dining room came a laugh in a bass voice and fragments of sentences basted with unctuous politeness. No doubt I’m here for the last time, he thought with relief.

So many times he had stood on the stairs greeting guests as they arrived, shaking hands as the park flashed with colored lights, the orchestra played old waltzes, the gravel crunched under the wheels of automobiles, and the smell of fuel blended with the perfumes of women sewn into glossy silks. Now that was behind him, like the lamentable film showing during the struggle in Budapest — the rows of empty chairs. The memory of the embarrassment they had endured grazed him like a bullet.

But other parties had been successful. Plum vodka and Tokay had livened up even the phlegmatic Hindus: they danced. They sang. They did not want to leave. When at last they were left alone, the ambassador with one jerk had pulled off his snap-on bow tie — for he had never learned how to tie one like a man in the higher sphere of society — unfastened his dress shirt, which was softened with sweat, and poured himself some wine. “Well, drink up!” he had invited graciously. “Well, Ferenc! Terey, go ahead! We’ve flushed out the crowd; it’s gone. We can breathe easily. There’s no one here except us.”

On the walls hung pictures of steel mill workers in the red glare of a blast furnace, masons on scaffolding, a woman mixing feed for piglets swarming to a trough; pictures like color photographs, approved and purchased, and no way was found to display them, so they were packed off to the foreign post. Lent — but no one would demand their return. They were relieved to write them off as a loss. The chairs and the red carpet had come from India. The great vase full of freshly cut branches with nondescript violet blossoms seemed to have been put in place randomly, with little relation to what was around it, for this house was not a home but a transient accommodation.

He lolled in the chair, smoking a cigarette, and was just walking out, saying goodbye to his life as an officer of the diplomatic corps. Margit was right: nothing has happened. Really, nothing.

“So you’ve arrived.” The ambassador’s wife came up. He had not heard the steps on the thick carpet. Evidently she had been bored with the conversation in a language she understood only poorly. She gave him her lumpish hand without a welcoming embrace, as if she needed support.

“Please sit down. They will be through directly.” She nodded toward the dining room. “You do not harbor resentment toward my husband? I want you to understand him. He had to.” She tried to penetrate his impassive expression. Her large eyes — hazel, even pretty — looked tearfully at him. “Instructions came to purge the mission, on the quiet, of a ‘doubtful element.’ He did not single you out; it was a collective decision. My husband said he would do nothing to injure you. After all, he has to be careful. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I understand too much.”

“No one believed you would come back. If you had not gone away it all would have gone differently. But that feeling persists. Talk to my husband, only please spare him. He has so many worries just now.” She confided in him, misled by the calmness of his manner; she almost took him for an ally. “He sleeps badly. His heart suffocates him.”

She leaned toward the counselor and laid both hands on her lap palms up, like a gossiping peasant woman. Her features were plain, honest.

“There are great changes in the government. Other comrades, not all of them friendly, went to the authorities. As long as he had the party behind him, he knew whom to go to and how to make his case; he always prevailed. More than once I was afraid — because he is so self-asserting, he demands so much — that he thought I was silly. And he was probably right, for he bore up against everything so that I was frightened sometimes. If that is reversed, he will not hold up well. Do not be hard on him,” she begged.

Voices drifted in from a distance; they were saying goodbye. Luncheon had ended, and she knew she ought to put in an appearance before the guest left.

“You can return to our country. To Budapest. Do you believe that I envy you?”

“I believe it.”

“There are no people here. We see diplomats exclusively.” She sighed heavily. “And one can be ever so careful, can handle them with kid gloves, and still they backbite, they make fun. But we must receive them. When you leave, think of your wife. I know where one can get beautiful silks in Old Delhi and lizard skin for sandals and bags. I would gladly go with you when the ambassador is not here.”