Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

The sun, spilling through ragged leaves, hurt the eyes. Passing his hand along the wall, he went back into the living room, slumped into a chair, and hunched over. He poured some whiskey and immediately set it aside untouched. He swallowed as if something were stuck in his throat. From far away he heard the voice of the cook as he bustled about.

“Has something happened, sahib? Did I do wrong to call the taxi?”

He shook his head no, for that did not matter now. As if he had just awakened, he waved away the tiresome chatter.

“No. Don’t serve the meal. Eat it yourselves. Nothing for me later, either. Not tonight. Go. I want to be alone.”

He noticed with amazement that his face was calm; he saw it in the mirror. He managed to pay them their wages, to listen to their thanks, to assure them that they would still have employment, that nothing they feared would happen to them.

How could she say that I didn’t love her? What is this sea of pain I’m drowning in if not love? She is my life, and it is torn away from me. Most terrible of all, I myself — and she so trusting, so yielding — did it with my own hands…

Desperately he tried to remember the first step: when had he seen, been led aside by the certainty, that he was exempt — because he was different from others, because perhaps it would not count? I create the law, so I can break it. And I broke us both. One may, in a rebellious rage, break the stone tablets, tread them down in fury with a feeling of joyful liberation. One may free oneself from them. But they will block the way, threaten, speak in signs of fire.

“Till death do us part…” He heard his voice, for the organ pipes were silenced; Geza and Sandor chanted. For from the Danube country I took my strength and I will be her son — and then the words whispered by foolish lips thousands of times: I believe. I believe. I believe. Millions repeated words of commitment and did not even know why they kept those vows. Two hundred thousand went abroad; perhaps half would still return. Others believe as they breathe, without knowledge, happy as the ox and the ass over the manger. Their prayers are heard; they are not led into temptation. They would become lawmakers, they would judge, and they would forget that they will be judged.

I would have been happy with her. I would have been. I know. At the price of triple betrayal. I understood the last ring of Dante’s Inferno in the night; I knelt on the sand before the gates of the chapel built of pugged clay and cow dung, like Hindu ashrams. I heard the singsong rhythm of an unknown language, and I knew very well what they were saying — I, a future excommunicant. I don’t want it at that price.

She said that I had never loved her. After all, I did that for love, a love that embraced and assimilated her. She takes me for a madman. If only it were true! I wish I could believe it. How can I explain to her — or is it possible to explain to a person who has been stabbed why it was necessary? Why a loving hand thrust in the knife? I was not lying to her when I said that she is my life. Only mine, mine and hers. We could have turned our backs on all the world and been satisfied with each other.

He bent over, pressing his fingers into his eyelids until he felt a radiating pain and saw red spots. He muttered, “I had to. I had to.”

He stiffened with alarm for her. He counted the stages of their advancing intimacy; he remembered the other man who had hung with bound hands in a raked-up fire as his hair sizzled in the flames. But enemies had done that. Today he himself, whom she so loved…A hundred times worse. And if in that hour, pushed to the very edge of despair, she saw no relief except in oblivion?

He raised his head defiantly and stood up. Bumping against his chair and pushing it away, he ran to the telephone. He dialed her number at the hotel. She was in her room; he breathed more easily as he heard, after the rattle, the click of the receiver as it was raised.

“Margit,” he whispered into the forbidding silence. “Margit.” He had to beg. “Can I see you?”

“What for?” He heard a voice in which there was no longer any hope.

“I want to tell you…”

“I’ve heard everything.”

And a sound like the click of scissors. She had hung up.

He went back to his chair. Her words, gestures, decisions repeated themselves and though he explained and clarified them to himself time after time, he was afraid. Her pain was greater than his; it was holding her at bay like an animal, engulfing her in a thickening wave of darkness. Hopelessness. He understood. She had stopped waiting. He realized with terror that she had not been exaggerating when she whispered, “Why didn’t you kill me?”

It was impossible, impossible to explain. What did it matter that he had also reached the depths of despair? Suffering does not unite. It pushes people apart, awakens aversion even to loved ones. Something about it embarrasses, makes one wish to hide it, like sickness.

He hated himself because he could think and act so coolly, even adjust his tie with a deft motion and remember to lock the door. The startled watchman rose abruptly from the veranda steps and stood at attention as a concealed cigarette glimmered in his left hand. The girl nestled by the balustrade like a young animal, half-disappearing into the cascade of climbing plants so he would not notice her. He pretended not to, but he knew very well that they had been sitting together, embracing. He did not envy them. He enjoyed indulging their happiness, which again, thanks to his intervention, had a future.

He drove the car out as if he were in a trance, involuntarily — as if he were dozing behind the wheel. He went into the hall. At the reception desk they knew him. Yes, Miss Ward had asked for her bill; she was leaving. They had gotten her a ticket from Air India. She had given an order to be wakened at five; before six there was a plane to Bombay. She was upstairs now. A moment ago she had asked not to receive calls from the city. They knew everything; they knew more than he did. He hesitated, reassured by all these directives of hers and what they indicated. And he could still come unexpectedly, and suddenly all these measures, these preparations to decamp, would be unnecessary.

He did not dare go upstairs. The inquisitive looks of the staff who had seen them so many times…He could not bear the garishly lit hall. The big reel with slides: the red fortified walls of Fatehpur Sikri, the white marble domes of the Taj Mahal, the blue ocean and the placid tilting palms, like the long necks of birds, that reminded him of the places where he had been with Margit. He turned his eyes away and saw them even under his closed eyelids. He escaped to the car and huddled in a corner of it. It seemed to him that she was beside him, keeping watch just a step away.

He peered at the hotel windows: some blazed gold and rose, others were dim and colorless. He gazed at them until he realized that he was looking for the window of her old room. Now she would have another one, and he did not know which. She ought to know I’m here, he thought. Or perhaps she was calling him now, again and again, and he was nearby but unable to hear, in the metal body of the automobile as in a crustacean’s shell, shrouded in the shadows of the trees.

In the wavering glow of the streetlights he saw a small band of men passing by — a pair of Englishmen trailed by a Hindu in an enormous turban who was chattering incantations, muttering that today was an exceptionally propitious day for omens, that the stars were revealing the fates of people. But the Englishmen knew what awaited them; what they were already certain of was enough. He gave up hope and turned to the drive leading to the hotel. He peered at Istvan and called softly, “Sahib.”