Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

Terey cleared a path through the crowd and parked the Austin. So many people gathered around the car that Margit hesitated about getting out.

“Well, brave it,” he prodded. “They will make way for you, they will move back. You wanted to see real life, after all.”

Half-naked boys jumped forward, raising their hands like diligent pupils.

“I will mind the car!” they called. “I will be watchman!”

He appointed two so they could keep each other company; they would guard both sides of the car. They shouted to passersby, proud of their employment.

Margit seized Istvan’s hand tightly, as if she were afraid the crowd would separate them — that it would pull them into the narrow, crooked little streets and they would never find each other.

The odor of drains, of rotting peelings and steaming urine, beat into the nostrils. The three-story houses, solidly built below but with casually knocked together upper floors, pulsed with life. Lamplight leaked through chinks in the walls, along with the sounds of gramophones and sewing machines run by impatient hands, singing, and the crying of babies. Smells of heated coconut oil and smoldering sticks of incense, placed in clusters in vessels filled with votive ash, rode on the air.

On roofs barely secured with railings made from poles, children chased each other, squealing. Terey and Margit squeezed slowly through the crowd that breathed in their faces, reeking of spices, sweaty clothing, and pomade. Gaunt, perspiring peasants tried to catch up with Istvan. They touched him familiarly, saw that he was a European, and hastily pulled away. In front of the white-skinned pair the crowd was sparser; behind them came a growing mass of those who would not retreat but went on staring, discussing Margit’s beauty at the tops of their voices, admiring her dress and high heels.

“Goldsmiths’ shops. Look!” He pressed her hand.

A peasant woman in an elaborately gathered orange skirt and a tight green bodice pulled a scarf from her black hair, wound it around her hands, and stood with one foot on a stair. With caressing gestures an apprentice placed a heavy ring of silver around her ankle. An acetylene torch hummed with a clear flame. The silver ornaments shimmered. Delight showed on the woman’s face; she must have coveted the anklet for a long time. Leaning on a counter, a master craftsman with a fat, almost female chest shouted to a young man, who quickly heated a thin silver wire and with light strokes of a hammer secured the anklet so it could not be removed. Two mustachioed peasants with very dark skin, wearing sun-bleached robes unfastened and dangling loose, picked coins out of a red kerchief and stacked them on the counter. Touching them with their fingers, they counted them several times. Chains, necklaces, and buckles, hanging on wires from a ceiling invisible in the dimness, revolved slowly, alluringly. Flashes from the torch threw darting shadows; the glow from little lights trickled as if in drops around the ornaments.

“How beautiful she is,” Margit whispered. The crowd pressed in on them; they felt its warm, spicy breath on their necks. The peasant woman was alarmed. She tried to pull her skirt around her slender calf, but the blows from the hammer went on ringing.

“That can’t come off, can it?”

“No. She will be the guardian of the treasure she wears. When they run short of money, she will come to this street and put her foot on the step, and the goldsmith will hammer the wire apart or saw through the anklet. He will throw it onto the scale and then he will repay her — only for the silver by weight, not for the anklet as an ornament, a work of art. That is his profit.”

The woman gazed around with huge, splendid eyes that were clearly troubled. The craftsmen had made a mistake in their reckoning. One of them wiped the tip of his beak-like nose with his thumb. The goldsmith raised his bloated body and in the flutelike voice of the castrated invited the foreigners, if they would be pleased to come in, to look at his wares. He lifted the lid of an encrusted box and, like one who feeds poultry, sprinkled a fistful of unset stones on the counter.

“Perhaps you will go in and choose something for yourself? I warn you, they are not worth much. The real jewels are hiding deep inside the house. He would show them escorted by assistants, would do the honors, would tell the histories: how he acquired them, in whose hands they had been previously, and what luck they had brought their owners. Apart from their value, stones are highly esteemed for their magical properties.”

But Margit was already moving down the street, her sights fixed on a tall Hindu with a black mane of greased hair. On his forehead was a yellow and white three-toothed sign. He walked aloof, as if he saw no one. The crowd parted before him. He was naked; his muscular body gleamed warm bronze. A sheath embroidered with beads covered his maleness, rather defining than concealing it.

He passed them, looking over people’s heads into the red sky full of the fire of evening.

“A holy man. A devotee of Vishnu.”

“I don’t understand.”

“A saint. For him the world is an illusion, as dreams are for you. He is awakened to eternity.”

She shook her head, signaling that she did not comprehend, until her hair shone like copper.

A little girl lifted a baby who had been straddling her hip and blocked their way, watching Margit with rapt attention. She asked for nothing; she did not notice when the crowd pushed her toward a wall. She only went on looking greedily, astonished at the color of Margit’s hair, her blue eyes, and her clothes.

A cow with a floppy, lopsided hump on the back of its neck made the road impassable. The faithful, smearing their hands with red lead, pressed their fingerprints on its flaxen-colored back. Beaded rosaries rattled around the animal’s creased neck; a glass ring stuck on its horn gave off a greenish shimmer. It poked its friendly muzzle, wet with saliva, into a vegetable seller’s basket and plucked a carrot from a bunch. The weak, emaciated man did not cry out, was not angry, did not strike. He only folded his hands as if begging a favor and tried to persuade it to walk a step farther, to move toward the other stalls.

The cow’s muzzle worked sluggishly; it seemed to be cogitating deeply. The carrot vanished between its dark lips. Its black eyes, like those of the Hindus, were full of melancholy.

Suddenly it stood with legs wide apart, raised its tail, and pissed voluminously. Margit looked on astonished as an old woman in a sapphire-blue sari pressed her palms together and caught the stream. Piously she washed out the eyes of a girl who was keeping her company.

“A sacred cow,” he explained, “so magical forces are latent in everything that comes from it.”

The human river flowed by until they were dazed by the gaudy turbans, fiery scarves, saris edged with gold, faces of piercing beauty, full lips, and deep looks from artfully made-up eyes.

“Does their gorgeousness affect you, Terry?” she asked. “I feel terribly commonplace here.”

A smile played on his face. He leaned toward her ear.

“There are no eyes like yours. Only now, against the background of this crowd, have I seen you. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“You console me a little.” As if struck by a sudden discovery, she added quickly, “Did you see how many here have diseases of the eye? Painted — and running with pus. Beautiful — and threatened with blindness.”

“You suffer from occupational fatigue. I see only their shape and luster. Fortunately, I am not an oculist.”

They turned onto a side street that was still more crowded; it was full of little silk shops. Whole sheaves of orange and yellow shawls hung from rods, like banners of the hot summer. Sellers, sitting cross-legged at tables, poured through their bare hands limp veils, diaphanous as mist, with glittering gold and silver threads.