Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

He got up from behind his desk and closed the door. As if wanting to make the most of their time together, he offered cigarettes. Istvan bristled inside.

“Have you ordered many cases of whiskey from Gupta?” the secretary began.

“What concern is that of yours? Would that give me bad marks in your book?”

“This heat! Everyone jumps at each other’s throats, and you are on edge as well. But I wanted you to put twelve dozen for me on your account. It’s just that I have ordered too many lately, and I don’t want customs to notice.”

“I haven’t ordered any in the last month.”

“So I surmised when I filled out the order card. Just sign it and I’ll take care of the rest with Gupta. Don’t worry about a thing.”

“Why so much vodka?” Terey marveled, reaching for the card.

“The case has a dozen bottles. I have been here two whole years longer than you, I know many, many people, and everyone wants to take some. Whiskey is the best gift, especially when they raise the duty. You understand?”

“Now I do,” Terey smiled. “After all, I’d have bet that you didn’t drink alone.”

Ferenc laughed, and they parted in good humor.

Istvan returned to his rooms to write a letter to the Times of India correcting some malicious information about Hungary reprinted from an American agency. Such a letter might be published under the heading “Conversations with Readers,” but it would be better if it were signed by someone who was not from the embassy. Ram Kanval, perhaps? Or Vijayaveda himself? He did not want to draw Margit into political imbroglios.

The cook announced with some perturbation that there had been two very important telephone calls.

“I wrote them down.” He pulled his glasses in their wire rims down from his forehead and faltered out the words he himself had scribbled, “Sir…Vijayaveda reminds you of the…party…to celebrate the return of the young couple…and Madam — that is, Miss—” he corrected himself, straining his great gloomy eyes—“I have it written here…‘also asked if sir will be there.’”

“But — Miss who?”

“I must have made a mistake here. I can’t read it.” He straightened the crumpled paper. “But it was an important call. In English.”

Perhaps Grace had wanted to be sure that he would come? It would be better not to appear at all. Shame and apprehension engulfed him at the thought of such a meeting. How to talk to her so as not to touch her? To pass over everything in silence? She would decide, would set the terms of their new relationship with a coloring of her voice, a glance, a way of extending her hand. He would prefer to avoid meetings, but at the same time he felt that suddenly to change his behavior toward them would be harder still — in a word, stupid. He would have to find a way of explaining it to the rajah and Vijayaveda.

No sooner had he sat down at the table, which was set with a linen place mat, and Pereira taken a grapefruit from the refrigerator, than he sensed that something in the room had changed. He hesitated for the twinkling of an eye before he noticed that a blue and white carpet lay on the floor, downy as moss in a beech forest.

“Where is the other carpet?”

“The merchant was here and exchanged it for this one. I myself chose it.”

“But who told you to?”

“Sahib never said a word about whether the red one was suitable.”

“Find the merchant and tell him to leave it for me,” Terey stormed, as if the rug they had disposed of were his property. “I want that carpet returned to me.”

“And if he has found a buyer?”

“I was first.” He removed a seed with his spoon.

The cook’s face brightened as if a beam of sunlight had passed over it. He was already calculating the tip he would haggle from the vendor.

“Sahib wants to keep the red carpet?” he queried, pressing for confirmation. His hair rattled dryly as he scratched above his ear with a bent finger. “It will be expensive. It is real cashmere.”

“If he thinks he’s going to fleece me, let him not bring it at all. I don’t want to look at him or at rugs. And you, instead of doing business of your own out of this, attend to the kitchen.”

A strong smell of burnt cake wafted from the half-open door. Pereira went pattering out in beaten-up slippers, shaped like the boats boys whittle from pine bark, that were never cleaned. In a moment he was back, passing a lump of something black and smoking from one hand to the other.

“The teacakes burned,” he announced, as if it were a great achievement.

The dining room was stuffy in spite of the large ceiling fan that whisked the air into motion. The cooling machine hummed like the roar of the sea in a shell. At the thought of the oppressive sun, which was out of eyeshot here but now and then crossed the threshold and fell like a weight on his shoulders, Istvan felt a pressure in his head and a sudden faintness swept over him.

He lay down and was beginning to read The Naked and the Dead when the open book fell onto his forehead. He let it fall and sank into sleep.

He awoke dazed and uneasy, with a dew of perspiration on his chest. He had dreamed that he came in by a narrow wooden stairway, roughly hewn with an ax like cottagers’ staircases, to a cramped loft. Dried sheepskins were hanging there, with their fleecy sides toward the center, smelling of rancid fat and an herb to keep away maggots. Ilona would be waiting there. In the darkness he reached out and touched a snugly wrapped baby sleeping in a wicker trough. Groping with his fingertips, he felt the moist, open lips. They smacked and the infant slept on.

In the bathtub, he chuckled as he remembered his grandfather, who had a knack for explaining dreams, “A child — that’s trouble. It sleeps all wrapped up, and everything is fine, but be careful not to wake it up.” His cheerfulness returned; he seemed to hear that voice, grumbling but full of warmth, just behind him. But his grandfather had died before the war, before Horthy…Oh, foolishness! He swatted his shoulders with a rolled towel and instead of rubbing himself with it, let the air dry his skin. He wanted to preserve the fleeting illusion of coolness that lingered after his bath.

He drove out to the gardener’s plot behind the European cemetery, where patches of snapdragon and gladiolus grew, and baby’s breath with tiny, silvery blooms that created a mist over the dense cluster of color — the indispensable finishing touch to a bouquet.

He bought flowers for Grace.

The rajah greeted him with sincere delight, handing him a tall glass of whiskey in which ice cubes gleamed like chunks of topaz. A slender man in immaculately pressed trousers, noticing the familiarity between them, gave Istvan his seat. The leather chair sighed like a human being as it accepted its new burden. When the man was introduced, the counselor did not hear his name distinctly. The skin lying firm and tight across his cheeks made it hard to determine his age, but he must have been over forty, for the neatly trimmed hair at his temples was streaked with silver.

“Who is that?” Terey asked in an undertone.

“Another one looking for credit. No one so important that you have to remember him,” the rajah said dismissively. “I don’t ask what he wants money for. What’s important is that he return it at term and pay the interest. But what he does with it—”

The conversation went on this way, as if the thin Hindu did not exist for either of them. But he, without antagonism, stood in obedient readiness a step away so as to be able to join in at any moment.

The rajah settled in to dwell at length on the splendid homage that had been done him at Jaipur, the hundred elephants that had come out to meet him and his bride. They had ridden into their estate on an elephant wearing a caparison of gold. Merchants had brought presents in spite of the fact that legal subjugation to the ruling family had ceased a few years before. But the merchants themselves kept up the tradition in order to signify that they enjoyed favorable relations with the wealthy of Rajasthan.