Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

Miss Ward was not at the reception, so Grace must have called. Pereira couldn’t manage to repeat anything. Terey writhed, listening with one ear to the rajah’s boastings.

Grace was hidden in a bevy of sleek women who passed their lives lounging about and gorging on pastry and gossip. Each year they gave birth and wheedled jewels from their husbands as rewards, then used them to pique the envy of their friends.

Grace’s face was full of soft brightness, but impenetrable, like still water in temple ponds; it hid a mystery. Could marriage have changed her so?

He took the earliest opportunity to escape the rajah and attach himself to Vijayaveda, Dr. Kapur, and a tall, hunched man wearing a white shirt gathered into innumerable creases and drawn together with a band under the neck. The man wore a dhoti and held the ends of it in his fingers like a dancer’s skirt, fanning his bare calves.

“War is not so terrible when one is our age.” Vijayaveda beat his chest. “We are talking of events in Tibet — a minor revolt of the lamas, the slaughter of some Chinese advisers,” he explained to Terey. “Even if the Americans took up the cause of the Dalai Lama—”

“You speak of something you have never experienced, sir,” the Hungarian countered. “I have seen war at close range. One must have vast patience and great intelligence to hold in check an arrogant opponent who is cocksure of his technology. Even if it takes enormous concessions, peace must be preserved.”

“You repeat it like an incantation, sir: peace, peace,” Kapur attacked him, “because the communist strategy demands it. You put the world in fear of nuclear annihilation, then you yourselves foment small wars, which are just, you say, because they are fought for freedom.”

“War is not so bad,” the manufacturer insisted. “It brought freedom to India, it dislodged foreign capital. And it all happened at little cost.”

“Little? If you disregard several million who died of hunger. In spite of catastrophic droughts, with your help the English pumped rice through to the African front. The passive death of Indians was also an ingredient in this war,” said the tall man in the dhoti.

“There are enough of us left.” Vijayaveda shrugged off the point. “I would rather see a war in Europe. There would be movement here straight away: orders for factories, turnover of goods, technical advances. War is not terrible so long as you maintain neutrality.”

“Easy to say, but who can guarantee that?” The tall Hindu spread his hands and raised the edge of his dhoti, uncovering half his lean thigh.

“The politics of Gandhi, Nehru,” Kapur put in. “As long as the Congress Party, the party of former prisoners, persecuted and struggling for freedom, is in power—”

“You know very well that the whole Congress is like one of our joint families, a family partnership. You were honest as long as you were behind bars; when you got your hands on power, you began to change overnight. I don’t deny that Nehru, Prasad, Radhakrishnan are noble people, leaders without self-interest. But the rest? Behind their backs the rest find ways to profit, to suck the people like horseflies on an ox’s neck. The money goes to a common pot, and they hand off funds to the Congress for propaganda and for the police, who are the guardians of their shady businesses. ‘Joint family’: one set of faces from the outside, another from the inside,” the Hindu said vehemently, his dhoti flapping like a sail. “And no sooner are they caught than they invoke the memory of their past merits, which were even in many cases quite genuine, because in those days they took no account of danger. They also like to point to other people’s scars, and to cluck, ‘Oh, Gandhi, Gandhi,’ thinking that that shibboleth will anesthetize the agitated public. It is time for us to have a proper role in the running of this country. Socialism!”

“Another shibboleth.” Vijayaveda shrugged. “An antiquated nineteenth-century economic theory elevated to the dignity of a philosophy.”

“Professor Dass, as you have just witnessed, is already infected by you. He dreams of revolution,” Dr. Kapur whispered to Terey. “And those humanists who extol revolution are the first to have their necks wrung by it.”

“You will never take over governments in India.” Vijayaveda struck his palm with the other fist. “You are compromised once and for all. When we called for boycotts during the war, when we haggled with the English for our freedom so blood would not have been shed for nothing, the communists directed the laborers to work loyally for the English. You condemned the strikes and demonstrations. And why? Why so loyal all of a sudden? Because Moscow was in danger, and you listen to her. What concern of yours are the interests of that nation? Chandra Bose was better.”

“Not Moscow, but humanity, was in mortal danger. That is why we agreed to make concessions,” the professor retorted. “The enemies of our enemies were our natural allies…for the time being, of course, for the time being. And if Chandra Bose had been successful, we would have had a Japanese occupation. Ask them in Singapore how they liked that! To drive the English out with help of the Japanese is to chase one devil away and let all hell in. Madness!”

“And what actually happened to him?” Istvan asked, recalling a snatch of an old newsreel and a crowd of moviegoers, not given to being demonstrative in public, rising in the darkness to pay homage.

“He died near the end of the war,” Vijayaveda said.

“When the campaign for the subjugation of India did not succeed,” Professor Dass said with a sneer, “the powers summoned him to Tokyo to explain why no uprising had broken out here. But on the way it appeared that the verdict had come down. They swung him by his hands and feet and threw him out of the plane.”

“He was a man of integrity,” Kapur said.

“Where would he have led us?” hissed Dass. “Perhaps he dreamed of a great India, but at what price? The people felt the tyrant in him and did not support him.”

“Stop hiding behind ‘the people.’ ‘The people, this,’ ‘the people, that,’” Vijayaveda shouted. “The people is a great mute. First of all, it doesn’t speak because it doesn’t know, and you shout on its behalf. And then, when you take power, it cannot speak even if it wanted, for you hold your paw over its mouth.”

Jumping as if on a spring, raising its rump high, a gray monkey ran in from the garden. Its long tail hung in an arc over its senile, ugly head. Its eyes, pale green like gooseberries, had a mocking look. In its paw it dragged an open bag that belonged to one of the ladies, dropping a handkerchief, lipstick in a golden case, and a bunch of jingling keys along the way.

A servant lunged to the rescue and tried to snatch away the booty, but the monkey tittered, shrieked hysterically, and with its back bristling, leaped over onto Grace. Complaining like a child, it cried and buried its little face under its arm.

“Let the monkey play with that,” called the owner of the purse. “She will grow bored and give it up of her own accord. There is no point in annoying her.”

The Hindu ladies resumed their conversation. The monkey, now soothed, jumped onto the back of a sofa and began to pluck sheets of paper from a little red notebook as if to put it in order.

“Delightful!” gushed the victim. “Grace, did you raise her?”

The monkey tousled her hair, making a shambles of her coiffure. It pulled out jasmine blossoms that had been threaded into her hair and began chewing them and spitting them out. Then it went back to separating the tangled strands of hair.

“Careful, that hurts!” the Hindu woman bridled, offering the little animal a mango. “She behaves just like my husband. My hair bothers him in his sleep. He says that it gets in his face, that it suffocates him. He wrestles with it. In the morning he can’t get his fingers untangled.”