Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

The jackal burrowed into the nearest clump of brambles; they had to frighten him out with shouts. The Hindu servants came running up, throwing rocks. Suddenly under the legs of the shuddering, foaming horses a slender form slid like red lightning and whisked itself away, eluding the chase.

Ditches on the course made falls likely, and the master of the hunt had checked before the group moved out to see if the riders were wearing cork helmets as prescribed by the rules of the club. Istvan had barely escaped breaking his neck tumbling among the burnt-out stalks. Though he had ridden in more than a dozen hunts, not once had he seen a jackal speared to death; they slipped away, they hid deep in thickets, they dived into dens. So another one had to be flushed out, and the amusement went on until foam red with dust ran over the horses’ bellies, until their raw-throated riders ceased shouting and the call of the trumpet announced the end of the hunt. Exasperated voices, faltering for lack of breath, told of perfect thrusts, extolled the fleetness and spirit of the horses, and made a laughingstock of Major Stowne, whose lance was lodged irretrievably in the rocky ground.

Grace rode doggedly with the experienced hunters. She knew that she rode well, but she did not force herself on anyone; she simply was. She was aware that her presence excited men, that each of them wanted to show his prowess — to win her praise, to feel a friendly jostle on the arm with a glove darkened by horse sweat, to see her eyes kindle with admiration.

The Sunday morning sun was unbearably hot. Shirts stiffened with sweat. Voices were full of barely concealed rage. They really wanted to spear that skittish carcass, to pin it to the ground and raise it quivering on a lance — to cut short this senseless chase, which they had already had their fill of, though no one dared call a halt. A few of the riders fell back a little from the group in the lead, giving their mounts their heads, and the horses slowed to a walk, as if in quiet desertion. But Grace, with fiery cheeks, galloped on a black horse side by side with Istvan. The jackal, straining all its powers, hurtled in front of them, its narrow tongue hanging from its mouth, saliva trickling down. They heard the tormented animal’s snorting moans.

“Strike!” Grace cried in a high voice full of cruelty.

Istvan jabbed with his lance. He must have grazed the animal, for it bolted sideways with a screeching bark. The nervous Hindu horse swerved and Grace went flying over its neck. She was dragged a few meters by her hands, which were tangled in the reins; the imprint of her splayed legs could be seen on the grass.

He leaped from his horse and lifted her from the waist, like a sheaf of grain. Her chin strap had come apart and her helmet had fallen into the brush. Her skirt was rolled up high; he saw her dark, shapely thighs.

“Are you hurt, Grace?” He shook her lightly in his arms until her forehead fell against his cheek. He smelled the fragrance of her hair, felt the warmth of her body, felt her lips, viscid from fatigue, sticking to his neck. She opened her eyes with such a piercing look that he shivered. He pressed his palms to her back and held her close. There was no incidental touching, only a chaste kiss.

“You were frightened, Istvan,” she said in a low voice. “Would it have pained you if I had been killed?”

He wanted to kiss her on the lips instead of answering, but the riders had come up in a group and were dismounting. Grace’s fall had provided a reason to end the torturous chase in the blazing noon sun. She stood leaning on him, brushing off her skirt. It seemed to him that she wanted to prolong their moment of closeness.

Her fiance rode up on a dappled gray Arabian. Seeing that Grace had risen to her feet, he did not even get off his horse.

“I had him when the trumpet call began,” he cried excitedly. “Look, I caught him on the nape. His hair is on the point.” He shoved the tip of the lance uncomfortably near their faces. Was there some meaning in the gesture, Istvan wondered fleetingly.

Servants came, leading back Grace’s horse. “Can madam mount him?” Terey asked.

“Call me Grace. He has no objection, isn’t that so, my rajah?”

“Yes, only I must give the word. Mr. Terey is a gentleman. Mr. Terey, help her into the saddle.” He drove his lance into the red earth and gouged out a hole.

Istvan lifted the girl and placed her in the saddle. He slipped her foot into the stirrup and adjusted the reins, as if it were difficult for him to move away from her. Then, seeing that the rajah had turned his horse away and, without waiting, was taking a short cut through the meadows, Grace pushed away her skirt and showed him a bruise on her knee. “It hurts,” she complained like a child, and he kissed the bluish spot quickly. Without a word she rode off at a trot after the disappearing rajah.

Istvan turned around. Behind him an old sergeant major with a thick mustache was sitting on a horse like a statue, the point of his lance jutting up above his red turban. “He saw?” Istvan wondered uneasily. “Did he make anything of it?”

When he had caught up with the couple and was riding at a walk so close to Grace that their stirrups jogged each other with a dull clatter, no one alluded to the accident; they talked of the merits of Arabian half-bloods, of pasturage, of the grooming of manes.

He dismounted hastily, but Grace was off her horse before he could help her. The sergeant major shouted to his batmen; in woolen stockings and shorts, they looked like overaged scouts. Istvan glanced at the sergeant major’s whiskered face. Flashing eyes looked knowingly, indulgently, from under shaggy brows. “Good hunt, sir?” he asked insinuatingly, and put out his hand for a tip.

In the dark interior of the club, sparks of color fell from stained glass emblazoned with heraldic emblems and wandered on the air. The hunters crowded to the bar, though the solitude offered by the spacious hall was alluring. Deep leather chairs invited each one to take his ease, but the members stubbornly clustered in groups. Barefoot servants ran about noiselessly, handing around drinks and cigars. Someone turned on the fans, and the starched muslin projecting like birds’ crests from the waiters’ turbans moved with a life of its own; the newspapers tossed onto tables or fastened in wicker racks rustled as if the invisible hands of club members long dead were turning their pages, once again carelessly browsing through the society columns. Istvan deposited his lance in an umbrella stand.

“Come here,” the rajah called. “We must complete the ritual. Sit by Grace.”

The girl was swallowed up by the leather-encased frame of the chair. She was pensive and distant. He could see only that both her palms clasped the knee he had kissed. “It hurts her,” the rajah said.

He looked with repugnance at the white dinner jacket that hung from the back of the chair. The blades of the fan overhead chased their own shadows around the ceiling. A lizard, as if molded from bread crumbs, wandered in slow motion around the wall.

After all, I did not fall in love. He shook his head; this sudden wedding galled him. When all is said and done, nothing has changed; they both will still be my friends, he thought. But he felt indefinably injured, as if he were saying goodbye to the girl, as if he had lost her.

Goodbyes. The winter of 1955. The dejected face of Bela Fekete at the station in Budapest.

“How lucky you are! I have always dreamed of seeing India. I will do it by proxy, through your eyes. Only write me about everything! I’m glad they are sending you. But it hurts to part with you.”

“I’ll be back before you know it. In three years you will be coming to welcome me home.”