Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“I am happy to hear about the Dr. Margit Ward who is unknown to me.” He leaned on the horn, for a flock of peacocks was crossing the road, their iridescent green and gold tails sweeping the dust and leaves like brooms. “Until now I have only known Miss Margit.”

“Every mother loves her child, but here love injures, blinds, sometimes kills. I rub the inside of the eyelid with ointment, I put in drops — and later I see through the window how the mother rubs the child’s eye with the border of her skirt, spits on her finger and wets the inflamed edge of the eyelid. And she will take the sadhu into her house and let him intone spells, she will apply amulets from sacks with dirt caked on them, or cow piss. I could show her what to do a hundred times, but she will not do it. She will repeat my instructions as if she were in a trance, and I will see in her eyes that she is promising in order to placate me, but when she is on her own again, she will not carry them out. She will get her friends together and tell them what it was like in the clinic, and when they have finished their oohing and aahing, she will take to painting the child’s eyelids with that disgusting grease of coconut oil and soot.

“Oh, it’s my fault, because I washed the child’s eye and it has eyelids white as a vulture’s, and it is supposed to be beautiful! You know, I would like to take the sick children from their mothers by force, because the whole treatment is all for nothing! It’s enough that the eyelid heals over a little; right away they stop taking the treatments seriously; they even stop coming. Now and then I’m overtaken by a rage like this one today. And I’ve taken it out on you. I apologize.”

“It’s nothing. Nothing,” he soothed her. “Go on.”

“Yesterday a girl was brought in. Believe me, I truly wanted to help, but I’d treated thirty patients and my hands were shaky. I gave an order for her to come with her mother this morning. I wanted to take her first, while I was still full of confidence that I could save her sight. I waited. I sent away other mothers. There was no trace of her! She didn’t come. You can’t even imagine how I reproached myself for letting her go yesterday, until I questioned the nurse.

“The nurse, who was trained in an English school, knows what hygiene is. She calmly explained to me that the mother bought a black goat, made an incision in its throat and walked it around the altar of Kali. The blood flowed out, and the pus. Now that whole cataract will come out of the child’s eye. And if not, why treat it, since the goddess wants it that way?

“Until then I had looked at the nurse as someone who was on my side, as an ally. Then she said with a sweet smile, which I would have liked to wipe off her face”—she bent the fingers of both hands down to the trimmed, unpolished nails—“‘Yes, I advised her to do it myself, for why should madam doctor wear herself out for that dark peasant girl?’”

“Do you understand? She put her up to it — so how can I count on the mothers to follow my directions? It’s hopeless!” she cried in despair. “Worse, it’s foolish. And I believed that I could help them.”

“You want too much too soon. You will see; you will adjust, you will get used to it.”

“I’ve already been here two months. Istvan, I can’t work without having faith that there is some sense in what I’m doing.”

They were quiet for a moment, listening to the even hum of the motor. Then he turned his face toward her with a truculent gesture.

“Have you saved even one child’s sight?”

“Of course!” she burst out.

But he went on without heeding her indignation.

“That child will be able to distinguish colors, shapes. You have given him the whole world. Is that a small thing? Wasn’t it worth it to come here even for the happiness of one child?”

“Don’t let my bitterness upset you. Something has come over me today. I’m mad as a hornet.”

“Look.” He pointed to the silvery-white sky. “Sand clouds, charged with electricity. A dry storm is on the way. The birds are taking cover, the cicadas are quiet, and we feel the tension, but we have lost touch with our instincts and don’t know what’s threatening us. We only feel an uneasiness.”

They turned between the spreading trees. Wagons were standing there, and motorcycle rickshaws with blue-striped canopies. Drivers in unbuttoned shirts dozed in the shifting shade. Horses with yellow teeth tore at the dry, dusty leaves of bushes and switched their tails over hindquarters stung by horseflies.

“Entry prohibited.” She pointed to a road sign.

“Not for us. For the Community Development vehicle.” He steered over the crunching gravel under the ruins of the palace of the Grand Mogul. Flies like bullets that had been blown into the moving car and battered against the rear windshield now took flight with a loud, desperate buzzing, beating against their faces and foundering in Margit’s hair.

“Dreadful!” She shuddered as she combed them out with her fingers.

The hot, listless hour had emptied the park. They stood at the foot of the reddish thirty-story tower, which seemed to reel among the silvery streaks that were spreading through the sky — to totter as if it might fall on them.

In the dark gateway a half-naked beggar slept with his head on his chest. His bony black hands had fallen between his parted thighs. His toenails were as long as a dog’s. He did not wake when they walked through the little passage leading to a winding stone stairway worn by innumerable footsteps.

Nebulae of whitish light shone through the narrow guard windows. They climbed the stairs, almost groping their way. In the tiny flame of a match, greasy streaks of dirt could be seen on the wall. Hundreds of thousands of sightseers had leaned on it with their hands and moved sweaty fingers over it, lending a patina to the plaster. The interior reeked with the musky smell of bats and urine passed stealthily by pilgrims. From the higher flights of stairs came the squeals of young girls, amplified by the echo.

“Shall we go all the way up?” he asked. “Eight hundred and sixty-two steps.”

“I would never forgive myself if we didn’t go up.” She quickened her steps. “I must reach the top.”

A line of girls in loose pantaloons, colorful tunics, and light scarves with ends hanging down their backs passed them on the stairs. Their shrieks and titters and the clatter of their sandals could be heard long afterward.

They paused more and more often, out of breath. Margit put a hand on her heart.

“It’s pounding.”

They startled a couple in white who were embracing. Pouting, the young people joined hands and began to descend, but the sound of their footsteps died away quickly; they were in no hurry to leave their stony retreat.

“Did you see? They were kissing,” he said, amused. “The censors cut scenes like that from the movies.”

“It’s remarkable to me, as well, that men here show greater feeling, that they walk around embracing each other, they hold each other’s hands, they plait flowers into their hair. I haven’t seen a boy and girl walking hand in hand. And if that does happen, they are marching in the company of the whole family. Oh, it’s not far!” She was elated by the light from the summit of the tower.

They saw an arid plain with strips of smoldering thorny brushwood and clumps of yellowing trees. Under the turbid sky, like streaks of distant rain, veils of dust were carried on the air along with the rhythmic mutter of thunder. In the copses the domes of old graves darkened, like the shells of gigantic turtles, stripped by a sacrilegious hand of their ceramic scales. Nearer the tower, a few white mud cottages caught the light in a banana grove, and in a pond, like boulders come to life, the black bodies of buffalo wallowed.