Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

He sat behind the wheel and tried to find his way through the streets. They all led to the riverfront, where peasants brought cattle to wade and dead bodies were burned. Through trails of bluish smoke he saw the rhythmic gestures of herders leaning forward with palms cupped, splashing water on the backs of the oxen. White terns flew over the water and, meowing like cats, collided with their own reflections. They shook off the drops and flapped their wings, disappointed that the water was only water and not an abyss of light that would bring them more reflections glistening with silver.

The little map outlined on the invitation was not enough for him. He had to ask directions from passersby, who looked at him and then at the car with great black eyes as if regretting that they did not understand. Here, away from the center of the city, it was hard to find people who spoke English. Suddenly he spied the Peugeot that belonged to the French correspondent and followed it to a large park.

Under the trunks of huge mangroves groups of Hindus stood, engaging in lively discussions. The university — as it was rather pompously called — resembled a Greek temple of harmonious proportions with tympana resting on columns. He had hardly parked the Austin when its representatives came up and welcomed him effusively. They fastened a golden badge to his jacket. On it were a lotus flower and a red ribbon on which he read “Tagore: knowledge, truth, God.”

They spoke with gaudy rhetorical flourishes of the weather, the charming features of the journey, the attractions of the country. When they learned that he was the delegate from Hungary, they tried to determine exactly where that country was. Of course they had a general idea that it was somewhere in Europe.

They conducted him to a building where he was introduced to the director of the institution, who could have posed for a monument to Tolstoy, with his majestic mane of gray hair and luxuriant beard.

There was the ceremonial opening of an exhibit of translations of Tagore. He noticed with pleasure that there were several in Hungarian. He showed them to the director, discreetly declining to mention that they had been issued before the war. Later, infuriated critics had branded Tagore a naive idealist and a woolgathering mystic, making a revival of enthusiasm for his work impossible.

“Is our great writer popular in your country?” asked the director, who had the face of a prophet — a dark face of saintly gauntness framed with white wisps of disheveled hair, and a fiery eye that seemed to pierce Istvan straight through.

Famous? Before the war his books had enjoyed small press runs; the elite read him, chiefly women. Popular? His name was dropped in conversation in salons but rarely mentioned by critics. Certainly he was no less famous there than here, where ninety percent of the people did not have his books within easy reach.

“Of course,” he said warmly. “Tagore is excellently translated. He is numbered among the classic poets. It is impossible to be a cultured person and not know what he was to India.”

“Splendid!” the prophet exulted, and began to recount how some under these old trees had walked with the master, and what he had studied. From that peaceloving, self-abnegating theory that the world could be changed slowly by persuasion and personal example had come the strength to resist British imperialism. Here the core of the Congress Party had formed; here Gandhi had spoken. And it had all begun as friendly meetings, strolls in the shade of old trees, the sharing of views on beauty, progress, and creativity.

The hall was empty at first, and rather cool. Istvan was called to the platform. When his turn came, he was supposed to give a welcoming speech and assure his listeners that Tagore’s thoughts were alive and bearing fruit in Hungary. There were not chairs for all who were gathering in the room; some sat on carpets. The organizers, in untucked shirts, brought in a microphone and tested its sound. Boys with sashes over their chests, wearing floppy sandals, were enjoying themselves under the pretense of keeping order. There were necklaces of strung flowers for the honored guests, but too many had been prepared; the boys searched out beautiful women in the crowd and threw the extra garlands onto their necks.

The ceremonies began with the singing of a hymn to the Mother of India, the words of which had been written by the master himself.

A little girl came running in with a tray. Bowing, she anointed people’s foreheads so their thoughts would turn without distraction to the highest matters. A man spoke with exaggerated fervor in Bengali, sometimes reverting to a few sentences of English to sum up his exposition for the small number of Europeans in the audience. White draped robes and dark upraised arms created an effect like gestures from classical theater, recalling the ancient Greeks or Romans.

“This blather doesn’t bore you?” asked Maurice Nagar, a short, very fragrant man with a neatly trimmed mustache.

“Not yet,” Istvan said with unguarded candor. A Russian professor sitting nearby must have known several Indian languages, for he reveled in the discussion that broke out when the speaker asserted that the finest Indian literature originated in Bengal, and that only because of that had Tagore’s genius found the perfect medium and been able to express itself so freely.

His statement evoked an instant rebuttal from the Tamil quarter and an unofficial denial from supporters of Hindi, which as the national language was going to displace English. The dispute grew hot in spite of efforts at mediation by the director himself, whose head seemed to rise above the agitated audience like an apparition at a seance. He raised and lowered his hands like a conductor unable to keep pace with a storm of instruments outshouting each other.

Istvan made notes for a report and a press release. The Frenchman looked at him skeptically; he knew that, true to good English custom, they would be handed a release before the end of the session. It would only be necessary to alter it a little, depending on the country to which it would be sent and the typescript of that country. But that was merely cosmetic.

When an intermission was announced, Nagar caught Terey by his sleeve.

“Surely you are experienced enough to know what will come next. Let’s stay here,” he coaxed. “We can have a chat, a smoke.”

They pulled lawn chairs up to a tree with a thick, knotted trunk that looked as if it had not grown out of the ground, but built itself by trickling down and hardening. Clusters of aerated roots hung from its branches. The two men stood in what looked like an unfinished cage.

“What does this remind you of?” Nagar pointed to the motionless ropes of roots. “It looks to me, quite simply, like a noose.”

“And to me, like the ropes in a belfry. I always have an urge to pull on them, to rock the whole tree. I used to envy the altar boys because they could hang onto those ropes and fly up over the floorboards when the bell tilted, and set it ringing through the whole neighborhood.” He nudged the thick, woven mass of whitish roots with the toe of his shoe.

“Be careful.” Nagar’s small, boyish face wrinkled with loathing. “I tried that once and shook a hundred beetles, caterpillars, and red ants onto my head. They stung even though I crushed them with my fingers. It felt as if someone had set me on fire with a match.”

From a distance they heard the voice of the next speaker, assisted by a megaphone. Parrots, shrouded in the leafy arch, quarreled. Huge white branches like gnawed mammoth bones seemed to dissolve into the deep shade.

A two-wheeled tonga rolled down the street. The drowsy gray oxen ambled along; on the heavy shaft between their hindquarters, like a bundle in a soiled bag, a squatting Hindu dozed. The heat seemed to congeal; the air trembled like a vitreous jelly.