Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

When the drivers of the wagons cringed at the blast of the horn, he imagined that they must take the vehicles speeding by in flashes of glass and nickel, with Europeans lolling on the cushions, for demons in flight. They emerged from a cloud of dust, they hooted, they threatened to smash the carts. They slowed their tires with a moaning noise, almost touching the carts with their gleaming hoods. When an opening appeared for a moment between the ponderous arbas, they jumped unexpectedly, their tires spinning out sand and gravel. They were not automobiles, but monsters from hell, spreading fear.

He smiled as it struck him that to the peasants, the oxen with swarms of flies grazing on their ragged necks, the flat, creaking wheels, the palm tree that had reluctantly fallen off, were part of nature, of the everyday order of things. Those half-naked, dozing wagoners were surely thinking, Where and why are the white men going so fast, to what are they racing? Do they not know that what they acquire they must relinquish, and what they possess they will abandon?

Istvan tried to keep up with the Frenchman, but Maurice drove like a virtuoso. He calculated unerringly the position and speed of a wagon and managed to slip past without snagging his car on the protruding copper-clad axles of the arbas, while Terey became mired in traffic and lost speed. He wanted to pick up the telephone and call the hospital, call Margit, or beat on her door. Perhaps she had returned at last? Although she did not know of his arrival, the very strength of his longing, the returning thought insistent as a cry, ought to draw her back, to impel her to come to him.

As soon as they had parked the cars in the shade of the pergola, Terey told Nagar with apologies that he had to leave him for a moment.

“I’m going to take a piss as well,” the other said with a matey air.

“And I — to the telephone.” The Frenchman’s easygoing ways grated on him, especially when he alluded in raw detail to the young men he consorted with, speaking without braggadocio, like old people confiding in each other about intestinal disorders.

He found the number of the hospital at once; it was underlined several times with colored ink marks. The numbers for UNESCO’s center for ophthalmological examinations were there. Immediately after he heard the ring, a nasal voice spoke in an unknown language. It rose, repeating something emphatically, as if hoping the European would understand somehow.

“Ask for someone who speaks English,” Terey exclaimed edgily. “Doctor. Doctor. Give me a doctor. English!” he barked, with heavy stress on the crucial words.

Worried gasps came from the receiver. The guard or attendant knew only the language of his village.

“Call a doctor,” Terey shouted, but the other man, out of patience and wishing to avoid bother, hung up.

“He didn’t understand, the stupid peasant,” the Hindu clerk said with a flattering smile. “They keep the most awful riffraff there, absolute savages. Perhaps I can help. I will be the translator. Whom am I calling?”

“Miss Ward,” he said in a tone that implied that the desk attendant should have known all the time whose room he had inquired about that morning. He was exasperated by the sight of the dark, slender finger slowly inserting itself into the holes on the dial and carefully guiding its rotations. There was a conversation, then a pause during which the clerk glanced knowingly at Istvan.

“He knows nothing. He went to ask,” he explained. “They are having lunch now. Beggars from all over India are crowding to the hospital.”

The wait was excruciating. The clerk felt no need for constraint; he did not use his hand to cover the receiver, that greedy funnel that seized the sound. The man on the other end of the line did not understand the situation in any case, while the clerk felt a bond with his foreign guests. Even every weakness of theirs that he detected and slyly stored away in his memory was like an initiation. They could allow themselves a great deal, refuse to acknowledge restrictions and laws divine or human, because they had so much money. He would have liked to use his knowledge of English to display his readiness to perform intimate services. A lackey intoxicated with the condescension of the powerful, Istvan thought.

A cat lay on its back, watching a large moth that was fluttering around a cluster of violet wisteria blossoms under a roof of greenery. Terey caught himself inwardly urging the cat to jump, to seize the moth between its jaws, for the insect’s heavy body was breaking off the petals.

“Very well, sir. You may speak.” The clerk bowed. Before he handed Terey the receiver, he rubbed it on his sleeve. “The head physician is there.”

They introduced themselves. Now he knew: he could not count on seeing Margit today. He might not see her at all. She had gone for an audit with the entire team. Where? The doctor could not say; everything depended on the volume of established cases. They had gone into the back country, they would travel around the villages, a hundred miles or more. The doctor was an Englishman, so he measured in miles. He invited Istvan to visit him at the hospital. Istvan laid a rupee on the desk for the clerk and scratched the cat on its fluffy throat. The little Adam’s apple trembled under his fingers in a rhythmic purr of satisfaction.

He did not have to hurry anywhere. He heard the jingling of insects in the blossoming roof of the pergola, the plaintive call of the seller of nuts, and the rattle of the magician who stood near the entrance gate with shallow baskets of reptiles, looking longingly for someone to summon him with a motion of the hand. That he could step through the wide-open gate never crossed his mind. The training of the English sahibs was still in his blood. The fakir lifted the rattle high above his head; the harsh noise shattered into an echo that rang from the wall of the hotel. Terey waved dismissively. No, he had no desire for this spectacle. Not now. Not today.

If my boys were here, he thought with a sudden longing for his sons, it would be worth it to show them the snakes’ dances. I think too little about the children; I imagine them as though they had not changed, not grown, as though when I return I will find them exactly the same as when I told them goodbye. Ilona? The delay with the passport was an indignity — yet another proof that I am viewed as suspect, untrustworthy, and they are holding the stakes. Or are they? One of the most trusted, when he defected and it was thrown up to him that he had left his family in the country, answered insolently, “I have taken my family out with me. I will never be separated from them,” and insinuatingly patted his crotch.

Without a sound Terey walked along the thick carpet, which brought him straight to the bar. The long paddles of the ceiling fan turned idly. The Frenchman crouched on a high stool with his knees bent. The whiskey in the glasses had a golden glint.

“Well, at last!”

“You should have begun alone.”

“You know very well that I get no pleasure from alcohol. It’s a conversation starter. I like having a listener. Loneliness? It’s possible to feel it only in Asia, in the human sea, the indifferent mass. We melt into oblivion here. We are lost atoms, utterly alien and dispensable.”

Terey sat on a stool and raised his glass invitingly. They drank under the solicitous eye of the bartender, who with obliging readiness brought forward a square bottle and a silver jigger for measuring the liquor.

“But you feel more at ease here.”

“Yes, for my income, in the face of the universal poverty, is worth twice as much. I can even allow myself the luxury of extolling the merits of revolution, of thinking seriously about improving the lot of human beings, and about the rights of citizens. Those, however, are purely theoretical reflections. In my country, the lower echelons have grown bitter; they are exerting pressure. The working classes feathered their nests and nothing would quiet them down. You turned their heads, they got a hankering to take over governments. That is to say, they wanted to gain ground, to liberate themselves from the complexes of their class. At my expense, obviously.”