Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“If I were in your place, I shouldn’t trust India too much.”

“Well, there are changes. I myself haven’t spoken of them except when it was necessary. I’ll wager that when we meet ten years from now, the greatest difference will be in the price of whiskey; of course it will go up,” he prophesied, leaning comfortably on his elbow and looking into his glass as he swirled it gently. “The Americans are no more adept than the English. Even their help causes offense.”

“Your French don’t go about things very wisely, either,” the counselor baited him. “Remember Dien Bien Phu and the Organisation Armée Secrète in Algeria.”

“Say what you please. Apart from a liking for true culture, and that I only find in the cuisine, nothing much connects me to France.”

“You speak as if you didn’t consider yourself a Frenchman.”

“I am a Frenchman. I am. Only before that I was an Austrian, and I was born in Sosnowiec—”

“Where is that?”

“In what was Russia, then Poland, then Germany, and now Poland again. My birthplace also changed national allegiance.”

Terey looked stealthily in the mirror at the small, wizened face of the journalist, which was covered now and again by the white blotch that was the bartender’s back. It seemed to him that he saw in Nagar the embodiment of the most harassed nation to which providence never gave a respite. He thought with sympathy of the perpetual rootlessness, the flight from death.

“Is your family still alive?”

“Father? Mother? That was so long ago and so terrible that sometimes I think my life began from the time I supported myself. I don’t delve farther back into my memory. I feel as if I gave birth to myself. Do you think I didn’t take a look there just after the war? There was no one. Even the wooden house painted the color of gingerbread, the beams full of housebugs—” he smiled, but his eyes were full of grief. “Above the window, to indulge the artistic sense, wooden cutouts such as you find all over Russia as far as Vladivostok. Don’t correct me: in czarist Russia.”

“The Germans burned the house?”

“That would have been too great an honor. They simply ordered the Jews to clear it out. It was demolished and a street was built there.”

“No one was saved?”

“Not even memories of them. Now there is another neighborhood. Other people live there.”

“Do you still speak Polish?”

“A little. We are clever. We have to be in order to live. I would even have learned Hungarian in nothing flat. By now I manage fairly well in Hindi. I don’t like to stand out. I want peace. Nature endowed us abundantly; we always find ways to prosper. We have to learn more; we have to work at night. We want to consolidate our position, but they only let us have money. If you have acquired that, people don’t forgive you. That’s why I prefer Asia. Here no one points the finger at me because I am Jewish. Perhaps they don’t even notice. If they hate me, it’s because they hate all Europeans. That’s a relief. I can breathe.”

“When did you go to France?”

“Just in time. I went to Algiers for six months before the defeat. I waited there for the Americans and de Gaulle to arrive. Then I was on the radio with de Gaulle once. Among the Americans there were a fair number of us. If you asked in Yiddish they would be irritated, but they helped on the quiet, arranging things, furnishing contacts. They would put you on the right track, they would whisper in your ear. And what is a journalist? A fellow who knows where to look for information, how to get access, and then writes something else entirely. I was no star; I just sent the usual dispatches, but they valued me. What Nagar sent was sacred. And I rather like you.”

He leaned forward and clinked their glasses with friendly solicitude.

“If you’re in a jam, come straight to me; don’t hesitate. Nagar has a head, not a big one, but it holds much, and much of value. Oy, many would pay well to shake everything out of it, like money out of a strongbox.”

He looked at Istvan and winked wearily.

“I have a soft spot for you. Take advantage of it. My grandfather used to plant his thumbs in his vest pockets and say, ‘Well, Maurice, the good hour has struck. Speak, perhaps you’ll get something. Ask, only ask wisely.’ And sometimes he gave me twenty kopecks. That was money. Nothing to laugh at. And sometimes he took me by the hair on the side of my head, wrapped it around his fingers, and pushed my head back and forth until it hurt. ‘You, you crazy boy, you mischief-maker, what do you fancy?’ For I had cadged five kopecks out of him to go to the peep show and see the big world. Oh, my luck! Now I sniff out what stinks from Rio de Janeiro to Hong Kong, and nothing surprises me. What I take a liking to I can have, and I don’t feel pleasure. There is no one to impress. In our business you hardly open your mouth to speak before everyone interrupts: they were there, they saw, they know better. They don’t let you get a word in.”

They drained their glasses. Other participants from the congress began to come in; a crowd was gathering at the bar. “Off we go,” Nagar said. “We should do some work. You listen to those, I’ll listen to the others. We’ll sit together at lunch and exchange information.”

He clutched Terey’s hand in his hot, dry paw and shook it as if he were giving him a signal.

“Thank you for the chat,” he whispered, “though I was the one who went in for confidential disclosures. If I were a little more honest, I would say: Thank you for your silence, for being willing to listen to a garrulous old man.”

Terey looked at him as he squeezed between the tables. Everyone here knew him, and greeted him in a friendly way. Why did he feel isolated? Did he see everyone else as more powerful than himself? Was he trying to win over everyone in his environment? He pretended that he was someone else, he played the sybarite, the gourmand, the affluent Frenchman exchanging pleasantries with a lady reporter, for it created the illusion that he had his place in the churning mill of events. If he himself had no influence on them, at least he knew about them. But that knowledge rarely proved useful. It was a burden — and it could easily bring ruin on him.

Better not to know. And if by chance you were a witness to something, don’t be complacent and say, I know the truth, for that is an indictment. Nagar certainly knows a great deal, knows much too much. It would be better for him to shout from the housetops: I have grown so accustomed to India that I want to stay here.

The luncheon, with English dishes, was intimidating. From the kitchen came the cloying aroma of mint sauce; the flat black slices of lamb had been drenched with it. A Yugoslavian journalist, a tall mountaineer with a scar on his forehead, beckoned to him with an upraised hand. One of the uniformed waiters, who looked like barefoot generals from an operetta, pulled out a chair.

“Do you have Indian dishes?” Terey asked hopefully.

“Yes, sir, but vegetarian only.”

“With curry?”

“With hot curry or mild?” The waiter had a black mustache rakishly twirled up and a starched white turban with notched ends that stuck out like tufts of feathers. “Mineral water? Coca-Cola? Orange juice? Perhaps a beer from the can?” He concluded the ritual, “We have it fresh from Germany.”

“Water, please.”

It was more expensive than the other drinks: real Vichy, brought in crates from France. The foggy bottle, the dewy little glass of sparkling water, aroused thirst.

“Will you drink some of this?” he asked the Yugoslavian.

“Yes, indeed. It reminds me of the springs in our caves, unforgettable water. Especially when I swigged it down after running for my life from the Germans, it tasted like life itself.”