Wojciech Zukrowski: Stone Tablets

“Can one be sure of anything?” Bela said, looking sad. “Three years in these times of ours…”

Steam hissed and hardened into needles of frost on the pipe joints. The clank of iron, the huffing of the locomotive, deepened the feeling of cold and sent a shiver through them. But Bela could not be sad for long.

“When you have had enough of that India, let me know, and I’ll fling such dirt at you in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that you’ll be recalled right away.”

Istvan stood in the open door; the copper handle seemed to thaw in his hand. The train was moving and Bela, enveloped in steam, took a hurried step beside it, waving his wide-brimmed hat. The window was crusted by a thickening layer of ice and refused to open. Then the train burst out into the sunlight and the glassy fields pulsed with reflected glare until he had to blink.

He had left his friend at a time when the air seemed heavy with a feeling of impending change, a joyful restiveness. Tension, impatience were everywhere. In the coffeehouses, people shrouded in the party newspaper whispered of disruptions that would occur in the government before long. Soon the letters he was receiving — full of sardonic humor, skeptical remarks and hopeful interjections — amounted to a prognostication that something would surely happen. Only the newspapers remained the same, with their gray columns of print spouting tedium. In vain he searched them for signs that something was coming.

Then he began to envy Bela because he was still in Budapest, because he could feel this strong, unifying current. He smiled as he recalled his caustic words, “A man ought to be something more than a dung factory, living to acquire raw material for its production. Blood in the veins is like a flag furled. We must remember that.”

As soon as I return from the wedding, I will write to Bela, he decided, and tell him about Grace. I will lay out the whole story in order, and then I will be easier in my mind.

He had prepared the wedding present with time to spare: an oblong package wrapped in white tissue paper, done up with golden ribbon, like a dancer’s calf. He could not afford jewelry, he could not impress them with a lavish gift, so he had chosen an enameled pitcher that Grace had admired at an exhibit of Hungarian art. She had cradled it in her hands, and the chubby face with the walrus mustache, the work of a peasant artist, had looked back at her with round, somewhat astonished eyes. “I would have sworn it was from India,” she had said. “You can see at once that the potter enjoyed himself, molding these shapes.”

Into the center of the pitcher, under the lid, he tucked a bottle of plum brandy. He had remembered that the groom liked to observe the English custom of drinking a little glass of plum brandy before a meal.

He heard the biting of gravel under the tires of a braking car and the long, triumphant yelp of the horn. Outside the window he could see the stocky figure of the watchman, who was scratching at the screen, flattening his nose against it, shielding his face from both sides with his hands and straining to see Terey in the dim room.

“Krishan has driven up, sir.”

“Good. I heard.”

He had already been taught that he should accept such services with a casual impatience, since they were obligatory — demonstrations of appropriate deference, proof of loyalty. Thanks in the form of a word or smile would be a sign of weakness, a breakdown of authority. In this country one said thank you with money.

He put on the jacket and adjusted the ends of his narrow bow tie. When he reached for the package, the housekeeper, who must have been eavesdropping at the door or looking through the keyhole, glided in. He seized the present in his black, slender hands. The long, twiggy fingers on the white wrapping paper looked like the claws of a reptile. His blue-striped shirt was split on the arms; the tears bristled with fringes of starched thread.

Terey knew that the housekeeper was making a show of his poverty again; his shirt, falling outside his pants and frayed to pieces, was an eyesore. Still, in accord with Indian custom, he pretended not to see it, not to lower himself by noticing misery, suffering, disease. Apart from the agreed-on payment, he had given the man three shirts. But the “sweeper” obstinately went on wearing his tattered clothes. When Terey had pointed out that he was an embarrassment to the house in those rags, he had said serenely, “Sahib will tell me when he is having guests, and I will be dressed in a new shirt. Those you gave me I save; I set them aside after the holiday. Sahib will go away, and I do not know if I will get anything from the new master. The Hindus give nothing to servants. They have relatives who have uses for everything.”

They passed through the hall; the sweeper, making certain that he could hold the package safely with one hand, carefully opened the first door. Through the second, the screen door, burst a wave of scorching air. They went out onto the veranda, which was overgrown by a golden rain tree. The shading foliage, thick and shaggy as sheepskin, rustled when it was stirred by a puff of wind. Lizards clambered up the thin, braided branches and jumped into the leaves as if they were water. A cane chair made a scraping sound and a short, slender man rose from it. Against his dark complexion his open collar glared bright white; his eyes were reddened and glittering as if he had been weeping a moment earlier.

“Mr. Ram Kanval! Why are you sitting here?”

“The watchman saw me with you once and assumed that I was a friend of yours. He offered to let me in, but gave me to understand that you would be going out right away, so I preferred to wait here.”

“How can I help you?”

“I am very sorry for not calling to give you notice of my visit. I have brought you my picture; this will only take a moment.” He bent over, drew a canvas wrapped in a sheet of paper from behind his chair, and tugged violently at the string. “You are fond of painting, sir. You will see its merits at once. Please be seated for a minute.” He pulled up a wicker chair.

His importunity was so warm, so full of hope, that Terey yielded. He sat on the edge of the chair, making it clear by his very posture that he had no time to spare. The painter walked out onto the steps into the yellow western light and turned the canvas around, lamenting nervously that the varnish was still shiny.

“It’s fine now,” Terey soothed him.

From the shaded veranda, among the motionless festoons of leaves reddened with dust and the spiraling coils of dried blossoms, he looked at the painting. Against a red background, figures with slender legs, draped in coarse grayish-blue linen, carried great baskets the color of wasps’ nests on their heads. He could hardly distinguish the human forms, whose shapes were distorted by their burdens; the picture was bold and ingeniously composed. The narrow, almost girlish hand of the painter, cut by a bright sleeve of raw silk, held it from the top. Beyond it trembled a sky the color of bile. The red turban of the sentry bent toward the sweeper’s head, which was wound with a handkerchief, like an old lady’s. They were looking with interest at the back of the painting, the taut dun-colored canvas with a pair of oil spots.

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Terey savored the moment. It will be worth writing Bela about, he thought. He will understand. Finally the painter gave in and asked, “Do you like it, sir?”

“Yes. But I will not buy it,” he answered firmly.

“I would like one hundred—” Ram Kanval hesitated so as not to put him off with too high a price, “one hundred and thirty rupees. I would give it to you for a hundred…”

“No — though I truly like it.”

“Keep it,” the other said softly. “I do not want to return home with it. Hang it here.”