Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“What were they talking about at the congress?”

“Rabindranath Tagore as a watercolorist.”

“What was their assessment?”

The journalist shrugged. He reached for a radish; it had been disinfected in a potash solution, and left violet spots on the plate.

“When someone is counted a saint, everything about him is seen as perfection, even the shirt he wore. The faithful call for relics.”

“But according to you?”

“It’s enough to cite other opinions. There is no shortage of authorities.”

“It’s as bad as that?”

“He dabbled in painting, and now they are trying to build a cult around it. I will give it a paragraph and let it rest. There is a party this evening — dry, unfortunately. Too spiritual a crowd.”

The Yugoslavian’s grimace when he spoke of the party was amusing to Terey. The room hummed with tired voices. A burly Italian journalist was extolling the beauty of Indian women with such delight that he might have been scanning the verses of d’Annunzio. A black-skinned man dressed in European style sat down near them, attracted by the Italian dishes.

“I am the delegate from Ceylon.” He introduced himself without extending his hand. “It will not annoy you gentlemen if I eat according to our custom?”

He kneaded the rice with his right hand. As he squeezed a handful, the yellow sauce leaked from between his fingers. He licked it with childish enjoyment, unashamed. His thick bluish lips parted in a greedy smile.

“Try it. Rice with curry should be eaten as nature intended. In the hand one can savor the thick paste it makes. And how do you gnaw the chicken? The fun of it is to hold it in the fist, like our forefathers. And crabs? Without hands and teeth, applying all your arsenal of pincers, chisels and hooks, eating was transformed into a gynecological operation and lost its primordial beauty. At every party in London I horrify people, but I am immovable on this point. I will not deprive myself of the delight of traditional eating. They can scowl, they can pretend to be disgusted, but I know that they envy me, for I am utterly myself, while they are imitations of others.” Again he vigorously sopped the sauce from his plate with his forefinger and absorbed it eagerly with his thick lips.

“I also have eaten with my hands, when I had to,” the Yugoslavian shrugged. “I was not impressed, but it did not bother me much. It was in the partisan battles in the oak forests of Velebit.”

Istvan was not even listening. He remembered corn roasted in the campfire, the smell of smoke in the stalk, chunks of meat charred on the surface and half raw in the center, rubbed with gray cattle salt and garlic — all washed down with sour red wine drunk breathlessly in great swallows from a round bottle.

“You didn’t wait for me.” Suddenly he felt Maurice Nagar’s hand on his shoulder. “And rightly, for they wouldn’t let go of me there. I say, could you send my dispatch when you send your own? I’d like to doze off for a while. I feel tired. The racket is making me sleepy.”

“I’d be most happy to.” He took the papers, which were covered with writing in a perfectly even hand. “I was just going to the post office.”

They made their way among bowing servants toward the exit. In the shadow of the pergola a hot breath of air brushed their faces, carrying dry leaves, dust, and the fragrance of blossoming vines.

“I like you,” Nagar said unexpectedly. “And I worry about you a little.”

“I know.” Istvan pressed the man’s small, dry hand. He looked down at the journalist’s balding crown, which was tanned and gleaming. “What clouds are gathering over me?”

“No. It’s bird flutters. A premonition. Too many times I’ve had to throw everything over and run away because I didn’t heed the signals. Something bad is in the air.” He raised the regretful eyes of a Pierrot and smiled slightly.

“Until this evening. I’m going to have a rest.”

He walked with short, prim steps down the brick path toward the guest rooms. Istvan went to his car. The shade was gone; the metal surface blazed with heat and reeked of gasoline. He opened the doors on both sides before he was ready to sit down. At once a light sweat covered his back as in an attack of malaria. He knows something, he thought, but he doesn’t want to tell me. Surely this was a warning. But what was it about? Margit? Has some gossip from the embassy reached him?

The Frenchman’s act of entrusting him with the text to be sent off was evidence of his confidence and kindness; he could take advantage of it, select from Nagar’s piece what seemed useful for his own dispatch about the congress. To be sure, his mission placed him outside the circle of professional journalists. He was not really a competitor, so the friendly gesture had not cost Nagar much.

The guests had already left the dining room. He wanted to be alone. He turned on the engine and slowly drove toward the open gate.

The afternoon session was devoted to Tagore’s metaphors. He could hardly wait to escape, if only to the Taj Mahal. The perfection of the mausoleum, the dome like a peeled onion, and four minarets like spears of white asparagus against a background of powder blue sky, made him think of a cheap Air India poster. The immaculate beauty of it was tedious.

“Ah, so the emperor’s love created this,” exclaimed a slender Englishwoman, looking at the tomb with wry admiration. “I wonder — was she beautiful?”

“She had nine children,” said her companion, reading from a red-bound guidebook. “I hardly see how she could have preserved her beauty after such an output.”

“Perhaps that is why she preferred to die.”

Terey watched as the sightseers made their way, awestruck, over the level stones. The pools, unruffled by fountains, reflected the harmonious façade of the mosque like mirrors. Cypresses and arbor vitae stood against the white walls like moulded iron. Into the polished marble the hand of the sculptor had hammered the ninety-nine names of Allah in a black zigzag, honoring him and praising his might. From a distance the inscriptions looked like a fanciful piece of fretwork.

The sky was growing red; weightless veils drifted across it at various depths. The dome of the mausoleum shone with a violet luster. The landscape reminded Istvan of Persian miniatures; only riders on white chargers were missing, draped in scarlet cloaks, brandishing golden bows as they chased the nimble spotted panther.

Enveloped in the falling twilight, forced into the role of a mute spectator, he felt cut off from the world and intensely lonely.

I came to India because I imagined a completely different country. I thought I would tell them about my homeland — after all, we have a common past: my people came out of Asia. But how can one establish friendship here when they have no desire for it? Europe for them is only England. Technological progress does not impress them, only tradition, established social norms, the observance of segregation even in the pub — well, and the queen.

Why should we be of interest to them? To the contrary: revolution fills them with fear and disgust. Violent changes, a need to act, even the business of choosing a course of action, urgency — no, that is not for them. How much better it is to be swathed in tulle and sit on a warm stone bench, to gaze at changing lights on smooth slabs of marble, to plunge oneself in somnolent dreams of things that have vanished — not to hear the hoarse cry of the beggar, not to see the leper’s stumps raised beseechingly, not to think about hunger and the undeserved suffering of children. To float away, to drown in delight at the beauty of evening, to reconcile oneself completely to what is and what will be, to whisper submissively: Fate, do as you must, as the condemned man, unresisting, bends his head under the executioner’s ax.