Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“Exactly where and for whom does he work?”

“Work?” Nagar reflected, frowning playfully. “Not the most apt way of putting it. Chandra is an artist at business. He must find it entertaining. He likes risk. If I were looking for the dominant trait in his character, I would say: pride. He undertakes things that seem hopeless out of perversity, to show himself and the world that he can bring them off, that he can win. Of course he doesn’t do it for free; rest assured of that.”

Their eyes followed him until he was lost in the crowd.

Mocking himself a little, Istvan began the next morning by strolling through the pergola and knocking on Miss Ward’s door. He listened outside, feeling like a boy on a date. He looked around furtively to see whether anyone from the staff had noticed him.

At the morning session he wrote letters under the guise of making notes on the speeches. He drew, spitefully, a gallery of portraits, knowing they would amuse his crony in Budapest. A letter to Bela would be read aloud to their colleagues in the editorial office.

He wrote his sons in a mysteriously macabre tone about cobras and fakirs and the white tomb of the empress. He thought with satisfaction of the pleasure such stories would give them. They would see the India he had come to this embassy to see, and had not found: the India of tales from a bygone age.

When he dropped in for lunch at the hotel and noticed a jeep with a red cross painted on it, he knew Margit was there. Immediately the clerk hurried up to him from the doorkeeper’s lodge and announced:

“Miss Ward has returned. She is in her room.”

He walked with a quick step through the shady tunnel of blossoming vines. Branches moved, stirred by jumping lizards. A maid in a whitish sari met him, touching her inclined head with folded hands.

“Miss Ward is having a bath,” she whispered.

He gave her a tip, but the fact that many people were aware of his impatience to see Margit was disturbing to him.

Margit had already bathed, for as he stood before her door, feeling an inexplicable agitation, he did not hear the sound of water, only a Bartok concerto. The rapid tempo of the orchestra seemed to urge him on, to accelerate the rhythm of his heart. The music stopped; it seemed to him that the girl felt him there, that she would hurry to him. But after a moment he heard the melody again. She had only turned the record over. He was in no rush now. He had her near him, just a step away. They were only separated by a flimsy door painted brown, with peeling varnish. He was happy, and he wanted this state of joyous certainty to continue, to be fixed in time. He knocked lightly.

She did not answer. He was seized with a fear that he had appeared too late — that she was not alone, that he had been supplanted, displaced by someone who was here, in this place, at hand. She did not love the other man, he could swear it, and the other man could not love her — he only wanted her, desired her, was seducing her, taking possession of her with his hands and lips.

He pressed the latch and the door opened quietly. The music goaded him.

Margit lay on her back with her head tilted sideways, resting on her hands. Her rust-colored hair streamed in a luxuriant wave. From inside her open bathrobe, he saw her bare legs, saw the skin above her knees, all golden from the tropical sun. A sandal dangled from one foot as it hung off the bed; the other sandal lay on the floor, its upturned sole smooth and gleaming. The record turned over quickly and the melody gushed like a fountain. He felt her coolness and his throat contracted. She was alone.

He understood that he had slipped in like an intruder, had caught her at a moment when she was unaware, undefended, exposed to his eyes. He knew he should knock with his fingers, even on the open door, offer the usual greetings, perhaps a little more loudly, to hide his emotion. He wanted time to stop. He drank in the slow movement of the upraised arm, the palm, the fingers entwined in her hair. She sifted it sleepily. He heard the plaintive notes of the piano. She must have felt the glare from the open door, for she shook off the sandal that hung from her big toe and immersed her foot in the sunlight as if it were a stream of golden water.

The record whirled too fast; the sounds of the orchestra broke, wailed mournfully, then died away. The girl leaned over to turn off the gramophone. In this catlike, lazy stretching that nearly caused her to tumble from the bed there was so much beauty that he advanced two steps and caught her by the ankles in a strong grip.

Suddenly the squawking of frightened parrots could be heard in the room.

The girl coiled herself with a movement like a lizard. Her blue eyes flashed with fright.

“It’s I, Margit,” he whispered. “It’s I…it was open.”

She raised herself a little, still crouching, covering her knees with the edges of her robe. Its dark green pattern, now splashed with sunshine, shimmered with color.

“Terry—” she extended her hand. When he bent to kiss it, she shook his collegially and rose briskly from the bed.

“You’ve caught me in a lazy moment, but I’m entitled to a little rest. I just got back from the villages; we did an absolutely punishing statistical survey. After that misery, even a bath isn’t enough. I loathed myself for having spent so many years living well, for being healthy and strong. I had to key my ear to a different music. They only whine to the sky. They beg for mercy. Their flutes and their slow song are a complaint without hope.”

She spoke hurriedly as if she wanted to hide something, not letting him put in a word, avoiding questions. With a movement almost like a dancer’s she pulled a dress from a chair and disappeared through the bathroom door.

“I’ll be there in a minute, literally,” she called. “I didn’t expect you. When did you arrive?”

“I’ve been here two days.” Reflexively, as if they had been partners in some misbehavior, he adjusted the blanket on the disheveled bed linen. “Were you expecting someone?” He barely restrained himself from adding: someone for whom you didn’t have to dress?

“Why, no! At most, friends who were out knocking around the countryside with me might drop in. You must meet them. That would certainly be great fun for you; they believe that they are reforming India. You have already infected me with self-distrust. Well, I’m ready. I feel like a different woman.”

She walked out of the dim light in a simple dress of peasant cotton in an uneven print. She sat down near him and looked warmly into his dark eyes.

“Are you staying here overnight? Will you be here for another couple of days? You don’t even know how glad I am. Sometimes I missed you so—”

“But you didn’t manage to write.”

“It’s the way I was brought up. If you have to write a letter, better to send a telegram: you’re less likely to say something stupid. If you intend to send a telegram, better to call; and if you’re going to call, be brave enough to meet and speak face to face.”

“I would have had to wait a long time,” he sighed. He found her extremely alluring, stretched out in a wicker chair and smoking a cigarette.

“Something has come up: a chance to pop back to Delhi for a few days. If you hadn’t come here, I’d have been with you sometime this week.”

“Surely my arrival didn’t prompt this change in your plans.”

“Certainly not. I’ve been longing to see you. I have so much to tell you.” She pursed her lips as if for a kiss; he understood that she had become accustomed to those evening rambles around Old Delhi during which they talked, sought each other’s advice, exchanged confidences, and he felt himself favored.

There was a knock at the door.