Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“No,” he admitted, feeling ashamed.

“Ah, you see. I’ve taken up too much of your time.”

They were silent for a moment. The cicadas were like drills in his ears.

“When will I see you?”

“Not anymore today.”

“Till tomorrow, then. Good night.”

“I’ll show you the hospital. You will meet our doctors. Good night.”

Her fingers slid from his palm. In the heavy dusk he did not see, but felt, that she disappeared, and when he reached out, he touched a closed door.

He shrugged. He was thrown back on himself, and he felt exasperated. What had happened to her so suddenly? Did I offend her in some way? He recalled every word, but he could find nothing for which to blame himself. With closed eyes he saw her, graceful, leaning over in the sunlight, her neck golden brown, her hair bright with copper glints. Her blue eyes, brilliant to their depths, blinking in the glare. Freckles around her nose, winsome as a little girl’s freckles. The full, sensitive lips that called his name.

He threw the bag on the neatly made bed. The mosquito netting, bound into a knot, fluttered in the twilight like the mushroom cloud they painted on posters exploiting the fear of war.

“A woman. Yes, a woman,” he repeated with relief — as if that discovery cleared up all disquieting uncertainties.

Like a lighthouse the reception desk, with its obtrusively bright glass panes, marked out a path. He passed Margit’s room, keeping himself under tight rein. One must have a little dignity, he admonished himself. She said no. If she had wanted, we would have been together, so don’t force yourself on her. How can I know what happened during the time we were separated? A beautiful, dangerously smart and self-aware woman: such a woman cannot be alone for long. She reminded me clearly enough where my place is: buying toys for my children. Could anyone say more forcefully, Don’t cry, you have your own life.

A group of his acquaintances stood by the bar, which at that moment had few other customers. Little Nagar was gesticulating animatedly, while Chandra, the philanthropist, received praise with ingratiating modesty.

“You should be sorry that you didn’t hear that speech. Everyone here toots his own horn, after all; Rabindranath Tagore is only the pretext. They clamber up his monument to be seen better themselves. But here was a surprise: subtle analysis, dreamlike motifs in his watercolors, the subconscious, the faiths of childhood, things heard of, unclear, but accepted as one’s own, incarnated in art. A case study in the observation of genius from inside.”

“Why, I only know a little about the texts, and I have studied the watercolors that are on exhibit,” Chandra parried, inclining his head. “Anyone who wants to think properly about the writer would stop in and have a look at them.”

“That is precisely the point,” Nagar said, clapping and shifting about on a tall chair. “What I appreciate most in you is your ability to think boldly, to make associations. You know how to look at things.”

“What is your pleasure, gentlemen?” The bartender leaned forward. He wore an enormous white turban stiff as meringue. Nagar’s clapping had lured him to the group.

“Nothing for me,” Nagar demurred. “Pardon me for the sake of my age — the hoary head, you know,” he added, coquettishly stroking his raven-black, sleek but thinning hair. “Where have you been? I don’t dare ask with whom.”

“With a beautiful woman,” Chandra interposed.

“You saw?” Terey found the rejoinder disturbing; suddenly it seemed quite probable that the omniscient philanthropist might have been moving furtively among the ruins, observing them from palace windows. “Were you also at Fatehpur Sikri?”

“You passed me when you got out of the Austin. I was standing not far away, smoking a cigarette. You talked a moment longer and I tried to imagine who the lady might be.”

“You also were not alone,” he retorted in a knowing tone.

“Oh, no—” and he laughed abruptly. “I didn’t mean to be inquisitive. Fatehpur Sikri is in the style of socialist urban design: a whole city all at once, a tour de force, handsome façades — and uninhabitable, because they forgot to investigate whether there was water. Humanity hasn’t learned much. There is truly no progress except in killing. And it doesn’t do to nurse any particular bias against that occupation; it is so universal and so well accounted for by science that it is even difficult to discern who is guilty. Knowledge of the law and clean hands: that is my maxim.”

“Well, come clean: whom were you with?” Nagar leaned toward Istvan with an insinuating wink. “You can be sure I won’t be jealous where a woman is concerned.”

“I was with Miss Ward. Surely you know her: a doctor. She is fighting to eliminate blindness,” he answered casually.

“A very risky business,” Chandra said with a crooked smile. “Life in India is easier for the blind than for those who see. Why open their eyes? I knew of a couple of cases in which blind men whose sight was restored committed suicide. One became convinced that his brothers were cheating him; the other found that his beloved wife, who was quite devoted to him, had skin that was speckled like a panther’s. Loss of pigment: to this day we don’t know the cause of this illness.”

The gong was vibrating languidly, so they finished their whiskey and passed through the double row of bowing servants into the dining room.

During the conversation the thought of Margit returned to Istvan time after time, like a bad toothache, until he was exasperated. He expected to see her enter the room with some man whose company she preferred. He was dispirited and impatient; he left early to go to his room.

If she had a light on, I would still drop in for a moment, he told himself to avoid admitting defeat.

The cone-shaped tent of mosquito netting reminded him of a snow-covered mountain peak. He began to undress lethargically. Through the thick wire screen that covered the bathroom window he heard what was taking place in the neighboring room; someone wheezed and snorted in the shower, and then he heard a call like the meowing of a cat:

“Darling”—he heard the English word—“how long do I have to wait?”

The voices irritated him. He didn’t want to hear them, and not only was he hearing them, but in his imagination he saw the indistinct outlines of bodies tumbling under the wavy netting.

Mosquitoes stabbed his bare feet; it was like a fire. He remembered something Chandra had said: “Since they built a swimming pool here for the Americans, which they don’t use anyway because it is overgrown with algae, the hotel has had mosquitoes.”

He crawled under the netting and pushed hard to secure the ends of it under the mattress. His pillow reeked of camphor; beside it the bag of carved animals lay where he had tossed it. An attendant had spread blankets on the bed, but he had not dared to rearrange anything.

He did not want to get out of bed. He scratched his ankles with satisfaction. He licked a finger and moistened the swollen bites. He thought of Margit, then of his boys; he wanted to show them the ruins of a temple, but they were not listening to him. A herd of horses, black and bay, came running up in a cloud of dust, panting from their warm muzzles. But that was already a dream, and he looked for Sandor and Geza in the shaggy hair on the horses’ necks, in the forelocks, in the flying legs and beating hooves; horses, he saw in his dream, were trouble.

He woke early, rested and calm. All trace of disquieting dreams he seemed to rinse away in the shower, and he was whistling as he shaved, when he heard a tearful feminine voice unexpectedly near:

“Darling, there is someone in our bathroom—”