Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

The dust above the trees was rapidly turning blue; Margit’s hair looked almost black. Far beyond the gate, with a sound of ungreased axles like cats’ meowing, the thick, bare wooden wheels of tongas rolled along. The white coats of the oxen in their harnesses gave off a violet shimmer.

I must remember — it returned to Istvan like a soothing melody — remember the smell of dry leaves, dust, and straw matting. Voices: the singing calls of drivers squatting on the shafts in enormous turbans, swaying like wilting poppies. The light of a few lamps, not yet a glare, but daubs of yellow between the trees, marked the advance of night. Its first breezes rippled through the air, bringing relief. A moment more and, like the quick blow of an ax, the semitropical darkness would fall.

She was also looking at Agra. The town was transformed by garlands of colored lights — the evening illumination calculated to entice tourists to the little shops full of ivory and sandalwood, embroidery, lace, and scarves of batiste with drawn-work delicate as frost, though frost had never been seen here.

He glanced stealthily over her neck, her flawless profile, her lips, slightly parted and a little swollen from the heat. She looked for a long time without blinking, as if the sudden onset of night like the rising of a river were disturbing to her. In that moment of quiet brooding she seemed captivating to him. He wanted her, wanted to feel the burden of her head in his hands, to feel her hair flowing in coppery streams through his fingers. To hang over her lips, not to kiss, only to mingle his breath with hers, to prolong the moment of yielding. She also felt no hurry. The silence of the receding day was accompanied by a peaceful certainty that they belonged to each other, that before long they would be together, not by virtue of predestination or indefinable fate, which might deprive them of their rebellious joy — that they had chosen each other and each would take the other as a gift, because they truly desired each other.

Large beetles droning in bass voices flew over the disheveled festoons of climbing plants, then suddenly lost their balance and fell with a dry crackle, as if someone in hiding were trying to break the silence by throwing pebbles. They heard an angry snorting, and both turned their heads. The cat from the reception desk beat with an outstretched paw at a fallen beetle, crunched its shell with her teeth, and shook the crushed insect out of her muzzle with revulsion.

The summer night had settled in. The darkness seemed to engulf the girl. He reached out and put his hand on hers in order to feel the joyful certainty that he had that privilege. When he felt her warm touch, he thought he also smelled the delicate fragrance of her perfume, or perhaps it was only that she had turned her head and he was catching the scent of her warm hair.

“Come,” she said, and their fingers linked.

He stood up in a passion of readiness, like an obedient pupil. She did not steer them under the arcades of the pergola, however, but into the depths of the park, to a pool half dried up by the heat. Lawn chairs stood propped against the wall of an empty bathhouse; they found them easily and sat down beside each other. By now the pergola was twinkling with lights. They had escaped just in time, for a waiter wearing a starched napkin like a crest atop his red turban was already beginning to gather up cups, and the servers were moving about in the yellow light of grottos dripping with leaf-covered stalactites.

They sat side by side without a word. The water gave off a breath like the air in a swamp. A handful of stars in a shimmering, fluttering tissue like a dragonfly’s wing seemed to fly toward the earth. In the pool, where no one was swimming, in thick, turbid water that seemed to be covered with a soggy clotted mass, other stars trembled, now and then nearly blotted out, violently shaken by drowning insects that had fallen splattering into the water.

In the bushes little lights soft as a fine rain twinkled. They flew about unsteadily, leaving shiny streaks behind them. All space, from the sky to the earth, was full of movement and instability. A small green flame floated calmly in the air and spiraled down; opposite that one another swam out, reflected in the viscid mirror. They seemed to run toward each other, drawn by an irresistible force, to join for a moment as if in a kiss and then disappear — to drop into the darkness or separate because of some perceived error, one soaring up, the other falling deep into the black water.

“You see?” she asked in a voice not like her own, low and a bit fearful. “The birth and death of worlds. An eerie night.”

He was silent, at one with nature, profoundly calm.

“What are you thinking about? It seems that you have left me, that you are very far away.”

His first impulse was to deny it, to seize her hand, cover it with his own and whisper, “I am thinking of you.” But he told the truth, caught off guard by her intuition.

“I was recalling a night like this in my childhood.”

“Everything that is and will be between us reminds you of something? And I wanted us to…You don’t understand that you have become a whole world for me, still undiscovered. I envy those who were with you when you took your first steps, the first girl you kissed, the friends you told who you wanted to be when you were still in the making. I even envy the dogs who walked by your feet, put their muzzles on your knees, and looked into your eyes attentively, intelligently.

“If you think I’m mad, you’re not mistaken. I am mad, mad—” she repeated rapturously, more and more loudly, as if even now she were not quite sure of herself. “You must tell me everything, so I can recover the parts of your life that I’ve missed. Tell me about your parents, your country, the books you loved, your dreams. When I’ve thought about you, I’ve had to tell myself every minute: I don’t know, I don’t know, and what joy the little word ‘yet’ brought me! I felt like a little girl in front of the locked door of a room in which nice surprises were being arranged. I told myself: He will tell me. He will let me into his life. What joys and discoveries I have to look forward to…”

He said nothing. He breathed deeply, passively observing the nuptial dances of the fireflies in the half-empty pool and the stars low in the sky. They seemed to fly toward the earth, for they dilated enormously in eyes that brimmed with tears from the strain.

“Tell me what you were thinking about,” she begged him. “I want to be your companion even in the things that were only yours.”

“Why did you bring me here?”

“I wanted us to be alone, completely alone. Dinner will be served soon. The staff will disappear, the guests will sit down, and then we can go. The whole wing of the hotel is empty because of the end-of-season painting. I looked out for myself. Moving wasn’t necessary; they refurbished the room while I was out in the villages. We must wait.”

The duality of her thinking took him by surprise — the shrewd calculation, the avoidance of risk, the adaptation to local customs, then this sudden outburst of pent-up feeling, the predatory acquisitiveness, the desire to possess him with all his past, for she must already have taken the future for granted.

“We’ll go soon,” she whispered, enjoying the impatience with which he waited for her; at least that was how she had understood his question. She reached out and put her hand on his temple, outlining the edge of his ear with her fingertips until he trembled all over with desire. She bent over and the frames of their chairs tapped each other; she wanted to say something or to kiss him, but they heard the crunching of gravel nearby. Two men emerged from behind a corner of the building and came toward the edge of the pool, their footsteps tapping loudly on the tiled walk. They stopped for a moment, watching the fireflies at their frolics. One threw away a cigarette; its red fire, crudely material and inharmonious, made an arc in the air and went out. The other twice dug up a fistful of gravel and dashed the reflections of the stars to bits. They seemed to be speaking Italian, which here in India had a familiar ring for Istvan, though he did not understand it. They walked away unhurried. They did not see the pair lounging in the chairs.