Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

The fingers Margit had put on his lips Istvan held lightly in his teeth. He moved his head and cradled it in her hand; he smelled the faint odors of medicine and nicotine and the fragrance of her skin.

In front of them velvety greenish lights rose and fell, making illegible signs in the air. The image of wide pastures returned: the grass, the barely perceptible smell of smoke, or rather of white ashes from burnt stalks, for the campfire had gone out long ago.

“Very well. I will tell you,” he began, deliberating over his words. She embraced him warmly and removed her hand. She pressed her fingers under his arm and rested her cheek against his shoulder.

“I lay on the ground — not on the grass, for it had been trampled away to nothing. Only on the ground. It was not hard at all. It was like a body, like flesh. I felt at one with it, as if it were a dog’s belly and I her puppy. Around me the grass that was not pressed down by my weight bristled like an animal’s coat, a pelt smelling lightly of the earth’s perspiration and giving off a vapor under my warm hand. The dew had fallen. The herdsman was dozing not far away, but was so cut off from the world by his peaceful sleep, so oblivious to a call, that it was as if he were not there. In the deep dusk I heard only the steps of horses, the dry clicking as their teeth cut the grass, their snorting and sighing. At moments they pressed so near that I felt the turf tremble as their hooves struck it. I smelled their odor, wild, bracing as the lash of the willow switch on our naked calves and thighs when we rode bareback, driving the galloping herds to bathe in the river.”

He turned his head toward her and spoke into her dry, fragrant hair. Only now, with his lips, did he feel its firmness and buoyancy.

“Aren’t you afraid of the stars? Raise your head and look. They hang over us in the vastness of the sky, in space the mind can hardly encompass. They may have already gone dark, but the blue fire of their light will flow toward us for centuries. During the day they retreat. At night they take advantage of the time when we sleep and are not watching to come closer to the earth.

“Everyone has his own star. It waits for him. Everyone — and you, and I. Its wings flutter like a crystal hawk’s and give off sparks. When someone dies, his star falls like a spider down its thread somewhere on the horizon. They threaten, they warn. They spin their beams into the eye, into the heart, which feels the omen and beats with agitation.

“To travel between them, to climb with the eye, higher and higher…Don’t you feel the earth under you fall away as you hang like dandelion fluff tossed about on a light breeze? How hard it is to return from those intoxicating heights, from that dizzying flight toward the earth, into cramped, sleepy, torpid flesh!

“I looked for a star that would give me a sign, stand out from the rest, wink as if to greet me. I looked until the tears came. I felt the rotation of the earth, the circulation of my blood, the sap in the plants. Sometimes it seemed that I would fly up, weightless, drawn by them with irresistible force, and never return. The earth would awake and forget about me as if I had only been a dream. I clutched at the grass. I clung to the sod with my arms spread. Under my back I felt every node, every lithe stem. The trampling of horses close by, striking the ground as if it were a drum, and the dull pulse of the prairie soothed me. I slept with a feeling that I had been rescued — not that day, but it would surely come, surely…”

She trembled and clung to him, pressing with her fingers, burying them in his arm. All around them the fireflies’ little green flames moved in their puckish orbits, and on the surface of the pool below, the reflections of drowned stars quivered.

“I don’t want,” she said like a small child, “do you hear, I don’t want—”

He took her in his arms and kissed her hungrily, avidly. She did not resist. He nestled his face in the hollow of her shoulder and pressed his cheek to her neck. He absorbed her with every breath; he satiated himself with the fragrance of her skin, which immediately went moist and clung to his as if there were no boundary between their bodies. Their breaths mingled. Their mouths opened deeply; their tongues met.

Through the dusky park, now outlined with pulsating lights, rolled the boom of a gong. It throbbed with a hard, painful note. Suddenly she pushed against Istvan’s chest and struggled free of his arm.

“Please — let me go.”

Reluctantly he obeyed. They lay beside each other like swimmers carried onto a shoal washed by waves. They knew that the next tide would engulf it, and that night was before them; that in this joining, long and splendid as a battle for life, they would draw near each other, deepen their intimacy and, finally, be one. The night was warm and thick as a black fleece in which they would be hidden until dawn came like a silver mirror, full of light, color, and twittering hubbub.

They heard the voices of guests hurrying to dinner. Figures in white moved about in the glow of lights half hidden among sprays of leaves. They lay with hands barely touching, every nerve vibrating.

At last the bustle at the hotel died away completely, and such a silence ensued that they could hear the jingling tick of the watch on the hand that cushioned her head.

“I was afraid,” she accused herself. “You are forgetting that this is India and they can hear us.”

“Who?”

“The dancing gods who jeer, mock, revel in tormenting their adherents, and are extremely jealous of human happiness.” She raised herself a little and leaned over. Suddenly, to his consternation, he felt her warm, moist lips pressed to his hand.

“What are you doing?” he bridled. He would have been less startled if she had put out a lighted cigarette on his skin.

“Istvan, I’m happy.” She rolled her head over his hand, sweeping it with her hair, warming it with her breathing. “You’ll never understand. I’ve found myself—”

His heart beat violently. Its pounding, not in his chest but in his throat and ears and through his body, and the dull muted roar of the surging blood, were like the blows of a hammer.

They started away, unhurried, keeping even more than a normal distance between them. Walking on the dry lawn, they passed the illuminated pergola and the doorkeeper’s lodge, which was shining like a lighthouse. They made their way straight into the darkness of the long veranda and toward the door of her room. As she groped for her key, Margit felt his hot hand on her fingers. He had remembered that the lock was stubborn, and that gesture of readiness to help open the door revealed his tension and impatience.

Inside, a little lamp had been lighted by a maid. Its low beam fell on the neatly made bed. The coiled mosquito netting hung over it like a white turban.

“Wait,” she said in an undertone, restraining him with a hand that he pressed to his cheek and touched with his lips. She looked at him with immeasurable tenderness. She was filled with a peaceful joy; I have him. He is mine.

“Shall I turn it out?”

“No. For you I would undress in the middle of Delhi.” She tossed her head provocatively. Her hair rippled onto her shoulders.

He followed her with his eyes to the door of the bathroom. He heard the light rasp of a zipper, the hiss and flutter of silk pulled quickly down. He undid the knot of mosquito netting; it uncoiled with sudden force and its white wisps lashed him in the face, releasing a smell of mouldering fabric, dust, and insecticide. The netting dropped, and veiled the whole bed; in the low light it looked like a transparent tent that had fallen to the earth.

He began to hurry. He threw off his sandals and tore away his shirt. His tie lay twisted like an injured snake. He heard the changeful hum of water as it beat on flesh and on the stone floor. He reached under his arm and noticed the pungent smell of sweat. Accursed India; he shook his head with a wry look. I must rinse off.