Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

He had hardly pushed aside the vines when the cook, who had been watching the door, appeared like a specter and whispered, “Milady is drinking tea.”

They were handing him off one to the other, making signs like partners. Both announcements had the ring of bandits’ speech: we have her. Istvan did not fail to notice that the cook appreciated the significance of this visit: he was wearing an unpatched shirt of immaculate, gleaming white.

“Will madam be here for dinner? Should I buy something good?”

“I don’t know. But best to buy something. How much shall I give you?”

“Nothing, sir. I will take my money and bring back the bill.” There was indulgent compassion in his look, as if he were a mother and Terey an only child who had just broken a vase. “That is a real lady.”

Seeing him come in, Margit rose and extended both hands. There was an enchanting freshness and simplicity about her. Her modest dress in a vermilion pattern was pleasing to him. He remembered that they had chosen the material together under the arcades at Connaught Place. Her tawny complexion and heavy plaits of hair, so easy to arrange in becoming ways, were alluring.

A sudden radiance lit her blue eyes, and her mouth seemed to invite a kiss. He embraced her, rocked her lightly in his arms and caressed her with his lips. She rested her temple against his cheek and clung to him with her whole body.

“Oh, Istvan, Istvan, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you,” she lamented, nipping softly at the end of his ear with her teeth. “When the professor said he was coming to Delhi, I asked, I pestered him. Connoly, decent fellow that he is, promised to stand in for me.”

They sat down beside each other. She held his hand tightly, as if she were afraid he would leave her. She told him of the arrival of a UNESCO commission which she was going to meet at the airport the next day. The program was limited to official ceremonies at which she should appear, maintain a presence, and offer to help entertain the visitors. Afterward she could disappear before she was caught up in the rituals of hospitality, the customary sightseeing of the city arranged by the hosts. She was only certain of having a free afternoon and night; she spoke of that openly, as if it were of equal importance to both of them.

“You will stay with me,” he said, looking her in the eye. Her irises were crystalline as fruit drops; he remembered the rattle of the tin scoop in the glass jar as the shopkeeper spooned them out. He had looked at them regretfully as they dropped onto the scale, for there were always so few in the little horn twisted from torn-off paper.

“Would that be wise?”

“Pity we’re not Hindus. We could write everything off to predestination. I want you to stay.”

“And I want to. You see that I came straight here. But won’t it cause you trouble at the embassy? Won’t everyone know?”

“If I know India, no. As things are, they had better get used to your being in my home, and without this smack of secrecy. You will be here, quite simply, as if it were your own house. That’s the way it’s going to be.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. After all, you have a wife. She may be far away, but she is your wife. People who have a regard for her will tell her. The situation will be painful.”

“So what do you advise?”

“You mustn’t change your schedule in the least. I can wait here or come at dusk. You can pay the servants for their silence. It’s easy to make sure you are in their good graces.”

“Confess: have you done that already? The cook called you a real lady.”

“I gave him two rupees for carrying in the suitcase.”

“And the watchman got something for opening the gate? Now I understand everything. You walked in here like a princess.”

“Did I do badly? It’s so easy to give them a little happiness. I wanted them to feel my joy.”

He looked at her and was delighted: the straight nose, the light arch of the eyebrows, the darkened eyelids. How he loved her!

“Don’t go to sleep.” She took both his hands and, pressing them with her fingers, drew him toward her.

“No.” He shook his head. “I was thinking how to force them to keep quiet. Probably I will frighten them a little so they will keep each other in check.”

“Will that help? We have a battle ahead of us, and we can only count on ourselves.”

Her fingers were moist from clasping his hands. When he bowed his head and touched them with his lips, he noticed that they smelled of medicine and nicotine. She smoothed a tuft of his hair — as one strokes a horse, he thought. He caught the subtle fragrance of her dress, of linen heated from the sun, which reached through the window like a white ingot. He felt the warmth of her thigh as he leaned against it, and a tingling swept over him.

“If you feel like it — only for a little while, even a moment — lie down with me.”

“I do,” she answered with such a jubilant readiness that he felt a catch in his throat. “But is it worth it for a moment?”

He laughed happily and helped her unfasten the back of her dress.

“Perhaps you’d at least lock the door. It’s still daytime.” She nestled against him.

“No one comes in here,” he murmured with his lips pressed between her breasts, though he was not certain of that at all, for he knew how stupid the servants could be. He thought of the car, which he should have driven into the garage, of the key, which could be turned to open the door, yet he could not tear himself away from her. He drank her in like a man wandering in the desert who finally finds a spring and falls on it with open lips. He saw that her eyes were open wide, filled with delight and receptiveness.

They rested, lulled by the double echo of the toy peddler’s fife and the shrieks of children in his wake. Silence returned; there was only the seller of ice cream crooning his song of praise, “Frozen cream, very good, sweet like honey, vanilla, pistachio.”

The watchman brandished his cudgel and with a hoarse cry drove some boys away from the Austin. The splash of water from an opened hydrant formed a counterpoint to the jingle of crickets. The young banana trees were drooping from the heat; evidently the gardener was trying to revive them.

They felt a profound release. They were not hurrying anywhere; they were not even clinging to each other. They knew they were comfortable, ready. Their breaths could mingle, their lips touch, their eyelashes brush. “That was good,” she said drowsily, putting her knee on him and stroking him lazily with her foot.

The telephone rang for a long time, but neither picked it up. They wanted nothing but each other. The world flowed by in soft notes that penetrated the walls of the house and died away, to repeat themselves in the mind again after a while.

Margit was still combing her hair when he went out to the dining room. He saw the table set, the tea kettle swathed in a towel, and fresh flowers: snapdragons of rust and yellow. There was no one in the kitchen. Through the window he saw the servants sitting crosslegged in the shade, resting against the wall, amusing themselves by throwing a knife. The old soldier — the watchman — hit a matchbox set several paces away on the trampled path. He saw Terey through the windowpane and made a sign to the cook, who ran up full of reproaches.

“Why did sahib not ring for me?” he exclaimed accusingly. “I would have waited. But everything is ready for tea. The painter Ram Kanval telephoned to ask if you were coming. I did not know how to answer. He insisted that he would wait on the street corner. It is not easy to find his house.”

Terey looked at the forehead creased with care, the gray stubble of hair, the eyes dimmed as if with fog.