Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

Looking at the bride’s moist, full lips as she drank avidly, he tilted his glass. The throat-burning taste of the whiskey and bubbles of gas were pleasantly invigorating. In his thoughts he wished her happiness, but not the kind that was supposed to begin this evening with the wedding ceremony — a happiness that somehow included him, innocently, as cats, wandering in a stream of sunlight, want to doze together on a windowsill on a summer afternoon. He felt an easygoing tenderness for her, and for himself.

The friendly roar of conversation went on; the crowd of guests suddenly became nothing more than an inconsequential background for a meeting greatly desired.

“Grace,” he said softly, “think of me sometimes.”

“No.” She shuddered. “Not for anything.” She saw that he was stung, and stroked his palm. “Surely you don’t want me to suffer. This wedding is like an iron gate; let them once shut it…” She was speaking hurriedly, as if locked into her own thoughts. She squeezed the tips of his fingers, driving her nails into them. “But tomorrow you will be here, too, and the day after. If only I could order you: go away, or die! I can’t. This is not an easy day for me, Istvan, though I’m smiling at everyone. I’d be glad to get dead drunk, but this is not London; it isn’t done.”

The red-haired girl was standing nearby, partially shielding them from inquisitive looks. She turned her face away, sensing that something particular was going on between the two of them. With a calm motion she took away the empty glasses, as if acknowledging that she had been cast in a menial role. Terey found this disturbing.

“I’m sorry. It was thoughtless of me to drink the whiskey. You surely brought it for yourself.”

“A mere trifle. Grace is a despot. It’s a good thing you and I are guests — lucky for us. The poor rajah!”

“Well, that is one thing you can’t say about him. I will not allow anyone to jeer at my almost-husband. You are talking as if you were old acquaintances: Counselor Terey, Hungarian and, be careful, red,” she warned, falling into a jocular tone. “Miss Ward, Australian. Look out, for she likes to devote herself to a cause. That is why she came to India. We have misery and suffering enough, so she is in her element. She wants to help people, to make their lives better; it makes her feel better at once. Perhaps she will even be a saint. Call her by her first name, Margit. Well, seize the opportunity, Istvan, kiss her. Both her hands are full. I’d rather you did it now than behind my back.”

“You are getting married, and you are jealous?” laughed Miss Ward. “You’ve made your choice; give me a chance. Well, don’t be shy — since she has given me her recommendation, kiss me, please,” and she offered a cheek of tender rose with a humorous dimple. Istvan’s lips touched her taut skin. She used no perfume; the freshness of her body was enough.

“It seems, madam doctor, that he is your first private patient in India. You have taken his fancy,” Grace laughed. “You want me to introduce you, Istvan, to the prettiest girls in New Delhi, and that is quite a field to choose from!” She made a sweeping gesture with her hand as colored lights played over it, and suddenly her white dress was bathed in violet, then in scarlet. “Lakshmi, Jila! Come here!” she called to two young women draped in iridescent silks.

They came, holding their heads high — beautiful heads with helmets of dead-black hair. Their huge eyes looked about with sparks of humor. They were conscious of their beauty and of the eminence that wealth confers.

“Next to them I feel like a dry stick, ugly and ungraceful,” Margit said. “Are they really that gorgeous?”

“Oh, yes — especially in those wrappings,” he said sarcastically. But she was not listening. She had noticed a servant with a tray of empty crystal and taken the opportunity to slip into the crowd, apparently to dispose of the whiskey glasses.

He knew several of the girls from families whose names were prominent in India: Savitri Dalmia, whose family owned a virtual monopoly in South Asian coconut meat and coconut oil; Nelly Sharma of Electric Corporation, slender and with a wonderfully long neck; Dorothy Shankar Bhabha, whose father owned a coal mine operated as it would have been in England two centuries earlier — a gigantic molehill enveloped in sulphurous smoke that made the hair of the workers go red and the grass and trees dry up. The combined land holdings of these women’s parents amounted to a latifundium hardly smaller than a quarter of Hungary, and their influence reached still further.

The girls’ eyes, as Terey gazed into them, were mild as cows’ eyes; their blue-painted eyelids drew out all their depth. Each of them wore her hair piled high and fastened with ruby and emerald clips. Ropes of pearls gleamed on both of Dorothy’s wrists as she played with them, laughing at Istvan’s jocular words of admiration and flashing her even teeth. They made cheerful small talk; the girls’ good looks drew men like a magnet. A photographer stalked the jovial group, his camera flashing repeatedly as he took souvenir pictures. They had to flail with their arms to drive him away, as if he had been a prowler.

Dr. Kapur, in a turban immaculately done up with small tucks, seized Dorothy Shankar’s hand, which was girlish and soft as a leaf. Looking her in the eye with unpleasant insistence, he began to tell her fortune. “Squares and rectangles — the lines closing,” he whispered. “Tables set by fate.”

“Not much of a trick to say that, since everyone knows who her papa is,” Grace objected. “Tell hers!” She pushed redheaded Margit’s hand at him.

“Leave me alone. I don’t believe in this,” the girl protested. The surgeon had seized her palm in a tight grip. It was tilted into the light; the shifting glare from the fountain with its erupting sparks played over it.

“Not long ago madam flew here, and not long from now she will fly away. I hear a chorus of blessing—”

“Tell the future of her heart!”

“Yes,” cried the girls, “we want to hear about love. Perhaps we will find her a husband here.”

The doctor put the young woman’s palm to his forehead, puffed out his hairy cheeks, closed his eyes in concentration. To Istvan the intimacy seemed improper. A cheap actor! The doctor’s lips, swollen and gleaming as if they had been rubbed with grease, hung partly open as he smacked them. He mumbled something and then said, “Bad, very bad, dear friend. One cannot buy love.”

The girls burst out laughing.

“Enough!” Margit snatched her hand away and hid it behind her back as if she were afraid to hear more. Her eyes were frightened, her lips tight.

Istvan moved quietly away from the bevy of girls. He felt a sudden sense of satiation; their beauty was too extravagant. Their walk was like music; their hips were wrapped tightly in silks; their bare waists had a warm bronze tint. Their long, slender hands moved gracefully, sprinkling sparkles from their jewels. One had to admire them, but they did not arouse desire.

He went on for a few steps and, to escape the crowd, turned onto a side path. Here the lights flashed less often. Several peacocks sat on the leafless branches, their drooping tails streaming with the shifting glare. The agitated birds emitted tortured cries, as if someone were pushing a rusty wicket gate. He walked onto a little bridge; at that season of the year, the artificial stream barely oozed along its swampy-smelling bed. In a dull, lusterless pool of water amid the fleecy overgrowth, reflected lights moved unsteadily. The water was full of life and motion; the insects that slid over its surface elongated the quivering gleams.

The hubbub of conversation, the wailing of the singer that could be heard momentarily above it, the slapping of the drum, and the birdlike trills of the flute brought on melancholy. Suddenly it seemed to Terey that he was on Gellert Hill, looking from the terrace toward the bridges over the Danube, which were outlined with lights. His eyes wandered over the streets of Buda and Pest — the darting automobiles, the neon signs — and a dry wind drifted around the hillside, carrying the chalky smell of warm grass and wormwood. Behind him he heard the distant tinkle of music in a hotel; in the sultry night the high bank around him rang with the chirping of a thousand crickets. Along a bridge below, a girl walked with a springing step, her sunburned hands flickering against her simple dress. She had black hair that fell loosely to her shoulders. She could be seen quite clearly from above as she walked into the white circles of lamplight. He felt a great tenderness for her; he would have longed to take her arm, to draw her away to a cafe that stayed open past midnight. But a feeling of inertia such as one has sometimes in a dream restrained him.