Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“I don’t know much about wines,” she confessed, raising her glass and looking with delight at the red fire in the delicate crystal, “but this is nice after that devilishly hot sauce.”

“When you come to Hungary,” he began, but his words lacked the confident ring of her invitation to Australia. He broke off, embarrassed.

She rotated the glass in her hand, enjoying the play of red lights on the tablecloth. Suddenly the lamp went out.

“What the devil—” He stopped the clatter of the ceiling fan. “Don’t move. I’ll check.”

He pushed aside the curtains. The long, vivid flash against the walls of the neighboring villa startled him; only when the darkness returned like a thick curtain falling outside the windows did he understand that it was the reflection of lightning. The windowpanes jingled faintly and a mutter as of a bass voice jarred the walls.

“What are you doing?” he asked, unnerved by her silence.

“Nothing. Drinking wine,” she answered nonchalantly. “We had already finished, and to tell the truth, we don’t need the light.”

Outside the uncovered window a shifting flame pulsed, though not the slightest breeze stirred the leaves of the banana trees. Reeling shadows rolled over the blind wall of the villa opposite. In the black sky, light flared in several places at the same instant. When a bolt of lightning illuminated the room, he found a flashlight in a drawer.

“Aren’t you afraid?” he asked. The room was bathed in undulating green. The windows, shaken by the rumble of distant thunder, began to chime.

“No. A splendid show!”

They finished the wine. When she rose, he kissed her on the mouth and led her to his room. He saw with satisfaction that Pereira, before he left, had made the bed.

“And where is my suitcase?”

“In your bedroom.” He handed her the flashlight. “I checked. Everything is ready.”

“Where shall we sleep? Here, or in my room?”

“Wherever you prefer.”

“Wait.”

He did not want to be in her way. He listened: the sky murmured in a deep bass register, but those were not thunderbolts, only a dull, vibrating rumble that the walls took up. Then a silence fell — such a dead quiet that the watch on his wrist seemed to emit a metallic chirp. Not one cicada jingled. Insects were silent, terrified by the night full of growling flame without heat.

He had to wait for Margit too long. He grew uneasy. He began to look for her. The door of the other bedroom was open. Margit stood before the uncurtained window with the darting fire that had erupted in the sky rippling over her. Her hair was blackish-green, her arms yellow as brass. The light poured over her bare body. He remembered the tales he had heard as a child of enchantresses who, beaten down by a storm in drum rolls of hail, fell among shepherds curled up on haystacks under straw hats. They chose the young, innocent boys, they smothered them with kisses and made captives of them. Their lips had the taste of herbs and the freshness of rain.

In self-defense the boys surrendered to the mad onslaught of opulent female bodies, then slept with their faces immersed in their lovers’ hair, fragrant with damp meadow flowers. They awoke, lonely, lethargic, and weak, on a dim morning, in a cloud of fog. Stallions, barely visible, with dark backs like boats, seemed to float in the mist; their mournful whinnying drifted over the river. From that time on, no woman could give them the delight they had known then. They searched among the girls for wives, they married at last, but they were never happy in love.

He watched as the glare from the lightning flowed over her arms like a glittering shawl. She turned suddenly, sensing his presence, and saw that he was still dressed. In a timeless gesture of embarrassment at her own nudity, she crossed her hands to cover her breasts. But a second later she was laughing without shame and running her fingers through her disheveled hair, which was standing on end because she had pulled her dress off over her head. She came to Istvan and embraced him, hiding her face on his chest.

“It’s not very nice of you to look at me that way,” she whispered.

“Enchantress,” he breathed into her hair.

“I’d like to be one of those. I would change you into a jewel and wear you on a bracelet, and in the evening, when I was alone, you would be yourself again. And all the time, even when people were around, I could touch you with my lips and caress you. We would not be apart even for a minute. Do you want me to do that?”

“I want it. I want it so.” He held her close. They stood in each other’s arms as the window burned with lurid green and yellow, the colors seeming to flail the sky with brooms of fire. Lightning leaped in the distance, striking, flashing. The earth seemed to quiver like a drumhead.

Their bodies, now familiar and intimate, sought each other, discovered accommodating movements, shared rhythms. Each felt the other’s breathing. They dissolved into each other; his moist skin clung to hers. He took possession of her as if she belonged to him. He bent like a bow and her eager yielding filled him with joy. In the rumbling glare the walls of the house seemed to sway. It was as if the distant roar had summoned an unknown, enormous beast that hovered over the city, ready to devour it. He wanted to remember the metaphor; already he had preserved in unfinished tropes the mood of the night, the curve of lips kissed and kissed, dark in the shimmering downpour.

“Tell me a story,” she begged. “I love it when you do.”

They lay quiet, listening. It seemed as though the crackle of the lightning could be heard in the room, but they only heard a large fly, invisible in the shadows, strike the ceiling with a doleful moan. Its lament must have aroused the appetites of lizards, for they smacked greedily with their tongues.

“I can’t hear anything but you. After all, you know that I am happy.”

“I don’t know. I don’t.” She shook her head. Their fingers entwined and they felt the pulsing of the blood subside. In the closed room the smell of bodies slippery with sweat mingled with the odors of insecticide and camphor wood.

He looked with wide-open eyes at the ceiling, which was flooded with flickering green. He saw the lizards gliding, converging; somewhere among them there must be a fly dumb with fright. In a moment he would hear its desperate buzz. He breathed in the fragrance of Margit’s hair and her moist body. Her passive fingers pulsed in his hand. She was tired; had she fallen asleep? He was immersed in the peaceful certainty that at last he had met the woman whose existence he had foreseen, and whom he had always desired. He was not thinking of the body’s cravings, the delights that would be her gifts to him. He knew that he could spend all his life with her, that here was a friend who would not leave him until the last darkness, which he would have to traverse alone.

Overcome with thankfulness, moving carefully so as not to waken her, he lowered his head and touched her with his lips, tasting her skin with the end of his tongue. It had a saltiness like blood. He thought she breathed more deeply; her arm fell across his chest and, as if reassured by his presence, lay still.

For that first conversation at Qutub Minar during the sandstorm — one of the most important ones — he kept a special place in his memory. She had spoken with disarming frankness about herself and matters of the body. Women, knowing the self-conceit of men, prefer to be silent about their experiences. Each man wants to be the only one, exceptional, unforgettable, since by now it is too late to have the troublesome privilege of being the first. At the time her revelations had disturbed him, drawn him toward her like challenges to battle. That strict sincerity persisted in her behavior. Margit pursued her goal honestly, with a courage rarely seen even in men. Was it a way of measuring his love?