Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

She had let two letters and a telegram go without answering. She must have received them, since they had not been returned. His masculine pride had hardened into a determination not to beg; he was not one of those who whimper. But by now he knew, he had resolved in spite of himself, that at the first sign he would be ready to run to her, to apologize, to plead. After all, one of us must be wiser than the other; this was his rather weak justification for his willingness to give way.

But what happened? Why is she determined to evade me, to shun me like this? What have I done? He ransacked his conscience. How have I hurt her? But she would have laid the whole bitter truth out in the open, demanded explanations. Perhaps someone told her something reprehensible about me. But she should come to me with it. Why would she be afraid to? Damned female nonsense — he clenched his fists. Entice me and then run away. She wants to worry me, to demonstrate her power over me.

But that was not like her. And indeed he felt that he knew her, for out of their nights together had grown conversations as unreserved as the intimacy of bodies hidden in the dark, under the pile of luminous white netting.

The tiresome, wavering but incessant lament of the sick crowded behind the screens of the vacuously staring windows, the waves of stinking disinfectant and feces, were carried on the stiff breeze. Stunned flies fled before the downpour and hit the men’s faces like shriveled seeds. Rain in heavy spurts clattered on the corrugated tin roof. The professor jumped aside, holding down the edges of his apron, which was flapping in the wind. Istvan took refuge in his car. He lowered the windows and would have gone on chatting, but the rain fell in sheets, so he only waved and they parted. The wipers could not clear the streaming windshield; he drove at a snail’s pace. Oxen in harness stood still, resigned. The peasants squatted naked, even without headbands. The rain beat on bony, bent backs. And then the sky was wide and clear; the partly formed arches of a triple rainbow glowed high above them.

Remembering that long, lonely ride in the torrential rain of the tropics, he turned his face toward the invisible sun and raised his hands to shield his eyes. Puddles stood on the square, their smooth surfaces giving off a glare that made him squint.

As he was driving the Austin out of the garage, the watchman suddenly appeared. Awkwardly holding up a long knife which he had taken from behind his belt, and a ball of yarn with knitting needles stuck into it, he helped Istvan maneuver the car by signaling with his finger.

“Sahib,” he announced breathlessly, leaning toward the open window, “I am going to be married. Krishan’s wife has a friend. Perhaps you will raise my salary by a few rupees?”

“I will see. And where will she live?”

“In the barsati. It is warm now. Oh, thank you for rewarding me for faithful service. I keep watch on the threshold of the house. I do not sleep.”

“And how will it be now?”

“I will sleep even less,” he smiled, happy that the master had assented to his request and was joking graciously.

He was touched by the servants’ trust. Not only do I feed and clothe them; I am the foundation of their futures, they cobble nests together around me. They look for happiness and believe that I can ensure it for them. Then one letter from Bajcsy could have me recalled and everything would fall apart. They do not take that into account, as we, Europeans, do not take death into account. They all have a right to happiness except me. Or perhaps they are simply satisfied with less, with what is more easily available.

In his festering resentment it seemed to him that he would rather see Margit dead than give her up to another. He felt robbed, as if the most precious thing he possessed had been torn from him. Though she had said so many times that she belonged to him, she was not his property; she had given herself. Now she had changed her mind. She did not want to be with him. She was rebelling. He must have the courage to acknowledge it. In a helpless rage he muttered a vow to get her back. But then, if she were standing before him, he would take her by the arms and shake her until his fingers bruised her. “Answer me: why have you had enough of me? What has separated us?” And afterward he would kiss her, kiss her.

He drove out beyond the cemetery, where in exemplary harmony, on a square divided into sections, Christians, Jews, and Muslims slept beside each other, though they had been brought there through gates marked with a cross, a star, or a sickle. The asphalt smelled of tar; the puddles splashed under his tires, which dried instantly. Vapor hovered over the road — a whitish smoke, swelling and quivering.

And what if Margit had simply fallen into a wayward frame of mind — needed a man and jumped into bed with him, and now, he thought vengefully, is ashamed to come back to me? Perhaps it would be better to indulge her…The miserable tramp. What a joy it would be to beat her, what a relief to humiliate her. I won’t meet you halfway, not even one step. You put up the wall; I’ll put in a few bricks from my side. He decided to drop in on Judit in the evening. She was a person who deserved his regard. Seeing her would cheer him up. For a while he would be able to forget Margit’s withering silence.

Margit. Margit. He repeated her name as if he were tugging at the bell by a locked gate. Why are you punishing me so?

Only now did he begin to feel the full extent of his loneliness, to fathom how much his life had changed. He had distanced himself from his friends. He had stopped spending time at the club. Margit had been enough; she was his world. He had forgotten the days of impatient expectation, when she put her head on his shoulder or stretched out beside him on the bed, shaking off her sandals. He had lived for the gift of those hours; they were the only ones that counted.

But I must see her, he said through clenched teeth as he plunged into the sultry shade of the boulevard. I must talk with her. I really have not gone mad. There is surely some logical reason for her behavior. She is too good to walk away without a word.

Yet the thought recurred like an echo: she is a woman.

So many times she said that she loved me, he reminded himself firmly, gripping the steering wheel harder. And the last time, too, she repeated it as if she were praying, when as we said goodbye I lifted her head with my fingers in her hair and kissed her until it hurt.

Her frankness was cruel sometimes. She did not conceal the past. When he had said tersely, “It is of no concern to me,” she had answered, “I want you to know everything about me.” With a sudden pressure at his heart he remembered that when he had asked her if she compared him to the others, she had shaken her head until her hair fell onto her shoulders, and slapped him on his bare chest.

“How silly you are,” she had laughed. “They are gone. I don’t remember anyone, anything. Nothing. I told you about those things because they happened in my life, but they meant nothing. It’s as if I wiped the slate utterly clean. Tabula rasa. You are only you, and only you matter.”

What if now it had been just as easy for her to rid herself of him? To wipe the slate clean? I am thirty-six years old now; half my life is behind me, and I still take women at their word. Yet he rebuked himself: be fair, she is not here to defend herself.

He saw his gloomy sunburned face in the mirror. Botflies darted in through the windows of the car, buzzing and creeping around the windshield until he squashed them with the chamois. Women in orange skirts held an unrolled strip of freshly printed fabric in their hands; it had come from a workshop under a tree, where a man was transferring designs to the material from blocks of wood treated with dye. The printing had to dry quickly; the women spread the fabric out like a sail swelling in the sun so the patterns would not blur. The air clung to the skin like oil as smoke from wet wood and smoldering stalks drifted from clay cottages, and heavy steam from laundered clothing, drying rags, and lye.