Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

He did not spread his arms like wings and float down with a hawk’s graceful swoop. Before he could run to the street by the serpentine paths, she would be far away, and the steps of other pedestrians would be rumbling on the bridge. He would not find her.

Grace. Would he miss her? Would he have swept her away to Budapest? He smiled at the thought of disrupting the wedding, of asserting that the girl was unwilling to go through with it. What could he say, what reasons supported his case? A kiss, a few words clouded with ambiguity? They would look at him as if he were a lunatic or worse: a fool. They would say, That Hungarian has a weak head. Take him out quietly. And his friends would lead him to the veranda and slip a glass of full-strength grapefruit juice into his hand. Who knows if here, amid all this sumptuousness, this music and these festoons of lights, something violent might not happen? And Grace would not be grateful; she would deny everything. They are among their own, these Hindus, he thought wryly, and the case law is on their side. The will of both families is being carried out, and the young will be obedient. Today the girl is still chafing at the bit, but tomorrow she will acquiesce, and in a year she will be adjusted to it.

He felt a warm hand slide under his arm as it rested on the railing. He whirled violently around.

“You ran away? I wanted you to enjoy yourself. I called the girls over; you could have had your choice. The rest depends on you, and you know how to turn someone’s head.”

“Why are you bullying me, Grace?”

“You must find them pleasing. Only don’t say that you would have preferred me. I’m getting married. They are free. Beautiful as flowers, and just as passive. Perhaps you could direct your attentions to Dorothy? Or Savitri Dalmia? She is a little like me,” she said in a half-whisper, breathing unevenly, obviously excited. “I would like you to have each of them, all of them—”

He gazed at her in astonishment.

“—because then it would not be that one I already hate,” she breathed into his face. Her breath smelled of alcohol and half-chewed grains of anise. Her eyes flashed in the twilight like a cat’s. Clearly she had had too much to drink.

What does she want from me? he thought, assaulted by uncertainties. She’s playing a hard game, but for what?

Suddenly she pulled away her hand, then stood erect, altered, imperious. Her very posture jolted him into alertness and he turned around. Men were coming; he saw the lighted ends of cigarettes. At once he recognized the figure of old Vijayaveda and the bald, nut-brown crown of his head in its garland of gray hair. Now he felt that he and Grace were confederates. But no one drew attention to the private conversation they had been carrying on. It seemed a matter of course that they were walking back to meet those who were approaching.

“Father, the brahmins have arrived,” Grace said. “I made a place for them in your study.” When the old man gave an angry snort, she said placatingly, “Uncle and the boys are with them. I ordered that they be served rice and fruit. Everything has been seen to.”

“Very well, daughter. I will look in directly. You still have time; it is just ten. You ought to lie down. The wedding rites begin at midnight.”

“Yes, papa.”

“You should look well. You will not sleep tonight. Some rest now, perhaps?”

Istvan looked at her out of the corner of his eye. The dialogue went on harmoniously, the solicitous father and the obedient daughter, a good actress. Was she also playing with him, pretending, deceiving?

They moved toward the palace, which glowed orange and gold in the lamplight. They passed the crowd of guests that milled about on the lawn as servants carrying trays of tumblers and shot glasses circulated among them. The singer, with closed eyes, not heeding the noise, whined to himself as the accompaniment flailed in an uneven rhythm. Perhaps they did not even hear each other; an improvised concert was going forward, in harmony with the spirit of the wedding night.

Istvan walked beside the old manufacturer. “Grace will be happy,” he said in a low voice, as if he wanted to assure himself of it.

The Hindu reached up and put a hand on his shoulder in a gesture of good-natured familiarity. “She will be rich — very rich,” he said chattily. “Our families can do more than government ministers in your country. But Grace must bear him a son.”

Beams of light near the ground jarred the eyes. Beside the black evening trousers of the European guests the short, narrow, crumpled white pants of the servants, their untucked shirts and their dhotis carelessly wound around their hips, made them look as though they had come in their underclothes by mistake.

A swarm of insects danced like a blizzard against the glass reflectors. Moths and beetles perished at once, sizzling against the hot tin. Others, lured by a glaring white spot on the wall, beat blindly against it and slid down with a crunching of open shells and a furious buzzing. Stunned, they fluttered onto the paving tiles; the plated scarabs crackled under the feet of passing guests. It seemed to Istvan that the crisp bodies of dead insects at the source of light gave off a stench like burnt horn.

The shadows of people walking played over the wall: slender legs and distended torsos with enormous heads. They reminded him of the figures in Ram Kanval’s painting. Now he was sorry that he had not bought it.

A tranquil dimness filled the spacious hall. A few lamps with ornate shades, mounted low, threw warm circles of light on the carpets. The rajah, extending his legs, reclined in a chair. The stripes on his trousers blazed emerald green. All the light from a little lamp set in a copper pitcher fell on varnished boots and on the picture the tipsy painter held in his outstretched hands.

“What does this picture represent?” the rajah mused contemptuously. “There is nothing to see. What sort of people are these? A child could have painted better! Indeed, you finished school, Ram Kanval; could you not have taken to some respectable profession? Why lie? You haven’t a modicum of talent. I will not pay for your flight to Paris. A waste of money! Whenever you want to begin working for me or my father-in-law—” he noticed Vijayaveda approaching—“we are ready to accept you for training.”

“And I like this picture,” Terey said perversely. “The people are carrying bundles on their heads. They are returning after a day’s work in the heat.”

“Those are the launderers from beside the river bank. The washers with dirty linen,” the painter explained impatiently. “The picture represents worry, futile toil.”

“And you really like it?” Grace asked incredulously. “You would hang it in your house?”

“Of course.”

“It’s sad.”

“That’s what the painter meant.”

“Launderers! What kind of subject is that?” the gray-haired Vijayaveda jeered. “I see enough of them in the kitchen! Do I have to look at them on the dining room wall? No eyes — no noses — heads like bundles of wash. That isn’t painting. The background all one color, flat — did you have a shortage of paints?”

“Come.” Mercifully, Grace drew her father after her. Istvan had the impression that she was doing it for him. “Thank you, Mr. Ram Kanval. Perhaps it is good. One only needs to grow accustomed to it.” She held the picture up and a servant took it from her.

“Oh! Miss Grace is very cultured,” Kanval said, leaning toward the rajah, but the compliment had an equivocal ring. Fearing that the painter would offend their hosts, Istvan led him toward the doorway to the garden.

“Have something to eat, Ram. They are serving very good filled dumplings.”

The artist waded waist-high in a white glare that played like limelight on his tall, lean figure. The rajah followed him with his eyes and said, “The conniver! He wanted to cadge a ticket to Paris out of me. He said so convincingly that I would share in his fame that I demanded that he show me how he paints. And after all that, there was no skill, simply — nothing.”