Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“It is there — and I was so on edge because I thought they had forgotten to sprinkle a little chopped herb on top. Without parsley it’s as insipid as,” he hesitated, then brightened, “as reformation without justice. Tasteless; send it back to the kitchen. Let it cook longer.”

When they were seated at the table and the dog had put her heavy head on Nagar’s knees, he asked with a smile of childish cunning:

“Do you know why one sprinkles parsley on that broth? So it will keep you from eating too fast, so you will not swill it down but savor it, just as you tuck a tuft of hay into a bucket for an overheated horse before you water him after a run, so he can strain it through his teeth. It’s healthier. It prolongs the pleasure. But what am I telling you this for? You are a Hungarian, you come of herdsmen and horse thieves. Hungary is not a stupid nation; when we were wandering around the wilderness on foot, you were riding from Asia on horseback like dukes.”

But they could not finish dinner in peace, for messengers from the Delhi newsrooms, swathed in capes streaming with water, came to the house on bicycles, clamoring for bulletins, not from Hungary, but from Yugoslavia.

A little perplexed, Nagar rushed to the room with the teletype machines, sniffing like a bloodhound. He rifled through the coils of printed tape and tossed them behind him, cursing at his Hindu assistant. Trompette shook her muzzle, which was full of rustling ribbons of paper. Joined by the serpentine white loops, they looked like the modern figures in the satirical Laocoon of Salvador Dali.

“Here it is. I have it at last!” he shouted, hopping about as the dog tried to seize the twisted ends of the tape that fluttered just beyond her mouth. “She knows. She understands already that this is important information, and you, you sleepy scarecrow, missed it,” he said abusively to the Hindu, who was not very much affected but put on a mawkish expression and set his lips as if he were about to cry. It was a bit overdone, but Nagar went silent, stroked the dark hand, and kissed the cheek comfortingly. Istvan saw how the young man smiled complacently behind his employer’s back and lit a cigarette.

“I have to attend to everything myself,” Nagar complained. “Look, a very important dispatch: a declaration by Tito, Nasser, and Nehru on the island of Brioni. Here, of course, we change the order of the names; Nehru will go first. They support the aims of the Algerian liberation movement. Now I understand why Sherif, a true Riffian from the Atlas Mountains, was hanging around here seeking admittance to the diplomatic corps. The representative of the state that is still a French province, and a member of a regime that does not even allow itself to be photographed — what times these are!” He rubbed his hands together. “Most eventful; even to be the dispatch agent is stimulating.”

The telephone barked urgently and Terey, feeling that he was in the way, began taking his leave.

“Pandemonium! All my life it’s been shouted over my head that the world is on fire”—Nagar pulled him back to the table—“but you must still drink this glass of burgundy. A good vintage; I got it from Ambassador Strovski. His family is from Poland, like mine, but that count from Galicia who became an ambassador only knows perhaps two words of Polish, both filthy, and meanwhile we are to believe in sentiment, in inheritance through blood. Well, how is the quail?” He picked it with his fork, using his fingers to help tear a slice of meat from the breast. He dipped it in the golden sauce and chewed it with relish.

“The Indian quail becomes tender quickly. It lies half the day in shallow swamp water before it catches the wind.” He used the hunting imagery with obvious delight. “Eat, Istvan, don’t stare at me. Your cook can’t make you anything like this.”

He paced around the room. The small gnawed bones he flung into the fire on the hearth. He gave the dog his fingers to lick, then wiped them on a printed tape that had stuck to his shoe and been dragged into the dining room.

“Cheese? Coffee and cognac? Ah, barbarian, barbarian! It’s as if you had dressed in a frock coat and forgotten the socks for your patent leather shoes. Well, since you must, be off—” he patted him affectionately. “I know what’s driving you. Make good use of your few hours’ advantage over the embassy. And remember that you have someone here; true, Trompette?”

But the dog, with a furious whine, once again leaped out among the trees, which were drenched by the diagonally lashing rain.

He was so overwrought that he could not think of going home.

Long sprays of rain shone in the headlights. The outlines of trees, and the villas hidden behind greenery from which banana leaves burst like geysers, flew by like an old, torn film. He drove up near Judit’s door but did not get out, did not turn off the engine.

The curtain in the window was drawn aside and yellow light poured over the hood of the Austin. Thinking he had been recognized, he raised a hand in greeting and got out of the car. But instead of Judit, Ferenc opened the door, with a motion that seemed to say that Istvan was expected.

“You have heard already?” he asked confidentially. “It is certain. It came through London.”

“Good. You’ve come.” Judit sailed through the room, touching up her hair and giving them their chance to admire her full, shapely bosom. “What will they do with him? Do you think they will let him make a quiet exit? Even in retirement he would not be content. He is eaten up with ambition. He might become a source of trouble — a thorn in the side of his more successful competitors.”

“He will take a side track. They will hide him away,” Terey said vehemently.

“So I thought. Surely this is not an earthquake, only a cosmetic change.” Ferenc looked him in the eye. “Others were also at the helm with Stalin—”

“But they must have preserved their humanity, since they are pressing for change. Democracy doesn’t mean that it is permissible to arrest anyone, to condemn them for crimes not committed, to shove them into camps for years, or shoot them.” Istvan’s voice rang with passion. “Any government may find itself compelled to resort to force, especially revolutionary force. The difference is, and this is fundamental, that force cannot be the only form of contact with the citizens. It’s the same with lying, for you must admit that every government has to lie, or at least be silent, about many things that are of pressing concern to people.”

“Istvan, I find your analysis objectionable,” Ferenc said worriedly. “To whose side have you slipped over? Are you edging too close to the capitalists?”

“I? That’s just what you are doing. They pay us miserably at the ministry. Everyone lives in hope of getting abroad and grabbing a little hard currency — feathering his nest, fitting himself out, putting a little something by, perhaps even developing a couple of little businesses on the side. I’m not thinking of systematic abuses, only of what happens when the masters turn a blind eye.”

“I don’t understand what you’re driving at,” Ferenc said as if to distance himself.

“You understand. You understand perfectly well,” Judit whispered with a wink, as if to say, the game is up.

“Your fears are well founded. There will be changes. There must be a democratization of this system which calls itself the most democratic, but how much we paid only the historians will tell us half a century from now. The stupid must go — that has just begun, and best if they are not pushed to the wall, for they will defend themselves. They will resist desperately; they will unite. They must be sent into retirement, to well-earned rest. They put themselves to great exertions; now let them set about writing memoirs in which they can exculpate themselves and bring the truth about their friends to light. Let us give them time to exhume what is in their consciences, perhaps even to sentimentalize their own misery.”