Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“You think this is the avalanche?”

“I think the same way you think.” He looked him hard in the eye. “You know that the boss, too—”

“Do not be quick to condemn, Istvan.”

“You hope to outlast the ambassador, and, it follows, me,” Ferenc said slowly, incredulously, his face contorting. “Oh, you poet! Poet!” he hissed.

“No quarreling. You two are standing rigid as a pair of roosters,” Judit said soothingly, “and in the end, we are all of the same opinion.”

“Not all.” Ferenc turned aside unexpectedly. “I will not trouble you anymore. Do the agreeing yourselves.” He bowed and walked out.

“You were carried away and you chose your confidant.” Judit shrugged and sat down on the couch, looking worried. “You cannot just stir up the hornet’s nest with that kind of talk. You know what he is like.”

Istvan shrugged indifferently. “He’s afraid for his skin.”

“And I for yours,” she said warmly. “You are a true hotheaded Hungarian. Silence is not always treason, and deliberation is not subjugation. You want to fight your way through everything. Before Kalman Bajcsy leaves — and he has connections and influence at home — you can create a great deal of bad blood. Do not be deceived by his indolent manner; he knows how to hit. Even if they recalled him, his opinion would carry great weight for a long time. They used to say that a man is composed of soul and body, then given a passport. Today he gets a whole file marked Confidential. You know how people love to speak ill of others.” She tilted her head and moistened her lips with the end of her tongue, smiling as if to say, what can one do? “Even I,” she added.

“No.” He shook his head. “We’ve known each other too long. You are good. You have a heart.”

“Don’t count on anything. I have been through too much to be able take risks, even in the name of friendship. I tell you in all sincerity, I want to live in peace. Enough of those romantic gestures, one-day coalitions, capitulations on the eve of the scheduled attack. Enough whispered warnings, small betrayals. I want peace; surely you’ll admit that I am entitled to it. I know everything.” She thrust out her full lips with bitter assurance. “Well — why don’t you ask me what?”

Her warm brown eyes looked at him invitingly. She sat hunched over, her locked fingers gripping one upraised knee.

“I fled Hitler and went to Russia. I wanted to be as far from him as I could. And I was. I was taken to the mouth of the Obi. Oh, to be sure I understand that they could not trust deserters. With a terrible effort that enormous country fought against the invasion! I remember to this day those browned clusters of log houses, those appalling tree trunks like dead columns, the clogged chimneys, the forest cut to a height of three meters. I beat my brains: who inflicted this senseless difficulty on themselves? And without further ado three meters of snow fell. Loggers were out standing on skis and cutting in a minus-forty-degree frost that made the beams in the cottages crack as if you were battering them with axes.

“There were plenty of trees. You couldn’t chop through the wall of entwined trunks. The healthy cedar held up the weak birch, which crumbled at the touch like decayed fungus.

“I didn’t meet my quotas. I had lice, impetigo, bumps on my face from gnats, those tiny midges that cut the skin. I had bites from the ticks that dropped from the leaves — but I still aroused desire. They did their business on plank beds in the bathhouse; I got a hunk of bread. Do you despise me? Istvan, I wanted to live. I took to sewing. The dress I’m wearing I made myself. Then they stopped taking me for a German spy. I got my own corner, set off with a large slab of wood, and the officers stood in line, competed for my regard, gave me boxes of fish paste, bottles of homemade liquor, cigarettes. Sometimes I see the tundra in my dreams and I wake up with my heart pounding. I breathe easily now because that is all over for me. I returned to Budapest. I worked for the military prosecutor. Don’t look at me that way. And don’t demand too much.”

He looked at her with profound pity. He seemed to see her from a great distance, as if through the eyepieces of a lorgnette turned backward. She has foreseen the thunderbolts that will fall on my head. Are things really that bad for me? His breathing grew labored.

“My dear,” he began gently, “I came to you because I was looking for my own, for Hungarians. When great developments are occurring in Budapest, surely we ought to be together. The embassy, after all, is a piece of the homeland, or at least it should be. And both of you — and you yourself — Judit, I knew I was alone, but I did not think I was so very alone.” With a savage motion he snuffed out his cigarette. “No. Don’t be afraid. I’ll not cause you any trouble.”

“Terey,” she ventured timidly. “Istvan,” she corrected herself, “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“It’s I who am apologizing. Well, all right, then. There is nothing more to talk about. Goodbye.”

He walked with a heavy stride through the living room, in which every piece of furniture seemed to have been put in place only temporarily, as on a stage — even the flowers, enormous lavender bouquets of gladioli. Nothing, not one picture, tapestry, or piece of earthenware, was from Hungary. She could have gone out of that room with a suitcase and someone else could have moved in, and nothing would have been changed. He raised her hand to his lips. Suddenly he felt her warm, ample arms around his head. She kissed him maternally on the forehead and pushed him away lightly.

“Go now,” she whispered.

He stopped on the threshold.

“No one yet has seen how I cry,” she said with her head erect, and suddenly he noticed the unnatural flash in her eyes. They were brimming with great tears which she did not wipe away but which rolled slowly down her cheeks.

“Until tomorrow,” he said warmly, his fingers on the door handle.

When he had slammed the door of the Austin, the light in the window went out and the house seemed to retreat behind a heavy veil of rain that had waited just for that moment. The windshield wipers, purring monotonously, slid over the glass. He forgot about the weeping woman; he was forced to concentrate on the road. Glimmering reflections lit up in front of him and the half-obliterated landscape loomed like a bad dream.

In the morning — a morning full of cheerful flutterings, starlings’ cries, leaves rinsed and sparkling clean — he had hardly driven up to the embassy and heard the friendly crunching of gravel under his tires when Ferenc came out to meet him, greeting him as if they had not seen each other for a long time.

“Everything is confirmed. Headlines in bold type,” he announced triumphantly. “The ambassador is here already.” He leaned forward. “Someone must have let him know, because he called during the night and asked what Budapest had sent over. He directed the cryptographer to get the dispatches to him immediately.”

They looked at each other.

“It is only a bulletin. Less information than in the newspapers.”

“You know already?” Terey asked tauntingly.

“The cryptographer gave me a copy before he burned it.” Ferenc was not in the least troubled by the admission; it was as though he and the ambassador, only they, had the right to read the coded dispatches.

“How is the boss?”

“Hard hit, not showing it. A diehard.”

“He is well schooled,” Terey admitted. “As if he were going to show anything! Dissatisfaction? Now he must turn all his ingenuity to making allies of his recent opponents, just as if they had been waiting for that all the time. He can manage it.”