Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

The caretaker came in quietly, set a small chair in place, and took down the portrait.

“Pish! Away with the vermin,” he shuddered. “I mean the lizards that lived behind the photograph. I have loathed reptiles since I was a child.”

He peered at Rakosi at close range, as neighbors gaze with undignified curiosity at the face of someone who has died.

“Comrade secretary ordered that the portraits be stored in the library. He said that in a few days we may be hanging them again.” He lingered, wiping away smudges of dust. “But you, counselor, stand up to them all. You will not swallow that.”

Terey did not engage him in conversation. The anger he was stifling smoldered in him. He was annoyed with Ferenc over the matter of Gupta. I’m not the prosecutor, he thought, biting his lip. I don’t care how much he makes from it, but I won’t be played for a fool. Does he think I don’t remember what he asked for?

He was so irate that he rose impetuously, shoving his chair aside. For a moment he plunged his hands in the stream of cool air from the machine. Then he made up his mind to have a talk with Ferenc.

The secretary put a calm face on the issue. He invited Istvan to have a seat, to smoke a cigarette — or perhaps he would prefer a sip of orange juice with ice?

“What is on your mind, Istvan? My little flair for business? Really, the money comes of itself. If you want me to, I will give you half. I swear to you, I saw that Sikh in person for the first time today. Gupta Brothers — and that must be the stupidest of them. Take this.” He pushed a wad of banknotes across the desk as if foreseeing that Terey would reproach himself for signing the orders. That Ferenc had five hundred rupees already counted out exasperated Istvan most of all.

“You know where you can put that cash,” he snarled. “You’ll have no partner in me.”

“You feel disgust? So much the better. Just remember that your signature is on the orders, and you cannot deny it, and you cannot justify it. So be careful,” he warned coolly. “If you become annoying, I have ways of dealing with you. Bajcsy will be on my side. Would it not be better to part amicably and forget about the whole business? It is a bore in any case.”

“It’s rotten, do you understand?” Terey shouted. The other man smiled as if it were a compliment, full of the sense that he had the upper hand.

“Do you want it to be war between us?” He blew out a stream of smoke. “Comrade Terey, think well: you have no chance. You will lose. Well, I extend the hand of friendship.”

Istvan ran out of the room and slammed the door. He summoned the caretaker and told him he could take the remaining five bottles of whiskey.

“Oh, counselor, sir! That really is too many. I asked for one because when the sun dries a man out in the daytime, he likes a nip of something wet at night.”

“If you don’t want them, give him back to Gupta when he shows up here.”

“Ah! I am not so stupid. He gave what he gave. They will not be wasted on me. Thank you very much.” He bowed in the doorway. “And if you think better of it, counselor, sir, why, as long as they are with me, they are, let us say, on deposit. Perhaps I will crack one a week.”

“Go now.”

“Everyone is irritable today. Things seem to have become a little less difficult at home, after all, and Rakosi is not your kin or mine. What is there to regret?”

When he was alone he began to make notes, to answer messages from Indian officials. A feeling of powerlessness weighed on him. He was in trouble; he had to be courageous enough to admit it. He would have to pay for his obtuseness. He heard Ferenc passing through the hall: his footsteps stopped in front of his door, but after a moment he moved on. The engine of the ambassador’s large car growled in its familiar bass. Through the window he saw one figure lolling in the back seat. So they didn’t go together, he thought with relief.

It would be enough to tabulate and produce a checklist of the casually signed forms to ensure that evidence that the counselor was speculating in imported vodka would find its way into a report to the ministry — evidence that he was exploiting his diplomatic status to avoid paying duty. “This kind of hole-and-corner profit-taking is unworthy of a diplomat and may lead to intervention by the Indian authorities. We defer the decision…” Or a simpler accusation: “Counselor Terey has been drinking heavily, as the enclosed invoices with his orders for alcohol attest. In recent months the value of his orders has amounted to three-quarters of his salary. We are of the opinion that, before a scandal results, it would be advisable…”

Then they remind themselves that he is a poet, and the officials only nod their heads: these are the effects of experimentation with unsuitable personnel, of making a poet a civil servant. Complaisantly, with untroubled consciences, they present his recall from his posting to the minister for his signature.

A desperate longing to see Margit came over him again. The fear that he might have to leave without seeing her assaulted him with the sense of the power of this clandestine relationship. Margit. Margit. He had no claim on her apart from the one she had given him out of generosity. He had no opportunity in the course of the next two weeks to go to Agra again. He was ready to humble himself, to offer explanations, to plead; anything to ward off a final rejection. He swallowed and opened his mouth as if he were gasping for the steamy air. To have Margit back, nothing else, nothing, only to hold her in his arms, to breathe the fragrance of her hair, to feel her thighs pressing against him, her belly, her breasts, warm breath on a bare neck. The thought of his loss was bitter as gall. He ached; a great hunger cried out in him, a hunger for tenderness.

He looked through the dusty window screens to the fringed tops of palms waving in the sun and the brilliance of the sky washed with torrents of rain. He was overcome by the desire for movement and space — to escape from this stifling room, from the odors of damp, creased papers covered with writing and cigarette ashes shaken onto the carpet, from the the nauseating smell of DDT.

One more letter and he ran to the car.

The shaggy greenery of the climbing plants rippled. The embassy seemed to be sighing in the broiling noon heat.

“Uncle, wait!” He heard Mihaly’s plaintive voice. “Uncle, take me with you.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t care. Where you go.” He looked Istvan in the eye, pushing his pale blond hair aside.

Terey sensed the boy’s wish and announced without hesitation, “I’m going a long way. I will tell you where, but don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t. Word of honor.” The boy blinked in the glare.

The counselor leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “For ice cream.”

The little fellow did not believe this. He fixed him with a crestfallen smile and said, “You are always joking, uncle.”

“No. I was afraid you wouldn’t want to go.”

For answer the boy got into the car. They rode along the avenue, where warm gusts of wind blew up great sprays of fallen, withered blossoms. Motorcycle rickshaws passed them — small, crowded vehicles. Under their heavily fringed canopies, Hindu women’s shawls fluttered, blue, cherry-red, and light as mist. The drivers’ downy cheeks bulged with wide smiles as they honked, squeezing big pear-shaped rubber horns as gleefully as if they had been the full breasts of girls.

“You know, uncle,” Mihaly confided, “I have a friend, a mongoose. He is not afraid of me at all. He comes to my hand. He lets me pet him. I feed him every evening.”

“What do you feed him?”

The child faltered. He rubbed his nose with his hand, turned his head away and mumbled, “Different things, but he likes raw eggs best.”