Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“You are in a very unhappy state, Mr. Chandra.” Istvan looked at him compassionately. “Do you despise everyone? Have you met with nothing worth loving?”

“Nothing exists that I could not buy, obtain, possess, and since I have it, it must not be worth very much. One must be occupied with something. So I decided to be a god on whose will human fate depends, if only some want to believe in me. I serve them, I grant their requests more quickly than that god to whom you must sometimes turn. After all, you want him at your service; you look to him for help and protection. You have no right to pity me. You want to be richer that I am, better than I am.” His smooth, slightly gaunt face constricted suddenly with spite. “You are simply misguided and foolish. You will never be rich.”

Istvan, passing the heavy sphere that was the severed head from one hand to another, thought the lawyer was offended. He considered the entire conversation an oratorical display not to be taken seriously. But Chandra did not go away. He looked in front of him, listening to the bicycle bells and the bleating of motorcycle rickshaw horns. He was ruminating about something, pursing his narrow violet lips.

“I lost my temper unnecessarily, and anger belongs only to God. You are so sure of yourself, then?” He looked sideways at Terey. “I could easily create a small earthquake around you and look on as you reach out and call for help. And, stranger still, you could rely on me, because…No, no, only youth and naivete produce such feelings of power. And health,” he threw out after a pause, as if he had found yet another gate to storm. “You wish to be a poet? A real poet, one of those who count? You must suffer, and suffer a great deal.”

They stood in the shade. A step farther on the air crackled with heat and green parrots crept over the roadway on short legs, picking through dry lumps of horse dung.

“Now I know why I like talking with you.” He looked around with eyes wide open, as if the light could not hurt them. “You are aware of what makes you different, of your little illusions. I found it pleasant to chat with you.”

“So we do not part as enemies.” Istvan sighed with relief.

“Indeed. And in enmity there is the hope that we will be won over, united, embraced, or thrown to our knees. Do you really think it is possible to be an enemy of God? Even those who struggle against Him render Him a service; even hating Him, they seem to confirm His existence. It is enough to do as I do. To feel oneself to be a god. And so it is in the lives of the majority of people, though they do not always have the courage to be consistent.”

He gave Istvan a dry, bony hand. It was cool in spite of the heat.

“May I give you a lift?” The counselor opened the door of the Austin.

“No. Thank you. I have an automobile, one that is even too good. I prefer the rickshaw. I do not like to attract attention.”

Istvan put the stone head on the back seat. He rolled the window down so the heat inside would abate a little. Chandra, in spite of all his cunning, his astute financial manipulations and his legal ruses, seemed to him an urbane madman. He wants to open me to the world with suffering as with jabs of a knife, he thought; or it may be that he noticed my sadness and irritability. My wound is Margit.

He flicked away a locust that had flown through the window with a loud rattle and lodged in his hair. He drove along, tooting the horn and squeezing between groups of cyclists in white or striped linen. When he put the brake on hard, the stone head rolled onto the floor with a loud thump. Obstructed by its chipped ear, it rocked continuously, beating like a bass drum.

He was overtaken by a violent impulse to turn back, pick out the slender figure of the lawyer in the crowd on the street and ask for his help to get Margit back. Yet instinctively he preferred to search out the truth on his own. Chandra seemed a doubtful ally, though Istvan did not believe he could do him harm.

“The ambassador was looking for you,” Ferenc announced with malicious satisfaction. He was hurrying down the corridor with a fistful of documents and a lost expression, as if he were in pursuit of the solution to a problem and it was eluding him.

“But you knew where I was.”

“Yes — there is always a reason to escape the office.” He nodded indulgently. “Go and face him. The weather is stormy in that quarter. What do you have there?”

“An old sculpture.” He turned it in his hand.

“You have too little kitsch in your house? How much did you give for that?”

“Not an anna. It was a gift.”

“Never fear. You’ll pay. They give here in order to gain something, not out of friendship.”

“Don’t worry.”

“I forgot: you have the ambassador’s storeroom at your disposal. There are bins enough there.”

Terey made sure that the caretaker carried the boxes with the films into the storeroom and put them on a shelf under lock and key. He turned the big fan on at full speed, and when the annotated papers on his desk bristled, he placed the stone head on them. It rested there sideways, and he found something disturbing in its open eyes, its lips full as if satiated with delight. So we lie in the dark sometimes, listening to the pounding of our hearts, full of expectation and fear.

The telephone rattled.

“It is I,” came the deep voice of Kalman Bajcsy. “Where have you been off to?”

He had hardly told him about the films when the ambassador broke in:

“How is your car? Running nicely? Get yourself home, pack your grip, and run over to Agra. Give a talk for me at eight tonight. You must leave in plenty of time, for there may be detours; remember, this is the monsoon season. Now there is a road and now there is none, only a raging river. Do not lapse into detailed assessments of our situation. Do not play the prophet when you answer questions; no long-range predictions. I depend”—he hesitated—“I must rely on your good judgment.”

“What about Comrade Ferenc?”

“He is needed at trade talks. And I am flying to Bombay for three days. The deputy minister for trade is coming in. We will return together to sign an agreement. It is an urgent situation.”

“I understand.”

“Well, get moving.”

“Right away, sir, and on that subject — had you announced a theme?”

“Only a general one: Hungary today. But you can take up some issue you’re familiar with. Something from literature, perhaps. Speak freely, enjoy yourself. Give a critique of your fellow writers; they have no specialists in Hungarian culture here, and nothing you say will have repercussions. Between us, the thing is to bore them for an hour so they will not feel that they have been treated disrespectfully.”

“I could talk about painting. I have a color film that isn’t bad.”

“If you feel up to it. That is even better. The talk will begin later. They have arranged an outdoor party and the film will shorten the discussion. Do not criticize socialist realism — that is my only injunction, because what if someone from our sister embassies happens to be there and begins to protest? Why make a spectacle of a quarrel in our camp? Well — good luck! Give me a report on Saturday.”

Terey stuffed his letters and documents into a drawer in his desk and locked it. He looked in the storeroom for the box with the film, checking a few cages in the glare of the light — for the Indian employees often packed borrowed short-feature films in boxes with incorrect stickers — and, his spirits rising, hurried to the car. Even the heat did not seem so oppressive now. The air surging through the open windows of the Austin hummed a high note like wind in a storm, and time after time the saw-like voices of cicadas pierced his ears.