Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

Water dribbled from the rusty showerhead in beads that swelled with maddening sluggishness. As they fell he did not see them, only the rainbow-tinted glimmers into which they shattered in the sunlight, wetting a spot on the slippery concrete that was overgrown with fleecy mildew. The tamping sound sent a shiver of dread through him.

He went out, startling the lizards, which flitted in zigzags from the walls to the ceiling. I understand nothing, he thought, like a man who has lost his wits. Now I truly understand nothing.

He informed his hosts of his arrival and handed them the round box containing the film. The meeting would take place in a garden under mango trees covered with fruit like old pear trees. Perhaps a hundred people were expected.

“It is an official agreement,” the old Hindu in the field cap of the Congress Party exulted unabashedly. “The event can be considered absolutely private and no one can intrude, but the family is gathering, and guests will come.”

Because the counselor admired the yellow fruit sprinkled with red, he was given a whole basket for the car so he could suck the mangoes when he was thirsty.

The ophthalmological hospital reeked even at a distance with iodoform and pus, as if the sudden rainstorms had accelerated the rotting process. He held a heart-shaped mango in his hand and sniffed it to counteract the stench. He wanted to talk to Connoly, to ask about Margit. But he found only the tall, slender professor from Sweden.

“You are out of luck.” He distorted his face into a pained expression meant to be taken for a smile. “Dr. Ward is stuck in the very heart of the epidemic. It appears that we will find one more cause for the spread of the sickness, and a classic one: quartz dust.”

“Is it far away?”

“About a hundred kilometers. It is possible to reach the place in a couple of hours, but everything depends on the rains.” He raised a long, bony finger and waved it dismissively. “Do not even attempt it with your car. It will bog down at the first washed-out river ford.”

“I would like very much to see what she is doing there.”

“The fight against trachoma interests you?” He scratched the back of his neck. “If you have time, come with me. I am going there tomorrow morning in our landrover.”

“Professor — you would take me?” Istvan blurted out. “What time should I be here?”

“Five in the morning, if it does not pour during the night. But you must be ready for a two days’ stay, for when the rivers rise…We will form an inspection team and surprise Miss Margit. Are you staying at the Taj Mahal? I will come to the hotel for you.”

“I was not prepared for such an excursion,” he said more reflectively, driving away the large, loathsome flies whose nimble legs were tickling his face.

“I can take a mattress and sheets from here, and we can share food if you are not particularly squeamish.”

“I was a soldier. I can eat what I am given. But I doubt that I will have much appetite when you have shown me your sick.”

“If you want to write about our work”—the scholar moved cautiously toward him—“we can only be grateful. Perhaps you will be interested in methods of combating trachoma. Are there many cases among you?”

“Before the war there were — a few cases in the mountain villages, where there was the greatest poverty. Now even medical students rarely have the luck, so to speak, to observe an instance at close range. There is no trachoma in Hungary. Conditions have changed: people earn more, housing is better, doctors are on call. People listen to the radio, they see educational films. They know by now that they must not dab at their eyes, or treat them with old wives’ remedies, or wait for the ailment to pass, but go to the doctor at once.”

“You have hit on the heart of the matter.” The professor spoke animatedly. “Altered conditions. But for changes to occur, people must truly want something, must do something, not simply wait.”

The damp odor of the hospital and the stench of putrefying bandages, wads of bloody gauze, and papers burning in a fire wafted toward them.

“Hellish climate. It’s disabling. It puts them in a stupor,” Istvan said agreeably.

“And those various faiths…”

“Would it be of any importance to you if an article on the UNESCO team appeared in the Hungarian press?”

“Send me two copies. Publication is important not only because of the statistics, but because someone has written about us in one more language. You have been in India long enough not to be surprised at anything. And thanks to your acquaintance with Dr. Ward, you understand something of the magnitude of our work. I like to talk, only take careful notes, for I will look like an imbecile in the reporting if you garble the technical terms.”

“I will give Miss Ward the English text for her perusal.” He pressed the professor’s hand, full of joy that he had uncovered the man’s vanity and hunger for recognition. To be sure, he was a first-rate doctor, but when he shut himself in his office, it was with the greatest delight that he turned the pages of the thick album in which he had painstakingly pasted all the notices concerning himself, his mission, and the activities of UNESCO. It was his vice.

“Wash your hands now, please,” the doctor instructed, turning on a little tap from an enameled basin on the wall. A violet stream of water mixed with permanganate trickled from it. When he rubbed his cheek as he drove to the evening meeting, he seemed to catch the familiar, barely perceptible scent of Margit’s hands.

The hope that he would see her the next day transformed him. His sense of humor returned; he was playful and witty. The showing of the film went off successfully, though the faces of the actors bulged on the unevenly stretched screen, and time after time moths made darting black spots on the picture as they flew into the white eye of the projector.

The night came on, warm and close. The guests did not want to leave. The fragrance of the flowers in the women’s hair was intoxicating; their silks rustled. The crowd broke up into small groups. People sat on cane chairs or leather cushions or blankets spread on the grass. When conversation died away they disappeared, sinking into the darkness. Only the high trill of cicadas sprinkled down from the tops of the mango trees.

The house observed tradition: instead of alcohol the servants carried around glasses of lemonade, sweetened with cane syrup, garnished with a pair of mint leaves or a jasmine blossom.

The heirs to the property gathered around Terey. Extensive tracts of land belonged to them; they were leased to peasants in return for half their yield. In the humid dusk their clothing gleamed white — shirts, narrow trousers creased in the crotch, dhotis like skirts. They look like spectres without heads or hands. Sometimes a face appeared when a cigarette was lit, hidden by a curved hand to keep a moth lured by the flash from sizzling in the flame.

“How is it possible that you did not know what your security service was doing in Hungary? Today you denounce the abuses, you vindicate those who were hanged. Was there some mechanism for control in your country? Must it not have given signals that there was malfeasance?” they asked in gentle voices. “Mistakes, errors may always be made, but here a fundamental principle was violated. In the Hindustan Times it was written that there were thousands of groundless arrests. Can everything be blamed on Stalin? What of your law guaranteeing freedom to citizens?”

“It was known that there were abuses. It must have been known,” he answered spiritedly. “But it was not easy to live with that knowledge. No one wanted to believe; criticism was taken as having come from our enemies. The stomach produces digestive juices; if it gets no food, it eats itself. It was the same way here. The enormously overgrown investigative apparatus, well paid, privileged, had to make its existence felt. It not only pursued adversaries but created them, to have someone to hunt.”