Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

“And the law? And the courts, which mete out justice?” they pressed him, clasping their knees with warm hands and gazing into his invisible face.

“You forget that there had been a revolution in our country. That is the inevitable price of great transformations.”

“Just so — and were they not too great?” Someone spoke up in a voice smooth as velvet. “For perhaps it is a revolt of the root against the flowers and the fruit. A great extermination of culture and beauty that centuries labored to produce.”

“The gardener prunes the tree so it will bear fruit more abundantly,” he countered, exploiting their love of metaphor.

“He prunes, but he does not cut at random from the most reckless impulses,” someone else retorted. “From a well-judged pruning come laws and codes.”

“All the world is moving toward socialism. The state takes over the very large industries; it limits incomes. You will say that in Western Europe industrialists themselves share their profits with their workers voluntarily. It is because they see that among us the workers also share in the power, in the governance of the state. They must make concessions, must give something in order to delay, for a little, the inevitable process of history,” he explained fervently. “Look how it is with you. Look how much unwarranted harm came to you as a legacy from the English. Great tasks lie before your generation. You have just crossed the threshold: independence.”

“We are a technologically backward country,” they admitted. “We have not yet taken inventory of our own natural wealth.”

“Enormous means are needed, and who will supply them? The Americans, or Russia? And if they help, how will they demand to be repaid?” These voices were full of doubt. “We are afraid of changes that are too rapid.”

“We are used to tradition, religion, old customs.” A bass voice sounded in the twilight, without sarcasm. “We love peace.”

“People are good in our country. They do not want what belongs to others,” intoned a womanly alto, mild and warm.

“If we argue with you, it is not because we are averse to reforms”—they offered him cigarettes—“only in order to know what awaits us.”

“For socialism is coming to us.”

“The Chinese,” hissed the voice of an aged person.

“That is still far away, fortunately. Our peasants are patient.”

“But they demand land,” Terey said tersely.

“To them, land means full bellies, life itself,” someone said, unexpectedly supporting his point.

“And a great deal of land is being given them.”

“And a great deal has already been given them.”

“Peacefully, without violence. Do not sow unease and hate among us. Why awaken hungers which cannot be satisfied, even at the price of blood?”

The sudden flash as lamps were lit behind the white columns of the porch startled the gathering; people turned their heads, shielding their dilated eyes. The light was understood to be a signal that the meeting was ending. Istvan was surprised to see how many listeners streamed toward him from the park. He pressed their outstretched hands and thanked them for their patience and receptiveness. The girls said goodbye to him by bowing their heads deeply and folding their hands as if in prayer.

“We are very grateful.” The host, clad in white as if undressed for bed, shook his hand. “A successful evening.”

Inside the house, as if for a group photograph, the large family clustered together: a diffident band of uncles, aunts, children, grandchildren, and gray-haired residents who had been pushed into the extensive service wing and were eager now for contact with the wider world.

In his hotel room, when he had rinsed off in the shower and shoved the edges of the mosquito netting under the mattress, he reached for a mango, breathed in its fragrance and held the smooth coolness to his cheek. Margit’s knees: the recollection pained him. He did not have long to sleep. Mosquitoes whined and bumped against the soft curves of the netting.

“Two months. Two by now,” he fretted in an undertone, as if he could not trust his own count. “She captured me, she took me as her property. I became rooted in her and now that I am torn away, I suffer.”

The jangling of the mosquitoes blended into a mournful music. He lay half covered by the rough sheet with its fresh, airy smell. An alarming thought came to him: Surely not. No. That last night, when he had bent over her, she had whispered, “You may. It isn’t my time…”

Though he trusted her utterly, a shadow of uneasiness remained. But if something had happened, she would have let him know, after all. And what then? He would have been in Delhi just as she was, with no recourse, both of them thrown on the mercy of the Hindus.

By the pool where they had been sitting that first night, a toad croaked, as if someone were stubbornly shaking an empty gourd with a few pebbles in it — a dull, wooden voice in the distance.

If we had a child — the thought left him unable to breathe — it would mark the beginning of another life. He had simply never taken the possibility into account. No, no — he could not foist off all the responsibility on her, could not say, She knew what she was doing.

No, it is surely not that. He sighed with relief. The embassy must have ordered her not to see me. An Australian woman is under the protection of the English. Perhaps they find our relationship disturbing. In their books I am persona non grata.

He slept, pressing to his cheek the aromatic fruit, which gently absorbed the heat from his body. The mosquitoes’ dirge was like twanging strings, as if the netting itself were growing taut.

A shadow slid slowly from behind the corner of the cottage warmed by the sun. Istvan recognized the figure at once. He waited breathlessly until Margit emerged; he lay in wait to catch her in his arms and surprise her with kisses. But she stood still, as if she suspected an ambush. He raised his eyes and saw with great astonishment the tuft of cut grass on a stick that stood in the hallway — the redtop grass, wrapped in a rag, that was dampened in a barrel and used to sweep out the bread ovens. I didn’t know they had those in India as well. How could I have been wrong?

Suddenly he saw that Margit, dressed in a sari like a Hindu woman, was making her way down to the river. Pyres were burning low on the bank and greasy smoke hovered near the ground. He wanted to warn her. He knew that she was going to bathe — not in that place, the ashes of the dead are sprinkled there! — and he tried to call to her, but a nameless dread constricted his throat. He overtook her when she was standing knee-deep in water with her back to him. She did not turn toward him, though he touched her arm. Then, filled with terror, he saw that her face was not reflected in the water, and he realized only then that Margit was not there. She had immersed herself in the water and was dissolving slowly in the dark gray current full of funnels, streams, and eddies, and some foul life as yet without distinct form.

He seized her hand. Her fist was clenched. He tried to separate her fingers as if everything depended on that, as if that could save her. But his hands were so weak, as happens sometimes in dreams, that he bit his lips with rage. To his despair, she sank. She vanished. He could not understand why only she met this fate, since he, too, had offered himself up to the malign powers. But her hand rose unexpectedly like a plucked flower, cool and moist. He pressed it to his lips and whispered an unfamiliar word he had never uttered before: my love, my cradle. His breath warmed her cold, tight fist and her fingers opened like petals; in the center he saw a tiny round red object. He shook it out onto his own outstretched hand; to his amazement it was a button, sculpted in coral, from a mandarin cap — exactly like one he had seen in a cracked bowl between the Tibetan woman’s rows of figurines on the walk in front of the Janpath Hotel.