Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

His faded blue eyes flashed knowingly.

They passed villages — the chunky gray clay cottages, the blind walls plastered symmetrically with daubs of cow dung dried to opal in the sun; the streets, which were deserted, for the villagers had gone to the fields to hill up the sweet potato patches and feed water into the cleverly contrived system of canals. Only by a well could they see two women in yellow and pale green saris carrying round clay jugs on their heads.

Flies and horseflies swarmed from the trees by the road. Carried on the breeze created by the moving vehicle, they hit the passengers’ faces like pebbles. “Slow down,” the professor ordered, seeing that dogs with mangy, thinning coats lay where they had fallen in the dust, unable even to raise their muzzles to see what was flying toward them with its horn blaring. Even the fleas did not goad them into moving.

They had hardly passed the last cottages when a sickening stench of decay blew over them. In a grassy field they saw a dark mound of vultures pressing against each other, battering each other with outspread wings.

The professor ordered the driver to stop. Aiming his camera lens at the feeding birds, he walked toward them. They moved apart as if something had disturbed them, hissing as purple strips of entrail dangled from their beaks. Their long necks, naked as if their feathers had been freshly plucked, writhed like enormous worms. They jumped about fitfully; their thrashing wings drove the stench of rotting carrion in waves toward the men.

“They look like rugby players in a scrum,” cried the elated professor. “I must see what they are pulling to pieces. A dead swine!” he exclaimed triumphantly, kneeling and jostling the camera against the ripped belly, the spattered skin with stubbly black bristles. “Superb footage for my guests!”

He moved the camera in a curve around the huddle of waiting vultures. The birds turned their heads to look at it. He had just stepped back a little when they began to move slowly, then faster, hopping like children in a sack race. Spreading their wings wide, they raced to block others who tried to approach the kill.

“First a good dinner, a cigar, cognac, and then a sight that reminds us of the sort of world we live in.” The professor’s long, weathered face creased into a sardonic smile. “Why so pale? And you were in combat?”

The carrion stank.

“Let’s be on our way,” Istvan suggested. When they were moving again, he bathed himself in the stream of air until it filled his shirt like a balloon. “A hideous sight!”

“Hideous,” the professor agreed. “That is why I filmed it. You could not work with us. You are too soft.”

“No. No.” He remembered his first autumn after the war: the yellowish-brown fields scarred by tank tracks, with corn stalks broken and in some places burnt out. Bela invited him to visit his father and hunt partridge. The covey they had shot circled as if on a tether and fell among the dry stalks with a loud rattle of wings. His bullet found its mark, and the grayish-brown feathers grazed off by the shot whirled above the rustling twigs. The empty stalks crackled underfoot.

He waded through the bare cornfields. In a thicket, as though under a ragged tent, lay a dead German in high boots. Horseshoes and nails gleamed red in the low beams of the sun. He lay on his weapon with his teeth embedded in clods of clay, in a greenish coat with a black belt that was peeling from exposure to foul weather. Istvan took him by the arm — he felt the loose flesh under the coarse clothing — and turned him over. From under his helmet grinned a grayish face without features, teeming with maggots, and the same stench had burst from that body that now covered Istvan’s forehead with sweat. Beyond the iron barrel of the gun, which lay at a slant, he saw freshly scratched earth and white traces of bird droppings. The partridges were coming here to feed, to peck at the swarming maggots. He let go of the dead man, who settled down as if with relief; one hand fell onto the sparse grass as if he wanted to remember its cushioning softness. And then Istvan heard the fluttering wings of a partridge that had been shot, heard how its body shattered, yet there was still a scratching in the corn. He found the bird and administered the coup de grace, striking its head with the butt of his shotgun.

They informed the administrator of the village and the fallen German was buried under the name given on his military document, which dampness had left curled and swollen. A few days later Istvan ate the partridge with gusto.

“No, I feel no repugnance for your work. Even Margit—”

“Ah, Miss Ward is Australian. That is like a different race,” the professor forestalled him. “They still behave with the hardiness of pioneers. She is quite amazing: she works like a man, and indeed, it is not as though she is compelled to — a wealthy woman, an only child.”

“You are mistaken. She has to work,” Istvan said vehemently. “She would not be herself otherwise.”

“A woman of character, alarmingly intelligent. It will not be easy for her to find a husband. I would be afraid of her in everyday life. She would be closed into herself. A despot.”

“Oh, Dr. Ward is very hard to please,” the orderly declared, clutching his turban as the blast of air struck it. “She works like a machine herself, and does not let the other person take a breath.”

“Yes,” the driver put in, “she is like a young officer. She cannot bear for people to sit still.”

“She has been especially on edge lately.” The professor leaned toward Istvan, displeased that the others were overhearing their conversation. “It is no wonder; the heat and humidity are dreadful for women. This murderous climate breaks them physically and psychically. I was against bringing a female physician here at first. Even the men have sudden attacks of rage that must be alleviated with meprobamate. Or they begin drinking. But she copes. I did not do badly, taking her on. A diehard.”

How little you know her, Istvan exulted internally. Only I can tell how much warmth and tenderness is hidden inside her, how good and accommodating she is. But then the thought of her sudden disappearance cast its shadow — the unanswered letters, the telephone calls, the twittering in the receiver as if the space measured out by the wires were moaning — all ending when the clerk croaked in broken English, “Miss Ward gone out.”

He had asked to be notified if a call came from New Delhi. The man had made a note of the carefully spelled-out name; again there had been long days with no word. No, it was not easy to penetrate Margit’s thoughts; she had secrets, a past that put its badge of black crepe on her life. But today he would meet her face to face. He would demand explanations. Yet, properly speaking, what right did he have to demand anything of her? What could he offer in exchange? He had said, I love you, I love you, but the feeling did not justify his behavior. How egotistical he had been to want to have her as his property, to possess her, to ravage her with desire.

Was it possible to settle accounts in love, to establish conditions like those governing commercial transactions? Is it not subjection, though voluntary, to a bondage not perceived as such? How assign a value to the discovery of joy inaccessible to others, incomprehensible, unfathomable in the unreserved giving of oneself for better or for worse — for even pain inflicted by that hand is only a kind of shock, an awe that we have submitted so deeply to love.

Fields partitioned by clumps of shrubbery stretched to a horizon whitened by small, luminous silver clouds. The slender dark figures of farm laborers bent and straightened rhythmically, partly obscured by the flashing of their wide hoes. Backs the color of brass gleamed with sweat.