By Satyam Prakash
How come a life be small like this, tiny in one's hand, breathing like a floating gentle breeze, eyes not even open and hands all wrapped together around your littlest finger. How come life be in such a thing, whose heart used to beat faint like pecking of faraway sparrows, whose fingers were small, invisible like some white stains upon some unlit windows, and yet, and yet in whose mouth, when he yawned, she felt the need to simply sink in; even to let him consume as much as he wished only wishing for herself the smallest of slices, just enough for her to carry him rocking one more day, if starved or if drowned, till the end. How was that one knew, for a body non existence but for few days, smaller than few hands of men, where rest of her life would reside. How was it that her sleep was sucked in with his every breath and her eyes tended downwards by itself, and when she slept she was kept on awake, that even she spoke, she kept on listening. A life had happened in front of her, this life, so small, so tender it felt the air might cut in, the world lush and warm when he was awake, cold, and barren when he slept. How come she got to hold something like this, she didn't knew, what can she even say now, she knew nothing, that she would grow old with this, that she, only she, would get to hold him like this, that he had left her, he would not ever be coming. What could have she say, she knew nothing. Only this, she knew nothing else.
A night earlier, on the first day, it was her husband on whose hand she first woke from her drug induced sleep. It was a winter night, everyone had there sweaters on and everyone was still shivering, her husband had taken his gloves out and it was that heat, of that warm supple flesh, that awoke her, slowly like warm water upon frozen ice, from her frozen nightmarish dreams. The sharp light of the bulb above cut first, even then with curtains closed she felt night had long past, then she felt, felt again somewhere back in her sleep yesterday's sun falling--witnessed from the window--the feel of the steps of several men and several women already leaving, distressed, exhausted, sometimes later he coming, only one here now, and standing, staying for several silent minutes before her waking. She took her time enjoying this, this knowledge of his desire, this sensation and thus the realisation she can lengthen, or she can shorten, his plight at any moment, but pity overcome. That she can make her man shiver in breathless anticipation, or like a blade of a knife, cut it in seconds, was delicious. At last she opened her eyes, and he fell to his grounds.
He started to kiss her bare feet as he began to cry in abandon, unaware or uncaring towards anyone who might be listening--who just might have stayed back late or were just more considerate--clutching the edges of her toes, pinching it with his careless finger nails, sucking in some breaths between those sobs so he might not in middle of this apparent jubilation collapse out of airlessness. It was difficult to make anything out of him, from that mess of that sobs and cries, but it was difficult still to continue hearing, bearing those noises he was making, some words muzzled in, and so it was that after waking again--after once in middle of the surgery since those anaesthesia wore off, then again in middle of the night when pain was still lingering--after delivering through her frail body that felt ripped, her lungs blown open her eyes threatening to fall, balanced as if upon edge of a pin, after waking from desolate dreams like these the first few moments afterwords in this conscious, like it was her prerogative, she lifted her arms, drew him in with her inviting eyes, pulling those muscles set placid upon her face as if caked with cement, and smiled. And a smile was all it took, for him to smile back, cease his cries and come forward in abandon, in delight.
A smile that melted her in his eyes, but for him to then cry again and her to began crying as well. Though it was silent it was also intimate, silent sobs, and they both holding each other, both silently weeping, moments passing as his hand went from her face through her neck, digging deep so that the his breathing began to become hers, looking as if she was all he needed to ever look at forever. Then, embarrassed, he pulled back.
"how have you been"? He asked apparently still perplexed.
"not good, but not doing too bad, have you held the child" she said.
"yes, he is so beautiful" he replied with a genuine smile.
"where is he" but then she noticed slipping under her tongue.
"oh, he is in care love, he needs some care, and so do you" he put his warm, large hands over hers, two hands not white like snow but brown, like the rocks underneath and holding till his warmth seeped into her, hands held as if it was everything as if, right then, it was the centre and everything that occurred, occurred elsewhere.
"when would you be going back" she asked then, satisfied with her fill and then horrified with these words.
"no, I did meant--"
"--it is not a problem, I understand. In few days, unfortunately"
"...I will miss you"
"I know" then he put his other hand and she put her other hand and together they made a knot that felt it just might stand against there sea of troubles.
"I will be back tomorrow, actually, if things go well"
"oh that's lovely"
"and I would be back with treats, I know your craving darling and also" he turned back and after stuffing his left hand to his back-pocket, looked back--a face of gleeful smile like how a child might look back--he slowly began to unravel from it at first something small, something with a jingle, a key chain, black, large with some buttons in it, then the large, metallic and shiny, a large key like that of a house.
"oh, no you didn't" she cried instantly. He came forward and began to rub her tears, dropping to his knees, kissing her as she did the best she could to hug him back. Gently lifting her back, reaching her arms through his shoulder till the pain shot like a bullet, and she fell again to the bed grimacing.
"are you okay!" he said as he grabbed her arms.
"yes, it's just the pain, I am quiet fine."
He then let it go afterwords, she let it fall, let is stay there till he grabbed it again, gently put it aside on her bed with delicate fingers as if she some foreign gem and the dirtied mattress a royal cushion. The pain was delirious right then, her breathing beginning to go jagged, and immediately he called the doctors. They appeared, and he was gently escorted back. The last look of his face concerned, struggling to not look away, to not just at once break the gaze and perhaps forget about everything else, was the only thing she remembered as she drifted back again like some reoccurring spell to her delirious dreams.
One cannot then say, with same confidence, what he was feeling or doing after meeting his pregnant wife back there. The man had made his way back to his wife, made pregnant it was only confirmed few months ago, had seen her face harrowed, in drought like those rain-less lands, had felt her hands trembling though she did not knew it, had touched her jaws as she looked up after another devastating dream, her harrowed face exhausted, yet smiling nonetheless, as she saw him coming. They talked like they always had but from the beginning he knew she had already gone somewhere else, held her hands though, he knew, she was not touching it, was not holding back his gaze. Slowly now, outside after the rain, in front of that hospital, he began to walk away.
Taking a taxi in the pummelling rain he made back to his, there house some ten or so minutes away. Paying what he could, stumbling quickly in his wallet and pulling the largest notes he could, he let the driver have the remaining change. The door in front was already half open, the light from inside spilling out in anticipation and the shadow of his arm that was about to take it's knob pushed against the asphalt of there street like some giant hammer he appeared holding. One, two seconds later, he knocked still on that open door, and sometime later she came back.
"may I help you Mr R---" she asked coyly as she noticed his wet body, his hair soaked and dripping, and her fingers began to twirl across the handle of the door open in wonder, she open mouthed with rage pity and relief, to let or not this man, the owner of the house, in.
"i am not in mood" he said firmly after giving up on the slight hope she might just take the hint.
"why, why isn't the gentleman in the moo--"
"please open the door"
She opened the door none too alarmed at this tone, and watched as he rushed in as if with relief of a man after years of suffocation finally breathing, put his briefcase, his tie, his watch hastily upon there shoe rack, and after untying, throwing his shoes nowhere around that rack, went in the bathroom, began--she deduced from the noise--to wash his face, use her moisturiser he had suddenly grown a liking. A minute later he came back and, pulling the tower from there common chair dried his face, carefully folded it back, and put it right there again. Since she had told this, that, if nothing else, he fold the towel back as it were, and since he hadn't forgotten at least that this time, she couldn't help smiling a little and forgiving him for it, even if he had forgotten every other of his promise. The kiss, of course, being the most important.
"how is she" she asked then not quite catching herself fast enough not to, but he didn't respond.
"I mean, is she all right" she corrected herself the best she could.
He sighed as he sat and sunk onto there decade long sofa and sighed again, looked up upon there decorated roof made specifically for some other couple with children, painted like how the world might appear to some babbling infant barring, here and there, some emerging signs of crack in between the concrete.
"she is alright, she..." a pause "...has just delivered the child so, you know, she won't be here for a while though"
"...are you sad"
"yeah, a little"
This was good enough of an answer for her. Better than he had been for several moments she noticed, more open than many a times before. Then she wondered whether to take advantage of this, take his hands within hers and guide him up, in there bedroom so perhaps they can hold, make love, or if he wanted otherwise, talk till dawn. Or, perhaps.
"do you want me to stay, I can leave I mean, I have some things to do as we--" she simply asked.
"no, no please stay, I want to talk to you about somethings"
"what is it?"
But he was remaining silent. He refused to look back as she stared dumbstruck, began to fail to hold this rage at his incompetence, his insistence on always being like that, but right then he interjected, not with words but his hands, up in the air almost in anticipation, open as if in surrender or bend to catch if she fell. Then he said what he actually wanted to say all along.
Summarised, it was a mere plea for some more. More attention, more affection, more understanding than he had been given so far and now, a little bit more of a compromise. He wanted her to go back, not him the husband but her, to his pregnant wife and give back the news that, given his circumstances in his company, who as his wife she knows all too aware, he would find it difficult to return back as he had promised in tomorrow afternoon, and that she should only expect him in the evening if even that. Her distaste must have been obvious then, for, if not in tongue, then at least on her face but then she bit the tongue nonetheless, she tuned back her face, and said an emphatic enough voice that yes alright--slipping in a sigh she hoped would be heard as much as a disappointment as she felt was appropriate and yet was unable to articulate--and further, without being asked, that it won't be much of a deal for her either way.
After a while of some harmless, meaningless banter, after some polite chit chatter and then, late at night, another desperate attempt at love that they soon enough gave up, and decided to sleep in first with backs turned against and when the night, the cool night like a flowing breeze fell in deep, towards each other, breathing there last breaths of the day in the quiet of that night in the arms of the other. Sleep fell.
The second day began and in maternity ward it was a fact that she would simply never recover. Her pain had already almost incapacitated her, and her legs felt even more dead, even more far away than usual. For about some ten, twenty hours--she couldn't tell--she had been like this, in pain so intense she could not tell if she had fainted, with scratches already so deep, her thigh's underside so bloodied, she felt afraid to turn back, to discover a blackened pool ready to spill. The baby had been delivered, he was safe, he was healthy and he was suppose to be in her arms in few hours, with her husband and a camera but that image, that aspired image of them together, hand in hand protecting a little in middle, she couldn't imagine. The smell of rancid medicine, of foreign chemicals, she couldn't this ever leaving. At 10 AM, some hour later, she was given another shot of anaesthesia, a small dose of Propofol, and she sunk again deep in the sleep she wasn't sure she was already in.
It was once again a sound, of clumsy feet unaccustomed to the sensitive ears of many the other patients that woke her from that slight layer of delirium, soft, in it's thinness. The sound punctured in and she opened her eyes but there was only the sight of that perceptual bulb, swinging with a painful sting. The next shot towards the door, of someone standing and it was as if a picture of herself, younger, or older but no, not her but staring, she was someone else, hesitating to come in. The mother opened her mouth to ask to speak but it was only pain, her legs would fail to stand she already knew but somehow she, that women standing, caught that, caught the attempt forfeited in imagination already, with pity and sorrow she rushed in aid. Pity hadn't stopped feeling so good.
"Mrs R--- please don't stand up" she said pulling the chair closer, putting her hands over hers "you really don't need to stand"
That women smiled kindly at her placid face that was unable to smile back, and waited in hope--it was obvious that women was oblivious to her pain--that she would at least attempt however she could to talk back. She did not knew it was as if sand itself had fallen in between every muscles, as if it churned whenever she tried to lift any of her limbs, move any of her legs. She only, barely, spelled a greeting.
"How has pregnancy been?"
"go--" she forgotten not to reply, and failed then to not grimace.
"Mrs R--, please" that women gasped "you don't have to say anything back"
"it, was successful" but she managed to reply nonetheless, the pain began to crumble a little "it wasn't that painful"
"you are still in pain?"
But she didn't replied then, tried again but the pain won over.
"no, please don't move, I understand" she turned to her blanket--thrown by the wayside in some struggle of sleep--and pulled it back till her chest where the smell hit, suffocating, the thin edge of those unkept fabric cut upon the edges her neck skin.
"I am your husband's correspondent actually" she said after a while, with a sigh, and then waited with hesitation, an expectation of horror or distrust she did not knew which.
"I have come here to tell you this" she continued, then waited again "that he would not be able to come this morning. He might come, this evening, or he might not come today at all"
But how could that women say anything. Staring with expectation and struggling to find anything she might then utter, able, willing to find any meaning in it but how could that deserted women say anything, she only looked back, her eyes suddenly swollen or was it that she just noticed, slowly pulling her head to the opposite side of bed, failing, or simply choosing to not reply with anything.
"I want you to know that he is deeply apologetic, but his work needs him" she said as she gripped again her hand, her fingers digging in. Then she pulled the chair closer "I know it must be very hard for you, listening in like this"
"no, I understand"
"...he tried" but she hesitated, she had already lied so much "he tried everything he could, but he could not make it"
"no, I understand"
after a pause
"...thank you" Slowly, then, she began to remove her fingers, one by one from that childlike grip of hers. After pulling the last one she stood up, then startled by that suddenness, as much hers as the lady below who turned some in half sleep, she stood till, looked down as if to catch from in between the mess of fallen unwashed hair some tears, some sobs, some silent weeping like a sight she might later punish herself with, then slowly, hesitatingly, trying not to break this silence she took one, two small step back, looked again at this diminished women, body so thin it disappeared under the blanket, tried to say something consoling for once, then clutched her purse, turned, and walked away. The edges of her boots didn't clacked much this time.
But what could explain this. It was not a question, it was, it could not be an accusation, but what could explain the existence of nothing empirical, nothing one can pluck like a string, which could only be felt like a fleeting moment, as vapid as useless, as it was distressing. No chemicals could have rinsed her smell now, no drain of time could have drowned that lingering touch of a clean women felt for a second yet to be remembered, she already knew, for eternity. She must have thought his pregnant, formally pregnant wife had turned away because of pain, had hid her face less it had shown some of her grief but it not that, it was the shame, the humiliation of what was true even if she cannot bear it. But how could she have explained her behaviour to him. What could have explained his absence, to her.
The day passed like the turning of an autumn leaf, asleep and then awakened she wondered every minute what could have made him do this to her. What could have made him turn, what justifiable reason could have made him wince, clutch, run to embrace and seek comfort in the arms of someone other than her, another women, but so similar to her. It was only a speculation she knew, but it truly was not, for that women was uncanny enough to be her own shadow, similar enough to be some comedic routine but it was not, she reminded herself it was not, that a women smelling like her husband has came and bend near, and had said he would not coming to see her, and then had walked away without looking back at her, that was not a dream she had felt living, but if someone asked if it was even real, she could not have said it so. The night turned. She didn't even notice her husband, or any man like him, had truly not come looking for her.
The mistress caught her husband some hours later coming back from that important meeting and looking, dumbstruck, at his own image in the mirror. He has that ruffled hair like a nest, tangled into each other and a face underneath tugged down by so many things she couldn't have helped but feel pity, need to embrace from behind and comfort him but there was also this tension, a wall in between they knew they have to cross, but not like this. He had come with a ruffled dress and he made his way back to her, and his room, only acknowledging, with that small node of his head, her existence, then turned the light of the bathroom on and leaving the door open, began to undress for a shower. She was unsure if she should join him, but after a minute, two of various knobs twining, the sound of those turns escaping from in between, the cascade of little drops hitting his supple body she began to undress as well, put all her dress one one side, her inner wears then safely tucked underneath the mattress--where he would never mind to check--and walked naked. Afraid though she was when his eyes stuck, surprised, appreciated, and how she glowed from pride so reminiscent, perhaps the only thing remaining she thought, of there early days.
He brought a cup of warm water from a nearby bucket and slowly pushing her arms aside made it fall on her body, made her skin hiss from deathly white to glowing red, watched as she shuddered, fell further and gasped around his shoulder. Slowly he swept her under the shower, watched the warm water fall on her face, drip across her body, to the floor and she herself falling deeper inside him, now abandoned with her eyes closed, now furious with eyes open. She looked back with that look of wanting, face close, and together they make love for the first time in a long time.
Some hours later, after there bath, he was sitting on his bed with the lamps lit in otherwise darken room and reading, as required, some book he had to finish before his next corporate meeting. It was clear from his face, the frown so thick if aware she was certain he would not have made it, that he did not wanted to think of anything else, and so was she next to him on bed silent, with her back turned, the homely mistress now done with safely tucked in. Her face burned with what they did and grateful, and annoyed, at his reluctance afterwords. It was as if she had become a teenager again, with her face hot enough to burn candles and her fingers twitching with remembrance. Suddenly then he reached over and, after glimpsing a look at that face, of his mistress pretending to be asleep, feeling perhaps grateful, perhaps apologetic, he put the book aside and turning off the lights, decided to fall asleep as well.
"what did she said" but sleep she could not pretend anymore, and asked in the dark. He did not replied. She turned her eyes towards him--he did not saw but still knew this--then pulled back the blanket as if night had already fallen, turned a little closer to him, said
"I don't think we should do it to her"
"...what do you mean"
"I mean..." she then stood up and turned closer still, tried to put her hand over his but, failing to find it, merely said "...i mean, I have been thinking about this..." but he began to turn here and there, swipe the bedside desk for, it came to her after a moment of confusion, a cigarette. Then bending left from the edge of his bed as if suddenly remembering he fished for it in the pocket of his hanging jacket, found it, then a lighter and, pulling both up, putting the cigarette closer to her mouth, lit it, left it to her. She took few deep puffs in, coughed a little, then said "darling, you have a child now, have you seen it"
"I have seen it" he replied as he watched from the lit flame of her cigarette her eyes widen, look down, look back.
"I know honey, I am not saying it...bu-" but right then himself he bends again, pulled the lamp light, and picked again that book. She stared back the best she could, avoiding that sharp light and hence his face, the look on it as if she had something this cruel, witnessed the rest of him turn away little, absorb back into that book's pages and now far away now from everything else. Eventually, she turned her head as well, pulled aside the blanket for herself, fell asleep.
At dawn the next morning he began his day by pulling perhaps the best suit he had, and after making and leaving for her a roasted omelette, her favourite dish, left a little note--made to be read and later burned, as they had established when the affair first begin--attached aside it, and called a taxi back to the hospital. He was suppose to spend just a little time there, give a little peck to his ailing wife and, perhaps see her matron over there child. It was hoped he would be able to return from work before the visiting hours back there elapsed and in evening see his wife again, but right then it was only a hope. He reached the hospital, payed again with cash the cabby, left the generous change as the tip--even after so many years he was afraid to leave small tips--and climbed up with the enthusiasm of the deserving husband the stairs where on the other side he would see his wife. It was almost like a movie. On the way he found the head doctor, who knew him by name but he didn't, and it became clear, in the short conversation that they had there, that her situation had truly worsened. He thought of turning back then, decided to go ahead anyway, deciding not to think about it, and as he entered her room there she was there, graceful and gentle, holding and starstruck by her newborn child. Her eyes had sunken in and the veins, the veins of her forehead was slightly popping but that was always the case, and she was smiling, smiling nonetheless as she looked first at the child and then, still perhaps surprised to find him in her arms but sensing his presence, at him.
"have you seen Pratham?" she asked, asked aloud even when she wasn't sure he was there and pushed her arms, as little as she could, towards him. He stood still for a while, then walked towards her, pulled the chair, took the baby slowly, gently putting her arms each aside from him, took a look deep at his, dead, dead eyes, noticed he wasn't almost breathing, and considered dropping it.
"how is he" she asked in her breathy voice, the tremor gone after so many days and, he just noticed, much weaker. He struggled not to look back with pity, to look in her eyes and call out this bluff, this illusion but no, he couldn't, for there it was already, almost a white layer over her eyes, her absent smile like when he first saw her so many years ago, it all said that much to him.
"he is great honey" but he replied smiling.
"isn't he like you, his nose with that dimple" but that was not a dimple, an infection it appeared.
"I can see that, have you weighed him?"
"the doctors said it is too early, he has to wait to be stabilised before that"
had the doctors already said that, had they already informed her of his condition so apparent, but she was simply smiling.
"oh, yes that sometimes happen" he said putting the baby back in her arms.
And then the silence fell again. He tried to put her hand under his but both were deep in her blanket, over a dressed white body, it was only her eyes, glassy white eyes that was watching at him with perpetual, innocent and captivated interest. Watching as if wanting him to say something, watching as if revealing all of that in this simple act itself, as if she has been waiting for so long to hear at this exact moment the words that she knew he knew must be uttered, but he couldn't, he couldn't facing the cold small hands of his almost dead son, his eyes as immaculate, as delicately made as they felt plastic, he cannot looking back, her hands shaking though she did not knew it, her smile wavering, quivering though she did not realised it, so he took the child again, she left startled, stood up and walked away from the room, crossed the next, the next, and placed it upon the hands of a nurse, she surprised that women even had a husband, and told not to tell his wife about it, it already understood, for when the times comes he assured, he would tell her himself, for when the time comes, he would handle everything himself.
She did not questioned as he went, felt and not quiet saw his going shoes and not quiet asked, not because she couldn't, but because where he was going she already knew, had with an maternal intuition figured it out, and yet all the while remained silent. Heard his shoe come back then, stand quiet in front of that room, then with a gentle squeal of the door, deliberate in it's slowness, coming towards her but without her child, him taking her arms within his again, how he began to rub it with care.
"he is in care darling, don't worry about him" he told her, whispering in her ears as his breath fell on her hair "nothing serious, I just felt you needed some time alone and he some could get some checkup you know how it--"
"--I know, I know" she said "...sorry about that" she continued after a pause "of course I understand, why wouldn't I"
Then she stared some more in his searching, desperate eyes, she knew where it was, where he was, finding comfort in it and in his arms, his calloused palms with old bruises sunken deep, made invisible with time. He took one of his hands to her back, let other hold her left arm, let her fall in his cage slowly, slow like falling of a leaf, saw her then break like a china breaking, she sobbing like she never had, like never in her life has she let herself fall like this, without care of where she might hit, unravel like breaking each bone of her body, turning each outside in till she felt it twitching. All that left afterwards was the desert, plain desert of the heart, calm, ravished, after the storm. Something untangled apart from her body, it left her light like a breeze, and she willing and able to fly with it, then he kissed her on her cheeks, whispered affectionately, then sometime later left a blackened rose she had not seem him bring, a note, he long gone. She died, two hours later.
In night, after work, after he was informed of her death and he had failed in front of she who brought this news to give adequate grief, or even a surprise, he came home to her, the mistress, fallen asleep, a book open on first page, and her legs left bare in cold. He took his time with this sight, noticed, perhaps for the first time, her darken freckles, but red like her hair upon the fair skin, in the dipping sun, that hair thrown over the chair, her teeth, yellowed slightly, a gap in between. He closed the door, noticed that sound twitch her eyes, made her turn her head slightly, whisper something. He went to the bedroom, choose one of the blankets from the many left crumbled. The child had survived he was informed, several critical days still lay ahead but if everything went correctly then after a week he could come and take him. He picked one blankets, one he had used yesterday, came back, and after taking that open book from her lap, gently putting it aside less it made too much noise, threw that blanket over and slowly let it cover her body. He pulled a chair together as well, and slowly, she fell back asleep.