Husband and Wife

But as always, she returned and would pepper his face with kisses, caress him everywhere and loved him until it was time for work. Talk to me, can’t we just sit down and figured out what went wrong? the husband begged after each fight. There isn’t a need to talk, dear, she’d protest placidly. I love you, just remember that, she’d smile and then hug him. There was something mystical the way she intoned it, a secret message she tried to convey with her anxious eyes and her busy hands and mouth as she tried to make him understand.

Finally, he’d have enough. One night, an ultimatum had been given. Freedom involved for the price of silence. Unless she talked, he walked. The words were stuck in her throat -- she couldn’t speak what he wanted to hear, the words that could just make it aright between the both of them. So she made him stay the only way she could each night. She held on to him tightly, grabbed his clothing in her frail, fair hands and squeezed her eyes shut until the next day. The man, recognising this stubborn streak in her, acquiesced. He stayed.

But along with that defeat, something else died too, I think. Situation deteriorated to the point where they were together, yet they did not address each other anymore. It broke my heart when I peered through the window one day and saw the husband leave the dinner table. The food on his plate, only half of it had been consumed. The wife, dumb without the understanding, could only stare down on her own hands and cry silently. After a few sniffles, she bravely cleared the table and would review the stock in her ladder - no doubt planning the next meal. I don’t know why she still tried after that. I don’t know whether she knew what could she expect out of it. Still, the line had been drawn a long time ago, I think, and rejection of any kind of an overture was norm.

This silent pattern went on until the husband woke up one morning and found his wife dead. Death came without warning. Death was meant to be the last peaceful release a mortal was entitled to, but on the wife’s face, there were dried salty tears on her cheeks. Him being a practical man, cremation and burial of his dead wife’s ashes went smoothly. Everything that had been or was of hers had been disposed off by sunset that very day. Neighbours, friends and families, they all conveyed their sympathies to him. But I think, because he had been so used to the silence, and that words no longer had any use for him, so he nodded his head and shook their hands solemnly. Poor man, they all clucked, he’s still in shock, they surmised. Never suspecting that anything had been amiss right under their noses, they all went back to their respective homes.

I stayed in that village for as long as I could, occasionally spying on his cottage. It wouldn’t have mattered if I had been discreet or not at all. Nowadays, he sits outside his home and hearth, no matter the seasons and stare off into the horizon. His eyes have the same look she used to when she saw the sun, the stars, the moon and the heavens above. I don’t know whether he finally understood what she tried to say or perhaps he had found another purpose that would give meaning to his entire existence. It was too sad, watching him day in, day out. Always aware that the wife’s tiny grave was only two steps away from where he sat daily. Slowly watching the dinner table and the cared-for pantry gathering dust.

Finally one day I swiftly packed all of my worldly belongings into one rude haversack and started walking, telling this tale to anyone and everyone who would bother to hear, and hoping that they could make sense of what I had seen. Theirs reasons vary, and none of them, I think, struck a true chord. Perhaps, maybe, you can tell me where it all went wrong in a love that seemed so perfect in the first place.