Love Story #1 to 14

by Annie Zaidi

  She took one step towards him. He said, what? What? And she said, it’s nothing. He repeated, what? She shook her head.

  She went towards him quickly and touched his face. Touched his lips and chin and wound her fingers in his hair and held his earlobes. And for the first time ever, he pushed her away. He put his hands against her belly and pushed. Not too hard. But she took two steps backward and found herself sitting down on a corner of the bed. He stood in the room, looking out of the window for a while, then he put the folder back and went outside to sit on the sofa.

  She couldn’t think. She hadn’t thought of what to do if he ever pushed her like that. It had happened now and she couldn’t think. She sat there, wrapped in a towel, until the sun had set and it was too dark to see anything. She dressed then and went into the kitchen. She put food on a plate and brought it to him. He wouldn’t even look at her.

  So she went and lay down in the bedroom. She lay there and waited. And waited. It must have been close to dawn when he came to bed. He lay down beside her, stiff. He made no move to touch her or even to pull a corner of the coverlet for himself. He lay there and fumed. She really had fallen asleep by that time. When she woke up and found him beside her, she turned to kiss him, but he was already awake. He sat up at once, not letting her touch him.

  She lay back as he left the room. Through the open door, she heard him make phone calls. The first call to the doctor. What? How? How much? Explain. Then to his insurance agent. He hadn’t bothered to read the papers properly before signing the documents. When? How much? Explain. Then a call to his various bosses. Were they happy? Was there more work? No, no, freelance suited him fine. He needed to freelance. He was willing to take on more, he said.

  He came back into the room and asked her to get up. She sat up. He asked her to get dressed. They were going out. She asked, where? He said, to the doctor. She said, no.

  She thought he was going to hit her then. She said it again, no.

  He did want to hit her, very badly. He wanted to grab her and shake her so hard, her teeth fell out. He wanted to ball his fists and grind them into her swollen eyes. Finally, she let herself say it out loud. This is going to be over soon, she said. Don’t hurt me, she said.

  And then he began to cry. He stood there, leaning into the wall, the tears coming down his face. She ran over to him and put her arms out, palms reaching to cup his face. He smacked her hands away. She tried once more, putting her elbows against his body, trying to worm her way into an embrace. He pushed her away. She fell backwards, landing with a thud on her bottom, like some unsteady child just learning to walk.

  She began to cry too. Twice more she tried. Stumbling through her tears, she held her arms out, blinking, like a doll come to life. Each time he smacked her arms away. She said, don’t. Don’t, she said. And he said, you don’t. Don’t, don’t, don’t. She said, what don’t? Don’t what? What did I do?

  Dumbly, like he hadn’t heard her, he repeated, don’t. And then, she was suddenly tired. She gathered herself up and went back to lie on the bed, and she shut her eyes.

  The exhaustion was real and sudden. It had started to come upon her like that these days. Like everything in her body was worn out. Like each nerve and cell had been used up beyond its natural capacity and it was begging to be allowed to go to sleep. Under her eyes, new gloomy half-moons had attached themselves, like night clinging to dawn, so that she never felt fully awake.

  She squeezed her eyes and stopped sniffling. She lay there all morning, not getting up, not even opening her eyes to see what he was doing. He steadied himself around mid-morning. He came towards the bed, looked at her lying down with her eyes shut, face working to keep itself still. For a while, he paced the room. Then he lay down next to her. And it was then that it struck him – it was always she who started it. He had never reached out to touch her without her having touched him first. He wasn’t even sure if he knew how to begin things with her. She had always been a little bit untouchable, a little out of his league, he’d thought. He had been afraid to touch her, even the first time, and it wasn’t until she had suddenly leaned in and brushed her lips against his that he had gathered the courage.

  Even now, he couldn’t gather the courage to touch her when she was just lying down, eyes shut. She was so still that he couldn’t bear it. If she didn’t move, if she didn’t open her eyes, if she didn’t make it alright . . . If only she would make it alright.

  And then he whispered her name. Twice, softly, he whispered her name. Like he did sometimes in the middle of the night to check if she was asleep. She didn’t open her eyes. His heart seemed to be growing larger by the minute, like it was going to explode in this very bed, and he wished it would. That would make it alright, perhaps. He tried again, mouthing her name. It felt strange to hear it like this. In warm daylight, his head throbbing with exhaustion. He thought of the pain and then it struck him that he hadn’t even asked her if it hurt. If that thing, whatever it was doing to her, was doing it painfully.

  That brought the tears back and he shook with the spasm going through his chest.

  He touched her on the shoulder. She raised a hand and smacked his hand away. He withdrew his hand. A moment later, he reached out again. This time, he wound his hands in her hair, making little ringlets all the way up his fingers. He took her name once more. She turned towards him and buried her face in his chest. And she cried until she was too exhausted to cry any more.

  He brought her coffee and toast in bed that day, and every day after. It would be over soon, but they didn’t talk about it. He couldn’t think straight, so he couldn’t work much. She made him say yes to deadlines, and when he sat by himself on the sofa, looking out at nothing, she came round and sat in his lap, slipping her hands inside his collar. He would grab her wrists very tightly and pull her down on top of him, like her body was some sort of magic cloak that could be used to ward off horrible monsters and fearsome dragons.

  And then one day, he asked if she would like to go out. A long drive. He took her, along with a picnic basket and blankets, to a hill they had driven past once. There wasn’t any glasshouse, and there weren’t any houses with French windows. Just a few huts on the way up.

  Halfway up the slope, he stopped and spoke to a farmer, offering to pay for the loan of a string cot and the use of a tiny thatch shed near a tree. He went back to the car, put all the bags on his back. He lifted her up in his arms and carried her to the string cot.

  Curious villagers stopped to stare at this shameless man and woman whose fingers were wound in each others’ hair, and whose lips were stretched with impossible smiles, and faces were glowing like warm red wax in the late afternoon. But after a minute or two, they too walked away, because looking at the two any longer became unbearable.

  LOVE STORY # 3

  (aka The one that was fulfilled)

  In the rest house, he learnt how to stop breathing in order to hear himself breathing. It was the most important thing he had learnt in his life. To feel the lungs suck hungrily upon the cool fingers of morning, on the warm teats of afternoon. This was life.

  He almost felt stupid for not having learnt something as basic as this all his life. But you don’t always learn things when you should.

  Breathing turned out to be an intensely physical experience, not the meditative, enlightening process he had expected it to be. But she had not warned him. She hadn’t told him how sensual the experience would be. She had simply prescribed it, knowing he needed to rediscover a lust (how had she guessed?) for breathing.

  Her prescription brought him here, to the rest house. She – his new doctor, flirt-mate, friend-philosopher and (he hesitated, but the word kept springing up like a broken jack-in-the-box inside his head) muse.

  He had wondered if she would come along. He was surprised when she didn’t suggest it herself. He almost suggested it when she began to talk about the sounds of the forest, the night that fell like a golden-grey axe, the insects that swept in like dust, like water. S
he described the night that left evidence of itself upon the floor, which couldn’t be swept out until the manservant came in with a broom to collect the corpses. She had said death and life and fulfilment and beauty played themselves out like a daily variety show in the forest.

  And they did. It was exactly like she’d said. This is what she had prescribed: three nights, doctor’s orders. Smiling, wagging a finger. No rings on the left hand. He noticed and almost suggested that she come along. Playfully, he might say, what if he suddenly took a turn for the worse and needed emergency care? Surely his doctor should be around?

  But even while he was trying to work out the correctly flippant tone in which to say this, he remembered that there still was a ring on his left hand. It didn’t mean much, but even so. Even so.

  Besides, a little archness didn’t mean much, not in this industry. Even if she thought it was inappropriate of him to suggest that she accompany him on an out-of-town trip, she wouldn’t complain. She was old enough to know how to deal with a little flippancy from a harmless, suffering man who was hitting forty. But why push it to the point that she must deal with inappropriate suggestions?

  Her easy familiarity had stopped short of flirtation. On the other hand, the way she said, ‘Is that you?’ There was something lurking behind the words. He couldn’t say what. But he knew there was something between them.

  It troubled him that she didn’t bother to cover up this something. She didn’t as much look at him as latch onto his eyes. She didn’t look down at her hands, or at the table, or the door, cutting away in the middle of a sentence. She did not smile just because he was looking at her. Yes, there was something. She knew it too. Something existed between them that belonged to them alone.

  She wasn’t his type though. He liked dark women, sultry, temperamental. Though when it came to a wife, he had picked someone very in-between – fair enough to not be called dark, and yet sort of dusky; a friendly college-girl kind of wife who slipped easily into motherhood; ambitious, but not driven enough to take ambition personally; passionate, but about things he cared very little for.

  The passion had been mostly his, and he preferred it that way. It had been necessary to keep feeling an undertow of want. He had even confessed once that he needed a sandpit of hunger at the core of his soul. It kept him involved.

  And involved he was. He liked to tell his friends that his marriage was his most intimate creation – the one thing he made just for himself. It was a little clunky, square, like a large metal trunk in a posh lifestyle store. It was like those familiar objects one cannot bear to be parted from, like blackened frying pans in the kitchen. Or an art film nobody understood because it was so terribly ordinary. His marriage, he liked to say, was not a spectacle. It wasn’t something he needed to communicate to the world. It was the only art film he would ever make. Just for himself.

  But then, the wife had recently decided that it wasn’t enough: this thing that wasn’t a spectacle was actually just a dry, barren hollow, a relic, a photo album, a facility. The wife said she didn’t want to be a facility. The child was negotiable. No custody battles. Visits were okay. As many as he liked. Or rather, as many as he could spare, seeing how busy he was. The wife had been sarcastic.

  He felt like he’d been socked in the face. True, he had always carried a hollow within himself, but he had never let it turn his home into a vacuum. He hadn’t let his work mar his marriage, he had been certain of that. He bolstered his home with solid rocks of affection and loyalty. He took vacations. He painted everything in sunshine. Not once had he strayed. Not once, despite the sumptuous, eager women who loved his work. Not once, despite his good looks and famously non-artistic temperament. Yet, the wife was going on about being nothing, meaning nothing, about sad, lost, precious years.

  He tried to argue. He promised to cut back on work. Whatever it took. The wife had shrugged. Perhaps she was right. Who could say? But from the moment she began to talk of the desolation within, it became impossible to stop the splintering of their home.

  He still slept curled up on his side of the bed, afraid to touch his wife. In the middle of the night, he would sit up, having dreamt that he had reached out and fondled a warm body, and then he would be frightened and would snap awake.

  Nevertheless, he did not offer to move into the living room, or sleep on the sofa. The wife did not ask him to, and as long as the bed-sharing arrangement lasted, who knew? He told himself, things could change yet. If the wife didn’t want to quit the bed, why should he?

  And so, he reminded himself, it was inappropriate to ask his new muse, his philosopher-doctor to come with him to the rest house, to this place of magic cures for strained hearts. It would have been nice to have her here. Not to sleep with her. Just to talk.

  But she would misunderstand, he told himself. Besides, he wasn’t sure he should even call her ‘friend’. What he felt for her wasn’t quite friendship. Friends were something else. They were people you knew, people you’d call when you had the time and the inclination to hang out over a beer. This woman was someone who’d clawed her way into his life, unashamedly demanding his help to further her career.

  He resented people like that. Now that he was ‘somebody’, there were so many people who called, wanted to meet, wanted to renew old acquaintance, wanted him to look at their work and offer an opinion, wanted to collaborate, wanted to invite him to their shows, wanted him to lead them to the pot of gold he had found and dipped into. Wanting! Wanting! Everybody wanting something. Like this girl, also wanting to meet him, to show him her work.

  This woman, actually. She wasn’t so young, but it wasn’t about her age. Her gaze was a woman’s gaze. Otherwise, she looked like a kid, like she was a couple of years out of college. Freshness around her lips and cheeks; faded jeans, slightly outdated junk jewellery, chappals, cloth bag.

  She was woman enough in the head though. That much he could see, and he saw that she wanted him to see her as a woman. She wanted him to take an interest. He had to remind himself that she needed him to look at her portfolio, to push her closer to the pot of gold, a slice of the pie, a lucky break. Just like everybody else. It was showbiz, after all.

  At that first meeting – ten weeks after she began chasing him, tracking him down through a maze of friends and acquaintances who supplied phone numbers, addresses – she had looked into his eyes and leaned back into the cushioned chair. That is all she did, just looked. And then she had asked, are you alright?

  He had wrinkled his forehead. Yes, of course. Of course. Why? What else could one say to a stranger asking a question like that?

  She said, you keep running your finger across your head, like this, like you have a headache; do you have a headache? He said, not really, I’m just, I don’t know, I suppose it is a new habit I’ve developed. That’s all.

  And then, abruptly, leaning forward, she had said, you don’t have to; don’t look at it. He had frowned, perplexed. What shouldn’t I look at?

  My work. If you feel like you can’t, or you feel taxed by this one extra thing you’ve gotten suckered into doing, maybe as a vague favour to a friend of a friend. What I mean is, she said, there’s no hurry, some other time . . . isn’t that important. Then she had leaned back in her chair again and latched onto his eyes again.

  That was when he properly noticed her for the first time. People didn’t take an opportunity away from themselves after months of chasing it. They didn’t just sit there, waiting for him to say something, or wanting to say something else, but not saying it. She was different from the rest, after all.

  Perhaps she waited for him to make a decision, to notice her, to dismiss her, to smile and say, of course not. Or perhaps she was waiting for him to take her up on the offer, to drop all pretence at taking an interest in her work.

  She sat carefully, hands clasped in her lap, elbows out, resting on the armrests. He told her then that he was short on sleep, but he would look at her work, later. He said it as gently as possible, struggling to fin
d the precise words, a voice that would be truthful but not dismissive. And she had said, I guess I should call you later.

  She waited ten days before calling. He wasn’t sleeping at all those days. Not at night, not in bed with his wife. In his studio, he would fall asleep for an hour or two, staying back after everyone else. He had taken to spending more and more time at the studio, going out later with friends, drinking. He would ask over and over, how had it happened to him? Why, when he hadn’t even done anything to deserve it? He had been a good husband and father, hadn’t he?

  Two of his three friends were divorced and separated. One had never bothered to get married. They all slapped his back, shook their heads and said, women! They told sad stories, dozens of little hurts they hadn’t mentioned before – the way they were pressured into moving out of their own houses, losing custody, money, the hair-splitting over expenses, the children, the odd scratchiness of thinking about meeting and wooing women after years of the comfortable knowledge that they couldn’t, shouldn’t.

  They told him what to expect next – sudden waves of rage, the sudden desire to hug a child in the early morning, calling to seek permission to meet the kid, needing more work to maintain two households, and to drown the bad stuff out.

  They’d been there, they knew. They smiled twisted little smiles at each other and said, we got that T-shirt, buddy.

  But they didn’t quite know, he thought. They didn’t know how enormous his ache was. Topping the pain and resentment was the giant failure. He had thought of himself as the sort of man who stayed. A man who stuck to a woman, no matter what. It just hadn’t occurred to him that he would end up as the sort of man whom a woman might come unstuck from.

  It wasn’t that he had never failed with a woman. But when he got married, he thought the failures were done with. And look at him now! That’s life for you. Turning you into a failure in every possible way.