Love Story #1 to 14

by Annie Zaidi

  But now we were at the police station again, and the same brown officer was standing before us, gesturing at us to step inside his office.

  She pushed me ahead of her, gently. The door swung shut behind us. I looked more closely this time. The skin was an unbroken brown, still startlingly smooth, but there were a few crinkles near his quiet, tired eyes.

  So, he was an ACP now. I sat a little away from his desk. She leaned forward, put her elbows on the table, and breathed deep as if trying to muster the courage to say something. Finally, she said she had to take back her complaint. That missing person complaint from six years ago. Her husband had returned after all. The brown officer just said, oh!

  She said, it was not right to waste his time, because she knew the police were overworked, and he had been so kind, taken a special interest, so she came to tell him herself. Her voice began to tremble. The brown officer nodded a few times, rested his chin on his fists. He pushed a covered glass of water towards her. She took it.

  Do you remember, she asked suddenly, pointing her chin at me. Isn’t she all grown up? Her weepy voice jangled with all the gleaming keys of intimacy that had been locked out of sight in our house.

  The officer nodded, his mouth buried behind his knuckles. Nobody said anything for a while. Then I said, I remember you too.

  I don’t know why I said that. She turned to me with a slight frown, and the brown officer looked at me properly then, right into my eyes. I could see that he, too, was about to cry. So I stood up and said I needed to use the bathroom. He rang a bell and a constable stepped into the room.

  I followed the constable, walking across a long corridor where the sound of my heels echoed hollowly. There was a horrid, smelly toilet for the public, but we walked past that one. The constable took me into another room, one that had a bathroom attached. It was probably meant for special visitors or maybe very senior officers. The constable gave me a key to unlock the toilet door.

  I waited there for nearly fifteen minutes. Then I came out, locked the door again, and stepped out into the corridor. I followed the constable back to where she was, standing outside the brown officer’s room, waiting. Her arms were wrapped around herself, as if she needed to be held. When she saw me, she dropped her arms to her sides and began to walk. I followed, half a step behind.

  LOVE STORY # 7

  (aka The one with cheese in it)

  She went into the kitchen to put away the teacups. Her friend followed, carrying the tray loaded with the damp matthi and diet snacks that nobody had touched. There was nothing else to eat in the house. She didn’t bother to cook for herself these days.

  The friend found her in the kitchen, gripping the metallic edge of the sink, leaning forward as if she was throwing up. But she wasn’t being sick. She was only crying. The friend stroked her back, and she fell into her arms, moaning.

  ‘It is not working. It is not working. Oh my god!’

  When a couple no longer lives in each others’ hopes, when two people do not look forward to the end of a long day so they can be alone with each other, when the rest of the world is reduced to items of harmless gossip, when their eyes no longer dance around each other, when there is no sudden drop into a warm current of anticipation – that is when it is not working. And indeed, it was not working.

  It had not been working since the pregnancy. First, there was the sickness; then the coming of the baby and endless exhaustion. A whole year later, she wasn’t sleeping with her husband.

  Her husband had been there, of course. Right through. He was there when the baby started moving, feeling her thrill and echoing her fear as the baby kicked hard. He was suitably awed and humbled. It was just like the magazines and movies and daddy-blogs said. He was there whenever he was needed – driving her to hospital, taking photos of the newborn, tipping the nurses, cooing to the baby, changing diapers. And when his work began to take him out of the city, he sent messages, every day. Even three or four times a day. He would ask to speak to the baby on the phone even though the poor mite couldn’t talk yet. He brought back toys that the baby was too small to play with. He offered to cook on days when he was not travelling. He smiled a lot. He probably thought it was working. True, they weren’t sleeping together, although she had stopped nursing. True, he couldn’t figure out why his wife was bursting into tears so often. She had never been the weepy sort, not even in bad times. But then somebody told him about post-natal depression and he calmed down.

  If it was a post-something problem, her husband thought, then it was a phase. It would pass. A year. Two years max. So, when she burst into tears, he learnt to stand still, breathing quietly like a loyal pet dog, waiting for her mood to swing to a reasonable median. He was a steady sort. He could outlast his woman’s moods, he told himself. There was the question of zero sex. But he was a patient man. He would not look at another woman. Well, perhaps he would look. But he was careful not to be caught looking. Sex, anyway, was just sex. True, it wasn’t healthy to go without for too long. But what man cheated on his wife on health grounds? He was stern with himself. He would wait out her post-natal depression.

  In the meantime, she sobbed more frequently, often in the arms of her new best friend, an old college friend who had been rediscovered lately.

  ‘It isn’t working,’ she would say, over and over.

  But the friend was a smart woman who knew that to respond, to say anything at all, would backfire. If one agreed and told her that she should just walk out, cut her losses etcetera, it would only goad a new mother into making fresh attempts at salvaging her marriage. The friend knew this from bitter experience, and knew also that once a marriage was somehow salvaged, her advice about walking out, cutting losses etcetera would be remembered and resented. The friendship would end.

  On the other hand, if one persuades her to redouble efforts at salvaging her marriage, it would be interpreted as a sign that even her best friend didn’t understand, that nobody would stand by her through a crisis. So she would stick within the marriage, functional or not. And she would resent the friend.

  So the new best friend stroked her back and said, ‘Shh, don’t cry. You will be fine. It will be fine. Do you want me to cook something?’

  A safe sort of thing to say. One could say it during any kind of crisis. Cooking always helped.

  While the friend cooked, she fretted aloud about how she had managed to land up here. Like this. Barefoot, post-natally depressed, in the kitchen. She had drive. She had plans. She was very self-willed too. It was one of the most attractive things about her. Even her husband said often, and with pride, that she was the compass of his life.

  The compass was dithering now, not knowing where to turn. She waited until the friend fixed a quick hot meal, then set about feeding the baby a day-old dinner of mashed potatoes, boiled eggs, carrots and rice that had been put through the mixer. Just looking at the stuff made her feel sick but the baby seemed to enjoy it. She couldn’t believe she had spawned a creature who enjoyed eating mashed carrots, without salt or butter, but who would throw up if you fed it ice cream. Silly as it sounded, it was a source of real heartburn for her: the baby had turned out so unlike her.

  The baby had taken after the father: dark, curly hair, wide eyes, a visceral aversion to rock music. Oh, how the kid howled if she put on Metallica! She had not been able to listen to her favourite music for over a year now. Topping everything else, this strange preference for boiled vegetables! Truly his father’s son. Her husband too hated ice cream and never buttered his toasts.

  How could anyone not like butter on toast? It was fundamental, she thought. It was almost a sign of being human. Even cats and dogs liked butter. Not her husband, though.

  He always looked surprised when people asked him that question – how can you not like butter? What about ice cream? He had thought he might be lactose intolerant. Yet, milk didn’t hurt him. And he actually loved cheese. All kinds, even the hard, smelly ones.

  He was often travelling to Europe these d
ays and cheese was his sole comfort. There isn’t much to do when you are on your own in a strange city, especially in the evenings. There was work through the day and then, depressingly clean hotel rooms. He wasn’t the type of man who could walk into a bar full of strangers and leave with a friend on his arm. Besides, after the first three meals, he longed for rice, dal, roti. So instead of going out to restaurants, he would buy a variety of breads and cheeses. Then he’d fix himself dry sandwiches in his hotel room and wash it down with tea-bag tea.

  He took a secret pride in this. Sinking his teeth into a sandwich he made himself. He could save money that way. And what’s more, he liked cheese. In France, Italy and Switzerland, he sampled all the varieties he saw on supermarket shelves. Now he couldn’t wait to go to Germany, to the east, especially. He had heard the cheese made in the villages tasted different and he intended to take a little tour of the dairies.

  But he couldn’t bring himself to tell her. It was his guilty secret. It was silly, he knew. His wife didn’t like cheese. He liked it. He loved it. But he had stopped buying fancy cheeses at duty free shops. Instead, he ate his fill on his trips abroad. There was no need for secrets. She had never said that she did not want to know about his cheese adventures. Still, he had stopped talking about it.

  He told his wife everything else – what he did, saw, ate, got shocked by, bought, sold, was disgusted by, was tempted by. It was the rock-bed of marriage, this telling of the little things. But somehow, he could not bring himself to talk about the new cheeses he was discovering and how much he was enjoying it. Maybe it was something to do with her disdain of smelly cheeses, her saying that she did not want any cheese in the fridge, even the non-smelly ones. Maybe it was her reluctance to let the baby taste the exotic cheeses he bought. Maybe it was the sudden, shocking hurt from her stray remark – something about him being a pig, a glutton.

  Whatever the reason, cheese was one of the first things he stopped talking about. But then, there were other things too. The secret compartment inside his head was stuffed with more and more tiny scraps – an antique lantern left burning in a dark alley; a small girl peering at him from a balcony on the third floor, then holding out her arms; the terror that she might jump; pink-orange flowers in a window; lace curtains; young men howling like wolves outside a bar; slick leather couches in hotel lobbies; leather skirts; bored eyes; a fever; a dream.

  He once had a dream – a nightmare – about his wife, where she threw their baby into a dark well. He didn’t tell her about it. And once, he had bumped into a teenaged prostitute while taking a shortcut through an L-shaped park. France. He didn’t even remember the face – only that she was dressed in almost nothing. Black boots and very red lips. He bumped into her and promptly apologized, but the girl’s mouth was slack, eyes almost shut. She began to run her hands over her flat chest. It wasn’t erotic. Nothing happened. He felt nothing. Surprised, maybe. He had turned his back on the teenager; he fled. But he didn’t tell his wife.

  There was also the episode of the charm bracelet. He had bought it off an old woman in southern Turkey. The woman insisted that it was specially woven with blessings that could protect children from malignant spirits, especially the type that seek out the breath of infants. He bought it and tied it around his own baby’s wrist, sending up a little prayer of his own to add to the power of the bracelet. But when his wife saw it, she freaked out. She yanked off the bracelet, screaming that he was stupid. How could they trust an old hag from Turkey? It could be some evil charm that would do just the opposite of what it promised. She didn’t want all this totka nonsense, not on her baby.

  She was just frightened. He kept telling himself that. He picked up the charm, slipped it inside his laptop bag and sent up a silent prayer: if there was any evil woven into it, let it come to him, not to his child. And he tried to forget that she had said ‘her baby’.

  One small word and she made the leap away from ‘we’. It was cruel and she hadn’t even noticed. He was soothed by that – that she hadn’t noticed. How could she have meant it?

  For the child’s first birthday, he brought back a stuffed giraffe. He remembered to get something for her too – a diamond bracelet. No lucky charms. Six years ago, she had declared that she wanted a diamond bracelet, not a ring. So when they got engaged, he bought her a bracelet of American diamonds, and promised that one day, she would have the real thing. Now he could afford to keep his promise.

  He had brought the bracelet home wrapped in plain white paper with a blue string around it, exactly the same way as he had bought his engagement bracelet.

  When she saw his face, waiting for her to open the package, to see the bracelet and exclaim with pleasure, she couldn’t stop the tears. It would have been a romantic moment. But she just wouldn’t stop crying. He tried to take her into his arms, but she was crying as if her heart was broken. Later, he noticed that she put the bracelet away, locked it inside her cupboard. Of course. It was real diamonds. She wasn’t going to wear it around the house.

  The next time he went to Europe, he bought a green silk dress. But he didn’t give it to her. For three weeks, the paper package lay in his suitcase with an ‘I love you’ note stapled on. He didn’t know why he couldn’t give it to her.

  Perhaps, it was because, when he returned home, she was in a weepy mood and refused to cook or even eat any dinner. He left the dress in its package, telling himself he would save it up. Maybe he could surprise her with it, when she was in a more receptive mood. And he tried hard to forget that he didn’t remember the last time she’d said ‘I love you’.

  Weeks passed. There was no sign of her post-natal depression abating. She continued to cry without provocation. He continued to wait, staring down at his hands, attempting to say the right thing, coaxing the baby to eat, or just sitting on the sofa, silent, until it was time to go to bed.

  Months passed. There were moments when he wanted to burst into tears himself. He tried to talk to her, bringing up old memories, telling her about the canals, the towers, the flowers he had seen. But she would say that she didn’t want to be subjected to yet another college anecdote; she had heard them all already. Or, ‘God, no! Not another travelogue for dinner.’

  On weekends, they used to rent a movie to watch at home. If she started crying in the middle of the movie, he would pause the DVD, so she wouldn’t miss anything. An endearing gesture once. Now, it would send her into fresh paroxysms of grief.

  She wanted, more than anything, to be rid of him. To have him out of the house. To not have to eat with him, share a bedroom with him, watch movies with him, get up in the morning and hear his anxious whisper, asking if she was awake. His very presence enraged her. His niceness made it worse.

  She was no masochist. She liked people being nice to her. She looked forward to having somebody pamper her, offer foot massages, play with the baby while she read outdated fashion magazines. She looked forward to having tea in companionable silence, or renting a DVD from the library, laughing over how bad it was.

  The friend kept dropping in. A box of chocolate today. Books of spiritual advice last week. A lot of hugs. Impulse cooking. Each time she said: ‘It isn’t working; I don’t know what to do’, the friend would sigh. Sometimes, she would stroke her hair, or offer a foot massage. Or suggest that she needed to get out for a while.

  They never actually went out anywhere, but making plans put her in a good mood. She imagined the ruckus of the market, the train, the baby wailing, the rude remarks from the audience if they went to a movie theatre, her self-righteous maternity on display. It made her laugh just to think of it. Sometimes, with her baby asleep and her friend listening, she could forget that she had a husband at all.

  The next time he went to France, he carried back the suitcase with the green silk dress still inside it. When it was time to fly back home, he took out it out, still in its paper packaging, the ‘I love you’ note still stapled on. He went out with it, walking through the same L-shaped park.

  He di
dn’t know what he wanted to do here. There was no teenaged prostitute hanging around at this time. It was broad daylight. The park was full of mothers, babies in prams. A black woman sat on a bench with a toddler scampering around. Another baby in her arms. She was breast-feeding it. Just like that. In the open air.

  He sat on another bench and watched that woman for a long time. He heard her snapping at the restless toddler, saw her switch the baby from one breast to the other, its tiny fist flailing about. Every other minute the woman would pick up her cell phone, as if willing it to ring. Then she’d put it back on the bench.

  The truth came down like a sledgehammer dusk. His wife was not in love with him. He made himself say it. Forced his lips and tongue to cooperate. ‘She doesn’t love me.’

  After he had said it, he stood up. Where was he going? He wasn’t sure. He picked up his package with its pitiful ‘I love you’ note, the green silk dress inside. Then he put it back on the bench.

  From the corner of his eye, he could see that the black woman was watching him too. She was curious. When he began to walk away, he heard her shout ‘Monsieur’. He hurried. He didn’t want questions.

  For the rest of the day, he walked. Parks, streets, hotel. His flight was at least nine hours away, but he checked out of his hotel and began to walk about, drundling the wheels on his bag. The streets were almost familiar now. Where was he going?

  There was somebody else, perhaps, he thought. Not perhaps. In all likelihood. There were signs all over the place. Someone who came into his house when he was away. Someone who bought flowers, chocolate, pizzas. He had often eaten the leftovers.

  Where was he going? The suitcase was light. Three days worth of clothes. He could go to a bar. He wondered if he should cheat, just to make it equal. That might make him feel alright. Or should he just go home and confront her. What would he confront her with? Flowers? Leftover pizza?