One Evening in the Life of ..... A Story

Part: One
And then all was still. The tiny, jingling bells stringed to her anklets had fallen silent. Her flailing arms, vainly trying to grasp the thin air, had collapsed by her side. The intermittent gurgling had stopped.

His heart beat wildly. His eyes were clasped shut. His breath had frozen inside his belly and he could feel the jaw muscles stretched across his chin.
He slowly opened his eyes and his gaze fell on the pillow and traveled to his clenched fists, pressing the pillow down on her buried face with all their might. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the nail on her little finger had broken. It had pierced the skin of her palm and a trickle of blood ran down across it, had started to coagulate in mid air and seemed to be contemplating falling on to the bed sheet.

His heart still beat fast but he noticed it was rhythmic and this knowledge calmed him some more. He relaxed a little and slowly, very slowly unclenched his fists. He tried to imagine what she looked like under the pillow but was surprised, as he was unable to visualize anything. “Anyway, I don’t want to see her right now” he thought and let the pillow remain.

Everything had gone according to plan. He had not made any noise and had not let her struggle much. He got up and tiptoed to the front door and peeped through the keyhole. There was no one. Of course he knew that. The couple staying below had gone abroad on a short assignment and their flat was locked and the couple above never came back before nine…and it was only five now. The building had only one apartment per floor, three flats in all, but he was convinced that the man above was the snooping kind and wanted to be sure no one had heard anything. (“He is not home now”, thought he, even as he squinted through the hole.)

He tiptoed back to the room and sat down on the chair with his back towards her. He pressed both palms face down on the massive wooden table (…family heirloom…solid Burma Teak…costing him 20 thousand rupees to transport from Delhi…) It felt cool and comforting and he remained like that. He wanted to know what he felt like. He concentrated hard but felt empty. He felt nothing.

He did not have much time left but he wanted to linger a bit, think about her a bit, about the short time they spent together. His passport and all other travel documents were in his briefcase. He had double-checked all his flight tickets. He had to catch the 11.00 pm flight to Mumbai and then onto the United States in the wee hours tomorrow. He would have to lie low for a few days until the coast was clear for him to proceed to Brazil. He would join his cousin there…start afresh…it was all planned. He was a great one for planning. That was a given and he felt safe in that knowledge.

As he sat there, thinking, it appeared very surprising that they had never had an argument, had never even spoken harshly to each other. And now he had killed her. “Cuckold” he whispered and with a more determined voice said “Never”. He felt very sad but knew he had done the correct thing.

He remembered her hurried conversations on the phone, as he entered the room unannounced, the sarcastic look she gave him before she disconnected.
Her late nights at the office, long drives with colleagues and the disinterest in him of late had all driven him to despair. He had fallen desperately in love with her and was ashamed to admit that she was the only woman he had ever got close to in his life. But he was a Man and was not the kind to sit and mope and wring his hands. He had never confronted her with his doubts, as he could never bring himself to broach the subject.

He had enough evidence and had furtively recorded her conversations with a hard male voice (He had gone to great lengths to learn how to do this, browsing the net for hours on end!)The quality of the recording was bad but he could recognize the tenderness with which they spoke to each other. It was all over now and he looked at his watch. It was 8.00 and thought he should be leaving now.

He took a sheet of paper and wrote “No newspaper. No Milk”. He slowly tiptoed to the door, opened it and glued it on. He came back and sat on the bed next to her dead body but did not look at her. He let out a long sigh and with firm steps went inside.

Part: Two

They broke open the door when the stench got unbearable and found the woman lying dead on the cot with her face covered by a pillow. The Man dangled from the ceiling and it was obvious he had killed her before taking his own life. They did not find a suicide note but a piece of paper with a few lines of verse hurriedly copied on it.

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
………………………………………………

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
………………………………………………
………………………………………………

And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
In silence let him lie:
No need to waste the foolish tear,
Or heave the windy sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.