The Evening

The following cover story piece is written by Sanchita Jain, it was printed in Yamuna 83rd Volume.

The deepening October twilight has brought about a kind of stillness with it. It’s as if the wind has stopped rushing and is hanging mid-air tiredly; the leaves have stopped rustling and their whisperings have been replaced by an ominous, deep, penetrating silence; the birds and insects have crept away in the protective woods, afraid of the darkness that is befalling them, and a strange chill has settled in all around, enveloping everything it can lay its hands on.

I’m sitting in the dark on the bed in our room. A single window brings in the dull, faded, minutely blackening skylight. It tells me that the night is yet to come; that it’s not time yet. The listlessness of my mind refuses to leave me alone this evening.

Fine, let it be.

Suddenly, the silence of the cold evening is broken by a laugh. He’s come home! I throw a quick glance at the pendulum clock on the wall. He’s late again. He always makes me wait. I won’t talk to him this time. I spring up from our bed in one quick motion before I lose his sound again and run across the dark room to look out the window. He’s out there in the garden, laughing and twirling around happily with his arms wide open. The wind has started to blow again. The trees have begun dancing dreamily from side to side. The birds pick up their melancholy, dulcet tunes from the air and begin humming again as if they had never stopped.

‘What took you so long?’ I shout at him, the sound of the wind drowning out my voice. I wave my hands wildly to catch his attention.

He looks at me happily with a big smile on his handsome face. My heart stops beating for a few short seconds and then picks up a speed ten times as before. I can’t believe that he still has the power to make me feel like a starry-eyed love-struck schoolgirl! I look at him adoringly, my momentary anger at him for coming late dissipating in a flash.

‘What are you doing out there? You’ll catch a cold. Come inside, quick!’ I shout again.

He sticks out his tongue at me and continues to laugh.

‘What’s so funny? If you’re not coming inside, then I’m coming out there to get you! You just wait!’

He stops laughing and looks at me intently, taking a few steps back.

‘Fine, I’m coming,’ I say, a little vexed with him, and run out of the house blindly.

He is standing at the gate now, still looking at me with that penetrating, unfathomable gaze of his.

‘Why do you have to trouble me so much all the time?’ I advance towards him complainingly. He smiles and starts walking away, turning round the corner to his left on the avenue. Afraid to lose sight of him, I run down the front path to catch him.

I step out of the gate on the long dirt drive, across which yawns a deep, dark wood separating the suburb from the main city. I turn left, expecting to see him a few feet away from me. He’s nowhere in sight. I take a few more hesitant steps forward. I look from side to side. I call out his name.

‘Where are you? When will you stop playing hide-and-seek with me? Come out this instant! Where are you hiding?’ I shout aloud with frantically searching eyes.

No reply. The ominous silence again.

I wait for a few long seconds, listening intently for the sound of footsteps, desperately hoping that he’d turn up suddenly and simply take me in his arms and my world will stop spinning all wrongly and be back to normal again. I hear a twig crack near the far end of the drive. That must be him! I think I heard it or was I just imagining things? With darting eyes, I break into a jog along the long drive. When I near the red brick wall at the end, I stop jogging and walk stealthily instead to sneak up on him.

‘And he thinks he’s smarter than me,’ I mutter to myself and chuckle.

I reach the end, and with so strong a surety of finding him there, look behind the bushes on each side of the drive, expectantly.

He’s not there.

A cloud of fear and sadness overwhelms me. No! I can’t get scared right now. He has to be here. He’s just troubling me, that’s it. Once he’s out, I’m going to give him a really hard time. ‘God, you’re such a kid! Please come out now, don’t trouble me like this!’ I pull myself together, and shout once again at the empty air around me.

The minutes drag by slowly. Despair starts seeping in again. ‘Please…Please…come out…come back. You’re making me cry…please…don’t do this.’ I beg him exasperatedly, my eyes yearning to look at that one face. I try to hold back my sob, and blink quickly a few times to stop the tears from blurring my vision. I can’t lose hope. No, not yet! He must have hid himself behind some bush along the avenue, perhaps. I instantly feel better, and wipe away my tears.

I start walking back towards our house, peeking behind the bushes on either side on my way. Night has fallen as silently as if it had always been there. The woods are gaping at me eerily, but they do not scare me. Nothing can ever scare me, except for the thought of losing him. ‘But that will never happen,’ I reassure myself quickly.

I keep thinking about him, calling out his name now and then while looking for him, and no sooner I end up at the gate of our house. ‘Fine, you don’t want to come, then don’t. I’m going to keep waiting for you here on such a cold night. As it is, you don’t care, right? If I catch a cold or some dangerous animal comes out of the wood and attacks me?’ I say somewhat stubbornly, and lean against the gatepost, waiting silently.

********

I don’t know how long I have been standing here now. His face, with a hundred different expressions on it, keeps swirling in front of my eyes. I have even given up wiping away my tears now. Suddenly, I hear the front door open behind me. My heartbeat quickens. It could be him! I turn around to look. The hope is replaced by disappointment, again. It’s his father. He walks up to me and steers me inside the house, adamantly.

I show my reluctance, try to convince him to let me wait for some more time, but my pleas have no effect on him. I don’t put up a fight and ultimately succumb because he’s old and weak and it isn’t good for him to be standing outside for so long in such weather.

********

I stand at the window in our room, looking out at the dark night and at the gate. The listlessness of my mind returns.

They call me names, all kinds of names. They say I don’t think right. That I’m crazy, under an illusion, hallucinating, living in reluctance, in a state of denial, running away from the truth. That I should stop tormenting myself. Face the reality. I don’t care what they call me or what they say. The only word I hate is when they call me a widow.

I hate that word. It makes me sick. It makes me want to cry. They say that he’ll never come back, that he’s dead. But how can I believe that? How can I believe that, when he’s there with me every day? When I see him, hear him, and feel his touch every single day?

How?