anindita2008
The Unraveling
The day she found her father’s old diary, she didn’t tell anyone. He had been dead for a day. Her mother was still filling vermilion into her parting and refusing to see anyone. Her brother had fumed out three nights back and not returned. It was not the time to tell anyone that she had discovered her father’s last secret in a leather-covered notebook. A lost child.
Her mother never came back from the twilight she had entered. Her brother came back only to pick up his clothes. Sometimes, she stared at the peeling paint of the walls and thought of what she had read kneeling in that grimy store-room. She went back to work eventually. There was little else to do in that town of dust and rain. She forgot about her father’s diary because he was dead and the dead are best forgotten quickly.
I found it when I moved in here. She had moved continents, leaving it behind in a cupboard along with an old towel and a pair of red socks. Debris.
I should have left it alone.
But I hadn’t yet learned how to leave things alone. I thumbed the diary loose with my fingers. I found the streets her father had spoken of. I found the house. They knew nothing of the boy.
He had not lasted, they said. He was difficult. They had sent him back to the orphanage. I followed his trail. He had entered families and left them swiftly. Like he was continually going through a revolving door. I followed his string of betrayals until I found him.
He had large eyes, a girlishly thin body. He looked solemn. Sad. I trusted him instinctively. Sitting on a spotless white sofa in his airy studio apartment, I showed him the diary. He read it through, rubbed his eyes tiredly. He held my hand at the door. I squeezed it and wished him luck.
I had imagined it so clearly--he would stop her gently as she was about to slip her key into the door. They would be tentative at first. Then a heave of tears. Later, wine and talk. The bartering of memories like playing cards. Like a Hindi movie reunion.
That was not how it happened.
They said her body was found in a ravine, her hair loose, her fingers stiffly fisted. She had been seen leaving the house with a slender, dark-eyed man. Nobody knew where he had come from. Or who had sent him.
I tell myself it may not have been him. But I never found the courage to go back to that bright, airy studio where he lived. I shut my shabby secrets into a suitcase and took a train to the coast. I live now among the seagulls and try not to think of her with her loose hair and open eyes, upended into in a ravine. These days, when I find somebody’s memories, I leave them alone.
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The day she found her father’s old diary, she didn’t tell anyone. He had been dead for a day. Her mother was still filling vermilion into her parting and refusing to see anyone. Her brother had fumed out three nights back and not returned. It was not the time to tell anyone that she had discovered her father’s last secret in a leather-covered notebook. A lost child.
Her mother never came back from the twilight she had entered. Her brother came back only to pick up his clothes. Sometimes, she stared at the peeling paint of the walls and thought of what she had read kneeling in that grimy store-room. She went back to work eventually. There was little else to do in that town of dust and rain. She forgot about her father’s diary because he was dead and the dead are best forgotten quickly.
I found it when I moved in here. She had moved continents, leaving it behind in a cupboard along with an old towel and a pair of red socks. Debris.
I should have left it alone.
But I hadn’t yet learned how to leave things alone. I thumbed the diary loose with my fingers. I found the streets her father had spoken of. I found the house. They knew nothing of the boy.
He had not lasted, they said. He was difficult. They had sent him back to the orphanage. I followed his trail. He had entered families and left them swiftly. Like he was continually going through a revolving door. I followed his string of betrayals until I found him.
He had large eyes, a girlishly thin body. He looked solemn. Sad. I trusted him instinctively. Sitting on a spotless white sofa in his airy studio apartment, I showed him the diary. He read it through, rubbed his eyes tiredly. He held my hand at the door. I squeezed it and wished him luck.
I had imagined it so clearly--he would stop her gently as she was about to slip her key into the door. They would be tentative at first. Then a heave of tears. Later, wine and talk. The bartering of memories like playing cards. Like a Hindi movie reunion.
That was not how it happened.
They said her body was found in a ravine, her hair loose, her fingers stiffly fisted. She had been seen leaving the house with a slender, dark-eyed man. Nobody knew where he had come from. Or who had sent him.
I tell myself it may not have been him. But I never found the courage to go back to that bright, airy studio where he lived. I shut my shabby secrets into a suitcase and took a train to the coast. I live now among the seagulls and try not to think of her with her loose hair and open eyes, upended into in a ravine. These days, when I find somebody’s memories, I leave them alone.
Poll Rate this entry