Ananya Dutta

Drama Tragedy

3  

Ananya Dutta

Drama Tragedy

Master of Dalliance

Master of Dalliance

14 mins
162


A hackney with a red velvety palanquin was not so hard to find. The cabs and carriages were often in a plain sight on Oxford Street. The charabancs were the paradigm of vintage rides, and could be seen moving in almost every corner of the town. The townspeople enjoyed them like strangers on the streets. Late in the evening, somewhere about seven every night, the statuette of Mr. Philips Reynolds was lit with colorful lights that looked like confetti to me because they gleamed brighter than the color they reflected; surely the catseye highlighting the décor of the causeway was only conducive to the shimmer of the night. It was the fifth month of our sojourn in London, and I still sensed the hortatory need of looking around more carefully with a little more attention than I’d looked at the suburbs with the last time I’d stepped outside. It was strangely and helpfully in my pristine memory now. The time that had passed following my and Tarsier’s advent in Abbey Road, Downtown would probably seem a surfeit of time for one to have known half of the capital, given they had their whereabouts in here. But I always discovered one place or the other that was yet to be explored. I looked up at the sky. The nimbuses were barely visible, but the blizzard evinced the drizzle precisely. I looked across the esplanade that stood constructed around the many patisseries. Jerome and Jack’s had the utmost of my predilection. The bell tower seemed to be inexplicably out of function. I was accustomed enough of its ring at that hour of the day that I was quite astonished to not hear it from the tower that day. “Certainly dear, the seventh hour of the Friday evenings is a delight to be outside at. You need to be anywhere inside the vicinity of Hampstead Heath. Oh good Lord! Mark my words Freesia, the tinnitus that the bell renders in the entire milieu has the power to enchant nearly anyone” Mrs. Margaret had said when we recognized each other as neighborly.


Having witnessed the time one too many times, I was completely persuaded by everything she had mentioned about the hour. It was thus that I had insisted on our assignation during the later half of the evening, although Tarsier was overtly testy about it. I didn’t know if I was genuinely bothering him by such obdurate notions of mine; I had merely wanted to make out some time for both of us around Time Square. Tarsier had officially got off his mortgage and we had moved into our apartment a year ago. I still cherished the joy of having a place to call my own and with someone I loved. My gaze reverted to the handle of the hackney I had been firmly holding since a couple of minutes as the driver enquired “Madame, do you wish to have a ride?” The blizzard fortunately kissed my cheeks again which were red with the rouge I had dusted them with a few hours back. I could tell that it was going to pour cats and dogs. “Yes, surely. Do you mind waiting for a minute more? I should get hold of my parka.”, I replied, gently leaving the handle. “Certainly not ma’am. It’s late now, and not many chaps can be found now, given the occasion today. I am fine to spare a minute or two. You may fetch your anorak.”, came the empathic response of the driver as he pulled out a cigarillo from the front left pocket of his cerise blazer.


I only trudged up the stile next to the lowly built parapet of our mansion and gave out a summon “Palsy! Can you get me my parka? Palsy! Yes…. Yes, the one with the light violet shade. Uh huh…It’s hung next to my wardrobe.” Palsy came out to the mezzanine and screamed downwind “Madame, correct me if I’m wrong!” as she held up the parka for me. “Yes, you got it. Bring it down really quickly!”, I cried, feeling a little mortified for my dearth of manners outside the house, just as Tarsier often picked out in my gestures that I could merely envision as amusing. I was far from becoming sophisticated in his eyes. Perhaps, it was the reason he often preferred no company to having me over in his parties of Fringe Bridge Colby. I was learning to be more ‘disciplined’. Yes, that’s exactly what Tarsier told me to be. I could say it with no doubt in my mind because there would scarcely a day go by without his picking up my flaw. I took it all for good to cut out the humiliation his remarks brought. It was easier that way. 


The zephyr was just enough to send a shiver down my spine. The hackney drove past the Maxi’s pub, and the Wilburg Ceilidh inn for the two abutted each other. Only a span of thirty seconds and we were past Oxford Street. I was elated within; it had been a year since Tarsier left for his job in Morocco. Though the time that had kept us apart was not even a day more than a total of three sixty five days, the lapse as no less than an aeon for me – I had felt the distance almost every day. I surmised if it was all too much. The shine of the terrazzo from the patina of the road seized my attention towards the street. The catseye shone even brighter in that darkness of the ambience, just like stars in a dark night sky. I took a careful look around the corners of the street just as I was supposed to. The lamp posts’ bauble resembled the upholstery that had been nicely equipped with the chintz and glitter. It was too surreal for one to stop looking at. The lambent lights gleamed like the lucent threads of a lame. The long wait for Tarsier then seemed to make distance so powerless that even from a few blocks away, I could smell the fragrance of the Christmas candles.


The entirety of the neighborhood lit up the lintels of their lancet windows with them on their candelabra. It was undeniably dark by the hour the hackney entered Brick Lane, but the fervor in me was only more intensified, with every meter that the wheels of the cart covered and brought me a little closer to my husband I had yearned to descry for a year then. I wore my pinafore which had tiny fringes at the bottom edge of its fabric and put on a dirndl woven in poplin that had light furbelow attached to it. Tarsier deprecated of the dresses with furbelows for they only made my feet look more lumpish to him. I conjectured he was a tacit man, and quite logical perhaps. I had thus, seen to my dress with much caution to not upset him in our assignation that was finally to be. 


It was inevitably cold in Brick Lane. I had envisioned it though. London was cold as frozen ice during December, and it was almost the year at end; it couldn’t have been any colder than it was. The breeze hit the skin of my cheeks and my wrists now and then as the hackney pulled further. It was only when I came to behold the Trattoria and the Galaxy Gharana that I could tell where I was; the patisserie of my destination wasn’t too far anymore. I merely cared about seeing him. I wondered if he would heed to my affection as yet another hysterical paroxysm of my wild love. Surely he would for why wouldn’t he? “I can’t take it anymore Free! I need some air too. You keep me clasped ALL THE TIME! May I know the reason behind your espionage by the way? You seem to be much interested in matters that I suppose should concern none other than me, that is to say, I want you to stay outside my world of business. Which part of this desire seems incomprehensible to you that you keep probing my ways?! Why! Don’t you pry on me? ANSWER ME!” he had said when I had got wind of the truth about him. The other woman must have had the posh and clannish manners that I still lacked, indeed, despite all of these years past our divorce. I conjectured I was too obtuse, but I was still left to figure if that was what had bothered him the most about me. You see, he never really told me what I didn’t have in myself. It was thus, often an incidence of such fascination to me whenever he pointed out my mistakes. I almost wondered if he only lied. There was a possibility, only if I could ascertain the reason why.


Oh, certainly he was too good for me; he hadn’t uttered a syllable more than “alright” before consigning his entire mansion to me alone. I should be happy. Yes, I knew that, but with the lapse of time, I realized I had never found it. How could I live with something I didn’t actually have? Perhaps, I could live with the thought of it, acting on one of Tarsier’s very personal advices to me that he had spit out before slamming the door on my face for the final time. That time he had murmured “Live with the thought of me”. I now wished I had never heard it. Looking back at it now as the blizzard gets a little colder on the back of my palm, I pondered if it had only been a truth about him. No. It wasn’t. It was about me too. I was a part of the holy tie we had shared years back in time. That was undeniable even if he disapproved of it. I didn’t. I still didn’t, although, that was hard for me to accept. Letting him go would mean a heck of a torment inside. If only I knew a way out of the labyrinth. I would have so much of life to myself.


“Madame, the restaurant is right there on the corner of Box Avenue… Ah! It has commenced to snow. I fear the cart won’t be able to pull itself further. Do you mind if I drop you right here?”, the driver enquired, causing a schism in the cascade of my entangled notions. How I wished to break free from them. All of them. Strangely, a legal assent avowed in the form of blue ink on a piece of paper couldn’t really set me free. I thought if it was all even worth a try. Was it? I was still struggling to understand how. “Uh huh. Indeed. You may pull over right here. I will walk the distance that remains.”, I responded, pulling the gloves on my palms. “How much?”, I further added. “Never mind madame. ‘Tis Merry Christmas! Enjoy it with your loved one”, he exclaimed, expressing great altruism and a sense of happiness that I could tell was real. He helped the skirt of my gown as I alighted from his cart. “Merry Christmas”, I wished him, smiling at him. “Oh ho, likewise madame! Likewise!”, he cried out with joy.


He glanced on wayside of the avenue that stood yonder, and looked skeptical. With a jolly effect of the chilly atmosphere in his voice, rather allowing the latter to be pliable to the mist around, he questioned, “It is almost midnight madame. Pardon my intrusion in your privacy Madame. Consider it as my inquisitiveness or my care for someone in general. It is….uh, merely seven minutes to midnight. Are you confident that whosoever you wish to meet will show up at this hour of the night?”. He lowered his head as soon as he put forth his query. Finding no answer from me, he gently genuflected and took off his hat in courteous awe of my hauteur, so as I saw it. I wanted to fathom deep into the simplicity of his world that was too poor for many. I had all of what he could possibly never quite collate, not in the life he was living at least. Yet, I couldn’t smile the way he did. It had been years since I had my eyes as dry as his. Let alone all of that pompous regalia, I wanted to wear pantaloons with butterfly wings on my back, be a little stupid again. Marriage was a tough task for me, and with complete veracity, I had turned out terribly. I envied the dryness of his eyes, the tweak of his facial muscles, extorting a grin of some kind on his grubby face.


The ramble in my mouth was detested, and it had indeed rendered me lonely years ago. But the cognizance that I had lost it for someone else for nothing good chiseled my heart apart. I had given a part of myself, only to be spurned with it. His manners fell out of place time and again, but he never lost the hold of himself; he knew that one could be kind and laudable even when they aren’t ‘sophisticated’. My eyes were unshed. Tears stood at the brink of the bottom of my eyes, and I fought them back with everything I could ransack internally. He stood with his head low. I wanted to shove him aside or push him back until he was no longer at any place nearby. The envy was blazing underneath my chest. I knew it was wrong for me to covet him who was running skint himself, but I couldn’t help it. I could only envy him more. I was too desperate for empathy and craving some company. I was tempted to ask him to pull up his gaze and stare into my eyes and tell me everything his eyes could scrounge for in someone else’s face. All in plain and simple words, and sheer truth regardless of the ugliness for I had had enough of the lies, both foremost and hitherto.


Tarsier was long sought in an embrace that my arms could never compose. Was mine falling short of the warmth that Grendy’s offered him? Or was it never meant to be admired by him? I only kept failing. I failed and failed. I failed in keeping him company. I failed in conceiving a child. I failed as a wife and in keeping him, I also failed. So did I fail in having the upper hand. It was always his. Never did I once win at anything. By the hour I had found the courage to defy, I was already defied; he had found his way to someone else’s. Verily speaking, I would spill my outrage as much as I desired to pour my heart out to him, just as I would not hesitate in putting my love on display for him either. This compassion in me was such a bruise that I could no longer endure the burn inside. My heart was achy in ways that I could appraise as explicable; it was the pain of a woman, an affliction that had emanated somewhere in my inmost core when for all the faith and conviction I had put together hell and heaven for, I was the one expected to strive a little further with the repudiation he had expressed for the love I had offered so unconditionally.


But his was to be won, over the conditions. What was my fault? I was coming to realize that I would have to bury this question of mine when it was my time. The gale had begun to sway violently across the street. A few patisseries and cafes were still open. The last number of couples, absolutely sozzled, was leaving the seats of the respective booths inside, while other few enjoyed the catamarans on the pool beside the cattle grid. I looked across the pavement of the avenue, and realized that I was poor. “No”, I uttered through the lump in my throat. “Do you fancy a ride back Miss?”, he inquired, his head still held down. “No. Go back to your family. I am pathetic and I admit it. Does it serve nicely enough for you to have laughter? Tell me! Tell me right now! Why laugh when I have turned around? Why laugh when I am not seeing? Laugh it at my face! Laugh it out because with all the levity and the diatribe at my back, I say it out loud – I am worth all of it upfront!


Are you scared now that I speak?”, I managed to speak before my sobs transmuted to shrill cries. Yes I was petulant and berserk and mad, so as the people around the street saw me. It was blasé for people had always seen my outrage that way. No one could ever tell how devastated I was. And no one must dare to now. “Go back! Never cross my path again. NEVER! Do you hear me?!”, I shouted. I could tell without a doubt. He pulled his carriage back and faded into the distance with the thick mist that hovered throughout the air. I kept my eyes on him until he was out of sight, and the last of the street light shut off in tandem. I found myself kneeling down on the concrete of the road which was a little wet, and set free the pent-up emotions that I had nurtured with such care all that time. My heart was light and I found the beat inside, now that the toxicity was finally taking its departure with the drizzle that too fell lightly on my shoulders. Surely I couldn’t be vindicated for all my sins, but the rain strived to wash me clean. I took off my gloves and heels and started walking homewards.        

                  

                  

            

                                                                                           


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