Broken Hug

House

He took the single couch opposite her, from where he too could see the guava tree. She fidgeted with the notebook and the Paris Review in her hand.

“Keep them on the table,” and he smiled.

“I have completed the given assignment.” Her voice was above a whisper.

Her eyes slowly raised themselves and rested on his. Her lips were parted; and with “sugar breath” as Bassanio had commented when his eyes fell on Portia’s portrait in the gold casket.

When Rohan stretched out his hand towards the notebook, she picked it up and handed it to him. He read the lines, and gave her the inputs. When he turned the notebook with the written side facing her and pointed at some lines and she strained her neck, he went to her side and, taking the place next to her, rested the notebook on his lap. She could now easily see the lines he was pointing at. 

“He is very honourable,” he read but her presence next to him quivered his heart. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, inhaling the light perfume she was wearing. He could single her out from any crowd with ease, thanks to the perfume. It exuded most from her throat and neck. “To better the language,” he forced the words out at last, “you may write, His honour demands respect from the gods.”

He looked at her. She nodded. She pointed her finger at one line in the notebook. Then their hands touched, the female forefinger touching the male forefinger. Neither of them took the moment to remove his or her hand away. Remaining in that position, he further read and then gently held her hand and kept it on the top of the page. He came to the end of her writing.

He tried hard to control his breathing. “I’m sure you didn’t get the time to email the writing, what with the distance between the school and your house.”

She shifted her hand to the table. “Yes. Writing in long hand and then in the computer took time. “But,” a surprise tone appeared in her voice, “I have already sent an e-mail about my coming.”

“Oh is it?” he asked with a surprised catch in his tone. Yet, coupled with it he was neither happy nor unhappy. “Let’s check the mail,” and he rose. “Come,” and he gestured to her towards the wooden stairs.

“But, Sir, your cell phone. You can check it there.”

“Oh oh,” and he laughed lightly. “No. There’s some issue with this cell. It doesn’t connect to the internet.”

The stairs from the end of the living room was narrow, and so he stepped aside, allowing her to proceed first.

“Come,” he finally said. “The study is to the left of the flight of stairs. Let us read your mail.”

While he switched the computer on he glanced at her. She moved about in the small empty floor before stopping at the right wall, fixing her eyes to the painting of a street with  along avenue of three-storey houses on either side. The street was almost choked with concrete buildings. He found a soft brown mark on the back of her hand, like a moon showing half its size on the fourteenth day of its travel across the sky. He raised his palm and looked at the back of his hand; at the soft brown mark, a similar half-moon kind there.

“Which part of the city is this, Sir,” she asked.

“North,” he said and stood next to her watching the painting. Was I watching the condition of my heart and making an honest endeavour to listen to its silent syllables?

The back of their hands, his right and her left touched, but they kept it that way, without any stir though he knew he had become conscious and could make out from a surprise in her eyes, that she too was surprised. The half moon birthmark on their hands touched each other and became one round moon; and when that happened, a light shudder, like a slight drizzle that passes over the city, passed through Charoen; and a similar shudder went through Rohan. The shudder remained for some seconds before their bodies became quiet and their hands remained joined by the touch. Then Rohan pointed at the painting with his left hand and explained why the sun was lying on the street, and why its colour was dull wood.

“Did the painter want to give his viewers the message that the world is coming to an end,” she asked. “And that we must take care of it?”

 “Yes,Charoen,” he said unmindfully, perhaps from a command from Emotion.

Immediately he placed his four fingers on her palm, lightly holding them, with the thumb.

She made no effort to remove her hand from his. They both looked at the painting, they did not talk, as if their held hands were switched-on cell phones and here they were conversing in the language of telepathy, exchanging views on a painting of a narrow street with concrete buildings huddled together, and the sun lying on the street, and why it has the colour opaque brown.

With his hand on hers still held loosely, he walked to the chair in front of the computer. Pulling the bean bag next to the chair and sitting on it, he opened the mail. There it was: Dear Teacher, I’m not writing the piece here and mailing it to you, but I’m coming to your house with it. Charoen- Thip.

He asked if she would use the net, but she shook her head and said no. So he logged out and clicked on a file called Lyrics, then immediately closed it and clicked open Poems. 

Silent Footfalls came up on the screen, and she read it.

“It’s good,” she said at last. “Though I don’t understand the nuances.”

When he read it out, his husky voice captivated the room; it paused at the right places; stressed the words and phrases at the rightful areas.

Allowing ample seconds to pass, he continued with the next line and the stanza. And when he stopped, when he came to the end of the poem, she turned her face from the screen. Her eyes rested on his face.

She searched for something there; scanning the space below his eyes; around the cheek bones; the jaw bones. Her eyes squinted to an extent, her forehead contracted before three parallel lines appeared on it, deep lines of thought, like a historical excavator having suddenly come across a deep unknown treasure, who now pondered about its history, and its value. Around his mouth she looked for that emotion. But his face was far above her scrutiny. And then it became visible. His emotion almost caught her by her throat. When she looked into his eyes, she found the hurt had spread from the epicentre of the deep brownness of his eyes. Within the soft slow rhythmic throb, like a slow heartbeat of hurt, lay the answer to her quest. She emanated a soft but clear cry, like a whimper, before stopping mid-way. Her eyes enlarged in surprise.

“How do such words come?” she whispered. “How does one paint one’s imagination with such mesmerizing lines?”

He looked into her eyes, at her mouth, the lips parted, teeth showing.

“They come with hurt,” he said, in a speaking-to-himself voice. “They come with pain.” he paused. “They come from the well of hurt. And they come from the lake of pain.” And his voice trailed to one thousand six hundred and eleven kilometers distance to a place in South-East Asia. And it is called, (dear readers for your kindest information), Bangkok.

Her emotion overrode her, and before the pause could stretch and fade, she bent sideways and put her arm around his, her soft chin on his shoulder. Her eyes closed; his face in her mind mirror; she trapped into the power of his voice; the pauses; the words lazily rising up and down in their husky and drawling rhythmic movement, creating sound waves and the lady called Charoen-Thip taking a quiet holiday ride. His reading voice continued falling like soft rain on the surface of her senses and seeping inside.

At last when she unclasped herself, her voice was a whisper. “What haunting lines,” and she scanned his face for something.

He was still trapped in her embrace. The pheromone from her body had numbed his senses. Her hair fell straight and covering her ears and part of her face unleashed a warm feeling in him. A lonely feeling. Mono-passion. Blood rushed to his face. I want to lie in your arms.

“You like it?” he asked her instead in the same-soft-almost-whisper tone.

“Yes.” Struck by instinct she whispered back, nodding her head, her hair, black loose silk, concealing her face.

“Then it’s yours.”

Lines of confusion appeared on her forehead. “I… I… don’t understand.”

“It’s yours, Charoen.” Finding her still confused, he clarified, “The poem is yours.”

He touched her face, his palm on the softness of her cheek for a while.