The Letter Beneath Your Desk

You possess much power and govern a fair piece of land but peace, you have none. 

The years waning, you have been braving the morning sun everyday alone and are survived by your only child. For twenty-one years you thought you raised her just fine until she came unto her own. Pretty and fair with eyes as blue as the Pleiades, she was a proud and imperious girl. The word of her beauty traveled across lands and there were many noble suitors for her hand. She rejected each proposal with so much scorn that by the time she was done with her affairs she incited hate and ill from all her lovers. You knew for sure that she garnered many enemies, for you and her both. 

An old man now, much incensed from this behaviour you reprove your daughter often. You silently weep every evening and with a tear or two, you open the decanter and pour the whiskey into the heavy crystal glass. The ash brown aroma fills the room. Seldom come the days when you are able to find comfort and solace in the heavy wooden smoke. Aged and vintage, this particular whiskey had few takers now and had seen its share of days in the sun. This had much in common with yourself, you thought to yourself, giving a pursed smile. You pour an equal quantity in the second of the pair of crystal glasses, carefully measured, as had been the norm for the last forty years and more carefully placed the cigar cutter just two millimetres below the head of the Cuban with disdain owing to a lifetime of non deliberate practice and fortune to go with it. The wooden chair creaked whilst you leaned back and looked out of the window overlooking the lemon tree against the backdrop of the green hills with a couple of dimly lit and sometimes flickering street lights dotting the curvy road leading down to the noisy sounds of civilization. 

How did the lemon tree come about to become so big and scattered, much like Ruth? Did nobody look after it? She must’ve, you thought. Forty years ago, you drove her in the Buick up the curvy road to this cottage. You had struck gold with your bestseller, the only one actually, earning enough money to last your lifetime and hers, twice over. The cottage was dreamy, big enough to fit in her heart and cosy enough to give you, her and Ruth the warmth needed in the cold serene of the hills. The lemon tree was young and small back then, like Ruth. She even gave it a name which your memory failed to recall now but you put that on your flailing health. Inside the cottage, the vintage and the Cuban at the wooden round table was the norm and so was the arm chair overlooking Mr. Lemoney, or Mellony or some such name she gave it, you recalled. Every evening, after putting Ruth to bed, she brushed her long blonde hair and touched up her moonlit skin with a hint of rouge before settling down for the evening vintage with you at the wooden table beside the window. You and her never ran out of conversations, especially since you paid a small fortune to get her the replica of the telescope sourced from the Museo Galileo. Burying her crimson cheeks and winking into the telescope her face emitted the colours of the night sky, angry almost at not having spotted the Arundhati Vashishta yet again, the twin stars with both revolving in synchrony unlike others binary star systems in which one is stationary and other that revolved around it. To others, she sometimes described her marriage to be like the Arundhati Vashishta, caring little of the ability of others to keep up with her, while talking arts and the literature. She would rather turn her haughty lip and scorn dealing with others when she had to, something you wished wasn’t passed onto Ruth.

Ruth was seven then, getting life lessons from her mother and was turning equally feisty.

"Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Her mother would often recite these lines to her.

One cold morning, her closed eyes, in which you could see the magic of the constellations, never blinked open. Your last memory with her was the mead you two had shared the evening before, not knowing, it was to be her last drink. You shook her, distraught and numb. Everything seemed bleak and downhill from that moment on, for you had a pact. A pact that confirmed that you would depart first and she stays with Ruth.

Insensitive to Ruth watching, you remember pacing the room with unquiet steps, for the thought of your twin star system falling apart was too painful for you to bear. At length, Ruth too, threw herself into her seat and sat with her face drooped into her hands.

For many days after her mother was summoned to the Heavens, Ruth showed much severity towards you and with time, her harsh abominations towards you became frequent. Years passed and Ruth now twenty one, a girl of ripe judgement, grew to be resentful towards you and indifferent towards anyone else. It was as if the cold of the hills that night had penetrated the cottage through the window, passing the wooden table and the arm chair, through the vintage straight to her soul and yours. Ambition was her ruling passion now and she longed to move out of the cottage to the city. It was as if a deep melancholy consumed both Ruth and you, each shedding tears many years in secret.

Over the years, the tears just tasted bitter.

You could not bear it all within you. After all, Ruth should not have grown distant, after her. You should have made amends after her. But what was to be amended? What is it that troubled her? One evening, you storm into Ruth’s room sans the niceties. You see her perhaps weeping, holding a frayed yellow paper which looked like an old letter. Taken aback, bewildered, you muster up the confidence the vintage gave and in a hoarse voice say to her, "I am old and feeble now, a few years and I must depart too. What troubles you my daughter? What makes you so sullen and bitter?" She holds up the paper, in anger, and hands it over to you.

At once you recognize the handwriting, the beautifully looped vowels in the words written in the letter. You try hard to make sense of it all, leaning back, almost falling. That day Ruth helps you find stable ground. Your little daughter, who she used to tuck away to bed every evening more than a decade ago, became your rock.

The brow of Ruth grew black and she asked almost as if she knew the answer already, “You knew she was ailing? I found her letter beneath your desk the next morning.”

During that moment, the most agonizing pain tortured you in all your limbs and the anguish was intense enough to destroy your existence. Feeling emancipated, you move like a specter to the bed to find something to lean on. Ruth was still there.

You knit your brows, look straight into Ruth’s eyes and say to her in rumbling words, “I did not, never did, my daughter.”

Ruth is now studying in the city but you are not alone. Holding the cigar between your frail fingers, as you pour the vintage in her heavy crystal glass, the lemon tree recites to you,

"Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light."