The Sunset

She sunk her feet a little deeper into the sand as the waves rushed to embrace her. She was staring hard into the eyes of the setting sun, perhaps wishing it could be frozen in the dwindling light of the day.

“I’ve never liked sunsets, you know,” she turned around and said in a matter-of-fact way.

“I know. You fear the approaching darkness. It reminds you of that evening when you were playing hide-and-seek with your friends and they had left you locked in the dark barn.”

She squinted her eyes, the way she did when she wanted to suppress a smile. “You remember that story?”

“I’ve forgotten nothing…Princess,” I whispered, looking far into the horizon.

A long silence followed as we both drowned in our memories of days long gone.

I found it hard to believe that she was standing here, right beside me, so close that if I wanted, I could entwine my fingers around hers. How many nights had I spent in these last twenty odd years, looking up at the blank white ceiling of my deserted home, wishing she would walk in through the door and be mine forever? How many mornings had I lain on my bed, refusing to believe that she was in a faraway land, beyond my reach? I had craved this moment many times over. What I had never fathomed was what it would mean to her.

We gazed at the sun being lapped up by the still waves. When the sky turned matted yellow, she suddenly whirled around and mumbled, “Let’s go”.

Her voice was mellow, yet melodic; it always reminded me of my mum’s lullabies. Age had not snatched away the rose-pink blush of her face, only a few strands of grey played hide-and-seek with the lush black of her wavy curls. Did I not want to touch the smooth nape of her neck and breathe down her soul to tell her how I felt? What was stopping me, I wondered.

She had called me up in the evening yesterday. On hearing the muffled, quivering “Hello?”, twenty years of longing and desire and angst and love had welled up from within. A moment’s pause, after which I had replied in an exuberant voice, “I knew you would call, Princess.” I had known. Always.

She told me all. Anxious at first. Maybe she had been sobbing before. I hadn’t asked. I patiently listened on the other side. I had come home after work and was in the kitchen, cooking up a salad. She told me what she wanted. After she took a final gasp, I gave her a moment to swallow her fear, then gently ordered, “Pack your stuff; I’ll pick you up in an hour.”

It hadn’t taken me a map to locate her address. I had known all along; I had sat many evenings in the park opposite her house, reading a novel or simply taking a stroll. Twice I had seen her, standing in her balcony, petting her beloved dog.

As I was pulling the car out of her driveway, she kept staring out into her garden. She asked me to stop just before the house faded from our view and rushed out. Plucked one little yellow flower from a bush by the fence, put it in her bag, came back, looked straight into my eyes and said determinedly, “You can start the car.”

I drove downhill and then took a sharp curve, not looking at her once. We had not said anything till we had reached the driveway of my seaside villa. It was only then that she had said, gathering up a brave smile, “It’s a beautiful house. Since when have you been living here?”

Since when? Since the day you decided that our love was not precious enough for you to fight for. Since the day you decided that your marriage vows were so sacred that you would throttle the last breath out of our blossoming camaraderie and walk away unflinchingly. Since the day you kissed me goodbye. Your final goodbye.

“It’s been more than two decades”, I had said.

My house is sparsely decorated. There is a lot of empty space, with few essential furniture placed where it suited my convenience most. I wasn’t ashamed of my abode but I suppressed a chuckle when she gave a glaringly disapproving look on seeing the large bed in front of the fireplace in the library.

“I work late into the night and often fall asleep here…so I just thought it made sense…,” I had blurted incoherently. She had laughed for the first time since we met. A hearty laugh…the warm, heart-soothing, welcoming laugh that I had fallen deeply and madly in love with many many ages ago. She had walked up to the bed, and sat down, with her feet dangling first and then slowly but surely resting on the headboard.

“Make yourself comfortable”, I had said, unable to look at her for a second longer, “I’ll keep your bag upstairs.”

When I had come down about half an hour later, with a warm bowl of soup in my hand, she had been fast asleep. Like a doll. Like a snowy evening. Like a frozen lake. I had gone back to my bedroom and slept the deepest and most comforting sleep of my life.

As the first rays of the sun danced across her face, I had sat across her, trying to concentrate on the book in my hand. I had made coffee and breakfast and kept it on the mantle. What did all this mean? I recalled the telephone call. Her husband had been cheating on her for the last five years. She had known all along but hadn’t had the courage to confront him. She had tried to break free. But she had her children to think of. What would they think? Her children were adults now. Her son had found out about his father’s infidelity. He had told her to go and find her own happiness. He would always love her no matter what his mother chose to do. She had thought long and hard. She had battled suicidal urges, fenced off vengeful ideas. The only thing she hoped, the only desire she had left in her life, the only dream she dreamt, she said, was to meet me…once.

She lay there before me, her curves accentuated by the quilt. I had longed to touch her, then noticed the faint quiver in her eyes and had diverted all my attention to the book in hand. A little later, I had been acutely aware of her gaze but did not look up.

She had sat up on the bed, wrapped the quilt around her and had softly said, “Good morning. Thank you for the breakfast. The coffee…it’s just the way I like it.”

I had looked up. Putting all my restraint aside, I had walked up to her, and had pulled her down to the ground and said with much urgency, “Get up and get ready, you lazy lamb. Someone wants to say hi to you.”

Clad in a chiffon yellow dress, she had looked every bit the young woman I had been so crazily attracted to.  Yes, we were well past our fifties now. The years had not been kind to either of us but today was not the day to crib and mourn and whine and pine. Holding her hand, I had walked her out to the shore and felt the glee of a little child as she gaped wide-eyed at the azure expanse of beauty before her. I had bought this villa only because it was right on the beach and the windows opened out to lovely views of the sand and the palm fringed fields.

And now the day had ended, and we were walking back to my house. The most beautiful day of my life. Watching her shed the burden of the years behind and lightening up with hysteria every time the wave washed away her castle. At one point, she had walked a little farther, but I could still see what she was writing on the sand. She wrote her husband’s name and wiped a moist eye when the sea swallowed it up. She wrote the names of her children, her pet, her friends, her parents, and a few other names I didn’t recognise. One by one. They were all buried deep in the sea now. The woman who walked beside me now was alone. Alone as the stray pup looking for its home. Alone as the bright star shining down on ships. Alone as a rock in the desert. Alone as I had been, without her, all these days and months and years.

The house loomed up before us and before she stepped onto the porch, I called her.

“Princess?”

“Yeah?”

“Before you walk in through that door, there’s something I need to tell you.”

She looked unnerved. Stayed silent.

“I have spent the last 20 years thinking of what I could have done to make you mine. In the end, I realized that I could do nothing, nothing at all, because I couldn’t make you mine till you wanted to belong to me. And when this dawned on me, I made peace with myself and my days ahead, accepting that you had chosen a life without me for reasons best known to you. I refused to replace you with another woman. I craved companionship and comfort from time to time but I knew I would do injustice to whoever I brought home because I would only be looking for your shadow in their reflections. Yesterday, when you called me up, I was numb with desperation. But I knew I had to allow you time…and space. I have lived the last two decades preparing for this moment and now that you are here before me, I know not what to say. Princess,” I bend down on one knee and looked up at her, unable to hold back the tears streaming down my cheeks, “Will you be mine? Now and forever?”

She didn’t say anything. She heard me through and walked briskly into the house.

I was baffled. Had I gone too far? Too early? Had I scared her?

She was not there in the drawing-room when I entered. My heart was racing. I could not bear the thought of her going away…again. As I raced up to the bedroom, I stopped at the foot of the stairs, peered into the kitchen. She was there. The whiff of the brewing coffee made me nauseous. She turned around, nonchalantly, and said, with her lips curled, “You know we can’t have a bed in the library, right?”