Orange Alert

“They had put out a storm warning,” she said looking at him as the darkness thickened outside.

Her tone was viscous. It had a languor that clouded his resolve in a layer of weakness as tactile as sin. He held the rosary in the pocket of his habit, with the Cross cradled on his index, the thumb caressing the profile of the crucified form. He could feel his sweat. The rain descended in a scatter of drops on the roof tiles and picked up the rumble of the monsoons over the backwaters, spiked with the breaking of thunder. The lights went off.

She cupped the flame from the matchstick until it sprung on to the candle wick, throwing her image, magnified, on the wall.

He looked away from her towards the silver claws that cracked open the twilight sky, beyond the large bay window. The startling white of his speedboat, Ave Maria, bobbing in anchor at the wooden jetty, flashed intermittently with the blazes that lit up the surroundings of the villa. The wind howled as if trapped in the Chinese fishnets, lining the backwaters of Cochin.

“You will have to stay back.” He realised that her gaze hadn’t left him as she said that.

Unknowingly, he searched for the case of peppermints inside his long pocket, but quickly withdrew his fingers and clutched the rosary again.

He cursed himself for the straying thoughts. The Cross on the bow of the Parish boat flickered alive in a flash and the evangelic zeal with which he had set sail in the storm flooded back to him.

“Shall we pray?” He lifted his right palm with the rosary wrapped around it and made a crucifix in the air.

“I can’t imagine how that firebrand activist in College has given himself up to proselytism.” She came towards him and stood beside with folded hands.

He knew this was going to be tough. The Krishna idol in the corner of the room smiled at him, with the flute casually poised over the lips. The pastoral parallel of this symbol was not lost on him.

“The Lord is my shepherd

I shall not want...”

His voice rose above the storm.

Her thoughts went back to their College Auditorium, where she had first met him.

‘Was it Rilke he had quoted in that campaign for Student Council elections?’ She wondered.

“Fling the emptiness off your arms, to widen the spaces we breathe!” He had the crowd with him all along that speech.

And then, she remembered, that evening at the local watch repair shop where she had seen him again. He was waiting for his broken wristwatch to be mended.

She had walked up to him and asked, “Did you fling your watch off your arms now?”

His laughter had rung loud making the watchmaker look up with a scowl, his loupe on one eye.

“Freshen the spaces we breathe!” He declared in mock grandeur, fishing out a plastic case and handing her a peppermint from it. This, she later realised, was his favourite ritual with her.

The coffee shop used to be their favourite hangout, where he would be joined by his friends from beyond the college circle. Works of Nietzsche, Kafka, and Sartre had kept them engrossed in long discussions over cups of coffee. They used to call out for the menu card, only as a calibrated punctuation to extend their eviction from those tables.

There was no contact between them after college. She had moved to the US for her MS. After settling down, she had checked on him. His number had gone silent. Common friends were also not very sure of his whereabouts.

It was totally uncharacteristic of him, she had wondered.

“He has left town for higher studies.” A friend explained. “No contact numbers left behind.”

The new University environment in a foreign land had totally consumed her. Her ailing mother was the only tendril that clung to her from home. Studies, work and new friends took her away from the thoughts of him for the last five years, until last week in town.

Her mother’s death had brought her back. After the funeral, she was settling all the formalities, the upkeep of the empty villa, and other trivia. She was feeling totally isolated. Most of her time, she spent at the local library.  

He had surprised her, appearing among the rows of bookshelves, in the aisle for books on philosophy. Even without the overgrown beard, he looked strange in his clergy habit. Later, in the coffee shop, they had spoken about the interval years. She had talked about her relationship and separation from her American colleague. He had described his sudden disappearance and the days at the seminary. It was a convenient vehicle for his higher studies; poverty at home becoming the driving force over ideology.

They had hugged each other as they left, promising to meet up before she went back to the States.

“...Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” His voice brought her back to the present. He took her mother’s name and prayed for her soul. She felt a strange peace.

They stood there for a while, unmoving, bonded in prayer. He still held that magnetism over people, she thought.

The storm had died down, shrouding the villa in silence. A loud banging on the door shook them awake from the trance.

The banging continued.

Seeing the fear in her eyes, he signaled her to open the door.

“Who is there?” She went up to the closed door with the candle.

The banging resumed.

She unbolted the door. Four men with identical headbands brushed her aside and rushed into the room. They caught him and pushed him to the door.

“We knew you were here when we saw your boat,” one of them shouted.

“Who gave you the right to preach in these parts?” growled another, as blows fell on him from all sides.

“Leave him alone!” she shouted. “He is my guest!”

Her screams were in vain as they dragged him out, into the darkness.

#

The silver flashes had died down.

Only the amber flames that licked and swallowed the white boat crackled and lit up the stillness.

THE END