19th December . Monday
Jim walked in on her lovingly handling her tresses. Such love as she had not, for ages, shown him. Such revolting vanity. He sighed and put his coat on the hook. The watch in its secure nestling nest in the frayed pocket. Made a damn great show of being tired out. Creaked the bed springs, wiped his brow, coughed like a dying man-child, stomach rumbled too – but that part was just nature. Or bad lunch.
Nothing.
And then, as he tossed and turned on the bedbug ridden mattress; a disinterested –
“You forgot the rent.”
Ah. The joys of married life.
20th December Tuesday
Delia ambled down the stairs, her kitchen-grime stained petticoat dragging on the stair edges, as her feet and strangled dreams dragged in the dust. Tired eyes dulled from the belle-of–the–ball brightness by haggling with the grouchy butcher, and the vendor’s leering glare. She was the neighbourhood balcony beauty and the wedlocked prize. No wonder she paid the price. And now that she was knightless, she really could not pull off the damsel act.
One dollar and eighty seven cents. That was all that scraped the bottom of the savings tin. That was all there was to count. Not much math needed there.
And Sunday was Christmas. Jingle bells, twinkle lights, and carved turkey for the good. Read rich. Thwarted desires, no dinner invitations, and coal socks for the lesser ones.
“ Jingle bells, jingle bells , jingle all the way
Oh what fun it is to ride on a one horse open sleigh!”
One horse indeed now it was. Each in a different harness. With blinders on.
One dollar and eighty seven cents. What a fortune to treat herself with. Not to forget treat the termite ridden bedsteads of her marriage. Holiday cheer for her better half. Interesting phrase that. Which deluded soul decided people could be halved?
Sigh. And as she descended, so did the waterfalls.
Passing the windowpane mirror, she noticed how tears restored some of that shine in her dimmed eyes. If that was not ironic, Lord knows what was, she mused with a wet, wry smile.
Meanwhile…..
On the other end of the city, where the cab drivers lingo began to change and the people shifted baseball allegiances, Jim stared out at the winter darkened sky, the cigarette dangling from his chapped lips. His doctor friend said he was deficient in some Vitamin. He thought he fell short in love. Dignity. Vitamins could wait, his soul was dying here.
One Dolllar and eighty seven cents. A crumpled bill and cold metal that encompassed all his holiday hopes and last ditch marital ones in its inanimate splendor.
So she lusted after those tortoise shell combs. Good to know she still had it in her. Quite contrary to her indifferent, unseeing eyes that greeted him each night. And stayed on like rust stains on linen, when he awoke each morn.
The sighs now fell from his breath with alarming regularity. It was a Sisyphus saga of longing. And reminiscence. For the lost days spent in sharing meager meals - when mundane hunger lost out to love’s satiety. Arabian myth nights spent breathing in each other’s scents as the city threw unseen light-shadow scapes on the peeling walls.
It was all falling apart. And somehow the frustration ridden, heated brain, wanted to lay all its’ bets on the money clutched in his grimy palm. His soon to be deathly cold heart followed in meek allegiance. Like a foolish gamble to empty a sinking ship’s crowd into one tiny lifeboat. Titanic dreams going bust. The only hope was for a hidden hatch. Or whirlpool. To lost paradise. One dollar and eighty seven cents wide. Not nearly enough.
21st December. Wednesday
Delia ran slender fingers through her rich locks. Her last fortress of pride, last anchor of self assured desirability. Jim, who had once with breathless poetry declared them her angelic crown, and crowned her his youthful fantasy; now looked away. Bored. Fantasy to phantom of fervent desire.
She glanced at the prized heirloom, the pocket watch that lay on the lonesome bed. A spurt of summer sun hot jealousy ran through her veins. Pathetic. Envy of inanimate objects. She was either losing her sanity or her husband. In all probability both. But when he touched it with a proud caress, she almost wished herself a ticking heart.
He came out fresh from a wash. Wednesdays they had running water. Not hot but still good for the aching, sooty body parts.
He went straight for it, as she knew he would. Into his pocket, next to his heart.
“I’ll eat with Tommy Perkins tonight. Maybe for the rest of the week. He got money off a racing horse. Fix yourself some decent dinner.”
As he shuffled out, arranging his moth eaten muffler-
“You know, you asked me to marry you three years ago, to the date.”
His stare. Unsure. Unsteady. Unreadable.
Hers. All of the above and more.
“Do you regret it?”
A drawn out breath. A half smile to take the edge of knife like harsh truths.
“Not everyday.” ‘ Too often now though’, he did not add.
But she still could read between his lines.
Her savings tin clattered to the floor. She looked out of the window at the culprit wind. On the street a poor Santa rang his begging bell.
22nd December. Thursday
A serpent coiled and uncoiled from the factory chimney. Releasing murky smoke poison into balmy evening air. Jim found it oddly fascinating. It reminded him of her coils of gold. Playful garland to noose like rope.
“I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.”
Him the lover to her Porphyria. Yet here his was the neck being bound. And pain there was. He clutched at the poetic straws of his inverted yet unoriginal thought.
He used to be all about words, poet in waiting. Till the typewriter cartridge and bills of trade absorbed all his ink.
And now he barely sang in the bath. Or wrote journals. Reduced to a mass of wasted words dying like embers in a self combusting pile of dead leaves gathered from yesterdays poetry.
Delia. The now elusive muse smiled at him from the clouds darkening the sky. Too far away to shoot . Or hate. Yet not near enough to touch his poetic lust, or his sooty heart.
He must recapture that castle. And bring down the walls. And the lost words would lie in the crumbled bricks and powdered cement dust.
The resolve gathered in the rain clouds as he walked till the shop window in rain slicked steps.
The combs glittered in the display like jewels of a guilty Raj, the Kohinoor crown of his possession desires.
The dipping sun swallowed his pride and hesitation, guiding light to his guerilla tactics as he turned the knob. Here goes nothing.
And then heard it. The call that turned his madly spinning out of control world right around on its unsteady axis.
Later.
Delia.
The barrenness of the once Eden-green garden ravished by civilization’s bulldozer seem to glare knowingly at her. As if it knew the sad tale of her barren fate. Her ravished dreams of cherubic laughter and baby powder smelling rooms.
That was the almost final nail in their conjugal coffin. The last but one straw.
Just as the wise men and the rest of the unwise world had crusaded and pilgrimaged for a baby savior, their prayers held out for an infant hope. Only theirs were to no avail. Nipped in the bud, strangled by the clenching of the doomed womb of maiden motherhood.
Walking up to the half toothed old man, she took one long hard look at the watch – chain on the counter, glimmering in the low evening sun. That was the price and the prize of Jim’s pride. The golden appendage to the heirloom of his masculine descent. The rope trail (she hoped) that he would finally follow home in the evening as he gazed at the jeweled dial. While he remembered the soft hands that put it shyly in his waiting grasp.
Lost in the mirage of a picture perfect ending, the solidifying of half-baked almost vaporized dreams , Delia walked straight into the stocky washerwoman.
Her calloused hands were caressing a downy baby head, as new as the dawn dew. Delia watched, as the laughter bubbled in those dimpled smile lit eyes. A plump hand extended like a handshake at a treaty. The enchanting creature gurgled and writhed in the woman’s grasp.
“Careful where yeh walk, me lass. You don’t want to go around knockin’ down li’ll babies now, do yeh?”- she said in her rough tongue, clutching on to the babe with surprising softness.
As if some omniscient prompter had given her the cue to launch into history of how a pudgy infant landed in her bewildered lap, she rambled-
“The poor babe’s mum caught the fever. Puny li’ll thing she was, tossed and turned in her bed for a week before finally givin’ up last night. Bless her soul. And the father! No good, slimy fellow, gambling away his life. So this poor babe’s all alone in the world now. I went to take down them bedclothes and drapes and saw them policemen came to take this little bugger away. Yeh know I couldn’t do anythin’ but take him in and run as fast as me old legs could carry!... But now methinks , it was a mistake yeh know. I am too poor, too old, and don’t have enough love in me tired heart to give the li’ll fellah. “
Delia watched and heard. Rapt and awed. The wheels turned and the faint outlines of a newly morphing dream formed before her eyes. Thudding heart and trembling hesitant hands in place she reached. And reached home.
As darkness crept up in finality on the heels of dusk, the street lamps lit up one by one. And in the alley, watched by a cynical old shopkeeper, a bemused washerwoman, and one barely formed gaze, a mother took birth, and then –click! It was light.
Previously…
Jim
Cry. Loud. Clear. Pure. Infant voice.
He heard it shatter through the late afternoon air, jarring his sleeping nerve endings with a shock that roused his primal paternal blood.
He followed it with his hollowed eyes and treading steps. Saw the mourner’s line as they dropped tears for the young mother’s departed soul. Spied the washerwoman’s surreptitious steps as she gathered up and quieted the wail of the bo , veiling him in her coarse linen.
Drawn by invisible chains, he kept the unlikely twosome in sight till they disappeared down the curb.
He knew that woman. He would find them soon. But first he had other things to find.
23rd December Friday
Jim and Delia. Delia and Jim.
Funny how two souls with hearts out of tandem, paced with synchronized footsteps in two different corners of one crumbling house. Their dilemma was one, intent was one, yet they each fretted and despaired over the deluded notion of the other’s dissent. Fear of the rejection of a tentatively precious dream. Much agony would be spared had the chasms of speech been bridged. But then again the wise were always foolish once. At least in the real world. And so they kept selfishly to themselves ,and paced and wrung sweaty palms. All day they avoided meeting eyes. Not too hard considering they had good practice now.
One dollar eighty seven cents, and two to be sold treasures worth of doubts.
As combs and watch chains sunk to the cobwebbed recesses of minds with nobler preoccupations, a fun loving cynic would see the irony of the situation.
Another evening of silence. Another dinner of thinly veiled desperation and discontent. Yet there were the niggling little nudges of tomorrows gambles. At the end of a day of half glances, and half- hearted beginnings of heart to hearts, they finally succumbed to tired eyes and minds.
“We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year, running over the same old ground,
What have you found? The same old fear
Wish you were here.”
24th December . Saturday
She had been gone since the break of dawn. So had he. Knight and warrior princess on their own grails. Of sacrifice and redemption. Lies and half truths, hidden and told, bought and sold.
Christmas Eve and yuletide spirit was here. The roads bustled with shining faces overflowing with ruddy cheer, and a smattering of the odd Scrooge here and there.
He elbowed through and reached the door; paused, breathed in and then jumped right in.
She sat in the shadows, by the window, hidden partially by wafting appetizing smoke from the mammoth feast downstairs.
Ahem. Cough. A pretentious start.
“Your fake cough is as bad as ever Jim. Try something else”
Blimey. She still could tell. Like before. Yet it wasn’t like then.
The sleeping angst ridden demon in him rose.
“So you can hear me. For a while there I thought I was speaking bat language. Or you had blocked ears.”
“It takes two, Jimmy boy. It always has. I was not the one who walked away from arguments. Or brooded away, disappearing in cigarette smoke. I was not the one slamming doors. Or acting like little Calvin from fourth grade who thinks girls have cooties. You refused to touch me ever since the baby di-”
“Don’t talk about it. Just don’t. And don’t pretend you didn’t pull away. Or lock yourself up like a princess in a tower. And that’s when you weren’t cribbing and nagging, and driving me up the wall. And that began before the baby. And after? Well , how the hell is a man supposed to melt a bloody Ice Queen?”
“I was bleeding Jim, not freezing , and you never said a word. Why Jim, why? Why couldn’t you just say what you mean for once?”
“Because you didn’t want to hear it!”
As the caroling outside drew closer, their voices rose, and reached the dusty ceiling.
A gust of wind blew, and a pane slammed, startling her into moving out into the light.
And he saw. The shorn shortness of it. Her blazing cheek and flaming eye framed not by the familiar Rapunzel braids, but short, pixie-ish curls that didn’t move.
“Y-your hair! What happened? What did you do? Did you do it just to spite me? Because you know how I loved it?”
“No! Though I do love the way you think my dear.”
Blank stare.
“I sold it for money.”
“Nice way to remind me I don’t earn enough. Very subtle touch.”
She laughed like the cynic she never had been.
“Honey. I wanted to buy you a chain for your watch, that’s why I even started contemplating cutting it. God knows why though. But now-“
The rest of her words were swallowed as she watched him sink to the ground.
Alarmed at his reaction after months of none, she crouched beside him.
“Jim? Its just hair. It’ll grow back. Don’t be like this please. Don’t!”
“No, no, Del.”
The nickname. It was bittersweet after so long.
“That’s not why. It because I – I- Isoldmywatch.” So fast she barely made it out.
Silence.
Then. “Why?”
“Those damned combs you wanted. Tortoiseshell’s the prettiest, huh?”
Leaning against the wall as the doorbell sounded next door-
“So why are you empty handed then?”
She looked back and held his stare for the first time in ages.
“Look behind the armchair Jim.”
And there it was. A crib. Blue and soft and with bells and stars.
No baby. Just crib.
He didn’t dare breathe. Or make meaning.
She spoke instead.
“You know the pale, pretty maid who live in the next block? The one I called beautiful and you kissed me and said I was much more?”
Nod.
“She died. Left a little baby boy behind. He’s perfect Jim. Blue eyes and dimples. Going to grow upto look like a God. I thought we could bring take him in Jim. Love him and never leave him and….and.. oh Jim! This could save us you know. We could have it all again.”
In the midst her rapturous rant, she was suddenly struck.
“I don’t see any tortoiseshell Jim.”
He pulled out a big brown package, messily wrapped. The paper fell away to reveal a modest child’s Santa’s haul. Shiny toys and a fluffy blanket. Her turn now to be befuddled.
“I saw her too. Martha the washerwoman, taking him away. Talked to her this morning.(I beat you to it). He’ll be ours, Del. Now we even have a crib for his head. She is going to bring him here tonight. Our Christmas gift. “
Tear tracks glistened and a forgotten embrace was re-invoked as they waited with bated breath for the midnight hour. The sound of the scared bell that would ring in the birth of the Saviour. And their long overdue resurrection.
At the stroke of midnight. Urgent footsteps were heard on the stairs as the church bells rang true.
25th December
Christmas
Even before the knocks could be heard properly, Delia rushed to fling open a welcoming door, Jim close behind.
Expectant eyes, about-to-break-out smile. Only to meet an out of breath worried gaze.
It wasn’t them. It was Martha’s gangly nephew Tim.
“Your aunt sent you boy?”
“No suh, she knows naught abou’ this. She ran away suh. S’ been heard she left bills to pay. The landlor’ was on her tail. Nasty fellah that. I was wonderin’ ..I saw yeh meet her this morn suh, she did’nt leave yeh nethin’ for me did she? She promised me a pretty penny if I helped her wash all week”
Delia was shrinking. Jim stood tall.
“No boy. She left us nothing.” He could not keep the venom out.
The boy recoiled a little. Just as he turned away, Delia stopped him, grabbing his puny wrist.
“What about the baby? Did she take him too?” Desperation.
“Baby? What yeh sayin’ mam? There aint no baby with – oh yeh mean the little bugger she handed over to the rich lady? “
Silence.
The boy chuckled to himself oblivious of dreamcastles and barely conceived futures crashing to the earth before him.
“ He’s a riot that fellah, grabbed the shiny rings right off Lady Marianne’s finger. She laughed at that. Gave me aunt a necklace too. She could have at least given me that, suh. Good work I did too…” He mumbled to himself and went down the stairs.
Jim could no longer bear her dead eyes. So he picked up his hat. Tucked in his muffler and preferred the cold comfort of the street to the cage that now consumed both again. He was about to check how late it was but then-
What did it even matter anymore?
“Go to sleep.”
And he all but ran out, slamming the door on his way.
She took one last long look at the crib and toys before she threw it all pell-mell out into the swirling snow and slushy street.
She sat before the mirror, and her hand went to her hair. Only this time her fingers had nothing to run through, but played with the tight curls, pulling at them with a slight, slight hint of desperation.
Epilogue
“The magi, as you know, were wise men – wonderfully wise men who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.”
Sadly this Babe was not that saviour. Destined for palaces, not mangers. And these two were just a pair of angry foolish children in a flat looking for a way out in the glory of treasures sacrificed for lost dreams. Of all who give and receive gifts, they were the most foolish. They are not the Magi, though they set out to be so, for they chose not to see the gifts they had, but sought more; and in the end gave it all away for what never was theirs to receive or to give.
