Songs From a Room

They sat on the same sofa. But far apart. He was listening to his Dylan on his headphones. She was perched up on the other end of the sofa, her feet tucked underneath her with a stole wrapped around her. She had Emily Dickinson opened but she was hardly reading it. She was lost in a world of her own. The rains made the only sound pattering away on the garden shed. It was a wet September afternoon.

They were married now for 12 years.

Far away in another city, he suddenly remembered her. He was rearranging his book shelf when he came across a collection of Emily Dickinson poems. He looked at the battered cover of the book and immediately his thoughts raced back to those glorious days he’d spent with her. Those days in college, when they were together. Madly in love. He stopped his book shelf work and stared into space for a while, holding the book in his hand. In a brief span of a few seconds flashes of memories from the past swept across his eyes, leaving them moist. He hadn’t thought of her in all those years and suddenly a book reminded him of her. He tried to continue cleaning his book shelf but was unable to do so. He took the book in his hand and sat down, leafing through it. The book was filled with little notes written by her in pencil. Some parts were underlined and comments were generously strewn all across the book in every possible blank space available. He sat there on the sofa reminiscing about those lost days.

It had been 12 years since college.

She got up from her sofa flinging the Emily Dickinson book on one side. He was lost in his Dylan and took a while to react. By the time he looked up, she’d gotten off the sofa and left the room. He could hear rustling sounds from their bedroom as if she was packing some clothes. He got up from the sofa to follow her in the bedroom.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing” he asked, bewildered, as he saw her place an opened suitcase on the bed and dump her dresses at random into it. There was a look of anger on her face which he’d never seen before. She didn’t answer him and kept on piling up the clothes in the suitcase instead. He came close to her and held her as she was hell bent on over-filling her suitcase. “Just leave me”, she said as she yanked his arm off her. “I am fed up. I am tired. I want to leave. I can’t carry on like this”, she said, her voice rising in pitch with every sentence. “I have tried and I have tried to make peace with you to try and make this work but I have failed” she said, now sobbing softly as she sat down on the bed leaving her pile of clothes the way they were. He kept staring at her face in disbelief. He knew they had very little to say to each other and were drifting apart in general but in truth he was unaware of the intensity of her resentment. He was used to their relationship status quo.

“Don’t say that”, he gently said as he sat down on the bed next to her. His hands were now stroking her shoulders softly. He felt her body stiffen at his touch. She didn’t turn around. He bent down and kissed her on the back of her neck softly, breathing in and out with her, as his mouth remained on her shoulder. He could feel her body relax after some time. She turned around and looked at him finally. “You don’t realise how much I love you do you”, she said, as she held his face in her hands. Her eyes were filled to the brim and her lips were quivering as she spoke. “You ignore me and take me for granted, never ever caring for my feelings”, she continued to rant as she held his face tightly within her palms. He felt her grip getting stronger. He kept listening to her all this time. He didn’t interrupt her. He wanted it all to come out of her. And it did. Finally when she went silent he put his palms on her face in an identical manner and kissed her softly. After a few kisses she kissed him back. They made love after a long time that afternoon.

It must have been 2 years since they last made love.

She kept looking at him sleep peacefully on their bed. She felt a lot lighter and calmer. All her anger her frustrations and her bitterness seemed to have been washed off. The rains outside had lessened considerably. She drew the curtains so that the rays of the evening sun didn’t disturb his slumber. She got up from the bed and began to keep her suitcase back in its place. All the clothes were back again in her wardrobe. She sat down with a cup of black coffee by the window. She picked up the Emily Dickinson book and ran through the pages. They were fresh and hardly had anything written on them. Excepting the little note he wrote to her as he had gifted the book to her on their first anniversary. She looked at the book, then looked towards the vacant ceiling and smiled wistfully.

Far away in the other city…

…he went back to rearranging his book shelf. He went about the cleaning in a more focused way after resuming from his self-induced break. He found more books that reminded him of her. But he didn’t stop to think too much. Just went about his job for the weekend in a dedicated focused manner. “She’s happy. So they say. As long as she’s happy that’s all that matters”, his mind was carrying on a conversation with himself. He finished arranging his bookshelf and was proud of what he’d done. The small studio apartment looked much neater now. He sat down with his phone to check his mail as he put on a Leonard Cohen record.

That same evening in the other city, Leonard Cohen’s Bird on the Wire played on constant mode.

And life went on…

Copyright (c) Pratik Majumdar