The Painter
It was a wonderful night in Maveli. The sea was beautiful and the shore was sparkling with the mystic hue of enlightened horizon embedded with new moon. When he took his fifth peg I looked at him alarmingly but checked myself from interfering as I knew, in vino veritas. His eyes were of forlorn island harboring some secret of his own. I waited for him to speak out that secret - now or never.
Seven days had passed since I came here. Once in every year I planned a visit to avoid the boredom of life or in search of new story and I was waiting for that story. Every day I used to strolled in the beach and enjoyed my drink till night moon touched my forehead and the beach became lonely except that one man sketching silently in his own mind in the light of the hanging lantern in the post beside the easel circled with a nimbus aura. Sometimes it clashed with the flirting breeze risen from the northern sea, flickering its lustrous flame with a lopsided grin. And I waited on a stone hinge, dropping my shoulders and directing my gaze toward the devouring, mystic sea, humming the seductive note against the glittering warm sand breast. When he finished he took the canvas; stared at it for a long time and then drifted it away in black water. Like a kid to a mother it fondled on the sea breast, with the ever changing motion of waves till it subsided into the depth of its womb.
I witnessed this for seven days and then I moved to Lougburn to attend my cousin’s wedding. I returned after 10 days as my cousin’s left arm broke tumbling over the flower decked stairs with all his absentmindedness or over alert mind exuberant in the proposition of new nuptial life and I had to proof myself as his most related blood and well wisher in the dense population of Legbourne. But at my heart I eagerly waited to come back, and always feared if my story skipped away leaving only an uncanny hue for my curiosity.
Seven days had passed since I came here. Once in every year I planned a visit to avoid the boredom of life or in search of new story and I was waiting for that story. Every day I used to strolled in the beach and enjoyed my drink till night moon touched my forehead and the beach became lonely except that one man sketching silently in his own mind in the light of the hanging lantern in the post beside the easel circled with a nimbus aura. Sometimes it clashed with the flirting breeze risen from the northern sea, flickering its lustrous flame with a lopsided grin. And I waited on a stone hinge, dropping my shoulders and directing my gaze toward the devouring, mystic sea, humming the seductive note against the glittering warm sand breast. When he finished he took the canvas; stared at it for a long time and then drifted it away in black water. Like a kid to a mother it fondled on the sea breast, with the ever changing motion of waves till it subsided into the depth of its womb.
I witnessed this for seven days and then I moved to Lougburn to attend my cousin’s wedding. I returned after 10 days as my cousin’s left arm broke tumbling over the flower decked stairs with all his absentmindedness or over alert mind exuberant in the proposition of new nuptial life and I had to proof myself as his most related blood and well wisher in the dense population of Legbourne. But at my heart I eagerly waited to come back, and always feared if my story skipped away leaving only an uncanny hue for my curiosity.
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When I returned Maveli I cursed the sun to be too slow to devour the western horizon. When I reached the beach he was already there, sitting and looking at the distant sea as if calculating the periphery of the untouched shore ever waiting to meet the horizon. The beach was warm and there was a little crowd. Astonishingly I found his blank canvas wrapped in dusky white sky projecting a figurine of a beautiful lady with chestnut hair and lavish doe eyes even gleaming in husky dark and the arranged color box and brush. Gathering some courage I sat beside him. He spotted me from the corner of his eye and offered me a peg. I humbly took it.
He spoke first.
“You were there for me when the beach was empty. Who are you?”
“A traveler.”
He laughed most amusingly.
“It’s a beautiful place and everyone travels here. But no one keeps vigilance on me.”
I felt shy but I did not feel the need to say anything.
“She was beautiful, than my painting.”
“She must be.” I murmured.
“I fell in love with her when she bought my one of the favorite paintings from the exhibition of Maveli Gallery of Autumn Landscape. Love seldom reciprocated. But she reciprocated. We both were exuberant and happy. We talked a lot we shared a lot; we wrote a lot with conjugal harmony fulfilling every passion that we created, harbored and throbbed with. I felt she loved me more than I loved.
Then life changed, life became a puzzle and I got busy to solve it. She waited patiently, then complained then got angry and fretted. But those emotions were nothing to do for me. I bothered for more a broader perspective of life than a mere love affair.
She became frenzied. Sometimes she kept herself cool, and then she broke out like a volcano, accusing me, insulting me, and bursting out her contempt. I just smile and kept my phone switched off, sometimes blocked her numbers. She kept changing the numbers and I kept on blocking them.
This continued. She tried to meet me in my studio. I lied and told my assistant to inform my absence though from the shutter of upper storeyed window I stealthily looked at her angst deprived face harrowing up and down the road and flickering desperate tired gaze at the road as she prayed I would come back soon and meet her daggered heart. The sight of her lone frail face was pitiful but I had no choice. I was busy with something sublime more than love; my creation, my fame. Her love appeared suffocating to me. An artist is free man you know. She went back when her exhausted feet could no longer hold her. She threatened me, “you will be destroyed when ill be no more, you will cry when I will stop to cry.” I just smiled and said, “Ok” to all her frustration. I always smiled when she accused me, pleaded me, and begged me to love her. Day after day she reminded me our conjugal happiness, quoted Browning, my favorite. But I was like a stone, unperturbed rigid, I was destined for a greater reality than love. Nothing can change me except Death- the sea, the death.
I felt she was dying; she was collapsing in front of my conscience. But I could not help to be but cold and vague and perhaps cruel, extremely cruel. She pleaded for a call, pleaded for a bit of solace. She texted me thousand times of which I answered none.
Gradually she waned from the full moon to a demilune. A crust of my attention could keep her alive but I did not care.
I just let her to die.”
He paused. The sand was cold beneath us and the ocean mournful. He was looking ahead of the sea. His face was that of a distant, alien island not yet ventured by any explorer. Hs eyes were perturbed with a deep agony.
I waited for him to continue. He took a good swig and then continued.
“There she dies, one day, in front of me. I just smiled as I always did when she cried frenzily clinging my heart and washing it with her warm tears. She wanted to meet me. I was too busy. I could not arrange it anyhow. Then everything stopped suddenly, as if silence conquered after a ravage storm. It made me surprise and curious and a little bit worried. There was no call, no message, and no means of desperate pleading. Then one day she called me and requested just to meet her here. This adjoining beach was quite distant from the original beach and less crowded. After dusk it got totally alone, like me.
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It was a moonlit night. Sea waves clashed violently and the ocean was brimming to its full. I kept her waiting for a long time. When I came she was there, silent, solemn and beautiful. She looked at my smiling face, a deep profound look. Then we kissed passionately. Her lips were cold and tasteless; her slender waist was only a frame of bone. I felt the love, the pain. She handed me a box wrapped in purple velvet. When I looked at her questioningly, she said, “A gift for all the coming years, open it when I will be not with you.” Then she smiled and kissed my forehead, like a mother kissing her dead son before the cremation and turned towards the sea.
Suddenly I felt heaviness at my chest as I looked at her silhouette touching the whitish rumbling foam. I could not see her face but there must have been something which my delicate brushstrokes could not be able to capture. I wished to turn that face towards me and to say, “Love you.’’ but I was afraid that my tongue could betray and even it could she would not believe it anymore. So I said nothing. Then she turned to me smiling the most languid but beautiful smile. I laughed at her though my heart was wrenching. Within a second a gush of wind broke into the scenario captivating the luminous moon in its hostile enmity. Thunder creviced the sky in multitudinous tapestry of black camouflage. A tangy fishy smell from the forlorn fish boats punched my nose and there was only the dense darkness dancing with the deep sea and nothing. Nothing. For the first time fear engulfs me, the fear to lose her, to lose the love I never retributed. I cried at the top of my quivering voice,
“Maria”.
There was no stress of her. I ran and ran searching for her through the shore, I ransacked every boat, bush and sand dunes but she just vanished into that sky, into that sea. After one hour when the thunder stopped and rain water started dribbling through my sweaty cheek I squatted on my feet and collapsed on the wet shore. I wished to cry, to scream, to kill myself. But I remembered the box on the sloppy stone and scrabbled for it. When I retrieved it, the sky was soothed and the moon was free. I remained seated there for long long hours looking at the sea with a tottering hope until the dawn broke with a roseate hue and before facing the world I crawled back to my studio cum home with the packet in my hand, weird and feverish. The next few days I eagerly waited for the cops to pick me up. Any knock at my door made me flinch out of my chair. But there was none. I did not get out of the room and read no news paper. I just hanged a notice outside of my studio- “closed’’.
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I confined myself within the four walls.”
“What was of the gift?’’ I could no longer hold my curiosity.
“Yeah the gift. He paused for some time as if he was visualizing the unwrapping of the last reminiscent of her.
“It was a letter, a very brief letter. I can remember every word of it, as I read it zillion times.”
“ Mon Amie
There was a day when I can fight my pain myself. I was so powerful. My strength, my pain everything was of mine. Then you came and took me away with you, taught me to fly with you. My life became a joyous journey with superfluity of dreams. But everything changed so suddenly that I left drifted. My strength eloped with my love, my dependence, my blind vocation. I fell in pit of blind wonder; my whole world was smeared with faithlessness, betrayal, selfishness. I could not reinstate, could not accept what you had done. I tried my hard but could not fight it. I believed you more than myself. You stained my God and it was hard for me to tolerate any more. So, adieu.
Maria”
After seven days I came out and stepped in the sea shore as it was calling me in the name of Maria. From that day I portrayed her with recurrent whims as if just to gush out the face from my memory, the framed profile, a girl in purple gown and white top smiling the most exotic smile turning her sad eyes glittering under the luminous sky before death. Every night I sketched that face and drifted it where I found it last before I could hang my eyelids for peaceful sleep till the next day. It kept hunting me. There was no escape.”
His voice broke in utter desolation.
We both remained silent for the next hours till I bade him goodbye. He also rose on his feet quite clumsily due to the over intoxication of wine or of memory I could not assume. I helped him to wrap his things and asked if I should accompany him to reach the studio. He waved his hand to signify the denial of a lonely fighter. I gazed as he trod the way like Sisyphus knowing well that he had to come again.
I confined myself within the four walls.”
“What was of the gift?’’ I could no longer hold my curiosity.
“Yeah the gift. He paused for some time as if he was visualizing the unwrapping of the last reminiscent of her.
“It was a letter, a very brief letter. I can remember every word of it, as I read it zillion times.”
“ Mon Amie
There was a day when I can fight my pain myself. I was so powerful. My strength, my pain everything was of mine. Then you came and took me away with you, taught me to fly with you. My life became a joyous journey with superfluity of dreams. But everything changed so suddenly that I left drifted. My strength eloped with my love, my dependence, my blind vocation. I fell in pit of blind wonder; my whole world was smeared with faithlessness, betrayal, selfishness. I could not reinstate, could not accept what you had done. I tried my hard but could not fight it. I believed you more than myself. You stained my God and it was hard for me to tolerate any more. So, adieu.
Maria”
After seven days I came out and stepped in the sea shore as it was calling me in the name of Maria. From that day I portrayed her with recurrent whims as if just to gush out the face from my memory, the framed profile, a girl in purple gown and white top smiling the most exotic smile turning her sad eyes glittering under the luminous sky before death. Every night I sketched that face and drifted it where I found it last before I could hang my eyelids for peaceful sleep till the next day. It kept hunting me. There was no escape.”
His voice broke in utter desolation.
We both remained silent for the next hours till I bade him goodbye. He also rose on his feet quite clumsily due to the over intoxication of wine or of memory I could not assume. I helped him to wrap his things and asked if I should accompany him to reach the studio. He waved his hand to signify the denial of a lonely fighter. I gazed as he trod the way like Sisyphus knowing well that he had to come again.
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