Colours in the dark

It was dark when I stepped onto the roof. Everyone had retired to the comfort of their beds. It was the first night of the holidays and the sleepover had resulted in an evening of merry-making and talk. Their untroubled hearts were euphoric thus. I heard a sound in the darkness and realised I wasn’t the only one in search of some midnight solitude. For some reason the instinctive apology for having intruded upon someone, never left my lips. The other person was crouched at the furthest corner of the roof and speaking to someone over the phone, if you could call it speaking that is. She shook all over and was crying her eyes out while muttering something which was hardly discernible. I would’ve slipped away from the scene- probably an altercation between lovers over some petty issue- but I couldn’t. The girl in question was someone I had come to know by a purely coincidental set of events a few months back. But in that short period of time, she had become somewhat special to me. It hadn’t been immediate but gradually she turned out to be someone I admired, cared for, fought with and sought support from with equal ardour. In short she had become an integral part of my life. She was the patient listener, the opinionated conversationalist and the comforting friend. However, she was always very private. She would laugh at something funny and be saddened by something grave. But whenever the conversation drifted towards her private life, she curled up into an impenetrable shell.

          Her voice was drenched in pain and heart-wrenching to listen to.  I could not leave her there! She would not need my pity or my help but still I wanted to be there, because of a childish desire to be near her. The sound of her crying in the dark- the sadistic beauty and novelty of it seemed to have brought to life something in my heart which had been growing inconspicuously yet deliberately for months. Feelings which I had buried deep down since I noticed their first gentle tremors. Feelings which were mine alone and had no place in the rational world I lived in. I sat down, not near enough to make out what she said but enough to hear her silent crying. It occurred to me that the person on the phone might be her partner. He lived somewhere far off and was someone I knew very little about. I wondered why I hadn’t asked her more about him in all the time I had known her. The only significant thing I could remember about him was his name. It was as if my mind had managed to subconsciously filter out his very existence every time I had interacted with her. As perceptive as she always was about people’s feelings, especially mine: maybe she had allowed this.

          I saw her silhouette leave the phone and bury its head in its hands. It was a strange moment. It tore my heart to see her like that yet my masochism prevented me from leaving. In fact there was no place in the world I’d rather be. It was one of the rare moments in one’s life when he is precisely where he wants to be. I walked cautiously to where she was sitting. I didn’t wish to startle her- but something told me she knew I was there from the moment I had stepped onto the roof. I gently sat down beside her, a few inches away. Her face was still buried in her hands. I leant towards her and gently touched my shoulder against hers. She was not startled as she slowly lifted her tear-strewn face. There was tenderness in her eyes the likes of which I never knew existed. But her voice was calm as she asked me to “go on.” It was as if we had been in the middle of an interrupted conversation. I didn’t say anything, partly because I was still trying to fathom the look in her eyes and partly because it was one of those exceedingly rare situations where I didn’t know what to say. I was relieved to see she wasn’t waiting for a reply. She was staring into the darkness with her head propped on her knees. After a few very long minutes I asked if she’d mind me putting my arm around her. She said she wouldn’t and moved in a bit closer and put her head on my shoulder as I gently placed my arm around hers. It never once occurred to me to ask her what had happened. It was one of the things I had come to learn about her over time. To respect her was to respect her privacy, to keep her was to keep her secrets and to love her was to do it unconditionally.

          I could feel her gentle breathing near my chest. We sat in silence for a few minutes which seemed like hours. She started to speak in a soft voice- draped in calm but spiked with the unmistakable essence of pain. As I sat there and listened to her, pouring out her heart, her troubles, her inner self- I saw in her a form of beauty I had never known before. It was the sort of beauty associated with the removal of the veil from around a much adored object. The fact that her words tore at my heart only accentuated my sadistic fascination for her. I wanted to comfort her so badly. Wanted to tell her how important she was no matter what she might ever be lead to believe. In fact, there were probably a million things I wanted to tell her. But I knew at the time she only wanted a wall. A wall which she could rest herself against and lay bare her heart without giving it a second thought. A wall with a comforting arm and a patient ear. She went on for a long time and it was like poison being drawn from a wound. Her strength of character was such that she could bury the things that hurt her, deep down and never betray them to herself or anyone else in her everyday life. But every container, particularly one as human as her had a spill-over point. Thus it was pure chance that this time I happened to be there at the point of spill-over. I realised later on that my being there, had affected me significantly more than it had affected her.

          After a while she again lapsed into silence as we stared at the overcast night sky which had turned into a light shade of red. I gently suggested we go to bed considering the lateness of the hour. All the rooms downstairs were occupied by someone or the other except for the single room on the roof. Once we stepped into the room I noticed a complete shift in my companion’s mood. She seemed -there’s only one way to describe it- radiant. She smiled in the most heart-warming way imaginable and the tear marks on her cheeks were like skillful brush strokes on a canvas, adding to the beauty of the painting. Indeed, there was something playful and almost childish about the way she laughed, teased and joked. I couldn’t begin to describe the charm of her blatant disregard for the hour, the situation or the conversation we had just had. It was probably in that moment that I felt most in tune with her. I was quite used to her nonchalant air but to see her in stark colours of emotion which were profoundly inter-linked yet vastly contrasting invoked feelings in me which I hadn’t dared to feel in a very long time.

          I lay down beside her and she drew me closer. I felt the gentle embrace of sleep closing in as I saw her serene face. Her eyes were closed and her head laid against mine. I held my hand over her face till the fingertips lightly touched her closed eyelids and I moved them along her cheeks and over her slightly parted lips. She asked me in a whisper “What are you doing?” I sensed in her sleepy voice a tone of fear. I said, “Do you mind?”

          Slowly and hesitantly she moved her head to say she didn’t. I moved my caressing hand along her throat and she raised her chin to allow me. The scent of her was driving my mind into rampant states of delirium. Again I dared to feel for her in a way which gave me a strange sense of completeness. A feeling I would probably recollect in times of solitude for many years to come. Time and hesitation dissolved into blissful oblivion as I touched her ever more fervently. My hands with remnants of ebbing tenderness moved to the small of her back and in a passionate reflex I drew her against me. Yet her eyes remained closed. Her steady breathing gradually deepened. I felt like I was challenging her with every increasingly bold move to stop me. To bring me back to the world of reality and sanity. A world where her partner was at the distance of a phone call and I was no more to her than the wall of support at times of adversity. I was on the brink of losing what little composure I had left to raw passion when finally, she spoke.

          “It’s time to wake up.” Her voice was calm as she got up from the bed. Without looking at me, she walked out of the room. I noticed there was a grey light at the door where she left; it was dawn. Thus I saw the final shade of colour the night had to offer. But this time it wasn’t a shade of emotion-but the absence of it. Once more with the first light of day she had draped herself in her garment of nonchalance.

          Still recovering from what felt like a beautiful nightmare I realised three things. Firstly, I would never find out what had gone on in her heart that night. Secondly, whatever had happened would never be a part of any world of reality which I may share with her. It would remain a blank space in the timeline of our lives. Lastly, I would feel the storm in my heart for months to come and her presence would continue to bring me equal measures of joy and pain. Reality would never permit her heart to echo the tremor that was in mine and where reality fails, sanity would step in.

          Maybe that is why I had to write it down. It was all too real and painful as a memory. Now that it’s fiction, I can go back to disbelieving it to my heart’s content.