The Stranger

The clouds were drenched with degrees of grey; the moon with cold silver, all were scattered across a black sky. Silence echoed everywhere, them, in the inscrutable horizon of ethereal figures, could hear it. Behind the closed windows, life lay.

   A pair of varnished shoes trod the ground. Wearing them, a man wrapped in a black coat the same texture as night.

   She looked like ice before melting. Her lips were painted in cheap red, her eyes in blue. Her body was easily traceable in the clothes she wore. She was old, and yet, young. Sitting beside her, was a bald man in his late fifties struggling to keep his eyelids open enough to make a person think he is alert.  The air in the bar was stale, was heavy.

    “They call us cheap,” her lips parted to say. “They call us cheap those women in fancy clothes.”

  “Yeah,” the bald man answered while resting his head on the table. He took another gulp of the beer.

    “They, those women I mean, got everything and are happy with it and we got nothing and are happy with it. Why won’t they just leave us alone? They and their stupid pride! I hate them.”

   The door of the bar opened. A man in varnished shoes and a black coat entered. There were only two people in the bar beside himself.

   “Aren’t we gonnaــ” the bald man halted, searching for air. “go?” he finally said.

  “No, not know. I mean, I dunno what else I’d like to be if I wasn’t here,” she continued.

  “What did you say? I didn’t hear that. I wanna go.”

     The man in black coat caught sight of the woman. He looked intently at her, confusion coloring his features.

   “I saidــ,”she trailed off, “Oh just forget about it. You know, I wouldn’t like to have their lives. I knew someone many years ago I can hardly remember her anymore.  She  had it and she just didn’t want it. It was all too heavy, owning everything and losing yourself in between… that’s what she said.”  She saw a man in black coat, his eyes fixed on her. She was used to men looking at her. She tilted her head the other way.

   “Did you say we are gonna go now?” the bald man asked, breathing heavily between the words.

    “No. No, I didn’t say that. That woman, she reminded me of something, we are all suffering. We ,all of us, are the same. Running away is sometimes inevitable for you to believe it” She looked at the bald man, caring for nothing more than the cup of beer he clutched. She smiled. Bitterly.  “And why am I telling all of this to you?  These are not secrets. I guess confessions also count even when the person you are talking to won’t understand a thing. So now, I am making confessions, that’s what I’m doing.” She laughed, a sick laugh, chocking on tears. Her eyes then fell on the man in black coat. He was still looking at her. She let her eyes search his face and was swept by an eerie sense of déjà vu.

   The man in black coat saw that the woman was too looking at him. He took that chance and advanced towards her.

   The woman saw the man coming her way. She looked away nervously. He lifted her face in his hands and bent to have a closer look at it. It felt like oxygen had totally escaped the bar. He let go of her face in embarrassment.

  “I am very sorry,” he said, “ you look a lot like someone I used to know…but you couldn’t be her.”

   He turned away heading for the door, the weight of disappointment obvious in the way his shoulders hunched.

   “But what if I am her?” the woman abruptly said, resting her head on one hand in a reckless manner. Challenge colored her tone

   The man stopped. “No,” he murmured as though to himself, “ You are  not her. Nothing can ever happen to change someone so much.”

      “You are quite wrong,” her face went very stern, “Life happens.” She let out another sick laugh.

     He looked at the woman in front of him and forced his memory to recollect shreds of what she looked like. There was a great similarity between the two faces but, no, she couldn’t be her. She, who owned everything could never one day be so cheap. He went away, the thudding of his varnished shoes no longer to be heard.

    She looked at the man, tracing his every step to the door. And when the door was slammed, she watched as he slowly faded into an ethereal silhouette of black in the horizon.Her eyes could no longer see him, and out of them, tears were spilled

Impure

  “Excuse me,” a little girl said from behind her, “I want to pass.”

    It was that inescapable feeling again sweeping over her. It was that sense of long lost  innocence brought by the wideness of those girl’s eyes. The distant past of laughter and ignorance pressed like a hidden wound. And now that she was  impure, it all seemed so far away.

    “Of course,” she said with a smile that poured bitterness into her face.

    She pushed her way through people and the humid molecules of air. Her voice of thought was an imperceptible susurrus transgressing against the noises in the street. Sometimes, it would be silenced altogether. She’d hold her breath and pray she didn’t forget it somewhere in the crowds.

    After getting lost within the grey concretes of streets for many hours, she bought the cigarettes and headed back home.

   “What took you so long?” her mother said, “ Do you even realize what could happen if your dad came and realized you were not home yet?!”

 She passed her mother without a glance wearing her mask of indifference.

   “And can you imagine what the neighbors may be saying right now,” she went on, “ ‘She can’t raise her daughter’, ‘Her daughter enters the house by herself at 9 PM’,” The mother so perfectly mimicked  those woman looking through the cracks of every door and whispering to each other in that wicked voice what they  saw. Perhaps it came out so well  because she was one of them.

   She entered the room and closed the door behind her. Her mother fiercely flung it open. “I’m not done yet,” she said hoarsely.

   “In half an hour, I want you dressed. Your aunt called and said she found a suitor for you. Now don’t you dare drive him away like you always do.”

    She opened her bag and got out a cigarette. When her mother wasn’t looking, she lit it and put it between her lips.

 Everything fell into an ominous silence. That silence before the storm.

   “Oh dear! I can’t believe my eyes. Oh dear..Oh dear! What have I done God to deserve such a thing for a daughter. Oh dear!” and then she shouted, “Throw that thing away!”

  She now looked her mother’s way, with a cloud of smoke surrounding her. “But you can’t make me do it. Now, I became addicted and if I try to stop, I’ll look so bad nobody will want to marry me.” Her voice was ever so calm and to further infuriate her mother, she said that smiling.

   “I said throw this thing away!”

   “You are mad because now you can’t control me. You are mad because I am not saying yes to whatever you say. Admit it,  you never loved me. Dad never loved me. You all wanted to have a boy. Why didn’t you just kill me when I was born instead of torturing me like that?”

   “I said throw this thing away!”

     “You just want to get rid of me. Every breath that comes out of me is a shame. I am a walking shame. You bring all kind of ugly men and have me sitting at one side of the room dressed like a pretty doll while deciding who you will sell me to. But you see, I am not going to get dressed tonight, because I don’t want to get married.”

    She looked around to find herself thrown on the ground, droplets of blood coming out of her cheek. Her mother had slapped her.

   Her mother stood panting and when she was able to regulate her breath, said, “You will get dressed and one day or another, you will get married. You are a  woman. That’s what women do.” She heard the door being shut.

   Minutes, long minutes lasted with her lying on the ground. Everything pressured her down she couldn’t find the strength to stand up. The world was tumbling down around her. She was not good anymore. She was not innocent anymore. Everybody looked at her that way. Long ago, she had taken off the dress of  purity to stand naked in the wind. Everybody wanted to cover her up because she was the incarnation of their hidden desires. She always looked proud in her nudity. But her mother said that women’s job in life is to get married and obey their husbands. The bitterness aroused in her soul. She couldn’t bear the weight of her breasts, the weight of her body, the weight of being a woman. She couldn’t escape what she is, She couldn’t burry it so that nobody would see it. She was their walking shame. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she saw how anger twisted her face giving it such an evil look. So many times, she had stood up confessing her impurity to herself and was happy with it. So many times all she wanted out of life was not virtue but freedom. Now, her nakedness looked so painful. Now, she was faced with the realization she always wriggled. She is a woman. Women get married. That’s what women do. In that, she found a way to be good again. She stood up and started getting dressed.