THE PARTING GIFT

THE PARTING GIFT
FOR  JAN 2015

By:    Dola Dutta Roy, Calcutta, India, (Oct. 29, 2014)

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She saw the man every evening from her window that overlooked the children’s park through the lacework of the branches of the old oak tree. She looked on while she cooked for the family as a daily chore. She hummed a tune as she made the soup and watched him staring at the kids romping about kicking grass and sometimes dust with their boots.

In the dying light of the fading sun, the man sat in a strange kind of stupor under the shade of a giant sycamore tree, hugging the corner of a bench, meant for lovers. The profusion of color on his fraying, patchwork robe blazed in the sun every now and then.  The tattered hat and his unkempt, straggly grey hair blew feverishly in the air. Like the Sphinx he trained his gaze at the playful kids shrieking out war-cries. There was a faint smile on his face.

Winter was setting in. The air was getting sharper by the day and the grass was withering around the rocky slopes inside the park. Like the tenacious kids the man appeared every afternoon and planted himself on his chosen spot feeding the pigeons absently before they all flew away to the comfort of warmer zones. The oak tree had been shedding for some time and the sycamore had turned from corn-yellow to flaming-orange in shade. Kids were wrapped in light winter-gear looking colorful like tropical birds in forests in the southern plains. Winter couldn't take the joy out of their lives, nor could it hold them captive indoors. Not just yet.

Suddenly that afternoon, the wind blew with fierce fury and the sky looked ominous. The thought of snow descending on them stealthily in no time, filled her heart with a kind of sadness -- especially for the derelict man. She knew soon the wind would grow still, the park would go white and the benches would grow colder. The birds would disappear and the trees would go completely bald. Their unadorned branches would look utterly impoverished and beg for mercy to the heavenly Gods to embellish them and help them flourish. Children would stop coming out to play and the old man would be seen no more. 

She looked out the window several times and smiled to witness a handful of dogged kids that fought the wind. But the man was nowhere to be seen. She began to worry. She always wondered why he visited the park every afternoon and yet why he did not make any attempt to make friends with the kids. But there was no way she could find that out. The children probably never noticed him; he just sat there like a piece of sculpture that blended well with the dry bushes and rocks skirting the park.

Moments later that seemed like eons, she saw the hobbling figure with the unmistakable gait moving in towards the bench of his choice. Slow but certain.

There was dinner on the stove to feed her young and the man of the house.  Days had grown shorter, and food must be ready and warm on the table when they return. She thought for a while with creases on her forehead. But soon she was seen with a basket of loaves and a bowl of soup weaving in through the iron gate of the park. She ignored the cruel wind and the bitter cold and strode ahead to sit next to the man on the cold, wet bench. 

The rustle of the red leaves on the ground with her approach broke the man's reverie like a Buddha waking from his meditative trance. His bushy eyebrows above those piercing eyes came down with a crash. From their hollow pits, those eyes darted from her face to the basket in her hand a few times. For a while he did not move; he just gave her a vacant look and his eyes blinked like glinting embers. When she flashed her kindly smile, she noticed that his mouth broke into a sluggish twist from behind his shaggy beard, still quite in a daze. She held out the basket and the bowl of soup to him.

There was a long pause of deliberation and then the old man shook his head. In a gruff, plaintive tone he spoke woefully at length. Hardly audible.

“I have sinned and squandered much.” He paused for a while. There was a distant look in his eyes. She watched him take deep breaths before he added, “I come here to retrieve my childhood….. actually the innocence of childhood.” Then he smiled; this time shyly. Through his bushy mustache she could see his two front gold teeth shine and he said slowly enunciating every word carefully, “Food is meant for the body, but my soul seeks penance….” He blinked. “I shall remember your kindness.” His eyes twinkled as he nodded and smiled with gratitude  and  his gold teeth glistened in the dim daylight.

With these words he got up and rummaged through the holes of his flashy mantle and took out a Cohiba, a Cohiba  that only the rich flaunted once. A Cohiba that is illegal and banned in the country now.  He held up the stick of tobacco and laughed, “The one thing that I still can’t give up…. I have lost my pride, my vanity and even lost the love of my life. Yet I’m shamelessly attached to this goddamn piece of snobbery. I don’t deserve it.” 

He left the cigar in its shiny pack on the bench and shuffled along trampling the dead grass wet in the muck and dirty brown leaves with his footprints. His crooked figure, bent with remorse, moved on --steadily diminishing in the distance. 

She never saw him again.

WORD COUNT: 950