The Confession (The Garden of the Dead - 2)

Strange things happen sometimes. Like this early dawn, when I was dreaming past my windows, not seeing the hills beyond. When all of a sudden this young girl - tight little thing - went jogging past my front gates, crunching the grass that had only just woken up from sleep. Call it an old man’s fancy for life, or just plain senility, that girl bounced her steps right into my thoughts and I found myself awake in a cold spring evening, years back, up on those hills with my Martha.

It was yet another of those long walks we used to go on, almost everyday till a year-and-a-half before Martha died. It was so cold, Martha had begun to suggest we turn back. This I found unthinkable, the air being so crisp and somehow strangely persuasive. I remember saying we’d go on till that abandoned graveyard among the hills. “It’s too beautiful an evening. Let’s pay a visit to The Garden of the Dead, then return,” I said.

So we walked on, old man and old wife, shivering yet sweating slightly. That was when this strange thing happened, right here inside my head. Looking at those half frozen violets by the roadside, I touched Martha’s cold palm and made a suggestion: “Martha, do you feel like hearing out a confession?” She gave me her teasing look and said, “If you’ve been gambling with those retired boys over a drink, I’ll forgive you, but only if you agree we go back now. I’m cold and tired.”

And then I began. I began by telling her that this was far worse than rounds of rummy with other pensioners at the club. I went on to tell her about the relationship I had with my boss’ secretary once, and how I had sworn to myself to never tell her, Martha, about it. And I remember the way Martha just heard me out without a word, while we walked far beyond The Garden of the Dead.

“When was this?” she asked once in between, and that was the only interruption to my confession. When she asked it she had that half-blush half-accusation look that easily made her the world’s prettiest old woman.

“Yes Martha, it was after I had met you,” I said, probably confirming her worst fears. “Remember the time I went to Delhi looking for a job so we could get married? Well, she was my boss’ PA in that small joint I first worked in. She was a tight little flirt.” This was during the two-and-a-half-year gap after I had met Martha and before we were married, and that made it worse. But I went on. There was no stopping me today, as we walked on against the breeze, and perhaps against Martha’s desire, but I’ll never know.

I went on ruthlessly, telling her it got physical just this once. Perhaps I expected the vast cushion of time – some thirty years – to take the sting out of my confession. But the most disturbing thing was Martha’s face as she just stared ahead at the small road, walking on, not cold not tired, with not so much as a word.
So I told her it got ‘slightly physical’ just this once, and added because I couldn’t help adding: “I was thinking of you, Martha. She reminded me of you.”

“The tight little flirt? I don’t think she should’ve reminded you of me, Mark. You couldn’t have been thinking of me,” she said with a smile that bore in like a knife. It wasn’t that she was angry or even jealous (come on, it was way too long back to cause jealousy now). That smile came from a clear, irreversible belief. An innocent but unshakeable understanding of a person that can only come from a lifetime spent together. No, not that she could ever have guessed I had kept such a secret to myself for all these years. Or that I could have shared a relationship with two women at a time, anytime, however young I was. I still think she always thought I was incapable of such things.

But on our walk back down the hills she never asked: “Was she pretty?” or “Do you remember her face now?” or even “Why did you never tell me, all these years?” She just walked on, like she wasn’t shocked but only felt a numb pain that she knew was silly and would soon go away.

Because once you’ve spent your life with someone, you were a part of him. You shared his guilt. His misadventures are yours too, past or present.

All these were only my wishful interpretation of Martha’s mind that evening. She was silent most of the way, sometimes holding my arm, sometimes plucking a leaf to twist in her fingers, sometimes mumbling absently: “It’s nearing winter, we better get the woolen stuff dry-cleaned.”

Martha lived another few years after that evening, but she never once raised the topic of my confession. Neither did I. And now, as I see the day growing up against my window, my mind again walks among those hills, alone this time. And I ask myself what made me confess in the first place. Was it a purely self-centered desire to come clean, perfectly clean, once and for all? And did Martha forgive me? If she did, was I forgiven too easily? But of course, the answer to all that lies up there too, where she lies now. The answer to that will perhaps be there in The Garden of the Dead, among the beautiful little wild-flowers that clothe her grave.

Strange things happen sometimes, but I think this evening I’ll be the world’s oldest man to ever climb those hills again.