The story of an affair that ended

Of all the stories I have learnt to listen, you know that there is only one theme that keeps recurring in my mind and around the space that shapes letters into colors, smells, tastes and touch somewhere within. So today, I will tell you a story. Half imagined and half listened to. I haven't read the novel that is supposed to recount a love more tragic and heartfelt than that of Tolstoy's Anna. But have scooped love in my cupped hands many times over from the gentle rain of RK Narayan's the English teacher. This is the story of his mentor, one who is supposed to have been at once a spy and a literary genius. A nobel nominee who irrationally, inexplicably and irrevocably fell in love with a mother of five.

Up there on the first window from the left, can you imagine for me an exquisitely talented Greene? And his married, catholic muse? Namesake of the lady who brought tea to England. Wife of an extremely rich catholic. A devout catholic herself. How many passionate afternoons and poignant dusks has that window been drenched in more than a Hundred odd years ago. I felt that cold hand of separation pass my heart too when I looked up too. Did you see passion?

They say Greene was a woman's man. He chose to be catholic after he met his wife, twenty years before he knew C. Some say he was disturbed deeply, prone to bouts of depression. There were times when he attempted to end it all but suicide isn't a writer's muse ever, is it?

And so childhood grew it's dark dreams within but elsewhere  there was poetry, pages and pages of a voice that craved to take shape in letters, Rosetta stones of desire waiting to be deciphered. One after another, spring and winter vied for that particular blend of happiness and heartache found in fingers intertwined, remembered long after faces, lips and limbs cease to coexist.

The years passed in a blur. He met his wife, knew he must have been in love. Converted and promptly got two kids. Restlessness never left him though. He travelled to remote corners of the world. Worked in exactly those activities that are bound to make you feel alive with the thrill of death close on your heels. Spied for the British, the Mexicans, the Cubans and all the while, filled pages and pages of unfulfilled longings. Other people's stories, other people's lives. Yes, but were there glimpses of his emotions, moods and colors? His portraits of thrill and luxury and leisure? Did I say love? Because he never did.

At first, they just glanced at each other when each thought the other wasn't looking. The magnets are not jut drawn to each other but draw power from other's force. Slowly, the fire consumed until it burned their nights, days, friends and holidays. Perhaps he dreamt of it all and she was just drawn to his fame. Or maybe he was drawn to her clearly unfulfilled needs. Yes, there are hormones everywhere. Growing beards and drawing periodic blood baths but those hormones, they existed in all those people living below that room and above, no? So who gave her the courage to draw him out in a Long kiss right there in that room above the coffee shop? This is why the Protestants said Catholics should be banned from politics. You see, they worshipped those pagan gods with Christian names. Someone named Eros was meant to be buried. What business did he have in a church?

But no one in that room could hold himself away. Long afternoons filled with the throes of letters, words, poems of sighs and skin upon skin. Separation, another day, another week, another month of not knowing whether the lips will meet ever again, that font of liquid life.

He moved out of his house. Could not bear to have another's perfume on his bed. Another's presence in his space. She continued to keep her home. Taking extreme care to keep her blinds on. The Husband's each need was anticipated and not merely met when requestsed. Who knows, he must have fallen in love with her again because of this. But Greene? Oh poor Greene burned of jealous wrath. She wouldn't come because of this and that and him, the husband and her, the child.

The war loomed closer, his jealousy even darker. Each day, he followed her. Kept a track of her movements. Who does she talk to? Why does she not come? Was there another? Did she have enough of me? Was I merely a temporary shack of pleasure? Round and round his thoughts went and all his travels couldn't bring down those curtains onto his mangled thoughts. But those moments that she came? Ah, the windows were lit in gold. The moon and stars dallied in bright afternoon light. Greene levitated into another world. Was there any other than that place above the cafe?

One day she said she can't anymore. And she didn't come. That was it. As simple as that was the end of that affair.

That story was longer than mine though. She prayed for her husbands safety and vowed to stop her affairs because of which she thought god spared her Husband from illness or thunder. Greene found out a tad too late. God took her life instead. But those stories, those stories make no sense. Do they?

She must have known it was to end. He knew it had to. But if it did, how was he to breathe? She died and filled him with her breath. How easy it is for writers to make up stories. As for me, I think my tales stop short of being stories at all. Just at that point where life starts screaming aloud in my ears and says. There is no point to all of this. Move on, write a poem. Move on, get another pen.