Can You Hear The Silence?
By Bineeta Fialok
Can you hear the silence?’ She said, ‘the silence of the dark sky, the silence of the shrieking trees, reaching out there gnarled and shriveled old branches to clutch it, to embrace it, to hold on to it forever as if there roots no longer have the strength nor the desire to strangle and clutch the earth with their strong hold. Before the final fall of death there’s a last attempt at holding on to something which gives the hope of further life, even if it’s just a chimera.’
She stopped to add fresh wood to the dying fire, which gave me the time to recover from the horrific visuals I had been supplying to her words in my imagination.
‘Did I scare you?’, she enquired in a concerned manner.
‘Oh! No, not at all. Just that I’m blessed with a very fertile imagination.’, was my reply, given along with a little chuckle.
‘But you do scare me.’ was her next statement.
‘Why?’
‘Because, I see a happy girl in you. Just like I was when I was your age.’
Now was my turn to be puzzled. All I could do was look on for an explanation, which wasn’t forthcoming. At least not at that time.
‘What did you mean by all that trees clutching at the sky and all? It sounded more like a horror story’, was me prodding again for some kind of an explanation.
‘Yes, indeed, it’s a horrific story.’ Now a naughty smile was playing on her lips as she played with her dainty glittering watch.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. When did I ever mean anything?’
In the past 23 yrs. Of my life I had never met a more enigmatic personality. I wanted to draw away, yet I wanted to know more. I was least bothered about what she knew yet there was the greed, the lust to be a confidante, to share in her unknown secret. I was surprised at myself, the usually cool and collected person that I am. What was this turmoil, this longing? Why was I dying to taste the ecstasy of knowing, knowing everything about that strange woman with large black eyes.
Those eyes, yes, those eyes, they had something in them. Full of mockery, that she knew something more, something important…crucial, which she wouldn’t tell and then suddenly there was the longing to tell, the pain of not being able to reveal.
As my mind raced on she lit a cigarette and offered me one saying
‘Don’t tax yourself. I promise you’ll know.’
I almost lost my balance, ‘How do you know?’
‘Now that one’s ambiguous. How do I know that you’ll know or how do I know that you want to know?’
The endearing smile that had drawn me to this woman had now changed into something so mysterious yet so enticing.
‘I guess I would like to have an answer to both.’ My manner had changed into a more formal and dry one now as I wanted to draw away as soon as possible. Of course none is comfortable sitting with someone who seems to be a mind reader of sorts.
A gleeful smile of importance spread on her lips, ‘But what do you want to know?’
This was becoming one of the circumstances where I tend to lose my cool, yet somehow I managed to produce a smile.
‘Everything if you want to reveal and nothing if you don’t want to.’
I had surprised myself with my answer because what I wanted to do was to run away from her and join the group of other fellow travelers who were also waiting for the little fault in the bus to be set right. Well, the little fault had already taken three hours.
‘Everything about you, about me or about every woman in this world?’, she said mysteriously with a laugh.
‘Oh please! If it’s about women’s oppression then I’m tired of the topic.’
‘Me too. I was also tired of people coming and getting pictures clicked, asking, ‘Did it hurt a lot? Did you know him? Was he someone close? What will you do now? We will help you.’
‘Publicity, rallies… yes they helped me a lot’
The smile on her face had turned into a loud, bitter laugh. The same shrieking laughter of the silently dying trees.
Yours Always,
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