[Creative Writing]
Short Story:
The confession
Jayashantha JAYAWARDHANA
Now I am a patient, an invalid confined to a bed, whose sheet and
mattress stinks with my urine. A couple of months ago, I suffered a
stroke which left me paralysed.
Today I feel like a breathing corpse. If only that stroke had taken
my life without leaving me to this endless suffering in this stinking
squalid room! May be, i am destined to suffer more.
Sometimes I think death will not be half as dreadful as this
miserable life I spend as a bed-ridden invalid.
Nevertheless, there are times when I dread the unknown which I will
have to explore sooner or later after death has released me from these
mortal agonies.
The mysterious realm which is believed to be lying beyond death might
perhaps be little better than these terrible sufferings. Apart from
those natural human fears about the unknown, however, I am also
suffering from a terrible sense of guilt dogging my every thought.
The painful consciousness of a past error gives me even greater pains
than this bedsore, which no medicine can alleviate let alone cure! Now I
want you to hear my sad painful story, and I wish to make a clean breast
of it before can have me in its relentless grip.
It all happened even more than three decades ago when I was a sturdy,
middle-aged man. But I can recall the details of its as if it was just
yesterday that this tragedy took place. Then I was working as a clerk at
the Zonal Education Office, Narammala.
I had six children, three daughters and three sons. At the time, none
of them was married. My elder son, a rice merchant then, had a fairly
big rice mill. He had employed several guys who performed the laborious
task of boiling and drying it on the basis of daily wages. Nimal was one
of those guys, employed at my elder son's rice mill.
We were a respectable family in the village. My late father who was a
stern confident man inspired the villagers' respect. At the time
literacy was not nearly as high as it is today. Education, free as it
was, was still limited to wealthy influential families.
So the majority of villagers were illiterate peasants who just lived
from hand to mouth. It was small wonder, therefore, that the fairly
literate families like ours could command their respect whether we
deserved it or not. Besides I had land of about twenty acres inherited
from my father which yielded a fairly large crop of coconut.
He had also accumulated a fortune of around 100,000 rupees by the
time he passed away. I know you will scorn at my reference to a fortune
of 100,000 rupees, because today even small children know that amount is
scarcely a fortune.
But it was then more than 30 years ago, before the price level had
begun to skyrocket under the influence of inflation. Then it was fairly
accurate to call such amount a fortune.
My later father was a money-lender, not quite unlike that usurper
'Sherlock' in Shakespeare's 'Merchant of Venice', a play I would still
love to read though I can hardly manage to read anything today. I can
still quote some lines from it.
"I am a tainted wether of the flock,
Meetest for death; the weakest kind of fruit
Drops earliest to the ground"
Let me quote another excerpt from it.
"And I beseech you,
Wrest once the law to your authority;
To do a great right, do a little wrong
And curb this cruel devil of his will."
I have digressed a little from the story that I am narrating. But you
may see that like many of my peers, I am still a worshipper of that
literary genius, Shakespeare, and pride myself on being able to quote
him so accurately.
My position as a clerk at the Zonal Education Office was rather
enviable even among the people who were not so poor. Nowadays I know few
people wish to become clerks, but again times were different then. I
always tried to live up to the reputation that my late father had
earned. I wanted my children to follow my steps and preserve the
tradition without tarnishing our family's good reputation.
Moreover, we were from a high caste, so I hardly mingled with those
poor villagers from low castes; nor did I want my children to do so. But
what I failed to realise was the extent to which they themselves wanted
to follow my sound advice.
Now I wonder if they ever wanted to follow my judicious advice and
whether they just nodded their heads in reluctant approval while totally
dismissing my advice in their intercourse with people for the simple
reason that they were too decent to contradict me, their bigoted
self-opinionated father.
These days I often hear my elder son say 'Caste is nothing to wealth
and social position'. But those days, caste signified a great deal
especially when it came to marriage. The parents who overlooked such
matters as caste and creed in their children's marriages were disowned
by their relatives. Or may be I thought so.
As I have already said, I wanted my children to follow my steps, but
did they really want to live in the same way as I wanted them to? Or did
they just listen to my advice for no other reason than that I was their
father who had begotten them and brought them up?
These are the questions that I today ask myself having been confined
to this smelly room, this filthy bed. I sincerely doubt if I ever can
find answers to these mind-boggling questions.
However, now I know my youngest daughter did not want to follow my
advice. But I also know that I have seen the truth rather too late.
Every family has at least one recalcitrant child. In our family,
unfortunately, that recalcitrant happened to be my youngest daughter,
Priyani whereas my second son, Wimalasiri, now a senior lecturer in
Kelaniya University was the epitome of obedience.
How is it possible that two children, fathered by the same man,
brought up by the same parents under the same circumstances, living
under the same roof, studied at the same school, receiving the same
advice, being accepted and treated in the same way can be as far
different from each other as day is different from night or fire from
ice?
Why I repent today is because I wanted the other five children of
mine to be like Wimalasiri. That each child was unique in his own way
did not cross my mind until all was gone and I had little choice but to
regret my irrational desire.
Priyani was the pet of our family. May be she was surfeited with
affection since she was the youngest and the loveliest. I, a very
punctilious father, a sort of domestic martinet did not pamper my
children, but deep in my heart I loved each of them alike.
For them, I always had tender fibres in my heart, but I often chose
to dissemble my feelings and play the role model of a strict father. I
did so because I wanted all of them to become highly educated,
respectable citizens of our country.
Does every child of every strict father necessarily become highly
erudite respectable citizens? Is being a strict father a necessary
formula for producing a good intelligent child? Maybe I should have
asked myself those questions some thirty years earlier. I also wanted to
pride myself on being the father of such respected children...
Priyani, from her early childhood days showed a stubborn streak. Not
that she was a very bad child, but she was a bit too strong-willed. May
be she had inherited such qualities from me. As she grew older I found
her exceedingly incorrigible.
Since I wanted her to become a good, obedient, intelligent child, I
punished her over-wilfull acts, I wished from the bottom of my heart to
marry my three daughters off to wealthy influential families from
superior castes. Decidedly it was their character which would be the key
for them to be connected with such families.
Unlike today, education itself did not count much for a girl in that
traditional society where women were supposed to rear children and
attend to household affairs. I, a worshipper of established traditions,
wanted to instill such ideas into their minds since they were able to
understand something. I had scarcely any problems with the other two but
Priyani often tended to disagree with me.
Oddly enough, I had no such dreams about my sons and just hoped that
they would live up to the reputation of our family whatever might
happen.
Yet I did not want them to go astray, so I caned them when I found
that they deserved that, but not as frequently as I did so to my
daughters and Priyani in particular. When I punished her for minor
offences, she refused to eat and locked herself up in her boudoir for
hours.
It was my genial wife and her two elder sisters that eventually
coaxed her into taking food. Though I was rather severe on her, she
always sought my company when I was home, calling after me 'Thaththi,
thaththi'. Whether she resented by harshness when I chastised her I
still ask myself.
Priyani, a sixteen-year-old at the time was prettier than both of her
elder sisters. She was friendly with men and women alike. So I and my
wife had few reasons to believe that the things were not the same as
they did appear to be.
Priyani also spoke with the guys who worked in my elder son's rice
mill. When my sons were away and I was at the office it was my wife who
oversaw the operations at the rice mill and Priyani helped her. Her
sisters were a little too shy and reclusive. But Priyani was an
ebullient, confident extrovert. May be that was the bane of her life.
When rumours began to circulate that she was having an affair with
Nimal, I was furious. "How can I let her be married to him, a guy from a
low-caste family?" I asked myself exasperatedly. Besides that, he was
not half as educated as Priyani who went to the Central College.
'An illiterate beggar', that was how I described him to others. When
I heard the news, I asked Priyani if that news was true. but she
resolutely denies having any affair with him. Yet it was not easy for
her to fool me who was four times as old as she.
A seasoned man, I knew smoke could hardly arise without a fire. Angry
as I was, I pretended to have believed what she had said. I told her
that she was yet a child and that she had to concentrate on her studies
rather than romance.
I also told her that she is too young to think about such matters.
It, I emphasised, was for us, parents to think about such things when
she had reached the marriageable age. Yet I was determined to discover
the truth of this rumour for myself. I resolved to watch her more
closely from that day on.
When I realised that I had guessed right, I was enraged, and hit her
hard like a madman. I even hit my wife whom I accused of condoning her
wrong behaviour. My rage had so maddened me that none of them escaped my
wrath.
That day our house assumed a funeral air. Priyani looked devastated,
crying her heart out. Next day I did not go to office and waited till
Nimal had turned up. Burning with rage I walked over to him, and slapped
him hard across the face.
Yelling at him, I used my favourite phrase, 'illiterate beggar' to
insult him. I was so full of wrath that that I would have killed him
then and there had my elder son not intervened and disengaged me from
him. Needless to mention, he was dismissed right away. He walked away,
an accused loser with his shoulders bowed. Never did he return to the
rice mill...
After a lapse of three or four days things seemed to have returned to
normal. Priyani was no longer wailing over her dismissed fiance and
seemed active and cheerful helping her mother.
She was friendly with me too though I had begun to be rather too
laconic following that incident. Deep in my heart, I was happy thinking
that the storm was over and all that was a thing of history now...
There is always the calm before the storm. This I forgot choosing to
believe rather optimistically that every dark cloud has a silver lining.
On that fateful Wednesday while I was working in the office, I felt a
severe headache, and told my chief that I was indisposed. a sauve
kind-hearted man, he granted me leave as soon as I had revealed my
necessity to him.
'Go to Dr. Wijerathne', he advised, 'or else you will fall sick and
won't be able to come to the office tomorrow'. Oddly enough, I never was
able to go to work the following day.
Leaving the office, I went to the dispensary, situated at a walking
distance from our office. The physician prescribed some medicines and
asked me to rest since he had diagnosed symptoms of fever, beginning to
set in. But things so happened that I never got any opportunity to rest
or relax that day.
As soon as I arrived at the Narammala bus stand, I saw a Wariyapola-bound
bus pulled in. Already a few passengers had taken seat. I seated myself
on a front seat and leaned back, watching the people hanging around the
bus-stand. There she was! It was not too difficult for my sharp eyes to
make out her, who came strolling towards the same bus hand in hand with
that pauper, Nimal. Never ever in my life had I felt angrier. That I was
ill never crossed my mind. I sat bolt upright, got out of the bus, and
marched towards them.
They, being intoxicated with romance, did not notice until I was
right under their very noses. When they did notice me, it was too late
for them to retreat to a hideaway, so they stood statue-like with their
very feet stamped to the ground.
Before I could speak out anything, my right hand whipped her hard
across the face twice or thrice. Such was my diabolic rage which had
compelled me to hit her that I felt my whole body tremble. Gripping her
by the wrist, I yanked her towards the bus and climbed her into it.
Sitting besides me, she cried all the way home.
At her weeping I hardly felt any sympathy with her. The more she
sobbed and wept, the angrier I felt. Once we were home I hit her even
harder and blamed her in the loudest tones possible. As usual she ran
into her room and locked herself up. For more than an hour, I heard her
muffled sobbing.
That night it rained heavily as strong howling wind continued to
blow, drowning the otherwise annoying croaking of frogs. A muffled howl
of dogs reached my ears, as I lay on my bed, too keyed up to sleep. That
howl and hooting of an owl gave me a premonition of a calamity to
come...
Next morning coming out of the room, I observed an overcast sky,
bleak surroundings and a garden flooding with rain water. I walked to
the well stepping sideways to avoid poodles.
Taking the pail in one hand, I peered into the well, and found to my
shock my daughter's still body afloat on water. She was wearing the same
dress that she had worn the day before. Her body floated on the water
with her face downwards.
I was so shocked by that horrific scene which greeted my sight that
my hold on the rope did loosen, letting go of the pail which plunged
down into the space and made a hollow sound as it hit the water. My
wife, who was coming towards the well to fetch water, might sense that
something was terribly wrong. In my mind's ear, I can still hear her
wailing, her lamentation about the lost child...
In her small boudoir, on her table, we found a short letter she had
written shortly before she had committed suicide.
In that letter, I can remember, she had written something like this,
"...Thaththi, I hope my death will serve to preserve our family's good
reputation..." Having read this letter, I, who had cried on few
occasions before in my life, wept like a child. My poor child had
sacrificed herself for the sake of our family's good reputation!
My wife never blamed me, nor did my children. To all others it was
just another tragic event. They might forget it once her coffin had been
committed to the ground or even earlier.
Even for us the mourners, time did not cease to commiserate with us,
and life ran its usual course despite the vacuum which her lamentable
death had left in our lives and was never to be filled. But I knew they
(my wife and children)secretly hated me for my cruelty. I knew they
hated me just as much as I hated myself...
Today all my five children are living in clover, holding respectable
positions being recognised by society. Their spouses are from affluent,
literate, influential families of superior castes. People respect them
too.
Except a passing remark Priyani is hardly ever discussed by them who
seem to have forgotten all that. All those painful memories seem to have
been buried deep under the sands of time.
But I believe they, my wife and children still hate me just as much
as they used to do in the past or even more. I have always been a good
husband and a dutiful father. Or I think I have been one.
But, my wife, will she ever forgive me for what I have done to her
sweet innocent daughter? And my children, will they ever forgive me for
what I have done to their gentle, affectionate sister?
And Nimal, who was prevented from even attending her funeral, will he
ever forgive me for what I have done to his loving, innocent fiancee?
Even if they were all to forgive me, could I ever forgive myself for
what I have done to my poor, naive child?
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