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Short story:
Hypnotic love
Somasiri Attanayake
“In a very clear and plain language, I want to tell you, I am not
interested in you at all. I dont love you either, or anybody else. I
even hate the young fellows who get interested in me. I have made up my
mind never to love or marry. For God’s sake, hereafter, don’t even drop
a single word about love between us. That will be the greatest help you
can do to me. Mind my words, I am telling you this with all
seriousness.”
 Manel
was in a fit of wild anger that trembled her visibly and her tone of
voice was harsh and venomous. Her overwhelming agitation brought a
distinct tremour into her belligerent voice. The strong words gushed out
of her mouth like a hail of bullets issuing from a machine gun. She spat
out tirade of threatening words against one of the male teachers on her
staff of the school where she also taught.
Manel was a very impulsive young woman whose tongue was as sharp as a
double edged kris-knife. The young male teacher whom the shower of
offensive words were thrown at, was stunned as if he had received a
thundering blow, in spite of being a thick-skinned brawny youth. He was
the most junior pedagogue on the staff of her school. Fortunately,
nobody had seen or heard the embarrassing scene.
The first day he saw the young teacher, he had taken a fancy to her
as she was young, goodlooking and outgoing. In various ways, he
indicated to her that he was interested in her. To his utter
disappointment, she did not respond at all.
His overtures intended to initiate a romantic relationship with the
young woman were ignored and shunned by her relentlessly. But, he did
not give up his pursuit of winning her heart although it was a real
challenge that excited him and kindled his interest more. He determined
to win her at whatever cost!
At the end of the day, Manel forgot what happened in the morning and
talked with the young man in a friendlier way.
“I am extremely sorry about what happened in the morning..... I
apologize for my harsh words.” Her talk and friendly attitude banished
his disappointment and he felt happy and elated .
“Women are peculiar type of creatures; you can’t understand them.
What they mean is quite the opposite of what they utter!” he mused.
Manel and Upali travelled together from Veyangoda to Gampaha by train
and from there to school by bus. The short distance of about half a mile
from bus-stop to school, they walked. Spending long hours in the company
of each other, waiting for train and always travelling together, they
became very intimate and pally. Upali thought the young teacher was a
very fine girl though she lost her temper the other day when he declared
his love for her.
As time trickled away slowly and unnoticed, his love for her remained
dormant in a dark corner of his heart. He thought of conveying his
feelings to her again in a very subtle way. On the previous occasion, he
was very blatant in his wooing. He plucked a red rose from the bush that
grew in his garden and carried it covered with a white tissue paper. The
young suitor wanted to offer the rose to her before they reached school.
Manel saw her companion carrying something wrapped in a piece of
paper in his hand. She became inquisitive about the small pack which he
tried to conceal from her.
“What are you keeping in your hand?”
All at once, Upali tore open the tissue cover and offered the flower
to his inamorata. Without thinking, she received the red rose. The
eternal symbol of love! She glanced at it. The serene look on her
countenance turned into a furious frown making it repulsively ugly; her
eyes sparkled with savage wrath. She crushed the flower in her hand and
threw it back hard at his face which he ducked and the missile flew past
the target. Her angry mouth quivered before she snarled.
“By giving me a rose, you say in sign language that you love me. You
troublesome oaf! Can’t you understand I have told you once there is no
love between us whatsoever and I asked you not to harass me. What exists
between you and me is just friendship; nothing else. Please stop your
nonsense and don’t make yourself a nuisance to me.”
She flounced away from him in indignation and walked fast towards
school swinging out her hands as if she were trying to take wing. The
inhuman, furious look on her face frightened the young man. He thought
that the horse he had been trying to break was a very stubborn and
difficult creature. Throughout the day, she did not speak a single word
with him; she even did not look at him. Manel continued her silent
protest against her tormentor for a whole week.
On the first day of the following week, she spoke to him as if
nothing had happened. Both of them were cautious not to drop a word
about the incident. Within a matter of few days, the status quo was
restored without any effort on the part of each party. In spite of their
bickerings, tiffs and squabbles, the camaraderie between them remained
intact. Days accumulated into weeks, weeks into months and months into
years, in this way time passed by.
One afternoon, the pair was returning home by train which was not
crowded as usual and they were gaily engaged in a spicy tittle-tattle in
a corner of the train compartment while the train chugged on rocking the
occupants and lulling them into a state between sleep and wakefulness.
Manel was sweating heavily and perspiration trickled down her neck which
she wiped on her handkerchief from time to time. All at once, Upali
snatched the hanky from her and said:
“I can keep this as a keepsake from you”.
At this, she got extremely wild with anger and kept on looking at her
torturer steadily. Instantly, all hell broke loose.
“How can you say it is a keepsake from me? You grabbed it from me.
Give it back.”
“No, I won’t give the hanky back. I want to keep it with me. I take
it wherever I go and keep it under my pillow when I go to bed.”
Biting her lower lip, Manel pounced upon the young man like a tigress
after her prey. She grabbed his hand that gripped the handkerchief and
tried with all her might in a desperate attempt to retrieve the piece of
cloth, but she was not equal to the task. Very easily, Upali shook her
away. Getting more and more angry and furious, at her failure, Manel got
hold of her handbag and hurled it at him. It struck him heavily on the
shoulder and bounced out of the train through the open window.
“My identity card, money and railway season ticket are all gone. All
this happened because you played an idiotic prank on me.”
She exploded trembling with great agitation and frenzy.
“It was all your fault. Why did you make a big fuss for no reason?
Don’t worry; we have almost reached the station. Let’s walk back when
the train stops and pick it up.”
After recovering the handbag with its contents, Upali suggested they
should have cool-drinks as it was very warm in the airless afternoon and
they were thirsty. Manel agreed without a word of protest which
surprised the young man.
They went into a cafe and sat at a small, circular table and ordered
two cool-drinks. They were in close proximity to each other so much so
that Upali felt her warm breath on his face. Her arms lay stretched
towards him with the delicate fingers spread out like long petals of a
flower touching the table-top. She had very shapely hands that forked
into long slender fingers whose tips ornamented with pinkish nails.
Upali looked into her long eyes. They were beautiful too; but vacant and
looked weary. Both of them were silent while they waited for the
refreshments to arrive.
“Very often I wonder we must have been husband and wife in our
previous births. That’s why we always fight and keep on getting friendly
again and again!”
To his great surprise, she kept mum about what he had said.
Usually, they would wait daily for a long time at the railway station
for their train to arrive. In this particular afternoon, they waited for
the train, seated on a bench.
A young couple walked towards them from the far end of the platform.
The young female was at an advanced stage of pregnancy and she waddled
slowly with some difficulty.
“Can you make out of this couple? They used to sit on the bench at
the very end of the platform talking and continuously holding the hands
of each other.”
“Heavens! Now I can remember them. The girl was very thin like a
pencil those days. She has put on lot of flesh.”
“Because she is very happy after marriage.”
“She may be very happy. But.... what I can clearly see is, she cant
even walk prop erly with her heavy burden of happiness!”
Having said that, she laughed aloud at her own repartee.
“By the way, I have almost forgotten to tell you about a dream I have
had recently.”
“What’s it?”
“I dreamed you and I were walking abreast somewhere close to a
beautiful lake. It was a brightly moonlit night. You were in a pure
white saree with the hair falling down your back, like silver threads.
How charming you looked! An angel from heaven!
“So, what else?”
Laughing lightheartedly and nonchalantly she asked. Encouraged by her
unusual interest in the dream, he continued.
“Never shall I forget that fantastic dream. You looked extremely
attractive. I don’t know how to describe.....”
“What happened next?”
“After walking a little distance along the waterside, I took your
hand. The moment I touched you, you disappeared, in a flash.”
“You are off your head..... I suppose!”
She broke into mirths of laughter which she would do very rarely.
After the vacation, on the re-opening day of the school, Manel waited
impatiently in the staff room to meet Upali. All the other members of
the staff had already left the room after tea, but Upali had not turned
up. She thought he must be taking a few minutes longer to finish a
lesson. Manel felt very uneasy and nervous when at last she saw Upali
through the open window, walking hurriedly towards the staff room.
All of a sudden, she had grown physically and mentally weak. Her
heart started beating in a violent flutter. With a broad smile on his
face, he burst into the room. She felt like running away from him.
Instead, she poured tea into a cup, with tremulous hands and offered it
to him which she did for the first time.
In her hands, the cup and the saucer clattered noisily. This surprise
made Upali look full into the countenance and saw tenderness and
yielding in her eyes that gazed caressingly at him from under her eye
lashes.
Upali experienced great satisfaction as a hypnotist does, who has
succeeded at last, by bringing an adamant subject under a trance, after
many lengthy sessions of hypnotic suggestions. However, the young woman
reconciled herself with the primeval instincts of life by shedding her
childhood inhibitions and yielding to the demand of nature and in the
end, found contentment and solace in harmony with her soul. |
