Roses Stained With Blood
Short story published with Nari, a magazine published by Popy Chowdhury from NY, USA.
Full story :
“Extramarital affair…my husband is no longer mine; he’s having an affair. It could not be!” Dina kept repeating to herself as tears gushed and streamed down her cheeks. She clenched her hands and hit her head as if to stop the cruel revelations racing in her mind. But like a siren, an eerie wail rang through her whole being, “ Affair…affair…”. She tried convincing herself that it was all a lie, but the truth did not come with choices. In her hands were the pictures of Rana, her husband, with an unknown woman, his lover. She wanted to burn the photo with Rana’s cigarette lighter that lay on the dresser beside her, but she did not. She needed to hold on to it for proof. Every time she looked at the scarlet lipstick of that woman stretching out in her husband’s lap at some beach; she hated them both all the more. Where and when had he gone to a beach with that women?
After spending a sleepless night, Dina tossed and turned on her pillow, trying to keep her sanity. Rana had left early for work that day, long before the sun was up. Her chest was heavy with anger and sadness. Her heart felt like a shattered china piece. How could a peaceful, happy family be shattered so suddenly? Where did Rana meet that woman? For how long he had been deceiving Dina? Endless questions bombarded her thoughts like tornadoes and shattered her peace. She could not think straight anymore, her mind whirled with shock, like a storm threatening to uproot her married life. Sadness descended like a dark, night sky upon her senses, and Dina felt numb all over. She stared up at the vast sky through the window of her bedroom and felt as aimless as the floating clouds up there. She[TC1] wondered if the sky had answers to her questions, Why do men cheat, why? Where had she fallen short so that the void had to be fulfilled by another woman, and who was she, anyway?”
An inner voice seemed to supply her with some answers, or were they dialogues she had heard from the movies? “An unfaithful scoundrel… he is having sex with another woman because men are like dogs! Who was she?’ Dina was shouting at the walls of her room, all the hate dialogues she could not tell Rana then, poured into the silence of her room. “Does it matter who the woman is, or how he met her?” She asked herself.
As she looked around her bedroom, the place that had held love and happiness so far, she was devastated. The room had turned into hell. She got up from the bed, closed the windows and pulled the curtains as if shutting the daylight out would stop some of her pain. Dina sat on her bed, disdainfully looking at the photos hanging on the walls, and some on her bedside table. There were Rana and herself, on their wedding day. The happiness written on their faces in the frames suddenly whispered of tears and death. Photos of their honeymoon, vacations and the day they became parents of their firstborn; the eighteen years of their married life in pictures stared back at her like an unhappy tapestry. Dina stared at the lavender walls, the ceiling, the room decors around her, all were winking at her, playing a cruel joke. Soon, another woman will be sleeping with your husband in this room. They all seemed to be shouting.
The well-furnished bedroom was suffocating Dina. How could Rana have played his roles as a good husband, and all the time been cheating on her? Was their bed not the place where she had waited for Rana almost every night, bathed and perfumed? How she had stayed up deep into the late hours of the night, waiting for him to finish his so-called ‘business deals’? And all that time he was spending time with that other woman and then come to her, claiming to be impatient for her? Oh, how ugly!. Dina felt as if she had given herself to a monster, sold herself to a demon. She had failed to see beneath the cover of his good looks and sugarcoated manners.
It seemed that it was only the other day, it was their eighteenth marriage anniversary, and she had cut the cake with Rana. Only a few days back too she felt grateful for having Rana as her husband. And then, there she was, hating the shadow of him and feeling like getting a gun and shoot him, point blank.
She had never imagined that she would feel like murdering someone. But life changes people in unimaginable ways. Betrayals and murders had so far been fictional to her. Those are things which one reads about in the newspapers, watched movies in the theaters. How could this happen to her? Dina could vision newspaper reports: “Unfaithful husband kills the wife.” Would be a picture of her with her gun? Would anyone be able to understand how deep the wound in her heart was even if she did kill Rana? Horrible thoughts and yet revenge could be worth for the blow he had given her.
As Dina’s eyes moved around her room, seeing all the pictures hanging on the walls with a new light. All of them held lively images of her family, of the only teenaged daughter, Mita, Rana and herself. At that moment they looked like pieces taken from somebody else’s album. Mita, so soft and loving, holding Rana’s hand in the picture was far away in the U.S. A., And yet, that same father had broken the trust of his wife and their only child.
***
A few days back, while Dina sat reading in her living room, a phone call had changed the eighteen years were burnt out of her life. Dina recalled the day when she had learned of Rana and the other woman. The call came from an unknown male voice.
“Hello, Mrs, Rana do you know where your husband goes in the name of his business?” the voice on the other end had inquired. It was a male voice, fresh and confident. “ I wonder if he told you about his affair with a young girl of his daughter’s age?”
Dina did not believe a word the voice was telling her from the other end. “If you are an enemy of Rana you don’t have to tell me about my husband’s character.” She had said. “Why, he is just like a saint. I know his success in business brings many enemies.” She added.
There had been loud laughter at the other end, and the voice had come again,
“Saint? Why a real saint would have a heart attack if he heard you. Listen I see your husband with a lady every day. Her name is Maya, and she works in a bank. Want some proof? ”
Then, the young man’s voice at the other end had given her an address and asked her to meet him. At first, Dina had thought maybe it was a trap. But and then as he went on describing what Rana had worn, where he had been for the whole past week she felt confused. The man had the correct descriptions of Rana and the clothes he had worn. She had then gone to the place as arranged and there she was handed over the pictures. The informer had a black handkerchief tied on the lower part of his face to hide his features.
“Listen,” the young man had said, when he called to make sure she had seen the pictures, “ I’m the ex-boyfriend of Maya, your husband’s lover. You see she dumped me over him. The first day I saw your husband with Maya, I became suspicious and followed them. I don’t know what she saw in that man, old enough to be her father. It’s just money; you see your husband is showering her with gifts all the time. But just thought I should let you know..”
Dina had stood frozen after she had opened the envelope containing the photos of Rana and the other woman. Looking at the photos in which her husband was involved in shameless acts with his new woman, she just wondered how the young man had gotten those shots. Or was all that a planned blackmail by Maya and the young man who was pretending to be helping Dina? Rana looked like a grandfather beside that vivacious, young creature, all painted and wearing sexy clothes. ***
It was quite late at night, and as usual, Dina was waiting for Rana to come home from his so-called,“ Business dealings.” She stood in front of the mirror, looking at her reflection. Yes, she was older, less desirable to her husband for sure, but she had been beautiful in her youth. Fair, tall and with those sharp features of hers, she had men staring after her. Were all men like that, was physical appearance the only thing that mattered to them? What about the family bliss, the married life they had shared all these years and the love affair from school life? Was that all just a matter of show? Had Rana been unfaithful to her at other times too? Trust crumbled like sandpiles all around her. Dina was crestfallen; she felt like a fool to have trusted him. How could two people share the roof and be strangers without knowing each other at all?
As she stared at her reflection in the mirror, her body felt dirty. Dina wished she could wash away all memories it held of Rana, she felt so dirty and used. Suddenly she could see things beyond her vision: the perfect husband, all the gifts, so many kisses and hugs every time they met. Why he had been the ‘too perfect’ a husband. Why had she never been suspicious before?
But and then who can imagine that things happening in the newspapers could happen in one’s own life? Extramarital affairs are supposed to happen to people who are far away from her, in movies, but not to her! Dina had never thought that truth could be so much stranger than fiction.
As Dina waited for Rana to come home, tears welled in her eyes, and at times she sobbed like a lost child. Then, just around midnight, she heard his car in the driveway, and after a few minutes later he entered their bedroom. He held a bouquet of fresh, white roses, just as she liked them. To Dina, Rana’s manly, handsome features were like a devil at that moment. His polished ways, his handsomeness that she loved so much, fell away like a snake shedding its skin.
“Sorry to keep you up darling, you should not be waiting for me.” He was saying with his usual quizzical smile as he bent to give her his usual kiss. Dina had a vision of him kissing that other woman, in the same way, and with more passion. She wished she had a knife in her hand to drive it through the deceiving rascal. And in her mind, she could hear echoes of, “Affair….affair…the affair, he is having an affair.”
Then Dina imagined of newspapers with reports reading, “Wife kills husband for cheating.” And she thought of her pictures in the stories. Just then as Rana came and his arms encircled her, and as his lips were about to close down upon hers, she moved away. In their eighteen years of married life, it was the first time she had rejected his act of love and that she did not thank him for the flowers. She could no longer think straight for with just his presence, Rana was driving an invisible dagger through her heart, again and again; he was killing her. The flowers he held out to her were like a bouquet of knives, coming to stab her.
Dina breathed with difficulty, were the walls around suffocating her? She felt driven towards the kitchen drawer that held the butcher knives; she needed to deliver justice to the liar and the cheat. Rana stared at her moving figure, undecided and fearful of an unsettling air around them. Just as Dina’s hands touched the knife in the drawer, she had a sudden vision of the white roses and Rana. The roses were covering his body, and the soft petals were white no more, but red and splattered with blood.
Her thoughts crowded with more unanswered questions as her hands held a knife firmly, ready to strike. If she did take justice in her hands and got the knife into that betrayer, she would get her punishment, no doubt. But what about the emotional murder Rana had committed, that had killed life out of her? Life stared at Dina with two kinds of deaths, an invisible one within her, and one that would be visible with white roses covered with blood.
End
Tulip Chowdhury writes from Massachusetts, USA.
