Why Did You Not Stop Me? Why did you not stop me? ======================== It was the third day of the eighth month of that year. It was raining all day and the weather was just too damp both inside as well as outside the bar. Peter had seen many such rains from inside his bar throughout last forty odd years he had been here. Initially he used to come here with his father only on the weekends. He would sit at a corner and would see many, many strange people, all so very different from each other coming into the bar and getting out of it. And it was since then that he got used to watch people. Merely looking at people told him their entire story. And he was proud as it was only he in the damn big world who could look at someone and tell the entire story of that person. He came true almost always. Only sometimes he missed the intricate nature of the people he was studying and the hidden secrets of their being. Yes, he missed only sometimes a long ago, as now he did not have that caliber, he would think. Somewhere he knew that no longer had he the capacity or the desire to know people from what they do and what they seem like! Though it was sad for him, he had been experiencing this thing since many years now. Well, not many though, but it surely was there for a very long time! He realized this only when he was terribly mistaken after looking at those eyes, he could not actually fathom into their depths. He could not actually understand the emotions hidden in them. He could not actually look in them the tenderness of that lady. He could not actually recognize the innocence that they carried with them. Oh! This must have had happened somewhere in my last life, he would think sometimes. But actually it is not so old a story. Only twelve years back, it was exactly such a day on which she had come. Well, truly speaking, it was not a day. It was very late in the evening that she had stepped into the doors of this bar. Wearing a short bright orange gown, with her black curled hair dripping water throughout, with no umbrella or a raincoat in that windy rainy night, with a bag which she would carry for the rest of the days, she had come in. He still remembered how everyone had looked towards the door at the same time when she had arrived. How all the lusty eyes present in the bar got studded at the same place, all together, when she had tried to shed water from her damp hair, without noticing her surroundings. With long lashes and hazel eyes, Margarita seemed a damsel just arrived from some foreign land. This may be an exaggeration but Peter knows, by God, how beautiful and breathtaking she looked at that moment. How could men resist such temptations on the bloody earth! Everyone had only one question in their thoughts. Who the hell that man was in relation to her who accompanied her? Well! Though it seemed not very necessary as a business, men there wanted to know if she was single. They wanted to know if they could go to her and talk to her once, if they could touch her once by her permission or on the pretext of something else! They wanted to know if … Enough! And she had allowed all of them! What a whore she is! Peter had thought about her then. She went on smiling at all, who came one by one and talked to her. Being in that bar Peter had known the intentions of most of the men who came there. He also knew of the intentions that women kept when they entered that bar. And everything is being said about that particular bar. He could have not thought as much if she were to go to a bar in the main crossing just a mile ahead. But now as she had come to his bar, he knew not what might have brought her here! Though famous throughout the city in its own rights, Peter’s bar had its own dark secrets. He had never been to a brothel. Not that in his younger days he never had wanted to visit any! He clearly remembered how one evening some of his friends had a great plan to booze and visit one at the end of the city. He, though not very supportive for this, had not been able to go simply because he had drunk too much even to stay conscious. While his friends enjoyed the night long, as they said the next morning on meeting, he slept a dreamless sleep. This was long ago. Now he catered to for such men and women who had the same intentions. Initially he surely was amazed by the kind of businesses that people dealt there on the pretext of a drink. Now this same thing has been driving him crazy though. Men and women from the creamier part of the society had always come there. And sometimes Peter wondered if this old city was intentionally planned to be so! How this bar was placed to the side of the city just opposite to the area where the people who came here had their residences! How all the men and women who came here on business plans, just to have a drink and just for an informal meeting had strange hidden intentions. While these intentions seemed so very appropriate for businesses outside the bar, he knew how carnal they became once they got in! Men of all ages – successful businessmen in their limousines, the less successful men in other fields, army personnel, men struggling to have their own hold in the society, and the young adolescent good-for-nothing sons of those very successful men – all had come here at one time or the other. And women, of course, the objects of affection and attraction, competition and repulsion among men, how could they not be a fare of all this? They certainly were there. Peter would very clearly understand a particular business plan as soon as he would see the lady and her boss, or the lady boss and the man, or the chancellor’s son and his neighbor’s wife or any such combination. He was destined to continuously look at all of this as, he believed, this is something that he had, sometime in his adolescence thought about uninterrupted – of flesh and desires. He would then appreciate the men who slept with more than one woman! How he would look with lust at the women who were seen and heard of, with more than one man! But now he knew how indispensable all these things were to the society. Now he had it all live in front of him, he no longer had to keep any track of the latest affairs, as they sprouted from his very own place. He knew the people who came to his bar were hungry. They were hungry for everything but food. They wanted many things in their lives, many things which actually they had in plenty. Men wanted more women and women wanted more men. Men would want every good looking woman who happened to cross by and still would look for more and women were not far behind! Only that they looked wealth and fame in addition to the looks! He believed somewhere in his heart, that when actually the basic needs of a human gets fulfilled, he or she begins to carve for more needs beyond the basic mental satisfaction. They no longer want things, but what they do is simply desire. And he noticed this very desire in the eyes of all men in the bar the evening he saw Margarita for the first time. He remembered very well how the murmurs and empty laughs had all of a sudden dropped down only to begin again, slowly. And how he actually was bit confused for why she had come to such an infamous place as this! Could such a beautiful soul as hers ever have to be here? He had though then! And the man who accompanied her was none other that Beck, the son of the marvelously rich businessman who had just come from abroad after completing his studies. He is a good soul, he believed till then. But that evening Peter had lost all his sense of judging people. So he had to think otherwise. It is now that he often smiles at his observations and wrong conclusions of that evening when he thinks about it. Margarita accepted all the greetings any man gave her. She was entirely new to this environment but she was drunk. Her eyes said it – she was drunk! And what else could be the need to come to a bar after one is drunk? He had thought that evening looking at her. But why, when she had a handsome man of her age to spend the night. Peter had looked at Margarita and Beck and believed they made a good couple. Somewhere in his heart he had a small prayer for her, he did not know why. Peter did not know why, but he wanted Margarita to be happy and so wanted her out of the bar, just by looking at her for an evening, his heart was so moved at her pristine charm. What a complicated emotion – having a soft corner for the girl whom you hate for what she is doing! Then he saw her going out. But Beck was not with her this time. She was with the officer he had seen with many women, never the same twice. And he almost forgot her as she was gone, busy handling more people as time passed by. It is since then that he had seen her coming into the bar, never alone. And then she also would leave the bar but not alone! There was just someone or the other who was constantly with her. Then sometimes she would not come for weeks and months together and he would get worried. But then she would arrive again to the same place. Peter would feel relieved but sad at the same time for her. Then Beck would also come once in a while to see her at the bar, with his wife. He actually had eventually turned out to be a good soul. One winter early in the morning, she had come alone. And there was no one in the bar. Though the bar is almost closed during the mornings Peter allowed her to come in and offered her a gin. She sat there alone. Speaking nothing, well there was no one to speak to. But why, Peter was there. She could have begun a conversation, but she did not and Peter went and asked her as bold as he could – who are you and why do you come here? She looked up almost startled. He cleared his throat and asked again – are you waiting for someone? “Well! yes I am”, she said in her thin frail voice. Peter sat down in front of her despite her almost invisible resistance. He wanted to know her. He wanted to understand her story and clarify all the conflicting notions he had made about her in all these years! He could not live in that turmoil anymore. He was going to speak up everything now. “I am waiting for a friend of mine. He had long ago gone abroad. I have not seen him since then. Actually we were not even in contact. But suddenly he called me up and informed me of his arrival. I do not know from where he got my number, but I assume it must be Beck. Well! I hope you know Beck”, she said. Peter nodded in affirmation. She went on, “I know it will be a bit awkward for us to meet after so many years, and that is why I have come here and asked him to be here. A familiar place you see! I know that you are not opened in the mornings but just wanted to take a small advantage of the soft corner you have for me!”, she smiled and then took a sip. She smiled with heavy eyes and lips. He saw that she was trying to look happy and shadow her emotions. And Peter sat there dumbstruck, for the first time short of words. She had told everything such swiftly that he was now lost – floating in something that surely was not reality. But he managed to come back soon. Back to understand that, years of meeting with strange people and so many of them throughout these years, has actually made her so fluent in talking and may be speaking her heart. She spoke effortlessly. And what more, she knew of what he felt for her, damn she knew it. She had observed and known people as well and may be better than him. And in all what he thought, he did not notice that the man she had been waiting for had come. Standing beside him, he looked straight into her eyes and she reciprocated. Peter moved with a jerk from the chair and made place for the man. She too stood after a brief moment. “Hello Matthew”, she said. She had honeyed his name so much that it seemed diabetic to Peter now. “Have a seat sir”, he said and moved away to the counter asking their excuse and leaving them together, as he felt heavily awkward standing there. And he listened to both of them. He listened to the silence they were sitting in and he listened to the heavy eyes with which they were looking towards each other trying to be cheerful. “Its been a long time we have met Margarita”, Peter heard him speaking in his deep brawny baritone. She cleared her throat and said in a frail voice, “yes Matthew, I was here in this town all this long. I thought you will never return.” He gave a smile, his tights lips showing a little curl, his eyes blinking much lesser now, as if he was observing something deep, something really of his interest. She showed a blush and sipped one more time. But the blush could not hide the ocean in her eyes. She tried to look down silently. But a drop rolled down her cheeks. “Cold you see”, she tried to reason. Meanwhile Peter served Matthew with a glass of vodka. “You are wearing the same thing you wore in the party last time we saw each other Margarita”. “You remember?” “Of course I do!” And only then did Peter notice the bright orange gown she was wearing and remembered the first time he had seen her. That was a brilliant evening. “The party was good. We had so much to enjoy.” “Was it so Margarita?”, he asked in a different, rough tone now. “Why? Oh yes, we were happy and … “ “And we were parting.” “Aaa…nd then I met Beck in that party. He has been such a good friend to me in all these years, you know!” “I was going away that night. Away from you, don’t know for how long.” “Well… Have you seen Beck’s son? Oh he is so cute … “, she said to change the topic. “And still you did not speak out. You drank so much that evening. But still you kept yourself locked!”, He spoke his voice a bit raised now. A brief moment of silence prevailed. Matthew was provoking her to speak up. He now wanted to hear what probably he had not heard that day. Peter could hear Margarita breathing faster and heavier. The silence between them seemed as a precursor to a volcano of emotions that was going to erupt. “You knew about this place right?”, she asked. “What? This place? Yes I did.” “And you knew that I was drunk right?” “I could feel it even from a distance Margarita!” “Then why did you not stop me when I spoke to you, of coming here with Beck?”, she asked with a shrill sobbing voice and broke down. He held her hands and knelt down on her side. “I did not know about it Margarita. I was not sure about you feelings” “My feelings? Damn, I loved you. That was my feeling. I love you.”, she did not raise her head. “Had you ever tried to know about my feelings for you till then Matthew? But I tried to know each and every detail about you from Beck. I did not have words. I could not see you moving away from me that way, just after a farewell! I could not tolerate you leaving me alone. And that is why I drunk that evening Matthew. Did you not know that I did not touch alcohol before that?” “But I thought …” “You thought? You thought what? That I was crazy enough to drink and try to sleep with your good friend Beck? That when he said no, I would force him to take me to a bar, just like that? And as if that was not enough I would find men to spend my nights with them all these years? Did you think that Matthew? Did you think I am a slut Matthew?” He could not hold any more. He could not listen any more. He did not want any more time to be wasted, much had already been. He turned her head and kissed her hard on the lips. And she did it with even a greater force. The chair tumbled and she fell on him. But their lips remained locked. She had waited for this moment since past ten long years. “I Love You Margarita,” he said looking into her eyes. He kept a bill on the table not looking at it, lifted her and took her out. Their lips still locked, their bodies cuddling each other, and their souls uniting. Peter neither heard of Margarita and Matthew nor did he ever see them after that morning. But he vowed never to judge anyone then on as it was really painful.
Copyright © 2005 Animesh Kar |