Love, Distance, and Other Rituals

Chai

Boil some water with a chunk of ginger cut in slices, three cardamom pods and a sprinkle of pepper. Add tea, milk and honey. Let it simmer until the kitchen smells right.

Drink slowly.

                                                                  ~☆~

I've recently watched the new screen adaptation of Wuthering Heights, which I thought reduces the original story to eroticised melodrama. The sublime in Brontë's narrative -all those overwhelming extremes, from the landscape to Heathcliff's demonic behaviour, and Cathy's supernatural appearance after death- has been translated into sexual spectacle and visual flamboyance. Character development seems to have been buried somewhere beneath the raunchy scenes on the misty moors, the languishing women in lavish rooms, and the parade of visually striking dresses.

I was not impressed, and was left with the distinct feeling that I needed to cleanse my literary soul, which is why I picked up the novel again -for the third time. (Yes, I'm a serial reader of the classics.)

When I read it for the first time in my late teens, I got the impression it was the depiction of love in its purest form. Now, however, free from the rose-tinted glasses of adolescence, it took only a few pages to see that Catherine and Heathcliff's story of all-consuming passion is every bit as powerful as it is unsettling and dark. With this realisation came another: I've always had a penchant for hopeless love stories -a somewhat ridiculous personal affliction that I am slowly recovering from in my late thirties.

With these thoughts still in my mind, I sat down with a cup of chai on a slow Sunday afternoon, vaguely thinking of much less dramatic (and much more mundane) kinds of love that have nowhere to take root. My thoughts turned to distance. When love has nowhere to go, creating distance is a natural reaction. And yet, we sometimes make distance a ritual, finding ways to preserve it even as we reach out to touch its edges. *Sip of spicy chai*. What are these gestures, then? A way of marking the distance?

I'd wager that most people over thirty have come across at least some of the ways this contradiction materialises –a message, a letter, a song, a final encounter. I know I have. As they came drifting back to me, I stood up to make some more chai. 

The message

“Chau, blanca flor.”

He said it as he dropped her at the train station in his hometown. She'd come for the weekend and he'd shown her around with the enthusiasm of a local determined to show his city at its best. 

They had met years earlier in a hostel abroad, where they'd spent a few weeks in easy banter before going their separate ways. They kept in touch in the loose, undemanding way people do when they have no particular reason to remain in each other's lives, but no particular reason to disappear either.

A couple of years after the weekend visit, they happened to find themselves in the same country again. By then, however, a wilful reticence had settled over their friendship. They were both in relationships, busy with their own lives, and neither openly suggested meeting. Then, just before he left the country again -and put a few more thousand kilometres between them- he wrote: 

I’ll let you know when I’m about to leave. To be honest, I would have liked to see you. [...].

Talking to you really messes with my head, you know? And it’s not good for me. What can I do if you’re the person I want and the person I really want to be with, and yet I have no way of being with you? Now that I know I have no future with you, the only thing I can do to ‘forget you’ is cut off contact.

But little by little I get used to not speaking to you. And then, suddenly, for whatever reason, we start talking again and I go crazy all over again. [...]

I don’t want to cut you out of my life. I wish it were the opposite, that you were my life [...].

It makes me very sad to have to do this. You can’t imagine how much it hurts me to take you out of my life. I just want you to understand what I’m asking of you and why I want to do it...

Nine years on, he's married to his then girlfriend and has children. They still exchange birthday messages every year. 

The letter

“Stay another five minutes. We’re never going to see each other again.”

She said it as he stood up to leave. He stole a guilty glance, but seemed set on leaving. She walked him to the door and, just as he turned to leave, he remembered the letter.

They'd met backpacking a year before, and their short-lived relationship had lasted little more than the heat of summer. It was never going to work, but blinded by her feelings, she could not bring herself to walk away. Eventually, they went their separate ways and, by sheer chance, met again in a different part of the world.

This time, his nonchalant, noncommittal manner brought her to her senses. He would leave the country at any moment, and she had reasoned that if her feelings were real, they should elevate rather than diminish her; wishing for a different outcome was not going to change anything. So she printed the first photo they took together, sat in a café and wrote a note on the back.

Now, the night before his flight, after a brief and awkward goodbye, he asked for it. Curious, perhaps. He read it on his way home:

The universe can be so fickle –I don’t really understand how it weaves its threads, but I’m grateful that our paths crossed again.

[...] I realised that I love you as you are, with your doubts, cigarettes and horoscopes. I also realised that I’d been handling what I felt rather badly – perhaps because it was something new and different [...]

Now, letting go feels a little like one of the sunsets on the beach here: distant on the horizon, with those melancholy colours slowly fading as evening falls, leaving a quiet sense of peace in the air.

There have been very few times when a hug has brought me as much peace as the ones I’ve shared with you, and I’ll hold on to that memory. Wherever life takes you, may your steps be filled with that same peace.

Safe travels.

He'd refused to accept the letter when she first tried to hand it to him a few weeks before his departure, complaining it was a manipulative move. Now, rather taken aback by its content, he sent an 'I love you' message from a safe distance, along with other lines whose exact wording she has since forgotten.

They've never seen each other again, or had another meaningful exchange. 

The song

"I've written you a song"

Around Christmas, a quiet, unassuming teenager told his school friend about one of his guilty pleasures: watching Love Actually whenever it came on TV. His favourite part, he said, chuckling, was the confession with the cue cards.

She giggled, amused by his unexpected taste for a soppy romcom and rather delighted to have been let in on a secret.

“Don't tell the others, though. I'd never be able to live it down.” Over the years, it became a running joke between them: his “best film ever”.

Then, twenty years later, oceans apart and after a period of radio silence, he got in touch.

Hey, I’m A. -you used to tickle my ribs. Not sure what other clue I can give you.

He told her he knew it wasn't like him to write, but he wanted to know how she was and where in the world.

I wrote you a song... I hope you don’t take it the wrong way and don’t get a restraining order against me. Then again, I don’t even know where you live, and I have no intention of moving from where I live.

Your name doesn’t appear anywhere in the song, so don’t worry, I haven’t given you away. I hope you like it. If I make a fortune from this, I’ll give you a share of the royalties.

I know a song isn’t much, but if you’ll humour me, let’s pretend it’s my version of this ( he sent a photo of the scene of the cue cards). That way, I can be on a par with my favourite character, in the best scene, from the best film in the world, haha.

And with that, I bring this brief interruption to my self-imposed and non-negotiable silence to an end. Any further recurrence would spoil the magic.

Intrigued by the secret her school friend had kept from her for years, she listened to the song:

[…] Even though it’s late, I feel it burning,

and only cowards speak when there’s nothing left to lose.

I’m doing things right,

but time doesn’t change the fact that I miss you. [...]

She was amused, touched and slightly bewildered. She thought back to their years of friendship, wondering whether there had been clues she had simply failed to recognise. There probably had been, although none had seemed like clues at the time. 

He made his brief interruption and, true to his word, disappeared again.

The encounter

"When I can't sleep I think of your hand"

She came out of the house when she heard the car pull up outside. He'd insisted on handing over some document himself –unfinished business. He wouldn't get out of the car, so she got in and closed the door.

He couldn't drive anymore, and sat slightly tilted to one side. One of their daughters sat silently at the steering wheel, waiting. His broad frame looked strangely diminished to her.

“How are you doing?” she asked politely.

"Oh, just about managing –he said, stating the obvious–. The pain is relentless. I often have difficulty getting to sleep now, so I try to take my mind elsewhere. I think of when the girls were little, of us in the early days, of the scar on your hand.” 

His tone was unpretentious, matter-of-fact even. She hadn't anticipated such a reply and, for a heartbeat, was at a loss. She reached for his hand and squeezed it gently, then placed her own hand, with its old childhood scar, over his heart and said solemnly, “Your daughters love you, and I’m sending you all my good energy.”

He closed his eyes feebly, taking in her words.

After a pause that filled the air with a heavy sense of foreboding, he said he would tend to the matter he had come about once he recovered a little. She dutifully suggested paying him a visit sometime to check on him, seeing as he spent most of his time on bed rest, but he just smiled at this. He wouldn’t want to upset his partner.

They had divorced sixteen years before, after failing to recognise each other’s changing needs in the latter part of a 25-year marriage. His blind denial of the chasm that had opened up between them lasted longer than her independent spirit could bear, and when she finally moved out, he shut her out completely, refusing any contact and going on to build a new life soon afterwards. Eventually, his bitterness mostly subsided, yet not his adamant resolve to avoid any form of communication.

He'd been apprehensive about a meeting, but as his health deteriorated visibly, a new sense of urgency swelled up inside him, and he overcome his qualms. This was the first conversation in all that time, and it was brief.

 

They parted with a hug. She got out and closed the door gently. The gravel crackled when the car set off as she waved goodbye.

He passed away a month later.

My little cast-iron teapot is empty again. I take the last sip and let the cardamom settle at the bottom of my cup.