Chapter 1
Wine Love
1
Concerning the days I thought of as a spring that had never spoken until then.
A harsh, gloomy downpour from a distant rain is on the verge of crashing down onto the earth. Yet, already, the heart has fallen prey to a storm far more ferocious than any rainfall. And so, I write like this,
“Flowers bloom in every season of life
In the deep snow, snowdrop flowers bloom
In the scorching drought, cactus flowers bloom
Whether we like it or not, flowers bloom in life
Flowers bloom in life.”
Is this the end of the drought? The end of spring? Or the end of all seasons? No, it is the beginning of the storm season.
Suddenly, I felt like telling you how I think about love. I chose to speak of this because of my curiosity to know if you, too, view love in the exact same way I do. For what I have been thinking of as love all this time might not be love at all. I will leave a small blank space for you here; if you can, please tell me about what you have perceived as love up until now.
This blank space is for you, ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
I cannot force you to be honest. But I can ask you to be honest. Wherever I am, I will be watching you, because I do not know what kind of thing you mean by love. Since I cannot speak of love alone as a woman who experiences love, separation, and bereavement equally with a balanced mind I shall tell you about love and separation as they felt to me.
If it is love, it is just that. You must remember how the feeling of love is from the day it begins. Yes, can you even imagine the weight you would feel if a massive boulder were brought and placed right in the middle of your chest? I call love that feeling which carries a weight equal to that very burden.
Then, what of separation and bereavement? I call them the soil particles that succeed in slowly breaking this massive boulder into pieces, piercing through and sinking deep into the heart. Any boulder is subject to nature. With time, even boulders are bound by the law of landslides. So, from then on, you might ask what a grain of sand matters to a heart pierced and buried under shattered boulders. Yet, how that agony of crying under the weight of those pierced, buried boulder pieces was endured is something I still recall with a long, disappointed sigh of broken hopes—remembering that this was once a heart crushed and bruised even by a mere grain of sand or a particle of soil.
Spring came without an invitation. But what a fortune it was to catch even a mere glimpse, a passing glance of that spring! I truly love the time I thought so. Up to this moment, I cannot give a definitive reason for that love becoming deeply rooted in my heart. I believe that if it is love, it is just that.
“My darling little Disney. What are you doing here?”
“Mom, Aunt Sweeny is here and she is calling you.”
“Go play with Nili, daughter, I will come.” Handing over the teddy bear that had fallen on the floor, I walked out to the living room.
If Sweeny came here to comfort me, that will never happen. Why have one party to break the heart and another party to comfort it? This is a very bad joke. If those who ruined my heart do not need to comfort my heart, then I, too, do not need comforting words from others. Thinking this way, I stood up from my chair to meet Sweeny. Sweeny is the sister of my husband, Mac Jacob. Leaving my bedroom door half-closed, I went to the living room to meet Sweeny.
“Viney,” she started the conversation, suddenly placing her hands upon mine.
“I am no longer anyone’s Viney, just Winter Babel,” I began to speak from my heart.
I did not utter a single word to her. Though tears began to speak instead of words, I hid them. I no longer wanted to share anything with anyone.
“Viney, Sera is still a little child, you must forgive her.” I felt as if Mac was also taking her side, because I had seen him chatting with Sweeny before I arrived. I instantly cast an impatient glance. Perhaps my anger leaked out through my face. They became silent. I turned back and returned to my room.
I write again.
Up to this moment, I cannot give a definitive reason for that love becoming deeply rooted in my heart. I believe that if it is love, it is just that. Though people say that the love which can never be forgotten in this world is the first love, according to my experience, the unforgettable love in this world is the love that was truly felt by the heart. I am not saying this based on recent experiences. I say this through the experiences of three or four love stories.
I felt my first love was too far out of reach. Since he was an uncle by kinship, I say that I loved him with my mind while watching with my eyes, and then let him go. Even though I say it like that in writing, my heart knows that is not the truth. Uncle Stephen though he was a relative uncle, there was only an age gap of between seven to ten years between him and me. In those days, how many times did even kisses feel like a strange, wondrous magic?
There are so many such secrets among school students. There were lovers’ secret kisses, trips taken hidden from home, wearing rings made of flowers and marrying from the heart instead of marrying legally, exchanged secret messages, and exchanged gifts. They were innocent love stories. They had innocent dreams. But that is not the nature of age-inappropriate relationships.
The ultimate outcome of age-inappropriate love relationships is unwanted pregnancies, suicides, abandonment, and for a very few, marrying well and building up their life path. The nature of all age-inappropriate love relationships might not be like this. I only stated what I saw and what I heard.
I was a young girl of about twelve or thirteen years old, and my uncle was a young man of about twenty or twenty-one years old. He was not my mother’s brother. He was an uncle by distant kinship. He was someone who frequently visited our house. While he was coming to my house to play with me, a love developed between us.
The gap in experience between the two of us was very different. Yes, it was so. By that time, what I knew as love was placing a kiss upon the cheek, walking while holding hands, wearing a flower ring and saying “you belong to me,” and exchanging gifts. No one suspected him or me being left alone because they thought we were children. But my uncle’s vision of love was in a completely different state than what I had imagined.
One day, after returning from school, he looked at a doll of mine in my room and, without looking at me, said that he needed me. I thought he said it because of love. But it did not take long to realize that it was not so. I remember him telling me one day about blue movies, or rather, pornographic films. I listened to it very enthusiastically because such things were fancy novelties for that age. I told these little secrets to my friends as well.
That day, he must have been trying to experiment using me with the things he saw in pornographic films. He turned me around, began to kiss me like crazy, started to remove my clothes, and began to kiss my lips deeply. He must have done it that way so that I wouldn’t be able to scream. But in my panic, my lips were wounded by his hand.
I began to cry very loudly, and he ran away. He never came to our house again. Being in a higher grade at school, he and I were strangers from that point on. There was a time when it was a question to me whether this was love or a relationship born out of curiosity. But it is no longer a question because at present, I have a mountain of problems to solve.
He didn’t even look at me from that incident onward. After this incident, my parents sent me to England for my education, and they never called me back to Sri Lanka. I, too, did not try to go there because my paternal relatives were here. I was merely surviving on the money sent by my parents.
Yet, even after that, I loved him in my mind for a long time. I used to think that the very first kiss a girl receives is given by her life partner, or rather, the groom standing next to the bride in weddings. I thought that if I were the bride, he would be my groom, and from then on, I began to love him from my heart.
But I say that the same feeling is never felt twice. On the day the growth of love in the mind stopped, oh my!!! Why did I do that? Why did I waste time for that? In the past, there were days, occasional days, when I thought that what he did to me was not love. Such is the way of broken hopes. So, I do not know if a first love is truly a romance. It must be after about twenty-five years that I even recalled it. I do not ask, nor do I look into whether he loved me.
This is about a love born during a childish time. What I understood from it is that the way each person views, seeks, and understands things changes according to their age and the experiences they receive. The first love story ended thus.
The second love story....
Knock.. Knock.. Hearing someone knocking on the door, I was startled.
“Viney, I need to talk to you for a moment. Open this door.”
Closing the book I was writing in great haste, I wiped my eyes with my hands as if waking from sleep, and came to open the door.
“Viney, forgive me if you were asleep. Let’s bring our daughter back, shall we? No matter what happened, she is our child, let’s forgive her.” When Mac said that, I instantly transformed into a she-demon.
“How much more am I to endure? Have you no shame? What kind of a father are you?!” I cried and wailed, pounding against his chest. Holding my hands tightly, he opened his mouth again after a few seconds.
“But she is our child, Viney.” Though he looked at me helplessly with eyes filled with tears, I felt anger rather than sorrow.
“You are the cause of all this, Mac.. Only you!” Freeing my hands from his grip, I pushed him out, and wept out loud again, and yet again.
Afterward, I heard children crying near my room door. Opening the door, I held them close too, and wept more and more. They cried, trying to comfort me. I cried, trying to comfort them. That day was a very long, frustrating day.
