[Fiction]
Martha sighed. Then she turned with a controlled calmness upon Gretta and smiled. "Here take this", she said and shuffled a tenner into her eager hand, then clasped it with her own wrinkled palm. "And this is the last of them, alright" ? Gretta's own contorted face transformed into an ice-candy bliss as she nodded her way out of Martha's grip and drifted across the hall to disappear into infinity. The tapping sound of her scampering feet faded into silence. The room was now empty.
Martha reflected for a minute, feeling the empty hallway assert its solidity around her like a presence, then returned to her knitting while the rocking armchair creaked in its familiar obtrusive fashion. For her own part, she had no regrets. She had never evaded responsibility.
There might have been some simpler, some less onerous tack around everything. When she looked in the mirror, and saw her hair grey, her cheek sunken, at seventy, her skin shriveled up like fabric - only it wasn't smooth; no, her eyes still sparkled - they were tired, yes, and for reasons that she did not feel the need to recall, they had lost their energy down to the marrow of her bones, but they still seemed to brew for themselves a quiet expectation - a distinct sparkle; but above and beyond her appearance, she thought, possibly she might have managed things better - her husband, money, the children, another life perhaps, if such a thing were possible.
These thoughts sounded as if they were floating like flowers on water, outside, and she looked out of the window to make sure no one had said them. The clear blue sky was falling, fading into the distance as far as the eye could see, and the soft pleats of the green dunes of meadow with flowing grasses on them ran zigzag into another world - like a fairy tale.
This is the view, she remembered, stopping, that her husband had loved.
Even today, she failed to hold him in compassion. And her children, they were so critical of him themselves. Less so, after they had moved out, one by one, to become people of the world - their present lives taking over their already forgotten, hazy childhood and past - her daughters, who could sport with infidel ideas were experiencing a wilder life, in Rome, in Paris, always elsewhere, always away from home, not always taking care of some man or other, not for more than a week or two, they had always been so mute in his stern face and out of her lifelong deference.
It was not his appearance that they minded; it was not his expression; not even his mannerisms. It was him. If there was anything to talk about - music, sport, anything, even if one were to comment on the weather, their father would turn the whole conversation round and round till he had either drunk himself to death or slapped someone, and he was never satisfied. They had learned to adapt themselves, suppress their urges only to avoid the unpleasantness of it all, but strife, prejudices, disaffection permeated the very fiber of their being and they grew up with acid in their hearts.
When they left, their bitterness was gone and when they came back much later, she saw in their eyes, the interest of her story had died away in them. To everybody there was this sense of calling for home, simply because they were so far away from it. Their own lives had enough freedom in it for them to welcome any sort of restraint. Now all she could be wise enough to do would be to succumb to the wishes of her grandchildren when they appealed for candy.
No, she thought, as the needles lay stationary in her withering, ancient hands, No, she said aloud, shaking her head from side to side, trying to feel the need to forgive. Children forget.
She did not want to think about anybody. She wanted to be alone; to let the silence grow in her mind and surround her recesses till she could hear nothing from the outside world. A dark wedge-shaped corner where she could bury everything she wanted to till it lost itself to another world - and the only sound she could hear would be of her own blood singing - her own heart calling. When we chose to be silent, to be alone, we realised that nothing ever lasted - not happiness, not life, not death, not sorrow. The real differences between people lay far far away, elsewhere, where there were enough differences already, and there was enough noise and enough of all of it. Beneath all that is dried and shrunken, it is all dark, like a layer, unfathomably deep, and the whole world lies above it; it is what you see us by when we reveal ourselves, when we rise above it.
All her roads had ended here. Here, at the altar of her household - at the porch, at the driveway - at the garden where old chrysanthemums and lilies blossomed in their profound imbuement with her dead sweat and hands. All of the pictures she carved out - a red lawnmower, a wheelbarrow, the refrigerator, leaves withering before the rain, the tobacco, Acacia with their whistling thorns, poplar trees - the wind rustling them - indefinitely, they would remain with her forever, and with a sense of limitlessness that grows on someone when their life has become invisible - even to themselves - a limitlessness that defies their age and makes them want to go to all the places they've never seen - push aside the thick rustic curtains of an isolated ranch and exult in themselves for the sheer happiness of a solitary freedom - an ended journey which has only just begun, so that one having shed one's attachments was set free for atypical adventures. She sat upright, adjusted her spectacles, and continued knitting.
None of that. Well, that too, but it wasn't the point. When life sank down to your sole existence, the range of possibilities seemed infinite. Was it wisdom? Was it knowledge? Heck, you had to live only for yourself.