A Sense of Truth

By Mehreen Ahmed

 

I'The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being. In human relations, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths' Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter.

 

***

My bestie, Malita and I were having breakfast in our open balcony of our Paradise Island House in Polwi, when she startled me with a revelation.

“Truth cannot die, in my view, because, dying is not in its nature, no rhyme or reason. Elusive as it maybe, it is its job to find a way to reveal itself. However, how it does that is interesting. Especially, in the absence of concrete evidence, such as in the case of ‘he said, she said.’

“What do you mean by ‘he said, she said?” I asked.

Malita said. “Anything, any truth really, for instance, someone hitting a motor vehicle without a witness, or a child bullying another in a school playground without anyone noticing, any truth will find a way out.”

“Let’s deep dive to witness its path of revelation, then.”

“I can draw an example from my life,” Malita said.

“Say, do you want to go for a stroll in the garden?” I suggested.

“Sure,” she said.

As we strolled through the garden, Malita said, “my sojourn in Paris was an eye-opener. It taught me how we were never the makers of the Fates, yet, we believed that we were.”

“What happened in Paris?” I asked.

“I met a clairvoyant who was able to see somethings that I could not.”

“Mysterious, please do tell,” I said.

“Well, I was sitting in a park on a Parisian bright morning when someone came and sat down beside me. I looked at her and smiled. I realized, she was blind because she had a guide dog, a blind stick and dark goggles on. She told me that I was being unkind in my relationship because I had been feigning love all my life, all the sweet lies I had been telling my partner of twenty-two years that I loved him, when I did not. Security and separation anxiety were the primary reasons to be with him, not love.”

“He believed every one of my lies, were utterly convincing and comprehensible that they suppressed all faithful truths—crazy as it was, I thought, here she was, the clairvoyant for a reason, to tell me that truth will find its way out one day, and realisation would break this beautiful lie.”

“What lies do you tell your partner? Was the blind seer correct?”

“Yes and no. I feed him sweet lies everyday for breakfast, lunch and dinner that my life would end without him. I feel no concerns or dangers when he is around me. He fills me with joy and happiness.”

“Hmm, doesn’t he?” I said.

“No. Not at all. Then he buys me rubies, diamonds and sapphires.”

“Are you also having an affair?”

“No, I think I am incapable of love.

“What?” I asked.

“There’s more,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

“Well, his Mum got really sick one day. She went to a hospital where my friend worked as a nurse. Mum had a hipbone fracture from a fall. A surgeon operated on her and my nurse friend helped her during this entire time with post op physio and all. Without her help, she would not walk again. My partner saw how hard the nurse worked to make her well again, he found it most impressive,” she said.

“That’s great…”

“There’s more. I cannot love him, I tried, but I can’t leave him either? However, I texted to him the opposite, words such as ‘companionship,’ ‘loneliness’ ‘love’ and so on. And his inevitable response, ‘I understand,’ ‘of course,’ words became kernel to this relationship.”

“Astonishing lies?”

“We aren’t makers of Fates; truth is on its way. Wait, let me finish. In the hospital, where his mother was, an elderly gentleman walked in to see her, one day. He was my father’s retired friend from our old neighbourhood where I grew up.”

“We had accidentally bumped into each other a while back, shopping with Mother. I had introduced them and then we had coffee. I was watching them talk like love-birds as though they knew each other forever. Something came to pass between the two of them and ever since, this man whose name was Jalen Kemp, had been messaging me constantly to find out more about Mother.”

“In the meantime, Mother fell and came into the hospital. I messaged him saying that she was recuperating in this hospital. He came to see her immediately after the message. I was talking to her when he entered her cabin.”

“Your partner was there, at the time, right?” I asked.

“Right, and he saw what he needed to see beyond any shadow of a doubt. The truth was staring him in the face.”

“And what truth was that?”

“The sincerity of a relationship, Jalen Kemp sat by Mother’s bed and took her hand into his; while they smiled and lost each other into each other’s eyes, my man sensed something missing in our relationship. He got up and left the room.”

“What happened next?” I asked.

“I left too to give Jalen and Mother some privacy.”

“Did you apologise?” I asked.

“No, I told him the truth. He asked me, ‘Do you love me?’ I said. ‘I said, no, I live with you because I feel secure in your company; lest he found the dutiful nurse more attractive.’

“Wow! Really!”

“Yes, really. He’s processing it,” she said. “Sweeter, if my lies of insincere love prevailed, instead of this stark loveless reality, no?”

“Your insincere lies were kinder but you finally owned up to truth!”

“What is ‘real love,’ fleeting, isn’t it? It erodes with time and that’s the final truth,” she said.

I shrugged as we strolled in silence. The gentle winds nudged the witch-hazels on the far side; she pointed out smiling, ‘harbinger of spring,’ the hummingbirds sang of ‘love and healing.’

Malita’s phone rang breaking the panacea of quietness. She picked it up, her face paled in the mellow afternoon sun.

I watched her as she moved away from me to speak to her caller. The call was over fifteen minutes. Her body language spoke a great deal of the mental agony with hands being raised and lowered several times. At one point she held her forehead with her palm. I could hear her voice breaking up and choking trying to suppress her sobs. There were no easy way of doing this. I knew that. She knew that. Could it be from her partner unable to suck up the truth, called her to break it off? Call it off?

Oh this was unbearable, should she get a second chance maybe to work on her ability to love? Her inability wasn’t a crime, though, and she had owned up to it. Did that not mean anything?

I wondered off, away from her thinking of all that could go wrong in this relationship. Disloyalty wasn’t something easily palatable. But this pretense of love wasn’t palatable either—a grand deception which she nearly pulled it off hadn’t it been for the accident which gave it away, her partner sensed something, not proven though, these things couldn’t be proven at all. Better to lie and be deceptive, find happiness in deception, perhaps.

Really? No, no way, deception wasn’t the way to go. I turned around to see where she was. She was running, running away from me running away from harsh, unforgiving reality. These things happened in life.

Not every event turned into happy ending, not every event in life could be fulfilling, either. Life wasn’t perfect, we all knew that but grieving was just as much as a reality as anything else, and we were never prepared to grieve.

Guilt? Wrongs were wrongs, wrongs couldn’t be made right, and every wrong had a consequence. I am no a maker of fates but I could sense disaster before it happened and I knew that Malita was going to face one. What was it though? What was she going to do now that her truth was out, what was he going to do to her for her grand deception?

Accosted with a lot of questions but no direct answers, I ran after her to stop her, to stop her, to tell her that she shouldn’t feel guilt, her marriage based on a sullied rock of lies was slipping away in pursuit of pie in the sky. But, she also gave him her support, her kindness and her companionship, so what if she couldn’t love him. The kindness was solid, wasn’t it?

I heard her car revving up just outside the lawn. I stood and watched petrified. I couldn’t stop her. I saw her crash into an old oak tree. I ran towards the car. Her head was on the steering wheel. I opened the door with great difficulty. I called an ambulance; her veins were still pulsating.

 

If this wasn’t a show of love then what was? I was no maker of Fates, just as she was no faker of love, either.

 

Mehreen Ahmed is an Australian novelist born in Bangladesh. She has published eleven books. Her novel, The Pacifist, was a Drunken Druid Editor's Choice in 2018. Her one-sentence story The Phases of the Moon won first place in the May Flower Contest 2020, Academy of the Heart and Mind Magazine. Dolly won the Waterloo Festival Competition, 2020. Her stories have also received nominations for the Best Small Fictions, Pushcart, and Best of the Net. She is the guest editor of Panorama Journal: Travel, Place and Nature, Encounter Issue 16.