The Candle Maker's Widow Read online

how it must have felt like to sleep on the right side of the bed every day.

  She had chosen the left. He did not ask her to choose, but she had. On their first day in their new home, she had dumped her things on the table by the left side of the bed. He had unquestioningly put his things neatly on the right. Neither of them thought too much about it then; they had too much on their minds. But later, when they had settled in, he asked her playfully why she chose that side. He was always right, she said, without hesitation. He had pulled her from the gloom of the orphanage; he had given her a new purpose in life. He had given her love, and restored her faith in people. As the moon shone gently into their room, she whispered that he was her light, her guiding star, her saviour. He drew her to his chest and caressed her head softly. As you are mine, he said.

  Their life had been happy. They had loved each other in ways that was platonic yet passionate, distant yet close. They were contradictions – people who were hardened by all that they had experienced, yet still in desperate need of support.

  He had always been there for her, and she for him. They understood each other well enough to know what to say and do. She had never felt such a connection with anyone before. She grew older, submitting to his protection, and he grew older, protecting her. They were both wanted.

  He took up a job at a factory. They made candles. He started off as a labourer, going to the factory early in the morning and returning late at night. Still, they were happy. His job did not put him at risk of danger, the reason why she so strongly had objected to him going back to the coal mine. He did not pick fights with the other workers. He was a model worker – quiet, dependable and efficient. He soon rose to the position of manager, coordinating the candle-making process and being responsible for the labourers he once was a part of.

  From earning just enough for them to survive on, they started having more to spend. But the thrift they were so used to always kept them in check. They never spent more than what was absolutely necessary. When they opened their first bank account a full five years after he was made manager, they shocked the staff with their declaration that they had previously been keeping all that money in their home.

  That bank account was left mostly untouched from the moment they opened it. Apart from monthly deposits of a portion of their income, the couple had continued storing an amount just enough for them to live on in their house. They lived frugally as they used to, never buying new furniture or indulging in luxuries. They even refused to have lights in the house, preferring candles as it reduced their electricity bill. They had a radio, but not a television set. They had a car as there was no other way for him to get to work from their isolated house in the countryside. But once he retired, it was used just once a fortnight, when they went into the city to do their shopping. Far from the city in a small, dark, sparsely-furnished house, devoid of modern technologies and surrounded by just greenery and hills – how they lived would be unfathomable to most; yet they were contented with what they had, happy with each other.

  The widow looked at his candle burning. There was not much wax remaining. The time she had left to bask in his light was ebbing away from her. The pillow she was lying on now had two damp patches on either side of her head. Tears had been coursing down the sides of her face from the outer corners of her eyes and she had done nothing to stem their flow. She turned her head away from the burning candle.

  He was funny about the candle. Possessive. When he became a manager in the candle factory, he stopped having to buy candles. He got them free. They were the usual thin, white ones. He brought them home in bundles of twenty, tied together with a string made of the same material as the wick. They were just candles. But for him, they were more than that. They represented how far he had come – from a poor orphan who had to work for just one meal a day to a man who had a house, a wife he loved and a job that sustained them. Those candles were his success, and when he took a candle to his bedside table, it was his and his alone.

  She had tried to light it for him before. She had come into their bedroom before him. It was completely dark as there was no moon that day. She decided that it would be easier for him if she lit his candle as well as her own. When he came in, he had stared at the candle and then at her. Without saying a word, he walked to his side of the bed, turned his back to her and snuffed out the flame. He slept with his back turned to her that night. She never touched his candle after that.

  The widow looked into the darkness that was the ceiling. She wondered if that was the last thing he saw before he moved on. Was his last memory of their life together that of concrete? Did he see her again before he drew his final breath? How had it been like, for him?

  She had known it would happen. They had never spoken of it. Yet she had seen it in the way he looked at her, filled with regret and sadness. He knew he did not have much time left. But they had clung on to hope, denying a truth that would break that unspoken promise he made all those years back.

  He probably suspected that she knew. On the last night of the full moon, just two weeks ago, he had taken her out of the house, his palms pressed against her eyes, leading her out in front of him. It was a surprise, he said. She had smiled tearfully when she found that he had dragged a table out to the garden and made a simple dinner for them both while she, fatigued from cleaning the house that day, was taking an evening nap. Under the cloudless sky, they sat in the light of the moon, and ate the food that the three candles illuminated. She recalled a similar scene when she first moved into that house. Just like then, they danced after dinner. A slow waltz to Prokofiev’s Cinderella Waltz that was playing from the radio he had brought outside.

  The widow found her lips curving into a smile as she remembered the feel of his arms on her waist. That was the last time she had danced with him.

  Two weeks later, this morning, she had woken up to find him fast asleep next to her. He was always awake before her. She had known then. Yet she persisted in shaking him, calling his name in a futile attempt to wake him. His face was still pinkish, and his skin was warm to touch. She had called the doctor, telling him he was very ill. One hour later, the doctor was in their room. By then, she was sure he had some of that pallor dead bodies had. The doctor had shaken his head gravely at her. He then took her dead husband’s wrist to confirm his suspicion while she sank onto the floor, overcome with emotion.

  The doctor has taken him away. She refused to leave the house, even when the doctor tried to persuade her to. She did not know why, but she knew this was the place to be.

  The widow thought of her husband, who was now away from her for the first time in fifty years and felt a sense of loss far deeper than anything she had experienced that day. Twelve hours ago, she had found him still in their bed, and now, she was there alone. She could not bear going on without him. She did not know how she could go on without him.

  The sense of loss intensified, consuming her insides. She felt a dull ache spread through her body, weakening her. She tried to squeeze out the tears that she knew were there, just waiting to spill out, but nothing came. The candle flickered for the first time that night. Then she gave a small cry as the pain hit her. Her hand clutched at her heart as the pain shot outwards towards her neck.

  The last of the wick burned away and the flame extinguished, leaving behind a mass of melted wax in a dark and still room. There was no moon that night, just as there had been no moon the night before.

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