Amoretti

When I first met her, she looked little more than 13 years old though she was 20… Pink cheeks and skin as smooth as silk… I remember how it glowed. That glow proved to be my undoing. It made me feel as if my very brain had twisted itself into knots and whatever I wanted to say came out wrong… She still agreed to marry me though…

God Almighty! She looked beautiful when she was angry… So beautiful the way those eyes flashed and the blush that crept up her neck… It was enough for me to want to torment her… Say things in a way I knew she would take wrongly only to fight for a little while and fall into each others arms. Everything would be sorted in the glorious consummation of our love…
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Every night she would sing as she made us dinner and I could feel the energy steal into me after the tiring day at the factory… Every night for the next two years… I went away after that… I had to, because of the war. I left her at my aunt’s place – my aunt, the only mother I had known.

There wasn’t a day when I didn’t see her sweet face, felt the heat of her skin against mine as I found myself drifting off to sleep with the taste of smoke, blood and sweat on my tongue. It was torture when the bombs fell like hailstones all around us, and in the haste to get away, save what little was left of us, I would suddenly imagine I smelt a whiff of her perfume… So delicate… So tempting…

She wrote me all of eight letters, each enquiring when I was coming home or why I wouldn’t write back. How was I to write to her when there was so much to say? I never knew where to start… “Darling, how are you? I’m fine here – you need not worry. I will be home soon.” Shallow words… What good would they have done? I knew I would go back home one day, I just wasn’t sure if it was going to be on my two feet or in a coffin… But I couldn’t tell her that… She would have seen right through those words, would have felt my fear and I – the coward that I am – I could never stand for her to lose faith in me. So I never wrote…

In my mind I imagined coming home to her… She would be angry, those eyes would flash and that blush would creep up her neck… We’d fight and fall into each others arms. Everything would be sorted in the glorious consummation of our love… And she would sing as she made us dinner… Yes, she would sing…
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When I first met her, she was only 3 years old. A blonde head, her hair tied back into a ponytail with green satin ribbons… Pink cheeks and skin as smooth as silk… She peeked at me from behind my aunt’s skirts… My aunt – my aunt, the only mother I had ever known – told me that she had died at child birth… I think my heart broke… I felt it fall to pieces at my feet… But the little angel peeking at me from behind my aunt’s skirts was timidly making her way to me… I was sitting down now, though I had no recollection of having done so… Where was I? Who was I? And where was she?

The little angel… My aunt whispered to her, encouraged her timid steps towards me… The little angel… Her skin glowed… My glassy eyes cleared a little as I focused on her… That glow proved to be my saviour.

“I’m your daddy”, I said to her as I stretched my arms out suddenly in control of my limbs.
She stopped and smiled, “Daddy chocolate?”
“I’m afraid I don’t have any with me right now, darling. But if you give me a hug I promise I shall buy you some first thing tomorrow morning.”

She was angry; daddy hadn’t brought her chocolate like her Granny had promised her. God Almighty! She looked beautiful when she was angry… So beautiful the way those eyes flashed and the blush that crept up her neck… But she hugged me anyway, her little legs standing on tip toe, the arms barely managing to wind their way around my neck… I held on to her like a drowning man to a wooden plank in the middle of the sea. I cried, but she held me still and after a while she blew a raspberry on my cheek and I couldn’t help but laugh through my tears…

It has been two weeks since I’ve been back. And every night I sing as I make us dinner and I can feel the energy steal into me after a long day at the factory when I hear her gurgling laughter…
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When I first met her, all I saw was a headstone… “Beloved wife and mother”, it said. “May the angels guide you to heaven.”

I visited her grave with our daughter. The bouquet of flowers she insisted on holding onto probably weighed more than her… I watched our daughter place it beside her grave. I told my wife I was sorry for never having written… I hoped she had forgiven me… I told her I was sorry I hadn’t been there and that I didn’t blame her for not having told me about the child we were expecting… I promised, just like I had promised her on our wedding day, that my heart would always be hers… And I promised her our daughter wouldn’t feel any lack of love or happiness.

That night when I made us dinner and sang, I felt my wife watching… I knew she was there because I could smell her perfume… So delicate… So tempting… I felt her smile every time I made our daughter gurgle with laughter…

And I felt peace…