(This short story below is inspired by one of the same title
by Nabokov… and is entirely fictional. I wrote this when I was in a café and
saw a man on his laptop.)
I was sitting in a coffee house one Saturday afternoon. I
was not alone in being alone, sipping on a ‘medium’ coffee in the corner. Far
across the saloon sat a man who, in his blandness, was a perfect recruit. I
almost pitied the man. By walking into the coffee house he had unknowingly
walked into the trap of my imagination. As I watched my oblivious prisoner I couldn’t
help but smile. How little he knew of his crucial role in the moments that
followed!
He was a well built man, the breadth of his shoulders filled
out a dark, corduroy blazer. He wore a black cap, which in the context of his blazer
and shirt gave him the vibe of a retired, celebrity sportsman. His graying beard
was as sharply chiseled as the shape of his jaw and his orbits were contoured
with wrinkles. This combination of facial features gifted him a permanent
contemplative expression, duping not only his friends but also his work
colleagues into believing he was highly intelligent. This unintentional mask, a
result of years of bafflement and confusion, had resulted in his promotion to
Manager of the malfunctioning human resources department.
So here he was, struggling on his laptop in the corner of a
coffee house. His missed deadline stared angrily at him through a spreadsheet
on the screen. He had realised the night before that the numbers were not
adding up. It was in desperation that he was staring at the spreadsheet, hoping
it would cease its antagonism and save him from his boss. He blamed the
spreadsheet because he couldn’t blame anyone else. He also surrendered to the
idea his brain was more inanimate than the numbers that tormented him.
He was the subject of a cruel joke. This spreadsheet was an
editable omen of his future, one that foretold his redundancy as things stood.
The cruelty came in the fact it was his incompetence that paralysed him into
being a spectator to his own failure.
He stopped seeing numbers. The spreadsheet blurred away into
his reflection in the screen. He studied his own face and for a moment smiled
as his mind began to wander. He remembered the first time he saw his wife. He
was trying on the very same black cap he was wearing, angling it on his head
whilst posing in front of a store mirror. He caught her watching him whilst he
was pouting. His eyes locked onto hers. Her face betrayed a character of innocence
and longing. She flushed red at the reflective encounter and before she could
even turn around in shame, he strode towards her and asked her out.
That was five years ago. Her naivety coupled with his idiocy
was a recipe for ignorant bliss. Life seemed easy, a stream of coincidental
events recycling the past into the future. They revelled in the monotony that
shaped their love. When one has low expectations of oneself and one’s worth, it
is easy to be content with any level of monotony. She never tired of his face,
and he of her laugh. They walked the straight line of their life, unaware of
the precipice that lay ahead.
How was he going to tell her? All he knew was he had to. He closed
his laptop and slid it into his bag. I watched the hero of my story get up, with
the intellectual expression on his face which plagued his life. He took slow,
calculated steps out of the coffee house and directed himself towards his flat.
Each successive step propelled his confidence. His heart raced as he got to the
dingy stairwell leading to his home. Adrenaline was now overcoming the inertia
of reluctance. He steps into his hallway and stops as he sees his wife.
She stood in front of him, her face a pale mirage of the
first time he saw her that fateful day. Her hands were behind her back,
stretching the stained apron draped around her body.
They stared at each other, dueling with the knowledge that
what was going to be said would change their lives forever. He didn’t have to
wait for her to speak. He saw the reflection of her slender back in the mirror.
He saw the reason for her silence in her hands and she saw that he knew.
She was holding a positive pregnancy test.
