The Paler Shade of Autumn (3 page)

An old woman of no more than five feet stands behind a stall. Her head and body are draped in a green sari; wrinkled face the only skin exposed. Laid out on the table are saris of all different colours and sizes. Autumn stops at the table and runs her fingers along the silken materials in pinks, greens, yellows and reds. She stops on a sky-blue sari with gold brocade around its edges and raises her eyes to the aged woman. The woman is already peering at her, meeting her gaze directly, despite her eyes appearing blinded—the pupils faded from what once was brown to mother-of-pearl.

Autumn gasps at the sight, but collects her composure and smiles. “Namaste,” she says, a gentle tremor finding her voice. She points to the sari on the pile.

The old woman opens her mouth and crackles, “One thousand rupees.”

Autumn nods, a quick movement. This woman with pale-eyes, wide and dead-like, scares her. She doesn’t dare to bargain—one thousand rupees seems like a fair deal for a silk sari and a quick getaway. She plucks the money from her bag and thrusts it towards the old lady. Autumn flinches as a wrinkled brown hand appears from underneath the sari, twisted fingernails, ten centimetres long. As she pushes the money into shaking hands, their skin collides and Autumn stumbles backwards a wobbly step. The contact, the imagery exchanged, is like being shanked with a dagger, the blade twisting and slicing as it pushes through her forehead and then out again.

Her heart is beating so hard she feels it in her ear drums. Autumn snatches at the sari, but is caught as she tries to retract her hand. The old lady clenches her hand in her steely grip and doesn’t let go. Images, thoughts, emotions bleed from the old woman into Autumn: horrible, despicable images of death, murder, disease, trickery, painful debilitating hunger; the nadir of despair. Young babies floating along a river, bloated stomachs; women dying on the streets of filth and stench; children gripping their bellies in ravenous hunger; young girls heartlessly, brutally raped.

Autumn twists and squirms; tries to pull away from this exchange of misery, the dross of humanity, where death is a release rather than something to be despaired. She feels the emotions invade, the pain spread its insidious fingers, and the revulsion gouge at her and fester in her mind. Hot tears sting her eyes and she blinks; lets them roll down her face. Her hand throbs, as though her fingers are being crushed into oblivion. She cries out in pain, in fear. She twists her body, trying to break the connection of hand-on-hand. Now she is the one begging; begging the old woman to let go. The old woman with her vacant bleached eyes, which contain the emptiness of a lifetime of dark and murky memories, every one of them flowing directly into Autumn’s mind to be assimilated and become hers for evermore. But the woman only glares and mutters in the common tongue, “Cursed. Cursed. Cursed.”

“Help!” Autumn screams. “Help me!” She tosses her head from side to side, looking for someone, anyone, anything.

No-one. No helping eyes meet her; they all look away.

She must fight. There is no other option. She raises her left arm to throw her fist at the old woman’s face and, if that doesn’t work, to claw at her arm. But like a divine being sent from Shiva, a man is at her side, lashing the woman in the Indian tongue and she, at last, unclenches her bruising clasp. The image-flow disconnects and relief drops Autumn to her knees. She rests her head in her hands and bellows out long, hard sobs; tears, dense, falling down her flushed cheeks and forming pools in her hands.

Her saviour lifts her from the waist and helps her to her feet. “Come on,” he says, voice urgent. “Let’s get you away from here.” She doesn’t fight him as he places his arm on the small of her back and pushes her through the hordes of people, away until the faces grow less dense, until it is only her and him walking across a field towards the shade of a tree. Autumn gasps in air, tears still wetting her cheeks, unable to quieten the pictures the old woman thrust upon her and the words that spewed from her throat, “Cursed”.

The man is a silent companion until the tears subside and Autumn finally lifts her eyes from the browning grass beneath her feet and looks at him. “Are you feeling better now?” he asks, widening his eyes.

She realises he is Australian and the recognition provides so much comfort in this country filled with strangers and unknowns. Her shoulders relax and she exhales a long lungful of air. That they are from the same country is something familiar, and familiarity she craves in this moment. Autumn sniffles and pulls the scarf off her shoulders. She uses it to wipe her tears from her face and her runny nose.

She nods. “Thank you for helping me,” she says.

“It’s ok. Never mind about that. I’m more concerned about how you are?” He nods towards her hand. “How is your hand? Do you need medical attention?”

She lifts her hand, fingers out-splayed, and then balls them into a fist. She does this a few times, feeling her joints and muscles groan, but there is no real pain. He tentatively takes her wrist and inspects her hand, turning it this way and that.

“There are no cuts, which is what I was worried about when I saw the length of those finger nails.”

Autumn shivers and closes her eyes; fresh memories flash across the movie screen in her mind. When she opens her eyes, she can see the man is about to take her hand in his. She flinches away. “Don’t, please.”

He lifts his hands in the surrender position, eyes cautious. “I’m sorry. I was just going to see if there was damage.”

She nods, tears rimming again. “I know. I know. It’s just … I can’t.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you, I’m sorry. I won’t touch your hand. I promise.”

She nods as her shoulders slump. “I
am
cursed,” she whispers.

“I’m not sure I’d give such credence to a strange old woman like her.”

She looks at him. “I am.”

“You’re not cursed. I’m certain of it.”

“You don’t know me.”

He looks away for a moment and then turns back to face her. “No. I don’t know you. But even so.”

Autumn takes her bag from her back and flings it onto the grass. She plonks down beside it, the man following suit, and retrieves a bottle of water. She gulps it down, not bothering that water is dribbling down her chin and onto her lap.

“That woman is cursed,” he says, adamantly.

Autumn nods. “Yes. She is cursed. To have a life like hers, to see the things she has seen, the destruction, the agony and the pain. She is cursed.” She allows some silence before she asks, hushed, “Because I am able to see all that she has seen and now have made that part of her a part of me, do I share the curse as well?”

The man peers at her for a long moment, his eyebrows lowered, eyes probing, then shakes his head. “You’re not cursed, because you can rest easy as it is not a life you have had to bear, only see.”

Autumn takes a deep breath in and brings her shaky hands to her water bottle, downing another mouthful. She stares at her feet, trying to push the memories away from sight. The man picks a piece of grass from the ground and spins it between his fingers.

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

His voice reminds her of his presence and when she raises her head she actually sees him as though for the first time. Before he was a solid shadow, a nebulous structure of strength who had taken her from the lifeless eyes of the old woman and led her, unseeing, to the refuge of this quiet space under a tree. Now, as her mind begins to restore a vague sense of equanimity, he has substance, takes on form, and she is shocked because he is utterly gorgeous. She opens her senses to him, seeing his buttery brown eyes, dark brown hair hanging loosely around his ears and neck, long overdue for a cut. His face possesses a strong, square jaw with a long, masculine nose and full lips. He is tall and lean, shoulders broad, skin tanned an Australian copper and complimented with a few freckles.

“Um,” she answers, shaking her head. “What did you say?”

“I want to know how it is you could see that old woman’s life?”

Autumn’s eyes widen.

“You said that you can see all that she has seen and I want to know how that is possible?”

She glares at her drink bottle and internally berates herself for having even given the hint that she has such ability. Her gift of insight is not something she shares with people, especially men she doesn’t know one thing about. “Bloody old witch,” she whispers, focus still on her water bottle.

“Are you ok?”

She nods and finally lifts her gaze to his. “I didn’t mean to share that information with you.”

“I see,” he says, eyes narrowing.

She can’t quite look away from those eyes, compassionate and warm, the colour of melting caramels. “I don’t even know your name,” she says.

His lips curl up slightly at the corners. “My name is Jet.” He extends his hand. She glares at it, outstretched before her, but after all that has happened she cannot take his hand in hers. He retracts the gesture after the moment passes.

“And you are?” he asks.

“Autumn.”

“Autumn?” he questions. She nods. “That’s a beautiful name.”

She lowers her eyes feeling her cheeks prickle.

“It suits you,” he continues.

She inclines her head, eyes narrowed. “How so?”

“You share the shades of autumn, your hair and your eyes.”

Jet is right. Her hair shares the colour of fallen autumn leaves: a luminous russet. And her eyes are of faded grey and blue, like a cloudy autumn sky. Her skin is pale, possessing colour only in her cheeks and in the pink of her plump lips.

“Anyway, I’m sorry,” he says. “That’s appearances—rather off topic.”

Autumn nods and takes in a deep, courage-drawing breath and reaches for his hand. Why? She doesn’t know. Perhaps because he is a stranger in a strange country, and she will never see him again after today. She first takes his wrist and slowly brings her fingers to the palm of his hand, crawls her fingertips along the length letting splashes of colour and imagery, all belonging to Jet, to saturate her mind. When her nerve has grown, she grips his hand with unfaltering contact. His mind is clear, memories lucid. She keeps a hold, allowing the thoughts and emotions to permeate her own thoughts.

First to trickle through are feelings: infallible strength, courage, intelligence, but it is tainted with the drizzle of doubt and confusion. She lets the images swirl and make sense in her mind, allows the pictures to align and tell their unvoiced stories. His childhood is a blur, like undirected splatters of colour on a canvas; she will only see what is dominant in his mind in the present moment. She glimpses the old lady in his memories and she flinches, but manages to keep hold of his hand. She witnesses the terror on her own face as the lady squeezed her hand and hissed ‘curse’ through her rotten teeth from Jet’s perspective, coupled with his emotions: suspicion to anger to compassion.

The images change and she is offered solid insights into Jet’s life. The big, brown eyes of an Indian boy, no more than four years old, take form on her mind’s canvas, along with an overwhelming love and empathy. The little boy is on his hands and knees on the dusty ground, crying. He is last in a long line of children. The woman leading them is occupied by a crying baby in her arms.

Jet runs to the boy, he is worried. He lifts the little boy by his waist, onto his feet and gently brushes the dirt from his skinned knees, palms, and smooths the boy’s hair back from his brow. The crying boy wipes the tears from his eyes with the back of his hands and sniffs the snot back into his nostrils, leaving only a moist trail on his upper lip. He lifts his little hand, pushes it into Jet’s and grips his comparatively giant fingers. He peers up with his tear-glazed, brown eyes and smiles so wide his entire face crinkles. A warm feeling starts in the pit of Jet’s stomach and spreads throughout his entire body; almost brings a tear to his eye. Jet smiles back. He hasn’t smiled like this for such a long time, where he has no control over the joy he is feeling or the upward curl of his lips. This little boy is so endearing, vulnerable, yet strong.

He walks with the little boy, hand in hand, following the other children and the woman with the crying child who is still bellowing. They end up in a small dim room of a second-rate building, fitted out with a single table and two long benches on either side. Jet exchanges glances with the boy, but no words; their tongues speak a different language. The children take a seat at the benches. Those who can’t reach the dark timber floor with their feet, swing their legs back and forth. One girl strokes a tuft of her hair with tentative movements and a little boy searches the contents on his nose with his index finger. Jet’s new friend unclasps his hand from his, assumes a seat at the end of the bench. And the crying child finally settles, sitting in between two older girls on the opposite bench, one taking over the role of comforter, placing her thin arm around the crying girl’s shoulders. A beautiful sight.

Jet speaks with the woman, a fellow Australian of about twenty-six or twenty-seven. She explains about the children that line the benches: waifs of the world, orphaned by parents who have succumbed to the terminal indiscrimination of AIDS. She has volunteered to be their guardian in the orphanage set up by the resident monks. Jet peers at the parentless little blessings all in a row, from one to the next, their innocent small faces, wide curious eyes and begins to cry until he can taste the salty, empathetic tears on his tongue.

The little boy, his new friend, stands from the bench and tip-toes with clumsy steps to Jet’s side. He looks him directly in the eyes, again taking his hand. He offers Jet his most glorious, wide-toothed smile in an effort to comfort him. This boy who has nothing, no home, no parents, few basic needs, is comforting Jet.

The fog clears, the melancholy clouds shadowing his mind for the past year turn a splendid silvery-white, and when the complacency that has plagued Jet dissipates, along with a good dose of guilt and shame, he has an epiphany. How could he have been so wrong to ever think he was not happy, when he has a home, friends and family, a job, money and every basic need satisfied? How could he have dared conceive of such a thing when this child before him, after all he has dealt with, the loss of his parents, home life and livelihood, can consider himself in a high enough state of mind and emotion to lend Jet, a stranger, a nobody, his happiness?