The Black Angel

“The novel that you are reading now isn’t about me.” Her hot breath whispered in my ears. I closed the book and turned to the thirst of her lips and thrust of her breasts. Another cold night perished quietly in her arms drifting me away from the warmth of my angel who stood awake talking to herself in vain. The practicality and reality of wife (life) kept clashing and colliding on the walls of a world only we understood. She, the black angel, isn’t a seductress but definitely not like my mistress who pressed more stress. The times I used to spend long hours looking at my wife's eyes and called them deep as ocean has faded away. Now it is my painful known truth that they are in deed deeper and treacherous as an ocean. We live together, if togetherness is only about the money we shared and the smiles we wore on every single day for past many years.

The history of black angel was still a mystery yet her misery, in a week, became mine too. I haven’t seen her but kept learning about her and her daily life. Her baby has no father, but she is breast-feeding him without questioning about his origin. Among the four (or more) men who shared her skin on a cruel night would never fight with each other to take her back to their life for that child. None of them would claim for fatherhood. She knew that fact. Today what is important to her is that fatherless baby than anyone else in this world. No baby can be born without a father. That is the reality. But in her case such a reality stays out of its value. Being a mother at the age of 16 and roaming in the streets for survival is her destiny - if destiny is the definition of all such disasters that has no specific solution or future.

I found her and took her with me last week as I knew that she was in need of my hands. To be honest, I bought her from the street in spite of my wife’s disinterest. Being a woman I thought she would understand her and spend some time with her and her little one. Instead of that she looked at her for a few times and laughed so wild. ‘The black angel’ was her biggest question. “How can a bitch be an angel and that too BLACK angel? Have you heard of an angel who is black?” she questioned me, as I stood silent holding the angel in my arms. I mumbled to myself, “Please, Oh please stop it. She is listening.” Since her arrival, I have learnt to believe in the purity of woman in its true sense. I adopted her baby as mine. He has a charm that my own children who are away in boarding schools don’t have. His smile is so beautiful. It is not easy to get hold of him as the mother always keeps him so close to her warm chest. Her dreams are about him. He is the reason for her very existence today. In her words, “At one point of time I kept the poison tablets in my mouth. Before I could swallow them I vomited revealing that there is a fresh tiny life in me and I am not alone anymore. Why both had to happen at the same time, I really didn’t know! I saw both death and life in front of my eyes. They both looked like twins and I heard a baby’s cry in my womb. Someone kept hands on my head and ordered that he is not a devil’s child but mine.”

On one occasion I was drunk with a BEST buddy talking all nonsense. He took my mobile phone and browsed through all the pictures and started laughing like mad. Then he told me a theory called ‘The ear-ring theory’. He said, “I can understand a woman changing her ear rings when they are single. But why do they have to do it after marriage?” I didn’t understand a shit. He continued, “Look carefully. Your wife is definitely an attention seeker. Even after having you in her life and having four children, she kept showing up with weird earrings. Brother, now listen to the great ‘Theory of Ear-rings’. Earrings do force attention on face. Amidst all the other women I noticed her face only because of her earrings. I became mad for her face because of her earrings. I made love to your wife because of her earrings. Don’t trust earrings.” He fell down on the floor and I fell down in front of me. I just walked out from the pub. It wasn’t his mistake but I left it as my mistake and assumed it as the mistake of her earrings. Even that night I slept with a seductress, my wife.

The black angel must have felt lost without my company. I dreamt about her whole night and woke up late with heavy eyes. The coffee was cold and the newspaper looked much older than me. It was clear that my wife was away. I didn’t care about her for the first time in my life but grabbed that muddy second hand copy of ‘The Blank Angel’ into my hands. Definitely she had passed through many such hands before reaching me. I really didn’t know where I stopped the previous night but continued from the page that opened in front of my eyes. There she was, smiling at me with her innocence, charm and purity holding her baby close to her chest. I kissed her tight.

I whispered to myself, "Yea, this novel is not about you- my wife."

On the back cover there was an image of the writer of 'The Black Angel'. He had a different beard and moustache on the back cover of his previous novel. Well, he does that all the time.