A Short Story
1
Eli and Luna had always been inseparable. They were a constellation of lovers etched into the night sky and woven into the thickets and brambles of the forest which circled their village and susurrated their names. Their union was an inevitability from the moment they were born, within seconds of each other, one muggy summer morning many years ago in a village that has long since disappeared. Their mothers, best friends and themselves joint at the hip, had endured months of synchronous kicks within their wombs – a bass drum rumble which increased in intensity and tempo as the births approached, building up not to a trumpet fanfare but a rupturing unison wail that left the village in no doubt as to the arrival of the babies.
The parental homes were festooned with flowers and bulged with merry-making well-wishers for the week following the birth, culminating in a joint christening and feast in the village hall. The entire community toasted the new-borns at a table resplendent with the finest cuts from the harvest and bedecked with napkins and tablecloths embroidered with the initials of Eli and Luna, fused together to form a floral monogram EL, prophesying their destiny as one.
And the babies proved themselves inexorably entwined, blooming into rosy-cheeked toddlers clutching each other’s hands at every birthday, wedding and funeral – Luna the assertive and fearless initiator of all their exploits, supported by the laconic and eternally-loyal Eli. His first memory of Luna was them being in a bath together, Luna giggling as she splashed buckets of water onto the floorboards and protesting vehemently as her soap-sodden hair was washed, dried, and yanked into severe bunches by her unyielding mother. Eli loved the perfect sphere of her head under that tousle of wet hair, so different from his own long yawn of a face. And Luna loved this honest rake of a boy who, when bullied at school for his protuberant ears and lanky frame, and scolded by teachers for his propensity for silence, remained unabashed, unperturbed, and radiant in her presence. The children were quietly tolerant of other people. But it was in each other’s company alone that they laughed, breathed and came to life.
Fast forward a few years and the carousel of life thrust the children into the heady pangs and fervours of adolescence, where handholding took on new significance and their embraces became closer. They held each other in a tight waltz as the seasons changed and their brothers and sisters and friends became men and women, shaking off childhood to embrace romance, careers and parenthood. They held each other as a cholera pandemic struck the region and killed scores of people they knew. They held each other tighter as Luna’s younger brother Lev became drunk one winter night and disappeared on his horse, falling through a frozen river to his death. And they held each other tighter as war knocked on the door of the village and threatened a premature termination to their eternal union.
But as the lovers parted, Eli swore that he would return, and Luna believed him – this ‘war to end all wars’ would be a mere blip on their ascent to the heavens. And as the village buckled under the seismic damage caused by the loss of its strongest and finest young men, Luna stayed serene, filling diary pages with optimistic visions of a future with Eli, the gratitude she felt for their love, and her unswerving faith in his return unscathed from war.
During the next two years, Luna began work as a much-loved schoolteacher, busying her days and sleeping soundly in the knowledge that these long nights were temporary, and that she would soon resume a life of uninterrupted joy with Eli. Yet while Luna went about her business, the village became more and more shrouded in despondency, uncertainty and pessimism for the future, as reports of catastrophic battles and piles of dead trickled back home. So when Luna’s parents heard a knock on the door one morning, they assumed the worst. But there was Eli, returned with a small group of survivors, bruised, exhausted but alive. He had come back to the village buoyed up by a single wish: to ask Luna’s father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Permission was swiftly given, and Luna came back from work vindicated to see her future husband returned from war unscathed. They embraced in a glistening pool of tears of joy and relief. Nothing could prevent them from consummating their union and living the rest of their lives side by side.
Invitations to the wedding were greeted with the same cheerful retort: “A wedding? You mean those lovebirds aren’t married yet?” but everyone cheered and showered the couple with coloured rice on the wedding day, and drank, danced and celebrated long into the night, revelling in the welcome respite from war, disease, and a series of poor harvests. And after the dust had settled on the celebrations, Eli and Luna settled down to a life of domestic bliss. Their bliss was the unswerving love of each other’s company. Their bliss was being together, immutably content with themselves and their possessions. Eli built a home on the edge of the village – a multicoloured confection next to a babbling waterfall and forest, crammed with furniture that he’d carved, adorned with intricate lace patterns sewn by Luna. Their house was situated between the village of their childhood, where Luna worked as a schoolteacher, and the city – that growing shadowland with its smokestacks, wan faces and rumbling discontent, where Eli found employment as a bank clerk. The job was mildly diverting, and allowed him a degree of solitude that suited his introverted nature, but he found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on his tasks, thinking instead of his bed, and the seraphic morning light that beamed through the slats of the blinds every morning onto Luna‘s breasts. He thought of the fir-coned paradise of their garden – the Eden that they had inherited as joint custodians, the children and animals they would fill it with. He thought of the boundlessness of their love.
He thought of their simple routines and rituals. That priceless time together in the morning and in the evening, bookending the necessary evils of everyday adult life, where he was obliged to work for people he didn’t particularly care for. But the morning rituals give him the power and energy to achieve the feat of getting through the day. Each day started with the lovers waking shortly after sunrise. In spring they would go for a short walk and pick blueberries. In summer, they would bathe under the crystal-clear waters of their fountain near their house and collect wild strawberries. In autumn they would pick mushrooms and cranberries. And in winter they would create gifts for family and friends. Every evening after work they would dine together, tell each other about their day, and enjoy each other’s silence, with Luna reading at one end of the table, and Eli whittling some wood at the other. They were looked upon by friends with a mix of envy and pride – a beautiful, unchanging, unblemished couple, who seemed permanently frozen in their honeymoon period. But time sped on relentlessly, and the city, with its grumbling discontent and unceasing sprawl, reached out a spectral hand as it closed in on the village.
2
One ominously stormy summer evening a couple of years into their marriage, Luna laid aside her book, kissed Eli on the head, and went to bed, leaving her husband to chip away at a clock for their kitchen, lost in the complications of his work – the rivets and cornering and smoothing that could absorb his attention for hours on end. Outside the storm raged against a brooding, blood red sky, with howling winds and heavy rain sweeping cascades of debris against the windowpanes. And out of this fog of debris, dust and jetsam, a giant appeared – a weather-beaten man with an untamed beard, soaked to the bone and emerging from the spray like a wrathful Poseidon. The giant rapped on the door requesting protection from the heavy rain. Eli bade the man come in, take a chair by the fire, and warm up with a brandy. The giant stared into the fire as the raindrops hammered against the windows, and Eli continued to whittle away at his work. And then a voice boomed over the crackle of the fire.
“Fine place you have here. You must be pleased with yourself.”
Eli looked up from his work at the giant, who was looking at the flames, his gnarled hands resting heavily on the armrests as if shackled.
“Young healthy man, nice little house. A pretty wife for sure. Where is she? In bed already? A nice faithful pretty wife. Clever wife does her work and you do yours, and then you make love and enjoy each other’s company and then start a new day and repeat and repeat and repeat. I’m not wrong, am I?”
Eli clenched his teeth as he looked into the eyes of the giant, but the visitor’s expression was unfathomable.
“Young, little Mr perfect boy. If you could have one more thing in life, what would it be?”
Eli fixed his eyes on the giant’s own pitiless black orbs and fought back an anger slowly brimming inside him at the insolence of this rain-sodden guest – an anger that he couldn’t remember feeling before. He answered in as composed a voice as he could muster:
“I have everything I want and have ever wanted.”
The giant glared at him for an ice age. Then his face ruptured into a molten pool of derision and contempt, his eyes blazing with loathing and embitterment.
“Wrong answer, little boy.”
3
The next day brought an excoriating sun which eviscerated all signs of the tempest of the night before, like a cacophonous circus magically disappearing after a night of revelry. Luna was surprised to find Eli, normally so composed and sparing with his thoughts at the breakfast table, raddled as he recounted his strange encounter with the giant, the references to their marriage, and the way the earth seemed to swallow him up as soon as he‘d arrived. He might have fancied he’d dreamt the whole thing, were it not for the drained brandy glass, and the impressions to the cushion on which the giant had sat.
Luna shrugged off the episode as nothing more than the ramblings of a dejected drifter, but Eli was still deep thought as they made their way to the waterfall, stripped and did two lengths of the adjoining pool, before drying off and heading into the forest to pick strawberries. This routine was one of the rituals that propelled the couple through the day – the bows of gratitude they made to Mother Earth as they stooped to pick the fruit, lit by a halo of light gleaming through the trees. And today the sunshine gleamed through the trees as radiantly as ever, as they placed an empty basket on a stump on the top of a slope, with Luna heading down one side, and Eli the other. But he still had the words of the giant on his mind. Why had the visitor insulted him so venemously? What was he supposed to wish for in life, when he had everything he wanted? He brushed his hands rather mechanically through the foliage, absent of the usual mindfulness with which he usually picked the bounty. And to his surprise, the soil offered no reward. The strawberries, abundant as they always were at this time of year, were gone. He scouted around on his hands and knees for five minutes, his bemusement turning to consternation and then to bewilderment. He searched through a two-metre radius, then five metres, then the whole slope, but to no avail. Yesterday the slope had been full of unpicked fruit. Today, a yawning, blank and pointed absence grimaced up at him. Back at the basket, Luna reported the same baffling lack of reward. They spent another 15 minutes ruminating on this before realising that they had to head home and get ready for work.
…
The riddle of the missing strawberries occupied them both throughout the day. Luna was perplexed but kept her professional mien as she set to bringing her unruly class to order. But Eli was convinced that they had made a mistake. He couldn’t wait to get back to the forest the next day: “We have to try harder. We have to look harder,” he muttered to himself as he toiled over the ledgers on his desk in the bowels of his bank. “We didn’t look hard enough.”
And when waking up the next day, Eli and Luna started the morning as they had the day before by swimming in the pool, then setting off to the forest to search for strawberries. But yet again, there were none to be found – no leaves, no stems, not a trace, just a green void. Luna insisted on them going home and getting ready for work. As she grabbed Eli’s hand and yanked him away, he felt a clenching in the pit of his stomach. A monster was stirring within him and getting hungrier.
The third day was an echo of the second – an even shorter swim followed by another futile search for strawberries, the slopes as devoid of the fruit as ever, the butterflies uncaring as they fluttered past in the morning heat, and Luna having to persuade a consternated Eli to come back home: “They’re gone, we’ve been looking for three days. It doesn’t make any sense, but we have to accept it. Stranger things have happened, and we can’t miss work.” Luna noticed Eli grow sullen and resentful at these words, yet he came home with her.
So hopeless did Luna think the task of finding strawberries was, that when the next morning came, after having gone for a perfunctory morning swim, she suggested they go straight back home to prepare for work. Eli refused, and told her he was going to continue looking. He had to look again. Luna shook her head and went home without him, as he scurried around manically and fruitlessly on the slopes.
On the fifth day after the appearance of the giant Eli went out alone into the forest while Luna set off for a swim. “You know there won’t be any strawberries, so just leave it,” implored Luna. Eli ignored her and stumbled on into the morning mist, while Luna plunged into the pool at the bottom of the fountain. He came back home half an hour later while she was reading at the breakfast table. His basket was empty. “Why are you doing this to yourself?” she asked. “They’re not there.” He thrust his hands into the air in resignation while staring wide-eyed at the table.
“Okay.”
4
Luna consulted books on botany and asked different family member about the sudden disappearance of the strawberries, but they could offer no rational explanation. Gradual decay and disappearance made sense, but they couldn’t account for such an overnight vanishing. She was puzzled. But then again, many things in life were puzzling. She believed that God had set the laws of the universe in motion. But why was there a universe in the first place? Why was there life on Earth? Why was she here, and what was her purpose? And why, amongst millions of unlucky souls who had been born and perished in the direst conditions, had she been blessed with such a joyous existence? She pondered her marriage – what could be more inexplicable than fate bringing her and Eli together? Her parents and the village elders spoke of an afterlife, but paradise was already here, wasn’t it? Some things were just the way they were. And with her inquisitive and pedagogical mindset all she could do was try to explain the inexplicable. And in the meantime, she acknowledged the miracle of life for what it was: magnificent, mercurial and capricious.
On the other hand, Eli, generally so accepting, pragmatic, patient and empathetic, grew annoyed at Luna’s dismissal of the disappearance of the fruit. In the scheme of things, he could concede that their absence was irrelevant – they had plenty of food, they had dozens of activities to keep them occupied, they had scores of friends, and they had each other’s unconditional love. Yet nothing made sense, and he found himself unable to focus on his work. And at home he felt an increasing sense of discontentment, and an inability to sink into the spiritual oblivion of their daily routines. Something in him was breaking. A new, sinister routine was taking shape, splintering the marriage and prising apart the unprisable.
…
Luna got up to swim at the same time every morning for the rest of that summer, while Eli slept longer and longer, and she would return home to find him silent at the kitchen table, chewing absently on a piece of bread, a cup of tea untouched at his side. The table he had crafted became shrouded in a silvery cobweb of sullenness and upset. His voice seemed incapable of sustaining its customary pitch and timbre. He felt the touch of an invisible, ice-cold hand on his shoulder, holding him back from telling Luna how much he loved her, and that of course the strawberries meant nothing, that the world was theirs, and that they had their lives before them. But instead this icy hand clenched his stomach and caused him to cry at random moments during the day. The morning walk to the bank became leaden, spiritless and joyless. He learnt to hate the monotony of his work, the lack of challenge, the lack of purpose. He wanted to run, to scream, but he didn’t know how. The bottles of vodka, wine and cognac that he and Luna had amassed and reserved for parties and celebrations at home started to empty. He couldn’t pinpoint the time that visits to bars after work exceeded time spent with his wife.
Back home Luna, finding herself alone for hour upon hour in the evenings, took to writing for the first time since Eli had returned from the war. She crammed all her worries and torments into the remaining pages of a diary that had once expressed certainty for a shared future with Eli. She remained professional at her school but developed a prickliness and brusqueness that made children less keen to sit on her lap. She came across as a severe young woman who didn’t like the idea of being yanked and shaped by forces beyond her control. So, she fought on by swimming more in the morning, and as summer dissolved into autumn, she picked mushrooms, drying and jarring them as Eli looked on vacantly from the kitchen table. She would not burden her friends with the gradual anger raging through her at the sight of the increasingly bloated, sullen and sarcastic man her husband was becoming. She insisted on maintaining social engagements by inviting people over, but saw herself as a juggler who had always been able to keep three balls in the air, but was now being tested by a jeering audience who would toss her a fourth ball, and then a fifth, as she struggled to keep them all aloft.
Autumn dissolved into winter, the river froze over, a blanket of snow hid their Eden from view, and darkness strangled light from the night sky. Visitors who chose to peer through Eli and Luna‘s kitchen window would see Luna reading or writing at one side of the table and Eli, if at home at all, bearded and scowling, drumming his fingers listlessly on the other. The silence once enjoyed by the couple in the evenings became haunting and chasmic, cleaving apart the table and leaving them stranded on their own islands, blind to the needs of the other. And the silence continued to grow louder, as Eli‘s presence at home became shorter and shorter.
And one night, Eli didn’t return home at all. Luna went to work as usual, expecting to find him back at the table when she finished work. But he wasn’t there. She had lost her brother a lifetime ago when he had got drunk and his horse had cracked through the frozen river, ending the lives of horse and rider. Eli had been there to console her then. But he wasn’t there now. The tears streaked down her cheeks and well-meaning friends promised to search for him: the whole village would turn out to look for Eli, visiting all his regular haunts in the village and the bars he’d been going to in the city. They would leave no stone unturned until he was found.
The constellation of lovers shone down upon the search parties from the sky, and the pine forest howled his name, but Eli didn’t return. “He’ll come back,” said friends. “He came back from the war for you, he’ll be back for you again”.
“He’s gone,” said Luna.
….
More than ten years passed, children were born and died, and the village was transformed, succumbing to modernity, new ideals and new idols and the promise of revolution. But as the seasons changed, the wooden house next to the waterfall stayed the same. Luna resumed bathing in the waterfall each summer. And every day after drying off, she would take an empty basket into the forest, bow to Mother Earth and brush her hands delicately through the foliage on the ground. And the strawberries were there to greet her exploratory caresses. She filled her basket every day that summer. She had been filling her basket with strawberries for the last ten summers. She had always known that they would return. She sat at the table after school that evening and started to write. “Dear Eli, the strawberries are back. I hope that wherever you are, you are happy.”
Tom Miodrag 