The Winter Goodbyes

The winters were of the regular disposition; a permanent haze of thin white wore through the air, touching everything with a damp coldness, with the lights looking through it a ghastly shade of pale, defined within the contained spheres about them, obliged, all the more by the thin blanket than the meekness of the power supply and looking from the street corners like a dim speck of life, devoured by the mounting cold of the winter eve, which would melt down to the marrow with it’s bitter wisp and even the expensive of the coats, bought from the posh northern part of the city, could barely stand the brazen chills from intruding.

He collected himself close, like a warrior stepping into the battlefield, trying to contain a hope that the cold was less biting this night, more so to comfort his own self to embark out in the open than to actually believe it; a notion, dispelled immediately by the touch of the ice offered with the first steps into the street, demurring all inconsistencies as to the certainty of a fifteen below zero on the mercury, visible through the broken pane on the pale, yellow wall of the public dispensary by the corner where a thermometer hung and was functioning surprisingly, albeit many a number on the Celsius scale had grown invisible.

Somewhere a clock struck twelve, barely posing any change to the environs. He felt as if the cold could stall time, hanging in the air forever, frozen in that moment and containing him along, for he felt his limbs grow numb and leaden, with a slight ache wearing into everything while the bitter dampness stung into his eyes, watering them and making the hazy lights in the distance disentangle in the moisture of his eyes, meshing up the visibility into a contour of colors, shades dissolving into one another and his half-parted eyes a tiny slit of melting semblances, reminding him of the toy-camera his father once bought him which he’d look into through the small hole and into a swirl of colors, forming shapes, dissolving and reforming, every time into something new.

Withdrawing the hand from the pocket, which felt a little cozier with it’s insides done with an extra piece of cloth, he rubbed his eyes, affording a fairly clearer vision though the mist still made him feel a little dizzy and the cold, realizing it’s opportunity and leaping at it, stole through his cuff and seeped up his sleeve, erecting the hair at his arm with it’s ruthless touch. Quickly, he pushed his hand back into the pocket, digging it deeper and clenching the fingers close, rubbing them against the interiors to feel a little heat, for even a moment’s exposure to open had dislodged all the warmness of the earlier containment.

Even the sounds of footsteps seemed to have mingled with the cold, ringing through the quiet night higher than usual, even when the road was damp and it’s metal worn and his shoes weren’t in a very fine shape, having been fixed thrice in the last three years and the third fixing, done this year, particularly, had been of a poorer fashion, exposing the outworn sole at the corners, though, nevertheless, saving the old man of undertaking the highly improbable task of looking a new fine, leather piece in a modest price when he definitely wasn’t going to pay, even much less, for an unoriginal one believing it was better to fix things each year than to replace them – an old man’s calculations of his economy and only good enough, for from the look of it, even when it failed to keep the feet warm enough, he could tell that another repair would well do away with the next winters and a sole-replacement, together with a few stitches to the little openings on the corner may keep the feet steady and fairly warm through another two Decembers – only if he’d be able to make it that long, he chuckled in an immediate manner, musing at the thought that had just struck his mind amidst the long planning.

For a moment, he stood by the corner, looking at the long street and the black sheet of the firmament hanging upon it, and in it’s foreground, few random structures discernable in the distance, which but all wore a mantle of gloom, as if amalgamating with the dreary night, a night of quiet, ripe with unsaid things and pregnant of quiet moments, with not a star that’d flicker to a moon which wasn’t in the welkin tonight. Concerting with the late hour’s unwavering solemness to stand its stolid air, he gave the pale gas-lamp a last look in that cold, dark, damp winter night and turned back to the old house – another failed attempt to attempt a failure, be that be told off the unsuitable circumstances that prevailed that night or a trace of fickleness in his assumed resoluteness. Nevertheless, he surely returned back home that night, sat by the window sill and spoke unintelligible syllables and Mrs. Carol, on the night-duty, could’ve sworn she later heard him sob amid the talking, recurring his son’s name a thousand times over, as if tossing it side-ways, this way and that, trying to collect from it some pleasure or comfort that shall reach him in the gloomy patch of his dank room at so late an hour, which perhaps did, for he was also heard to be laughing gaily amid the brief respites from the gloom.

The next morning found him dead, clinging to the paled, smudged picture of a little boy, standing next to a man of middle-age with a background of whatever color, having turned a dull brown fade over, apparently, a lot of years. The authorities confirmed a heart-attack as the cause and although we have well acquainted ourselves with the gloom that reached the old man’s heart that night, we still would, in the habit of all those good-natured authors, like to believe that his son immediately made for the old house and did participate in the funeral, even amid his busy schedule, although it couldn’t be told for sure for it would’ve been very difficult to discern him from all the black coats at the event – but then again, how can a son miss the final service of his dead father.