05. Illusione...!


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The Old man was as near to the shop as he could without being seen. He could listen to the voices of Antonio and Shyam clearly now. Shyam was muttering something which was as good as a curse, and his name in the end confirmed that the cursing was meant to him. Antonio was struggling to keep calm but looked almost relieved. His face appeared as if he had just survived some huge catastrophe. The old man thought he should make himself visible to the rest now.

“Hello, Shyam. Hi Antonio” Now the old man had anticipated some drastic reactions, but not as violent as a lethal knife to be shoved at his body. The knife, although missed the better part of his body, caused some serious damage.
The old man could barely stand. Shyam was furious and rightly angry. It was his kid who was kept away from him for sixteen long years and was not even told when he died. He was oblivious to these things, mourning for his kid all these years, while he was growing up in another part of the world.

“I can explain everything! Just give some time. You deserve to know what happened.”
“And you deserve to die”
When Shyam replied to the old man, his voice was hoarse. His eyes were all red and voice, although thick appeared as though he would break down in any moment.

The old man thought it was going to be his end. He had come to take revenge on Antonio, who had supplied drugs to his kid, Mark. Mark was diagnosed with dreadful leukemia at his birth. The old man happened to work as a ward boy in the hospital when he was born.

By the time the attending doctor could tell the family, everything was over. The doctor died in the terrorist attack and the old man had fled out of the country with the kid. He somehow thought he would have a better chance at saving the kid. Or that’s what he told himself.  Truth was the kid, was his pet project. A purpose, an aim to an otherwise lost life of his, is what the kid was to him.

He went on declaring to the people who asked him where he had gotten the kid, that the kid was wrapped in a sheath and he got him in the garbage. But only Antonio knew the reality, since he abetted him in fleeing, even after knowing that the kid belonged to the Shyam family. Money is an irresistible trap. The family was told that the kid died and was given some corpse of a stillbirth baby, which was half burnt in the terrorist attack.

Fifteen years in Italy and around the world, the old man did not get any cure for disease that the kid he stole had. As a last resort he had come home. He wanted to tell Shyam and family that their kid was alive and was dying. But as soon as they reached back here the kid’s health worsened and the drugs that they gave him in hospital was not enough for him to cope with the pain that the disease was causing.

Mark had somehow got the knowledge that Antonio sold drugs and was addicted to it. By the time the doctors could detect unknown drugs in his system, it was too late.
Right from that day, the old man was waiting for an opportunity to avenge his kid’s death. He was somehow naïve of his own crimes of abducting the kid and keeping him away from where he belonged. At times he would even console himself saying he was doing it for the good of the family. That losing a kid who is grown up is rather more painful than the pain of a child who died at a very tender age.  All the things we lie to ourselves while facing our conscience!

All these years his attempts of killing Antonio were in vain.  But that day everything fell into place. What are the odds of Shyam sleep walking to Antonio’s shop the day the old man chose to end everything and Antonio losing it and telling everything to Shyam.

As he lied on the ground with his hands clutched to the wound, the old man gave out a husky smile at his destiny.
***

Right when all these things were happening, this man with a crooked back stood in the street. He was strolling lazily to the shop. His gait tired and he was getting annoyed with the rain pouring down hard. He is one such person, who detest rain and runs to hide under shelter when it rains. That must speak a lot about his character!

But today he was too much in lure to get the drugs he was on. He couldn’t possibly have resisted this urge to be lost in his mind with the drug flowing through his blood veins. That sweet little moment in the tiring endless life is all he craved for and lived for. Pity he had to be a part of what happened next.
The man entered straight away into the shop, without even pondering a thought about the two old men in the shop.

The man had shallow holes in the place where his nose should have been. The man looked scary…!
***
It was all over in an instant. I had come back to my home with my hands covered with blood. Malvika was rambling in the hallway. She almost fainted when she saw my hands. I assured her it was not mine and she was scared a notch higher after I did. I had lied to her that I ran into a crime scene in my sleep walk and ended up in danger and I also pleaded her not to talk about the day anymore in the future.

Apparently I had walked in my sleep out of our house, crossing the empty road at midnight and had reached Antonio shop, where I take a smoke before I board in to office bus everyday. It was Antonio who woke me up and it was in a shock that he spat out the truth which was I was not aware of for almost twenty years. I had snatched a knife in the dining table while I sleep walked, for no apparent reason and scared of knife in my hand and tantrums I had thrown at him, everything in sleep; he was devastated and had told all about it.

Tejasvi did not die that day in hospital. He was taken by a man called Michael, a military veteran from Italy; I have known him till the day he disappeared twenty years ago, after the terrorist attack took place. He was a warm person with affectionate character. You would never believe he kidnapped an infant, if you knew him in person. Antonio who owned the shop even then, twenty years earlier, had known all these things. The pain was so much unbearable now after knowing that all I have lived in through these years are false.
***
Antonio was struggling on the floor. The rain had gained rapid momentum. His life was fading a little by little out of his body. When Michael came, he had pointed towards him saying he was the one who kidnapped. It turned out Shyam knew him already. Antonio had been having these attacks from the old man from last few years. Today he had thought he would tell everything to Shyam and he thought he can escape when they both are in confrontation.

But it never happened. Although Shyam did swing the sharp knife in his hand at the old man, he never got up after that. He sat in a corner, listening to the frail attempts of the old man, explaining Shyam what had happened. And then this man with unusual nostrils came into the scene and everything toppled. He asked for drugs, acting completely naïve of the two old men in the shop whose lives were changed completely in the last few minutes.

It took Antonio several minutes to assess what was happening. Michael, the old man was suddenly on his feet and was storming towards him. The old man who was till then struggling to get up was full of energy, rage that was filling his body with energy unlimited.

It was only later, when he was laying on the floor defenseless and lifeless that Antonio found out the reason. The old man was muttering under his breath. Revenge, revenge, revenge! The crooked looking man asking for drugs had revoked his original reason for coming there. Once a soldier is always a soldier. All of Antonio’s attempts to defend himself had failed.

Antonio was dying. The world and his wife will know. The newspapers will term his death as ‘Un Umicidio’ in Italian language, his mother tongue, to add the artistic effect to his death’s headlines. That’s what his life will be reduced to, some creative headlines and all his secrets of selling drugs.
Antonio struggled on the floor. Moved, rather crawled an inch, perhaps his last move.
****
It’s all been over now. As I crawl into bed with my wife, sometimes that face with no nose suddenly emerges out of my mind. It’s just a nightmare. It’s a mark of something that I have done or not done.  In the end everyone got what they deserved. Perhaps Malvika lying next to me deserved to know. But I don’t want to hurt her any more than what she has been already through, in her life. If she deserves something now, it’s nothing but peace. She needs to die unaware of this.

But all the pain, can it be undone by killing the man? Evidently no. He sure has loved the kid himself all his life. But did I kill him out of the sudden rage that filled my body?
You never know! I am the storyteller here. I can say anything and still get away with it. But my decision to hide my deeds, does not necessarily mean I have killed the man who snatched our boy from us or spared the man who ran around the world searching for a cure for the deadly disease my son had. . I can reveal or I can choose not to, because it’s my story and I decide what I tell and what I don’t…!