Suvechchha Saha

SKB Road, Ramsita Para, Nabadwip, Nadia, 741302, West-Bengal, India This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

I saw the door today, again. It was closed as yesterday, and as the day before; fast closed. I wanted to enter and find out what on the other side of the door was. But it was at the far end of the long dark corridor and I was still standing beneath the spiral staircase. There were uncountable steps between us.

A new aspect of my life had begun. These days I had to take sleeping pills before going to bed. It was due to my unsteady and unhealthy nights of the past few days. I had become so decided to discern the mystery of that door that my compulsion turned into mad mania and my mad mania travailed to reflect a couple of evening-coloured shadowy eyes and two hollow cheekbones on the small hand mirror. Sometimes they accompanied a very dry mouth. But my mornings remained busy like ever and whatever I planned for the afternoons, they only proved to be prolonged parts of the mornings. It was only at night when I could be idle to think about the door. So, I started abandoning my sleep to sit down to deduce the mystery of it.

#

The first day of my taking a sleeping pill brought a quick night. I had to stop myself from spending the nights awake. I never took a sleeping pill before. I was not sure how my eyes would shut- consciously or unconsciously. After I lied down, I felt a heaviness on the pillow. It was the back of my head that seemed to be heavy. I raised my head a little and touched it with my hand. It felt hot. I stabilized the hot heavy head on the cold pillow to begin pondering over the heaviness of a rain-less clouded day. This is when it descended upon me. The dream.

There was darkness. All around the place there was taunting fathomless darkness. I could smell wet walls. My mouth felt dry. A wet darkness. My meagre courage told me not to spread my hands to feel where I was. Cautiously I tried to revolve around my toe and almost tripped. Where I was standing did not seem to be a wide floor. Could it be the spiral staircase? I wondered. Slowly my eyes became able to trace things in the darkness. I saw a narrow step beneath my feet that looked old and unattended. Below it countless steps had gone down coiling like a snake. Yes, it was that spiral staircase. I turned back to see how many steps remained there to cross. I could not find any end to see. But something inside me reckoned that today there would be an end. I began to climb the stairs. One by one I left the steps; left them to coil with the bottomless chain of steps below. I did not stop, did not take any rest- not when I was almost breathless, nor even when the dryness inside my mouth kept rising rapidly. I did not know for how many hours, or how many years I was climbing that staircase. But I knew I was almost there. I could feel it. Then at last, I could see the door. The door of my dream. There were only a few more steps left now. Five. Three. One.

Then I woke up.

#

Damn morning! I had never felt so disappointed in my life, disappointed and disheartened and with no further longing for being alive. That life which stood glistening under the morning sun and that morning sun which had kept me away from my lightless dream were intolerable to me. The sadness of estrangement and the pity coiling up inside me for the door waiting there alone, were making me numb. But I knew that night would come again and this time I had to cross that one step dividing us. I was determined. Yet night came walking with leaden limbs. I took two pills that day. This time when I reached there, I jumped over the last step without wasting a single moment. Now the door was before me, within the grasp of my trembling stretched arm. I took one step forward, the distance lessened, my fingers touched the door.

Something happened as the door touched my fingers. My blood in my body seemed to be curdled at one single place and my whole existence seemed to be encircling that place, like a snake. In my sleep I could feel its wet body against mine. But what about the door? It remained closed. I pushed it harder and harder but it remained fastened like lips or like mind. I was frantically searching for a lock. But the door was plain, there was not a single curve or hole on it. Somehow, I could sense that the spiral staircase below had started slithering upwards. My mouth became dry inside, the dryness passed through the hollow of my throat and then rose upward. It spread all over my brain and started pushing my head from inside just like I was pushing the door. I woke up setting a long breath free that had been choking inside.

I would die if I had to wait one more night for the door to open. No, I could not suffer to see the crawling crippling morning with these very eyes. A faint daylight was already coming through the window. Now it was creeping towards me climbing over the bed. I was very afraid. It would burn my skin. I took the bottle from the bedside table and inserted a handful of pills into my mouth.

This time I was a lot calmer. By now my fatigue grew too high to exist anymore. Even the staircase behind me stopped slithering; it was soothed. I heard some movement from the other side before I could touch the door. Slowly I pressed my ear against it. An indistinct voice came from behind as if from very far away. But I understood each word. It told me to rest my palms on the door. I did exactly so. And with a shudder that animated my whole body, I felt another pair of palms touching the door from the other side. Its outstretched fingers looked like mine mirrored on a dust-ridden aged piece of glass. The door was flung open.

#

The door of my dream finally opened. For this, I waited day after day; night after night I slept with impatience on my eyes. Now I would be able to see what was on the other side of it. I stepped into a small room. My mouth became dry again. But there was plenty of water. The walls inside the room were all wet. I licked one of them. That movement was there once more. I moved my glance across the room and there she was, sitting at a corner, with her chin resting on her knees. Her hair was unleashed like a spider web inside a sealed room. I walked there and sat down in front of her. Gaspingly, staringly I was looking at her stooped face. She lifted her eyes. There was accusing sorrow in them.

We talked for a long time that day, in my dream. And it was the longest sleep of my life. Longer than death.

#

One week later, I was wandering around an uninhabited place in the town. This was one of my favorite pastimes- to discover new places. That day I happened to discover my dream. I saw an old crumbling house. I felt that I had come across this house once or twice before and each time I wanted to go inside. Today I really did go inside the house. Through the moth-eaten passageways I was walking to be suddenly stopped by a spiral staircase. It was that spiral staircase of my dream. I could see the door at the end of the steps; that plain door without a single curve or a hole on it. I knew whom I would find there. I rushed through the stairs and flung open the door. But there was no one. The room was empty like the world outside. I entered the room and locked myself in it. I never left the room again.