A Short Story: Can you bring me some colours?

(Inspired by J.)

I pulled the curtains open. I felt a desperate need to get some sunlight, some cheer into the room. But the bleak landscape outside brought no comfort. I had to call somebody, to try and shake off the pall settling on my mood. But who?

There was one. He always knew what to do in these situations. "Old friends are like wine," he had said, "The longer you know them, the less you see of them, but the more you cherish those occasions. Those meetings gain in maturity, in sparkle, in fulfillment, making up for what they lack in frequency." I hated him for that philosophical bent of his, hated him for saying things I did not want to hear, hated him for being right. But he had never let me down. No, he was far, far, more generous than I could ever be.

And I hated him for that too.

I called him.

"Hey. It's me."

"Hi! To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"I have a task for you."

A chuckle. "At your service, m'lady. What can I do for you today?"

"Of late, my world has become... gray. Can you bring me some colours?"

"Ah, but colours do not behave that way. Perhaps if you go to them, they may agree to come back with you. But nobody can simply bring them to you."

"What should I do?"

"I'll pick you up. Half an hour."

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He was as I always remembered him. It was easy to talk to him. Most of the time. He was a good listener. It was when he went into one of his speeches or self-designed proverbs that he became unbearable. But he didn't do that as we drove into the outskirts of the city. He always had a sense of timing. Now was not the time. I would have jumped out of the car while it was moving and hitch-hiked back if he did. He probably knew that, too.

We pulled up at a farm just outside the city. The workers there greeted him cheerily and he waved back. "I come here now and then. It belongs to a distant uncle," he explained.

We walked into a beautiful meadow. Cows grazed placidly, and regarded us with big, friendly eyes. The grass was soft and damp under our feet; there were copses of trees some distance away; and the air was clean and fresh and redolent with the smell of dew. Some children were playing tag nearby. He plucked at my sleeve and we headed in their direction.

I looked at him incredulously. Surely he didn't expect me to play! But he had that mischievous glint in his eyes that said that was exactly what he had in mind. And there we played with those kids, running around bare-footed, weaving to avoid a catcher, laughing, short of breath. It was fabulous. I felt free for the first time in a long, long, time.

We sat down in exhaustion some time later. My chest was heaving with the exertion but I was smiling. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a little cloth bag. It was embroidered in beautiful patterns, and by a slight reluctance in the way he pulled it out, I gathered that it was a personal treasure of sorts. He pulled a long blade of grass out of the ground and gave it to me with the bag. "Look at it. Feel it. Your first colour, the green of light-hearted joy. Then put it inside the bag."

I did all that. We walked back to the car. As we drove back, he said, "I'll pick you up tomorrow, same time in the afternoon. We'll go and fetch your second colour." I smiled at him. He smiled back, a little too softly. I felt mildly ashamed. But I got out and went back to my apartment without a word.

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This time, we drove up to a little quay by the sea and rented a small boat. But it had a quiet and powerful motor, and very soon I was laughing into the wind and splashing the water as we streaked through it. The sky was cloudless, the most wonderful shade of azure blue. The water was a darker but no less enjoyable shade of blue, and it glistened with golden sunlight towards the horizon.

He stopped the motor after a while, and we floated there - in every sense of the word - with only the sky and the water and the sun to keep us company. A few birds flew over our heads, but they only added to the deep sense of blissful serenity that was creeping into my soul. The whole time, he had said nothing. We just sat there, leaning against each other, soaking up the surroundings. When the sun started getting too low, he pulled out a camera, one of those that print out the picture on the spot, took a snap of the horizon, blue meeting blue in a flare of gold, and handed me the picture. I looked at it for a long minute and put it into the cloth bag, wordlessly, as he started the motor to head back.

As we alighted at my apartment, he finally spoke, "Same time tomorrow." I nodded.

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The third day was not quite so pleasant. I was alarmed when we pulled up into a hospital. I hate hospitals. He knew that already. I can't stand the atmosphere of pain and loss, can't stand the sight of blood and violence, am liable to faint at the sight of a needle. But he gripped me tightly by the arm and led me inside. He spoke to a nurse, who seemed familiar with him, and she led us into the emergency ward.

Nobody stood still in that place. In fact, they were always in a rush. And with good reason. In the first 5 minutes there we saw at least six patients wheeled in with gruesome injuries or symptoms. One man had been in an accident, and was bleeding so profusely that the blanket covering him was entirely bathed in blood. They wasted no time in taking him into an operating room.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. But he still held my arm tightly. Not cruelly, in the physical sense, but cruelly nonetheless. A nurse and a woman doctor wheeled in another guy who appeared to have been knifed. There were two gaping slashes across his chest and stomach, bleeding red, red blood. The nurse seemed frantic and kept saying that the operating rooms were full, and left to find someone who could do something about it. The doctor examined the man closely and suddenly seemed alarmed. "This can't wait," she said aloud into the air and beckoned to me. "You, press this down against this wound to staunch the bleeding. I am going to stitch the other wound right here. He has lost a lot of blood." And she handed me a strip of gauze. Just like that. I obeyed mindlessly.

It took her only a minute. She then moved on to the wound I was covering and stitched it up quickly and expertly. She examined her handiwork and nodded to herself. Then, she did the strangest thing. She pressed her palm against his forehead, closed her eyes and said a quiet blessing. And left, without a word to me.

I was still holding the blood-drenched gauze. I looked at my friend and he nodded. I put it into the little cloth bag with the blade of grass and the picture of the sea. The grass had left a green splotch across the picture, and now I was adding a blood stain to it. Strangely, I did not feel guilty about doing so.

We walked out and he talked. Here comes the speech, I thought. But this time I listened most carefully.

"You see it as a place of pain and suffering. But I see it as a place of unwavering care and heroism. That blood is the mark of both. Without darkness, there is no light.

The Green of Joy, the Blue of Serenity, the Red of Suffering, they are all part of one tapestry. Look at the embroidery on the cloth bag closely. It appears to be made of all colours, yet it appears to be made of just one colour.

In trying to avoid pain, you ended up losing joy. Life is not meant to be spent avoiding feelings but embracing them. Lose one colour, and you will slowly find yourself losing them all, and the resulting gray existence is even more intolerable than the very pain you set out to avoid."

I cried. I stood there in front of his car and I cried like a baby. He took me into his arms and rocked me slowly. I think I must have bleached the shoulder of his shirt with my tears that day.

I returned his bag a week later, because I sensed it was precious to him. The blade of grass dried up and the bloody cloth turned brown, and I threw them away, but I kept the stained picture. I had found my colours.

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