Short Story: The Comrade
‘Sorry’, I said to myself, looking at the mirror. The mirror stared back without a reply.
‘Are you the poet and the fiction author?’, it seemed to ask silently.
‘I am not sure,’ said I, looking away from my own reflection. Somewhere, the last week had unhinged the new life I had set upon, in the COVID years. Suddenly, all the peace was gone. The jigsaw puzzle pieces of my life were disturbed and scattered.
‘ A friend is gone. And we both felt that the other one betrayed. All that was left was the money I owed him.’ I talked back to the mirror. My reflection stared back at me. The mirror was talking through my mind.
‘Why did he not speak to me when somebody painted me black and poisoned his mind? After the brush with the poison ivy, he was never the same.’ I replied. My friend had a partner who he called the ‘Comrade’.
‘If that was him, what about you?’, somewhere the inner voice asked. I frowned at the mirror. Without a flicker, it stared back.
‘I was right. I thought and did well to him. It was he who never told me that he had been poisoned. All he could say was ‘ I cannot say anything more. I only can tell you that things are not the same.’ My thoughts raced as I thought about the last time I tried to meet him.
I went to the meeting, as I got a call from my friend. But never turned up. I met his ‘comrade’. The culprit and the villain.
He sat on his high pedestal chair, his Gods behind him adorned with jasmine, an overdose of the flowers’ smell, flooding my nostrils. I covered my nose. He laughed and sniggered at me, saying that every time he saw us together, he had mocked our friendship. ‘You guy never figured it, right?’, he asked with an air of conviction.
Something was wrong about this comrade guy. Very wrong. He was a sadistic, small time, uncouth megalomaniac.
When I entered the meeting, the last one, I knew that my friend had gone — just to avoid a situation. After the meeting, where I was insinuated by this ‘Comrade’, I called him.
He just said,’ I had been telling you.’
I knew he was a weak but well intending soul, but now all that was gone. Only the last experience would remain.
‘I was wrong’, I told the mirror. A sigh was heard, but not seen. All I had to do was settle the amount with my friend. He had been poisoned, but I had no energy at this stage to explain myself to him. I just wanted to move on.
‘Then why are you stressed?’ asked my look alike across the glass surface.
‘I did everything that I could with good intentions. Yet, those came back to bite me. I wonder what I did wrong.’ I said, holding the edges of mirror tightly and grinding my teeth.
I could remember the comrade’s cackles. I felt humiliated.
That night, I dreamt of walking in a corridor of a building just after Komala Vilas, my favorite eating joint, in Lake Terrace, Rashbehari Avenue, Kolkata.
It was a bright evening. A crowd blocked my way and amidst the many unknown faces, was the comrade. He looked at me as if why I had turned up there. He was selling his real estate inventory to this cacophonous crowd.
On seeing him, an unease set forth in my mind. He was uneasy too, but seemed to quickly overcome it. Instead, he stated feasting on my unease.
I turned back and walked away in hurried steps. I turned a corner, just near the end of Lake Terrace road. The crowd has vanished and I was alone. The comrade ran and caught with me easily. Then he walked side by side with me, his shorter steps trying to keep pace with mine. Silence prevailed in the air.
‘So how is it feeling?’, his words poked my behind with a heated iron rod. Ouch! I saw his face, it was peaceful yet sadistic. He was shorter and younger than me, yet he played into my mind. I did not reply to that poke, and walked ahead silently. He ran up ahead and turned around at me, as if to block my way to make more fun.
I stopped. It was getting windy and dark. The air swooshed once, blowing away the autumn leaves. We both stood in silence. I, with an angry face, and the Comrade, with a smirk.
He pointed his car to me. It was a dark blue BMW. Then he pointed my car, standing further along the road. I knew my car. A 10-year-old Toyota, screaming for maintenance and a cracked windscreen. His smirk grew bigger and uglier. I knew what he implied.
‘Come along, I will take you for a spin.’ he said. I did not respond. He held my hand and opened the door of his Beemer. I hesitated once, and looked around. There was no one except the dark road and the wind.
We both strapped on our seat belts and he switched on the ignition. He drove smoothly. His sly grin never left his face. He knew that he had me. He let me simmer and boil inside.
I looked around inside the car. Plush, beige interiors and fresh jasmine smell. His God loved jasmine. The God of Wealth. I caught his side-glance. His sly grin became an ugly smile. I looked ahead.
He drove around the blocks. We were silent. The silence was a battle. A battle of wits between the sly, smirking comrade and the simmering me. The tussle broke when he reached his parking lot.
‘So, here we are!’ he said, grinning like a rabid dog. ‘How did you feel? I had figured you out all along, dear friend.’ I looked at him in anger. ‘You think you can get away?’, he said. All his smiles had gone and I could see a white monster in the driver’s seat, with its fangs gnarling at me and white claws tearing into the plush beige steering wheel cover of the Beemer.
The gloves were off. I felt that his car was shrinking and coming down on me. My breath became shallow and my palms were sweating.
He had got me inside the Beemer, where he wanted me — in his car, a dark blue monster with soft beige innards, and I was in its stomach.
I pushed the lever of the Beemer’s door and stepped out. I stood there for a moment, sucking in the warm night air.
I walked hurriedly towards my Toyota. My hands searched desperately inside my trouser pockets. The warm metal tip of the key felt safe against my fingers. I clicked the unlock button on the keypad, and the faithful Toyota beeped in response.
I got into my car. The familiar smell, a combination of my own sweat and the unwashed dust, hit my nostrils.
The smell, my own, was palatable — much better than the sickening smell of Jasmine in the Beemer. More importantly, it felt safe. My Toyota. My home.
~Ashok Subramanian
