The Bitter Wine Memento

Eventually the tension between us subsided and bit by bit it all faded. We vacationed in Torquay and went to buy fabric for a new coat. We celebrated Christmas at her sister’s and bought a vanity for the spare bedroom. Nothing had ever happened, or so we liked to pretend. While cleaning up on the attic one day she found a box of old door-knobs, rusty hinges and abstract tools that we had nowhere else to put. Rummaging through it she found, dusty and still powdery of rosin, her long ebony bow. The minute I saw it a familiar feeling infested itself in me. That night she was quiet and absent-minded. I put my hand in her dark brown wavy hair. I stuck my nose in it. My hand wandered around her waist. All I wanted was to make it all go away. But she pulled away and went to bed. Against my will my lungs greedily sucked in the air. I needed it. I sat on the sofa all night, breathing.

The following day I found her crying over the kitchen table, clutching the bow in her lap. I didn’t walk in, just walked past the doorway and went outside. I don’t remember where I went all day and all evening, only that when I returned through the door the guilt-ridden feeling returned stronger than ever before. In my gut I knew something was wrong and I started searching through the house, calling her name. I found the note before I found her. It was lying on the kitchen table, held down by the silver-encased bow. The words were spare but I understood what it said before I read it. My hands found each other, squeezed each other until I could almost hear the bones break. I shivered, could not balance on my feet. I screamed and I screamed until the morning, one hand holding the crumpled note, the other hugging the bow. All I could hear was those few words. “When love is gone, air is still superfluous. I wish not to breathe anymore. I will not. Life is so silent all of a sudden. My darling, I am so sorry. But I cannot breathe…”

She had hung herself in the attic.