Sarah and Nicolas, the soon-to-wed couple bring Samara across the border to Canada, hidden in their vehicle as she’s wrongfully accused of carrying illegal drugs. At the border, they pretend to be married, although they aren’t, and Sarah is arrested for carrying an ornamental gold pagoda in her handbag. She’s bailed out the following day and a court case is filed. She wonders why Nicolas and Samara don’t turn up to inquire after her, and learns later that they’re in a secret affair and they’ve betrayed her. She attends the court case alone, pays a fine and faces a suspended sentence of six months imprisonment. The following week, she flies to a city far away, finds employment there and settles down. She follows a university course to become a teacher. She coincidentally meets a young man (Sherman) and falls in love with him. He suggests that Sarah be his niece’s home-visiting tutor, and introduces her to the family.
Episode 9
More than a decade ago, things had been as follows:
It was the residence of Kumberlin and Christus, and no one else lived there. Apparently, they were quite a happy couple. Christus was a man of rules and regulations. Kumberlin lived a life of pretence then, just like she did now, although the circumstances were different. For her, Christus was the only man that existed in the world or so she showed that she didn’t value anyone else as much as she valued Christus.
He was a selfish man, but for Kumberlin, he was a self-centred man, and she thought it was the most positive character description that anyone could receive. At events of charity in the community, Christus, being richer than an average townsman, hardly contributed. If anyone criticised him for not being a donor, he became self-centred, and made sure that such criticism didn’t even enter his ears.
“People haven’t identified him well. He’s such a rare human being. They say he’s selfish, but he isn’t. He’s not a selfish man; he’s a self-centred man. He’ll donate anything to anyone.” Kumberlin often said.
Perhaps she was right from her own perspective. However, it was bizarre that she spoke about their generous nature, even when it wasn’t necessary. No one expected them to be charitable, but she expected everyone to expect it from them. When her brothers Sherman, Sidney and Jerad were teenagers, they lived far away in their main house, and she gave away her husband’s old, worn out underwear to them. They looked at them with disgust, held them with their fingers when she was gone and tossed them in the garbage.
Christus could easily be angered, and hardly anyone knew it. Kumberlin was successful that way; she saw to it that none of her siblings knew about the kind of life she lived with him. In brief, it was a failing marriage.
Once, Christus returned home unexpectedly and Kumberlin took a longer time to open the door for him. He rang the doorbell many times and waited outside for a few minutes. When she did open the door, he was in utter fury, and grabbed her by her hair and thrust her to the wall, asking why she had taken that long. She was frightened and quiet and to his surprise, she also had a family friend visiting her at the same time who he hadn’t seen before he entered. It aggravated his fury and he let go of his wife and tried to physically attack her friend. Her friend, knowing that she was in some kind of danger, rushed out of the house.
There were many such incidents with regard to Christus’s aggressive behaviour. It was surprising that Kumberlin had managed to hide the real face of their relationship from her siblings for decades. However, Kumberlin was always capable of hiding the truth, no matter how hard it was.
How unfortunate! She didn’t know that the truth was like the sun or the moon. If all human hands stretched towards the sky in an attempt to cover the sun or the moon, would the sun or the moon stop glorifying the earth with their brightness? The answer is, no. Without any effort, they’d rest their prestige on earth. The truth was the same, no matter how brilliantly one hid it from the rest of the world it’d be exposed one day.
One day Kumberlin visited the registry office with Christus. He dropped her off and went to park the car, and Kumberlin walked towards the office by herself. A man working in the registry office opened the door for her, asking what she needed to get done. Before, she answered, Christus came in between and questioned him on the reasons for having to talk to his wife.
“Yes, what can I do for you? What do you want to know from her?” he asked.
“Sir, I’m trying to help her, direct her to the right counter.” The man replied.
“You don’t have to worry. We know where we’re going.”
At this the man became silent, and Christus walked with Kumberlin softly muttering, “I don’t know why these people try to gather around a good-looking woman just to get attention and show they know everything. If he had argued, I’d have called the cops on him.” Kumberlin was delighted about his attitude, no matter how wrong it was. The man had been really doing his job, directing people to the right counter. He hadn’t had any intention of approaching a woman to get attention.
Christus often travelled abroad on business. Once, when he was lining up to board a plane, he caught sight of a familiar face, a man from the same neighbourhood. Recognising him, the neighbour made a friendly gesture and walked towards him, but Christus ignored him.
“I don’t know you.” Christus said, despite the effort made by the other party to talk to him. Although Christus knew him well, his self-esteem had brought him down very badly or perhaps taken him high up to the sky that he hadn’t been interested in falling into conversation with a neighbour who he thought was inferior to him. He was jubilant about ignoring him and making him feel less important. His mannerism and personality matched well with those of Kumberlin, no matter how unsuccessful their marriage was.
Kumberlin, although she thought she was married to a high-ranking man, she loved to be fancied by other men. Whenever they attended a friendly get-together and she was left alone in a crowd she fell into weird conversations with other men. Once, amid some people having a drink, she heard someone making a comment on an unmarried young man.
“He’s lived alone enough now, looking for a girl to marry.”
Kumberlin, highly excited to hear the words, raised her voice, and looking straight at the bachelor said,
“Well, I am here!”
Everyone looked at her, some taken aback and some not, as they knew her well. And, to make her comment seem casual, Kumberlin burst out laughing, as if she had been joking.
It was when Christus went abroad on business once, that things came to a crucial point. Yes, that was the climax. It was quite a long absence, as he was taking a longer time abroad than usual. That was the time that Kumberlin visited a friend, and met a nice gentleman, Ronald, who lived in the same town. Kumberlin invited him home, and although he was a married man, he visited her alone. He visited her many times during Christus’s absence, and Kumberlin was successful in getting many household work done by him. In other words, he became a handyman for her. He fixed broken drawers, wall cupboards and also shopped for groceries. Kumberlin, being thorough in the art of getting work done by men never spared him by any means.
Christus called her often, but she wasn’t affected by his absence. She was happy about it, as it gave her a longer time with Ronald. She was enjoying his company, including everything that Christus had failed during their eleven years of marriage. Yes, they were married for eleven years, trying to have a baby, although it was a failure. Kumberlin was a very successful woman in this regard. She was overjoyed to hear the news of herself going to become a mother, knowing well that the father of her child wasn’t Christus, but Ronald. It was the news of a lifetime. However, two weeks after receiving the news, Christus returned.
Kumberlin tried her best to hide it from him, at least for some time, so that she’d be able to pretend otherwise, but she was unsuccessful. Christus, getting to know the truth, was furious. One night before falling asleep, they had a severe argument.
It made him sick. Kumberlin denied the accusation; she continuously said that she had conceived a baby before his departure. However, her efforts of hoodwinking him were futile. He never believed her, and despite his efforts, he never got to know the name of the man she had been having an affair with.
The next day Christus went to take a walk outside in the same mindset. The argument of the previous night and the devastating incident had tormented him. He returned home with a failing heart, laid himself on the bed and took his last breath in front of his wife.
Kumberlin was shocked and saddened. She called her siblings and passed the news of the sudden death of her husband, and also that she had conceived a baby. Her siblings were shocked to hear the news, although none of them knew the story behind. After his death, Sherman, Jerad and Sidney came to live with Kumberlin, and at the due time baby Kristina was born.
To be continued next week
Copyright - Santhoshya Jayamali Seneviratne