Last man in line
View(s):
Once again I am in my armchair, in the garden. Watching the birds and the going down of the sun.
Peaceful. A luxury and a privilege. How did I get so lucky? I am here by proxy. I am living another man’s dream. It was he who had planned to be sitting here, in peaceful retirement. I remember him, and his dream….but Time moved on for him, his priorities had to change, and the dream was wrapped up in tissue paper and carefully laid aside. No regrets. It had served its purpose. Perhaps it could be gifted?
I bought this house from him. After 13 houses in ten years of marriage, I was looking to drop anchor, for a house of my own. Preferably one built on an unfinished Housing Dept. loan, so that I could pay a modest down payment and take over the unpaid loan. His problem was that his rented house in Colombo had, suddenly, become an affordable option and he had to sell this house to buy that. He asked his tenants to find another house; repaired and colour-washed the house; installed a care-taker and put an “Ad” in the papers.
I saw the “Ad”. What caught my eye was: “Principals only. No Brokers” in bold letters. I rang him and fixed an appointment. I had not met him earlier.
He was a former school teacher, nicknamed “Penda” by the boys; a very nice man, smiling and modest.
He approved of me, too, and suggested we see the house.
As soon as we saw it, Dayadari and I looked at each other. This, we wanted.
He took us around the house, in his swaying gait (“The boys call me ‘Pendulum’ , he explained) cheerfully prattling on, inconsequentially. On a teacher’s salary, he said, he could only buy this land in a suburb. His brother and he bought, and shared this half-acre block. He would build a house here one day, he decided, and he would retire and live here.
He planned the house for that day. Vacant land, all their very own, surrounded the house. No neighbours, no fences. (Robert Frost said “Good fences make good neighbours”, but ‘no fences, no neighbours,’ is even better!). Large, open windows unbarred.
Spacious rooms. He would relax in his haansi-putuwa in happy retirement. That was the plan. But to repay the loan, the house had to be rented out. Then, the house he was living in – in Colombo – became available: but his loan was yet not paid, he was retired and this house was his only asset. So he divided his share into two, to sell the part with the house. He had no children. And he could relocate his haansi-putuwa to Colombo. All these bits of information he scattered in his wake as he took us around. Was he talking to himself, or me? He was “checking me out”,
I now realize, whether I was the man who could take over his house he had built upon a dream. He liked Dayadari and me (“Principals Only”) and we, him. Two days later he said, “I would like to sell this to you. How much can you afford?” I had decided on an opening bid. “Can you make it a leetle more?” I raised it a wee bit and he smiled happily: I had passed the test!
He handed me a bunch of keys and his dream. The house was now mine. But not his dream. It never was, really, though I am living it, by proxy. Maybe, with his prattling, he had infected me, like COVID. (I should have practised ‘social distancing!)
He visited us a few times after we moved in. Smiling, approving, gently letting go.
We invited the monks from a nearby temple to chant pirith. They began by offering merit to those who had lived on this land before. But who did? I asked myself. This was the first house built on this crust of Earth. Only one family had lived in this house. But, yes, the land was there before the house. Who had lived there in the wilderness? Prehistoric people? “Ghoulies and Ghoosties, long-leggety Beasties, and Things that go Bump in the Night”? The materialist in me was not convinced. But, last week – just last week – a 48,000-year-old human settlement of hunter-gatherers was found at Pahiyangala, only a few miles away as the crow flies. Perhaps proof of insubstantial beings will also emerge? “There are more things than are thought of in our philosophy, Horatio”.
The loan was paid off. The Housing Dept. closed their file and handed me back some documents. Reading them I came to know that “Penda” had bought this property from the estate of a Dr. Roberts who had died. There was a Joint Last Will where he and his wife had bequeathed their all to each other should one die before the other. No mention of children, dreams, future, hopes. Only each other. The end of a shared dream. What was sold was only an entry in the Assets Register.
I am “Penda”,
I am his tenant,
I am Dr. Roberts,
I am the hunter.
I am myself…
… the man in the armchair….. at the going
down of the sun….. remembering them.
(Maybe he infected me. Or maybe I am just soft in the head!)