The Last Valentine

Priyabrat Biswal

 

TEN years had passed, yet the morning returned with the same pale light, the same suspended stillness — and the same unease that had once entered Siddharth’s life with a telephone ringing before dawn.

He had always feared early calls. They arrived without context, like doors opening into rooms one had sealed and sworn never to enter again.

Half-awake, he lifted the receiver.

“Hello?”

A woman’s voice answered — cold, immediate, without breath.

“Forgotten me? You never loved me. You only pretended. I was right not to marry you.”

He did not ask her name.

He already knew.

Maya.

Once, she had been the quiet center of his days. Their love had begun in the most fragile way — through a newspaper article she had read about him. A letter followed, then another, and soon their lives existed between envelopes. Ink carried what distance denied. Four hundred kilometres collapsed each time the postman stopped at his gate.

It was she who first spoke of marriage. She who urged him to elope, fearing her family’s refusal. But Siddharth believed in patience — in consent, in dignity, in waiting without stealing. She had agreed. She had promised to convince them.

They met only once — five brief minutes in Bhubaneswar, under the watchful presence of her family.

Five minutes he preserved like a relic, replayed until memory itself grew tender.

After that, absence began its slow erosion.

Letters thinned. Calls shortened.

“I am busy,” she said.

He believed her, because love — when it is sincere — does not suspect.

Then silence hardened into fact.

Smita, once the silent bridge between their letters, called with a hesitant voice.

“Do not write to Maya. She is getting married next week. A rich man. From your city.”

The world did not shatter.

It emptied.

He tried to reach Maya. She denied him even the mercy of refusal.

Time moved forward, though he did not feel it move. Smita remained distantly in touch. It was she who called when Siddharth lay in a hospital bed, his body burning with cerebral malaria.

Later she called again.

“I told Maya you were ill,” Smita said softly. “She did not pray for your recovery… she prayed for your death.”

Something inside him did not break.

It simply went silent — like a lamp extinguished without wind.

Years passed.

And then, on another Valentine’s morning, the telephone rang.

“Did you really love me?” Maya asked.

“Yes,” he answered, without hesitation.

“I want something from you. Promise you will give it.”

“I cannot promise. Tell me.”

Her voice was calm, almost practical.

“Can you die for me? I have everything now — a rich husband, a beautiful house, a respectable life. But I cannot live peacefully knowing you exist. What if you tell him about us? If you truly loved me, end your life. Let me live happily.”

There was no tremor in her words — only fear.

Not of losing love, but of losing comfort.

Siddharth listened as though she were speaking about someone else.

“I will,” he said at last, “on one condition. My mother is dying of cancer. My father lies in a bed that memory has abandoned. My sister is trying to rebuild a life after its collapse. Take responsibility for them — for all of them — and I will do as you ask.”

Silence.

Then a short, incredulous laugh.

“Are you mad? How can a married woman accept such a burden?”

He spoke gently, almost kindly.

“There is nothing for your husband to know. We met once — for five minutes — in front of our families. We exchanged a few letters, and you took them back. There is nothing with me to threaten the life you fear losing.”

He ended the call before she could answer.

She never called again.

Nor did he.

Valentine’s Day still returns each year with the same pale light. Siddharth wakes before the telephone rings — not out of hope, but out of habit — like a sentry guarding a memory no one else can see.

He keeps no letters, no photographs, no proof that she ever existed.

Time has erased the ink, the paper, even the sound of her handwriting.

And yet one thing refuses to fade:

Five minutes beneath a watchful roof.

Four years of waiting across four hundred kilometres.

And a love that asked for nothing — until it was asked to die.

He has learned, at last, that some stories do not end when they are abandoned.

They do not fade, nor heal, nor close.

They remain — quiet, unseen — like a wound that no longer bleeds, but never becomes skin.

 

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