At Eternity’s Gate
A Love Story
A poor young man went to the city one day. He had no reason for it, except that he was bored and he had never seen the city. There, as he walked through the crowds, he saw her.
He knew from the moment he laid his eyes on her who she was. She, he knew, without a doubt was the woman of his dreams. His heart tensed and his voice ceased. So he ran home, crying all along the way because he could not explain the pain in his heart.
For the young man, you see, had fallen in love for the first time.
That night, as he twisted in his bed unable to fall asleep, he wished deeply and profoundly in his heart that this woman of his dreams would fall in love with him forever.
His wish was so strong that despite all improbabilities, it came true.
The next day when he went back to the city, the woman looked at him and knew in her heart that she would be his and his alone, forever. And so she came down to him, with a smile on her face, and told him what was in her heart.
“I am yours and yours alone, forever,” she told him.
After fourteen days, she married him and they were man and wife, woman and husband.
The Gods watched them from above, for their love was heavenly. Poets began to weep because all the words in the world did not hold enough meaning to sing their story. And lovers across the world envied them because they knew that they could never love this way.
And so the years went by and the seasons changed as seasons always do.
The man woke up one day and looked across from him and saw an old crone sharing his bed. Father time had etched lines across their face, painted her hair white and cast her skin leathery.
‘This cannot be the woman I fell in love with,’ he thought. ‘My love has skin soft as feather and as smooth as pearl. Her hair is darker than the eye of a raven and her voice, more melodic than a chorus of songbirds.
‘This cannot be the woman I fell in love with because my love does not snore the way this thing here does, my love does not drool on the sheets this way and my love does not look like wrinkled leather. I never thought it possible but my love is dead.’
Saying these words in his heart he walked out of the house, never to come back. No one knew where he went and no one saw him ever again.
The woman woke up and thought that her husband must be in the kitchen. So she searched for him in the kitchen and he wasn’t there. Then she looked for him in the barn among the sheep and the goats, but he wasn’t there either. And then she walked the length and breadth of the fields thinking, ‘My husband must be tilling the soil.’
But it was winter, the soil was hard and her husband was not there as well. She came back home, hoping that it was all a dream and that her husband was waiting for her at the table with food prepared to break their fast.
But he wasn’t there either.
So, she sat on the porch, saying, “I will wait here until my husband comes. I will not eat until he is here for we have never eaten separately; and I will not taste water, for I only drink when I eat; and I will not sleep even if the moon shines bright and the wolves cry, because I have not slept ever except for beside my husband.”
And so she waited.
She waited from dusk to dawn and dusk again. She waited for weeks and weeks. The months came next and when the months went by, the years came. Neither rain nor hail moved her from where she was.
Not even when the neighbours urged her that her husband was never coming back did she move from her place. Not even when the kids around her grew old and died did she move from her place. And not even when death came for her did she move from where she sat.
She said to death with a kind smile, “I cannot die yet, for my love is still alive.”
So she stayed there for centuries. The centuries, as centuries do, eventually turned into millennia. Nations were born, changed shape and died, but she still sat there until one day a lone traveller who had travelled around the world a thousand times passed by her house.
He paused for the first time in his travels and asked her, “Grandmother, why are you sitting there alone? A thousand times I’ve travelled around this world and a thousand times I’ve seen you sitting there alone.”
In a croaky voice, for it had been a long time since she had used it, and in an extinct language she replied, “I am waiting for my husband to come back.”
“Don’t be a fool, grandmother,” he replied. “Your husband is surely dead by now.”
“That is not possible, child,” she replied with a kind smile. “For my love, you see, is still alive.”
“And what if your husband does not love you anymore?”
“That is not possible, child,” she repeated. “For my love, you see, is still alive.”
The traveller sighed and walked towards her and as he came closer, she got up off the porch and took his hand and led him inside. She prepared food and they ate.
“Where have you been, my dear husband? I have missed you so much.”
“I left my home and travelled the world because I realised that I did not love you anymore.”
“Why?”
He closed his eyes and meditated on the question. When he opened his eyes he spoke the simple truth.
“Because you became old and ugly.”
She looked at her hands and felt her face.
“Ah, that is true. Indeed, I have become old and my features, ugly. So you truly do not love me anymore?”
“No.”
“If you do not love me, why did you come back to me?”
“It is because I have lived over a thousand years, and for a thousand years, I have lived without you. I have seen everything the world has to offer. I begot hundreds of children in a hundred different nations and I watched them all grow old and die. Finally, I got up one day and said to myself, ‘There is nothing left for me in this world but to go home.’ So, here I am at home because I have nowhere else left to go.”
Silence.
“And now that you know the truth,” he continued. “Do you hate me?”
“No.”
“I see.”
With a sigh, the old man got off his chair and went into the bedroom. He fashioned a noose from a ragged piece of cloth and hung himself to death. But death did not come for him and he began to cry.
Once he was done crying, his wife helped him down. She bathed him and trimmed his beard. She cleaned his scars and massaged his aching limbs. And after enough time had passed, he spoke again.
“Why can’t I die?” he whispered. “I have tried a thousand different ways and I have failed a thousand different times.”
“You cannot die, my dear, because my love for you is still alive and well,” she replied with a kind smile. “And as long as that never ceases to die, you, my love, will never die.”
Fear gripped him. “And how long will you love me then?”
“Do you not remember my promise when I first spoke to you, my dear husband? Forever.”
