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Strange tales have been told before; this tale is hard to tell. Some years back, I wandered the  crowded streets of Calcutta…the smell of curry and orange spice so heady it made me sick; Hindu cigarette smoke circling in waves above my head…bees and swarms of brutal insects hissing–hiding somewhere in the bright colored bizarre; plucked chickens hanging in the shade of awnings. A deadly heat. Shiny brass dishes for sale. Old sailor that I am, I had no use for this or that.I was looking for someone. That was the only reason I had come back. The sea was my home. Calcutta had become a strange world.

The one who I was seeking would be old now; his heart a shadow, He had been a poet, a sage, and prophet.  We had parted in silence many years before my return. A silence that was the song of doom ;an empty horror that left him smiling at his admirers and not a nod to me. He knew why I was leaving. No concern to him. His admirers would give him gold and food and friendship. I had become unnecessary.

Once, we had walked these streets together. His white suit and long black hair stirred the senses of men as well as women. His face a chiseled regal beauty. We had grown up together. I was his shadow. He spoke of opulent palaces where he would be invited.  But, he seemed fascinated by the red tinted windows of an opium den. You could see shadows through the windows. Slow motion… as if the people were asleep. He stood before the house and sang his songs to them; discordant melodies, listening to their tomb like whispers,ghastly forms, a hideous throng of rotting flesh beckoned him from the pale door. He would smile and walk away. Then enter some dark salon with me and order absinthe and for a time just dream. I had suspicions.

He had a following , who would walk behind us as we went to the brown river, blurred by vapors of heat. The shadow of the temple cool, we’d sit and he would chant his poetry. “The reflective soul in solitude starts to die or goes mad…I pass by  vessels of perfection and the golden bird flies to the jasmine garden where the flirt, the jeweled Nightingale has escaped from an evil magician.” I loved his words.

It was a night of celestial lights bursting from black raven skies. He told me he wanted to be alone. I let him go but followed in the shadows. He walked like a prince down the empty dirt street of the bizarre. He stopped in front of the house with the red tinted windows. I felt my heart begin to die. He did not have to tell me of his insatiable longings. His absinthe drinking was a sign. Mysticism, his mercurial words were just a defence against his own true nature.I thought he was struggling now I know it was just to save face. I had longed for him to confide and ask my help. To confess! When I finally left I knew he wanted the lie.

I had listened to him speak of pleasure domes, jeweled nightingales, and delicate doves to eat…figs as sweet as a virgin bud, of sacred rivers, towers to heaven, incense bearing trees; ancient forests so dark and warm like the womb. I had believed in his poetry.Finally,in the dark of the strange salons, he took me to drink the absinthe, I had begun to smell a bad smell. Worship had not completely blinded me. He was telling old poems. Sinking deeper into the green liquid bottle. I watched a stranger point him out and say, “He steals his poems and consorts with whores. They steal for him.” I wanted to think they were liars. 

When  savage unholy rhythms began to haunt his mind; he drank more absinthe to still his thoughts and would hear a tormented woman weeping for her goat lover.Demons danced in his brain. He could not sleep. He muttered to himself. He had been a poet god to these people. If he was false he would be found out.Time was running out. And so that night, he wanted to be alone, he entered the pale door. The house of the red tinted windows. This was the evidence I had waited for; he did not love me. He had used me all these years.

It  burnt my soul. I went away from him without a word and became a sailor. I had known love because of him or thought I did. He had fooled me. All the years, he had taken all from me, beauty and poetry. Betrayal ate at my heart. Now, after so many years I had returned to find him. I’d heard rumors of his madness. The opium den and Caligula like circus in the dark shadows of evil. My obsession was murderous. I hated myself and I loathed him. I clutched the knife in my pocket like a talisman. Somewhere along these dirt streets with howling wild cats had to be the house with the red tinted windows. A wanton girl with a red dot on her forehead emerged from the shadows. I walked away.

Then I saw it. The house with the pale door and red tinted windows.Shaking. I walked towards it. The door opened before I knocked.An old man with long white hair and beard, sunken cheeks and dirty fingernails, blinked at me. His eyes were watery and red tinged. “It is you.” he whispered. I reached into my pocket for my knife. ” I knew you’d come someday.” he said. “Death usually comes at night.” I stared at him. Suddenly, I realized  he did not know who I was. The old devil thought in his buried poets mind–death had come at last.

“Don’t disappoint me stranger. Do your deed and be gone. All they will find is a pile of dirty clothes and a stack of disfigured bones.”

I couldn’t speak. Nothing mattered. My hate was gone. My love was dead. My future ended here, “Well,” he snarled. “Why are you waiting?” I backed away. He smelled of rot and decaying teeth. He reached out a thin gnarled hand. “Wait! If you are Death, tell me this. My boyhood friend, my muse, is he dead?” I dared not speak. He still clutched my hand. “I loved him, you see. I betrayed him for my own selfish lusts; demons that ate at me till I let them in. My friend left me without a word. He knew I was false. I became the mad, drugged, worthless egotist that had masqueraded as a poet of the people. Who was no ones friend. I have always been false even as a child. I pushed my friend away to get attention. And it was my friend’s devotion, always at my side that made me real and gave me courage. His love drew pictures in my mind that came out as beautiful words.  I never praised him. I was so afraid that one day he’d discover my evil longings and my false empty self. I stole words from other poets. I stole life and breath from my friend. I left him for the cheapest thing…an opium den.”

I felt an agony I had never experienced. I felt hollow like a dummy. My hand in my pocket still clutching the knife.

He stared at me with a dead man’s eyes…and a pleading. I pulled my hand away from his. I pulled out my knife. With  great force I plunged my knife into his chest. He gasp. In a kind of slow motion, he slide to the ground. Feebly, he grasp my trouser leg and looked up. Tears were streaming down his face. “I knew you’d come back to free me…my dearest love, my friend.”