This one is from the archives. A tale on quarantine, obviously fictional.

Is it though?

Mr. Darcy was a grumpy man. He was as thin as a bare skeleton and so tall that he had developed a hunchback; no one would be able to guess that he was only 62, his loose skin and grey facial hair made him look much older.

People often wondered how he married a beautiful woman like Julia aunty. She too had grey hair and loose skin, but perhaps time was kinder to her; her hair was luscious and her eyes full of light. Her laughter was infectious and her fish curry to-die-for!

I grew up in the house next door to this couple, and Julia aunty always looked after me like her own. On the other hand, nineteen years later, I still do not know much about Mr. Darcy. He barely talks, well at least in front of others but we hear him laughing and singing with aunty in the evenings. 

He is a weird man; reserved and alone. Almost always cranky and smoking a cigar. He never combs his hair or shaves. All that whiskey on the rocks has made his voice grainy and deep. Julia aunty is just equally chirpy and fun to be around. She wears pearls every day and makes these elegant braids with fresh flowers from our garden. She comes to pluck some every morning at 6. 

Since the covid lockdown was imposed, mother plucks some flowers and passes them to her from our kitchen window so that she doesn’t have to come out herself. 

Julia aunty seems petrified of corona. She is so paranoid that they will get infected. Not just her, everybody is scared, nobody knows what this virus is or what it can do. All we know is that we need to stay in and isolated. Aunty said on a call one week into the quarantine that self-isolation is too depressing for her. I too get lonely and bored as days turn into nights during this quarantine. 

“Robert is having the time of his life! He has always hated socialising, he loves staying in his library with his whiskey, cigars and radio. But I force him to get dressed up for me every other night. We sing and dance and cook this huge meal together. Now of course us two oldies cannot finish it, so we make sure we pack dhabbas for you all beta! In a month, I will send some homemade red wine too. Your uncle Darcy has tried his hand at brewing”- said Julia aunty the last time I spoke to her. 

Well I didn’t know that it was the last time I was talking to her then. She was so healthy! Perhaps one cannot really predict these things. It was heart-breaking to see her coffin being lifted from our window. I wish I could have attended her funeral or just sniffed the scent of her jasmine oil as I hugged her one last time. She was the grandmother I never had and now she was gone. 

After the funeral, as some days went by, Mr. Darcy retreated further into his shell. 

Mr. Darcy shut his doors tighter now. He never cracked a window anymore, but we still heard his karaoke every night. We could not imagine the pain he must be in, Julia aunty was all he had. She was the only person who put up with his crankiness. They were soulmates, two puzzle pieces who just fit together. No matter how rude and self-centred Mr. Darcy was, he worshipped Julia aunty. Every time aunty leaned in for a kiss, she would say, “I will have to deal with your lunacy until death do us apart Robert!”, and exactly in that moment, one could see how much Mr. Darcy loved her because he would reply- “Even after” with the kindest smile.

We gave him his space to mourn for a week but then I couldn’t stay quiet, I had to know if he was okay. So I put on a mask, a pair of gloves and knocked on his door. I could see his shadow from below, but he didn’t open the door. 

Next day I went again, with some hot food. He didn’t open the door. A week went by, still no answer and then suddenly on a Sunday morning he called and asked if we could pluck some flowers aunty liked and pass them to him. Mother did so and also tried asking him if he needed company but the rude man snatched the flowers and shut the window close. That evening I waited for 40 minutes at his doorstep, asking him to open up. He didn’t. Now I was as annoyed as I was curious about what was he upto.

He started asking for the flowers every morning at 6am, just how aunty would. Perhaps he was coping in his own way. 

A couple of weeks later, he showed up at our porch in the evening. We couldn’t invite him in due to social distancing restrictions but we tried talking him into letting us cook dinner for him every evening. But he delivered a jug of his homemade wine and mumbled- “Julia said I must deliver this before dinnertime, you know how persuasive she is!”, and left. It was weird seeing him talk as if aunty was right there, waiting in the kitchen for him to return so they could continue roasting their perfect chicken. The jute bag with the jug in it gave hints of aunty’s jasmine oil; perhaps now Mr. Darcy wears it but his hair was not oiled. The encounter was weird and sneaky, something was iffy or maybe I was overanalysing. Maybe. 

Things kept getting weirder after that. Now we could hear Mr. Darcy sing with his karaoke machine like he did before aunty passed away. We heard him giggle and laugh, call out aunty’s name from his library while the lights in the kitchen were always on. We could see his and aunty’s clothes drying after laundry sometimes when he would open his kitchen window to take the flowers. He had also started making frequent runs to the pharmacy. As we got more worried, Mr. Darcy got more secretive. Now he would ask mother to leave the flowers at our windowpane. And later in the day he would take them when we wouldn’t be looking.

One evening I saw him coming back from the pharmacy and tried talking to him by force but I slipped on his porch as his main door swung open. What I saw is an image that will haunt me for the rest of my life. Chills went down my spine and as my jaw clenched, I couldn’t believe my eyes! It was the corpse of Julia Darcy, dressed in a fresh pair of clothes, her braids done neat with jasmine oil and the flowers from our garden, sitting at the dining table with a warm brisket and two glasses of wine, her hands put in place using thin metal wires and her body covered in a white powder of some sort. Perhaps Robert Darcy was serious every time he said even after to his wife’s ’til death do us apart! Before I could take everything in, Mr. Darcy pushed me out of his house and spit vile insults at me. He shut the door but all the neighbours were out, looking at me, asking me what was I doing disturbing the poor old depressed man.

Depressed? Poor? This was a creepy psychotic old man who had dug out his loving dead wife’s corpse!   

I called the cops on him; he was arrested and my sweet Julia aunty was buried again.

Turns out, Robert Darcy was a lonely lunatic who had no one besides his wife in this world and even though he loved being isolated during this pandemic, quarantine without his wife turned him crazy. He says he loved her too much to let her go but I think losing the only person who could bear his insolent, bizarre nature was too much pain for him and that’s why keeping her alive using chemicals and copper wires seemed a safer bet than dying alone and lonely.   

He couldn’t extend a friendly hand to anyone during the quarantine but now he is to spend the remainder of his life in prison: the ultimate isolating cell.

Was this all for love or some eerie obsession?