Anna could talk endlessly to Joseph about their short blessed years together. Although he did not have the strength to participate in the conversation as much as both wanted, he would listen and sometimes with short phrases said something. Anna's belief was that their relation was not and had not been an ordinary one. Definitions like happiness, joy, serenity, and so on did not apply to them; so she said things to him that were her deepest beliefs.
"We're happy but not the kind of happiness that is customary for other people. For us, happiness, joy, and serenity are something else." Then she would add after a minute of silence:
"I feel life more profound with you. I am more alive with you than before, no matter of what is happening now, no matter of you being sick." She gazed thoughtfully into space and again continued:
"Life is blooming in me if I just could divide everything around me into either positive and negative."
"It's funny because I feel the same. I was alone seeking life before you." He said in an unsteady voice.
Tears glistened in Anna's eyes. She kissed her husband's forehead and then his lips. His eyes were cloudy, too.
"Before I met you, the intensity of life was such that I was hoping for a miracle. You know, I wasn't satisfied that notions like amenity and peace of mind had the same signification for me than it had for others; if so, they had to lose their meanings a great deal because I could not be judged by normal standard." Anna spoke more and more passionately.
Joseph could no longer make up her face. He was drowned not only into his excruciating pain but also into a profound sadness for his wife rather than himself. He was at the verge of tears.
"You're not alone in searching life anymore." He said with a searching glance and bitter smile.
"I know dear. For me life now is beyond the idea of convenience and assurance. I'm intense but not the kind of intensity that I faced before. I will never become what I was before again."
"I love you so much that it hurts. You're an exceptional human being." His voice still had its familiar professorial tone in it that Anna always loved.
"You know, I worship our talks even though it's changed. It used to be that you talked more and I listened; now I talk more and you listen."
"I like that. You were very quiet then." He said in half whisper.
"Those talks we had are not bygones to me. They appear as real as it is going on now. They live in me. I keep bringing them back to my memory." She seemed pale and gloomy.
A soft breeze moved through the open window. Anna gazed out there, where the breeze animated the trees.
"You know I can imagine that soothing of nature..." He stopped in the middle of his sentence and waited until she answered the phone which interrupted them.
When she returned to the bedroom, since she always answered the phone in the kitchen, she found Joseph asleep.
*
To Be Continued
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