I’ll give you one day to find out who’s the owner of this torn red handherchief. By the end of the day, I’m expecting the story written right here, on my desk, in all its details. I’m expecting to get all the essential answers, such as who, where, when, how, why and most important what the hell it is doing on my pillow, disturbing my sleep with its red presence, reminding me of things I should have forgotten by now, storming my memories in search for that particular one I can’t actually remember.
You can consider it as a test. People always give tests to other people when they feel insecure. People give tests to other people when they feel superior also. Or when they need the proof that they made the right choice. Or before making the choice. People give tests in all kind of situations. That’s only one of them. So don’t feel annoyed if you fail because that won’t make you better or worse than the rest of the world, just as it won’t make you better or worse than you know you are. Maybe you should consider it rather as a detective experience. You know, that kind of Sherlock Holmes stuff. Find some clues, put them together, see the result, get the hint. Sounds simple, isn’t it? You only need little bit of imagination, little bit of luck and little bit of feeling. You can’t do anything without feeling. Feeling means empathizing. How can you grasp the hidden meaning of things, how can you get to the core of the truth if you don’t empathize?
So first of all you should tell a little lie to yourself and pretend that handherchief belongs to you. In this case, the problem turns round 180 degrees to another question: who am I? What does this torn piece of material tell about myself? Pretend you lost memory all of a sudden and this thing is the only connection you have with your life. Can you reconstruct your life using this only? Can you go back to your past without having anything else but a story told by an object which doesn’t have voice?
Let’s have a look, then. It’s a small handkerchief. A small thing to be used by small hands. Fragile itself, so probably belonging to someone equally fragile. That kind of person that can be hurt by the touch of a spring flower. Delicate, sweet, almost unreal. I would say, a girl. Not more than 20, not less than 15. Shy, silent, lonely, but all in all lovable creature. A girl men are afraid to talk to exactly because she’s so special in her own way. If you are not a girl, it would be difficult for you to imagine how she is really like, because your eyes will look at her with that hungry look of the wolf waiting for its prey. You will hunt her just as all the others do, not getting too close, smelling from distance, growling and rooting, feeling frustrated for being dominated by instinct in front of someone who is above instincts and above earth. So a double effort is required. Are you able to do it? Maybe not. Maybe that’s too much. Or maybe you have already seen the next hint, the next particular thing about this handkerchief.
Its bare existence. How many people use handkerchiefs nowadays? I, for instance, prefer to buy those white perfumed hygienic tissues. Use them, throw them away. No bother about washing or ironing them. That’s the comfort of the 21st century individual. More and more people help the paper companies grow their income. What kind of girl would still use handkerchief? Perhaps an old-fashioned one. Perhaps she’s living with her old mother in an old house. Every morning she wakes up to go to school or college and she finds a newly-washed handkerchief next to the glass of milk and slice of bread with strawberries jam and butter. Do you think she likes it, this habit I mean? Do you like it? I suspect she got used to it, in so many years. She is so used to it that she would find it weird not to happen one day. That would mean either she’s dead and there are no handkerchiefs in heaven, or that her mother is dead and she was too busy dying, so didnt have time for her daughter’s handkerchief.
And what about this fine embroidery on its margins? Delicate handkerchief wearing delicate embroidery made by delicate hands. That gives special meaning, so it has to be a special handkerchief. Otherwise why should she have spent so much time with this handwork? You may say that probably all her handkerchiefs are the same. But I say only this one has this particular design – circles and flowers and curve lines going to nowhere, suddenly interrupted like the flow of a thought which was not supposed to be there at all... She was dreaming in that moment of embroidery birth. She was dreaming of someone dear to her heart. A man. Not a man of her age. Young people don’t make girls embroider for them. He’s older and he made her a promise. Do you see this continuous line, with no circle, no curve and no flower? That’s where she feared that she’ll lose her love. That’s where her hand trembled and her eyes lost the track of the needle and silk thread. Then the flowers are back because she has no one to tell her story, so she’s telling it to her handkerchief. Every single needle point is a word of hers and a tear of hers and a hope of hers.
The crease... Her small hand made that crease. Angelic being getting angry with the whole world. Angelic eyes throwing arrows of helplessness and revolt. Now that’s a problem even for me. Why did she get angry? What could have made her so upset as to crumple the handkerchief embroidered by herself? Would you destroy a thing you made? I tried that once, with some old sketches of mine, drawn ages ago when I was a kid. No value of them, rather a burden on my already messy desk. Yet I couldn’t throw them away. We depend on such things of our past, as if they are the only ones able to keep alive the memories stored in our mind. We fear that by losing them we lose a bit of ourselves, so we store more and more and more...till there’s no more place to support all this heaviness of matter and of heart. And because of the mountain of trash, we are not able to get a glimpse of the future anymore. So we become relics in a world of relics, pathetically proud of what we thought we were, but not giving the slightest try to be proud of what we can be.
She got angry because he did something, something terrible, something like leaving her for a woman of his kind. When he understood that behind her eyes there’s a child hidden and that he adores that child, he also understood that his love will break the child into pieces. So he simply left. Praying that it isn’t too late already. Praying that the child will not suffer much and will forget. But she didn’t forget. Otherwise why is this handkerchief torn? Yes, he tried to explain. Face to face. In a letter. Doesn’t matter how. He tried, of course. But how can you explain the end and the necessity of this end? I see you now with this mistrustful look on your face and I know what you’re thinking of. He didn’t really loved that girl. Men don’t make too much philosophy when it’s about women, unless they are poets or lunatics. He had his part of fun and he left. I believe in their love, though. Because she is tiny, fragile and because she has an embroidered handkerchief. A girl wearing handkerchief doesn’t know much about how the things go. Everything happpening in her life is a new experience she has to face and she has to find her own answers and her own ways out. So how can you not love such a girl?
That still doesn’t solve our mistery. When did she tear the handkerchief? When he left? When she remembered him? When she missed him most? Or when she decided that it’s time for her to leave also? And how did she do it? How can those thin fingers tear the handkerchief? Too much rage? Too much pain? Too deep despair blackening her thoughts? An unsuspected strength bursting out all of a sudden? Where was she? How come that no one was there to stop her? In her room? Bathroom? Backyard? Basement? Attic? Bank of the river? I don’t know. I just found the handkerchief on my pillow. It would have been easier if i had found it somewhere else. Like in one of the places I mentioned, for instance. You see? I don’t care how it got here, I don’t care who brought it. Obviously there’s no angel girl in my room. My room rejects fragility by its nature. This handkerchief is an intruder and I’m only trying to read between the lines and get to the true story of this intruder. I know one thing only, and that thing is that the handkerchief is the only witness of what happened next, and that witness is silent.
I wish it had a mouth to talk and tell me at least why it is red and why this red colour is haunting me. How many possible answers do you think there are? She might be a painter and by mistake her hands got red coloured with paint and she wip them with her handkerchief. Or maybe it’s not paint but lipstick. Unconscious of her beauty, she wanted to be beautiful that day. Unlike herself, she used lipstick and removed it from her red trembling lips in the minute she understood it’s useless. She couldn’t be something she was not and it would have been useless anyway. If I tell you I’ve got a red handkerchief, without actually showing it to you, you can assume anything. But I can’t assume. I don’t afford to, since I hold it in my hand and I’m looking at it and see clearly the red of the blood – her blood, which somehow got on the white handkerchief and gave it its colour and its sense of a tragedy.
She was a fragile little being. She fell in love for the first time in her life and her love was lost because he was not ready for her. In the day when he left, she locked in her room, torn her handkerchief and silently left too, putting an end to a story which was not unique in itself, as nothing is unique but rather following ancient patterns overused by thousand and thousand of people before. There was no one to save her and she was not saved by anyone. I’m in this mood today and I don’t want her saved. For me, the girl died. There’s beauty in her death, there’s beauty in her love, but more then anything there’s wantonness and the proof of her useless act is lying on the wrongest pillows of all.
I empathize with my girl. My heart is beating its last beats now, while blood is slowly flowing out of my body. If that’s not empathy, then I don’t know what else is. In the same time, I want her dead. I prefer her dead. This world is not meant for angels who carry handkerchiefs with them. On the other hand, that gives me the perfect opportunity to die without feeling guilty and without really dying myself.
For me, this is the story and that’s where it ends. I could tell you more about the music she liked to listen, the places she liked to visit, the things she kept in her room... But I won’t do that because some things are not to be revealed. Little secrets meant for my heart only. Even now i’m playing with them, twisting them, giving them new shapes and new colours. I’m not even sure I’d be able to make a language shelter for all of them. And if I do that, time would be lost and the world won’t get the chance to read the story of my torn red handkerchief and create its own version of it. That shouldn’t take more than a day. A day is enough and each minute added to that day would do nothing but force the truth and the meaning.
But I’m curious... Close your eyes... Pretend you don’t know I’m here and you don’t know that I’m letting the handkerchief fall on your pillow. Pretend you’re surprised to find it there, as if coming from nowhere, and tell me... Do you know? Can you retell the story of your handkerchief?