Digging in the Garden

by Trost

I am not afraid to admit that I cry. Why should that embarrass me? Men too can feel sadness.

I pulled a handkerchief from my jacket pocket and dried my eyes. Anyone who knows me will attest that I am not an overly emotional man. I have been told that one of the first impressions I leave upon strangers is that of being a mentally stable man, someone in control of himself.

I kept the handkerchief at hand, I knew that I would need it again before the minute-hand of my study’s antique clock reached XII.

A nip of scotch, I thought to myself, although the sudden urge for a drink seemed to have come from outside my head rather than from within. Anyway, regardless of its origin, I was inclined to concur. A scotch would go down very nicely right about now. Or perhaps some port, or even a little Cointreau.

I turned from my study window, which overlooked the cold wintry garden, and stepped over to my well stocked liquor cabinet.

Maybe I’m not an excessively emotional man but every man has his limits, and I had certainly reached mine recently. There is only so much anyone can bear.

I poured a decent glass of whisky and drank deeply. I felt better immediately although I knew that there were some problems that even a good dose of the old single-malt couldn’t solve.

Without really thinking about what I was doing I found myself being drawn back towards the window. My slippers were stepping slowly along the polished floor. I felt like a man approaching the edge of a cliff, wanting to see what lay a hundred metres below but worried that a sudden gust of wind or a misplaced step would send me toppling over the edge. 

I wiped my eyes again and surveyed the garden. The winter had ravaged the trees, their thin branches stuck into the grey sky like a multitude of accusatory fingers blaming the heavens for besieging them with the cold season. The ground was packed hard, last night’s sleet had formed an icy crust. The frozen earth was disrupted in just one place, directly in front of the cloaked figure which crouched where the woods began.

I sipped my whisky and leaned against the window sill with my free hand. My breath fogged the pane and my handkerchief found itself being used for two tasks now, clearing my vision in two ways.

Only a maniac would be outside on a freezing winter morning, digging at the packed soil with bare, frigid hands.

So that begs the question. Is my wife insane?

I couldn’t convince myself that she had become anything but that, she was insane, I only hoped that it would be a temporary illness.

There I was, standing in my warm study, studying. I usually read books or work on my computer in here but this was a new kind of study I had found myself carrying out. I was observing my wife as though she were a rare animal following its inexplicable instincts.

My wife is digging in the garden. Just as she did yesterday, and the day before, and for several days before that as well.

I wiped away the condensation that my breath was making on the glass. She was still digging, frantically, ignoring the cold that must have been stinging her nose and ears and biting into her desperately scratching fingers. Her breath rose in puffs around her hooded head.

Maybe I should make an appointment today.

The very idea broke my heart. I didn’t want to have to take my darling bride to see a psychologist but it couldn’t be put off forever. If this behaviour continued it would become inevitable.

Not today, maybe this is a normal reaction after all. Perhaps tomorrow, certainly next week. I’ll give her a chance to work through it herself, hopefully she will come to her senses in her own good time.

My wife never looked up at the study, though she must have realised that I was there, watching, sipping my drink, crying over her dreadful condition.

This ritual had endured for eight days now. My wife dug up what I had buried. Every day I plunged the bundle deeper into the ground. I used a bar and shovel to break up the hard earth but her unhealthy obsession lead her to dig anxiously with her bare hands until she had recovered it.

As I finished my whisky so my wife completed her sad task. I saw her cradling the cold and dirty bundle in her arms. She rocked backwards and forwards for several long seconds until she collapsed on the ground, overcome with exhaustion and dismay.

I placed my glass on the cabinet and made my way downstairs and out to the icy garden. The same as I had down every morning for the preceding seven days.

‘Sweetheart,’ I shook her by the shoulder but she made no movement at all. I prised the bundle from her stiff arms and placed it next to the gaping cold hole.

The tears seemed to freeze on my cheeks as I drew my wife close to my body. I lifted her limp body and carried it inside, to our bedroom where she could rest quietly. The morning’s ordeal over, she would sleep until midday when I would serve her the breakfast she had fogotten to eat.

‘Sleep now, honey,’ I whispered before slipping away.

I put on a thick coat, my gloves and my boots and went out to the shed to find the bar and shovel which had become very familiar to me lately.

I dug and dug and dug.

It’s hard to say how long I was out there but I kept thinking about my wife and that helped me ignore the cold in my bones and the pain in my hands. If she could undo my work with her bare hands I had to dig deeper with my gloves and tools.

This time I dug in a different part of the garden, so that she wouldn’t know where to burrow in the morning.

The hole must have been nearly four feet deep when I stopped. I wiped the tears and sweat away from my eyes and dropped the bundle of dirty baby clothes into the hole as lovingly as I could. I tried to pack the earth hard into the hole, so that the ground looked undisturbed.

It was too late for him, I had accepted that, I just wished that my darling wife could let him rest in peace. I would have to be resolute when she woke up and refuse to tell her where I had buried our ill-fated son.

Someday I will mark his grave. When she is ready. Hopefully that day will come soon.  

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