The Marriage Blues

We’d lived together for three years. Then she‘d begun to have that idea of hers about marrying. Over time, I gradually had lost my power to resist and, on a sunny January 25^th afternoon, had finally given in.

Neither of us wanted a big party. Just a few friends of ours, a church and a nice banquet in the evening. I had my reasons to exclude my parents, and hers I’d never met.

Next thing I knew, she'd left me standing right in front of the altar. Or, more precisely: she excused herself half an hour before the marriage on behalf of last-minute-fixing one thing or another about her white, glossy dress, and never returned.

The crowd grew more and more uneasy, the next couple already had turned up and taken to make photographs in the front yard, and the priest asked me about her. I didn’t know what to tell him.

I wished our friends home, cancelled the catering, apologized to the priest and went home to our apartment. She wasn’t there either. Neither were her things. She must had packed them up in advance.

I had repeatedly called home the last hour. Had had the feeling I might catch her there. Five calls, the answering machine signalled in blinking red digits. Five calls, and she hadn’t bothered to answer even a single one of them. Provided she had been here even so long.

That night I didn’t stay at home. I didn’t know yet what to feel about it, and I felt it wouldn’t help to stay in the place where we’d spent most of our time together. So I circled through the bars downtown, downing a few whiskies and waiting for a conclusion to finally arrive on the blank slate of my mind, for a feeling, an opinion or anything.

Several friends tried to call me on the mobile, probably in order to inquire about that rather bizarre marriage-ceremony of ours they had come to witness, but I didn’t answer any of their calls. I wouldn’t have known what to tell them anyway. Thinking of it, my then-still-girlfriend and me had delivered quite a show. Splitting up right in the church, in front of the altar, like in a cheap Hollywood movie, then vanishing from the screen and answering none of their calls whatsoever. As far as they knew, we could have both been dead by now, or left the country in a hurry in order to come over the events, off to Timbuktu or Bangladesh or the Sudan. Not that I really cared about ever visiting one of those countries, but well, you never knew what people were up to next. That’s the thing about them.

Over the first sips of a new Heineken, it suddenly appeared to me that I hadn’t the slightest idea about the whereabouts of my runaway-bride either. Hadn’t even thought of it. That’s what shock and surprise do for you. I’d been acting on autopilot for the last few hours, doing the necessary provided it catched my eye, and trying to make some sense out of the events. That being said, I had in fact done what I often did in situations like that, being unsure of my own appraisal of things: I went to a bar and drank something, waiting for a conclusion to arrive. As yet, I still wasn’t sure if I could cross over to the banks of comprehension successfully in the end. At the moment, I felt more like being stuck on the shallows of achingly unfiltered reality.

Anyway, I had to admit that I had no idea about her. That applied equally well to the situation at large, as well as to her disposition.

I’d thought I’d known her pretty well by now, having understood how her mind worked most of the time, and checked out the sandbanks beneath the smooth surface of her consciousness. How wrong I’d been. It now dawned on me that I hadn’t had the slightest idea of her, contrary to my popular beliefs. If things like that happened to you, even your sturdiest convictions and safest views started to crumble.

So I downed my Heineken and took my mobile out of the inner pocket of my jacket. Right there I realized that I was still wearing my wedding suit, complete with the bow tie around my neck. I took it off and crammed it in one of my other pockets. Then I took a closer look on my mobile’s screen: twelve calls during absence, but none of these from her. Several friends, several calls each; and one call from my office, but I didn’t feel like answering that right now either.

I was about to dial a number, but on second thoughts got up and headed for the public phone at the rear of the bar, right next to the privy. I wanted to make a few calls myself, but didn’t want everybody to know at first glance it was me who was calling. Also, the whole situation had taken on a surreal touch anyway, and so I felt I could do something surreal myself, like using one of those old, dial-equipped phones like they did in those equally old, black-and-white hard-boiled movies they made in the Forties. I felt like a beaten, battered private eye myself, clad in my suit, nursing some whisky in a bar, reflecting on the disappearance of another person.

Not that it even really mattered anymore. Had been a clear-cut case the moment I realized her things were gone as well.

But I just wanted to know, for the sake of it.