The longing. The dreaming. That pain, that ache. All because of his waiting for her.The hole in his chest, the one incapable of being filled with love. He has loved her forever. Through the trial, the missing and the loss. Perhaps not in the same way as from the beginning when he was innocent, naïve. Those days are since long past.
"'Don't I know you', she said". She did. The feeling, the dreams, it all flashes past. The wedding, their child, Joanna, the day he left, the tears in her eyes. His long years alone. To see her like this… it takes time before he comprehends. His wife. His oh so breathtaking wife, dead, then alive but dead again.
"You knew she lived." The realization, the moment of clearness. When it all falls in to place. that agonizing feeling of knowing she was alive, that she was alive. Living! What has he done? All anger has evaporated, all frustration, only leaving space for his agonizing grief.
"You lied to me." She knew. She didn't tell him. She did what he did, the judge, to get him away. Lied. All his life, lies. He feels mute. Lame. Shut off. He can hear that bloody woman, singing her excuses, but he doesn't care, it doesn't matter, not yet, all he can see is her.
"Lucy."
He feels some strange compulsion to tell her. To tell her that he did come, that he did keep that promise he gave in secret only to himself. He wants her to know, so desperately. So, the closest to tears in years, he tells her.
"I've come home again." Still so breathtakingly beautiful.
"Lucy"
"Oh my God." The insight, the true and final insight. Realization. He killed her. Killed her. His wife. His live. His true reason for living.
"Lucy." Her name crosses his lips once more, the only thing he can get out. He feels as he is going to choke, as if the world is coming crashing down. The angst pulls him under. What has he done?
"What have I done?" The anger returns, his head snaps up, he catches that Ms. Lovett. That one bloody woman. She lied. She lied to him! She is nothing more than a member in the final category of men. Putting her foot in the face of the others. She deserves to die. To burn.
He twirls her around in a dance of madness, in a dance of pain, of trickery. Always that feeling, that pain, never it leaving him. Then she is gone. Ms. Lovett. He cannot feel grief for that woman despite her efforts for him. He sinks down to the ground, lost. Not confused, never disoriented. A tad crazy perhaps, but never out of control, always knowing what he is doing, in charge of himself. He drops his knife.
So busy with the corpse of his bride, of the barber's wife, he sings softly. Strokes a bit of hair out of her face. Holding her in his arms, finally, at last. The body is cold. Oh, the feeling.
"There was a barber and his wife. And she was beautiful." She was. "A foolish barber and his wife." He can hear him now. That infuriating boy. "She was his reason and his life. And she was beautiful. And she was virtuous." But he has had his revenge. And he has missed her during all those long, cold years. He want nothing more than to see her again.
"And he was…"
He leans back.
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