Dear readers, Happy Easter, for those of you that celebrate it! I decided to post a shorter little story I did on a more religious note. Less extensive and detailed than the last three, but I hope you make the connection to the movie! Enjoy :-)
IV. Till Death Do Us Part
To have and to hold from this day forward; for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.
How many times had he heard these vows? How many couples had he married? How many had he proclaimed man and wife? Countless people had been united at his altar. Arranged marriages and love matches. Happy lovers and those who were already quarelling before he had the chance to even start the service.
It is the wish of any priest like him to be considered blessed. A luck-bringer. For his service to be wanted by the engaged above others,; for marriage in his church to be an honour – a harbour of a long, happy life. Naïve and unreal as it was, it was still something he dreamed of; he often wondered how many of those couples he had wed would go on to honour their vows, and how many would not. He would often remember the faces that had, for one reason or another, stayed in his memory, and wonder how many of them would end up despising eachother, and how many would grow old in each other's arms.
He wondered about it then, years since he had wed his first couple as a young, idealistic minister, and yet with a shaking voice, with quaking hands; he had thought about it as he was on his way to shave his gray stubble. A priest, whether or not he puts God first as he should, or not as most did, must still look presentable.
Perhaps it was good that this priest did not know that he was quite the opposite of what he wished he was. Tracing the fates of previous men and wives that had come out of his church, any engaged couple wishing for happiness would move to a different county, just so as to avoid his church; they would consider him a cursed priest. A bringer of ill fate. His service would be unwanted; marriage in his church would be a foreshadowing of a short and unhappy life – a black cat crossing your road.
As he walked those streets in those final minutes of his life, he remembered one of those couples that had the bad luck to be wed by him. Though of course he thought it was good luck. Ignorance is bliss.
He did not know why he remembered them. Was it because they were so happy? No, that could not be. He had wed many happy couples, love matches, in his life. Was it because they were beautiful? Perhaps. For they were. Both of them. He remembered the wreath of daisies on the woman's yellow hair. He remembered the man's deep brown eyes. Sincere. Beautifully shaped. And yet, he had wed plenty of beautiful couples in his life. He could even recall those who, one could say, held more physical beauty than those in question. Was it because they were innocent? So young and carefree, eyes open, sincere, unmisted by suffering, hate, loss? Possibly.
And still, he did not know why he remembered those two. The two, that, unbeknownst to the priest, were the unluckiest couple of all of them. Perhaps that dulled sixth sense, the muted sense of premonition that never really registered consciously made him remember them.
It was rather late when he stepped into the barber shop. The sun was setting, and it so happened that on that particular day, the usual London gray at the horizon lifted, revealing splashes of crimson. Crimson on gray, on white. Crimson as his blood, that the barber wiped off his blade, wiped off the floor, wiped off his hands.
The moment before he died, he wondered, once again, why he remembered that particular couple. Perhaps, if he had remembered, if he had recognized the ring on the barber's finger, things would have been different. But coincidence, or her more wayward sister, fate, prevented him from doing so. He paid for it. With his life.