Perfect Tense

ဟယ္ သီဟ...
ဟင္ သီရိ...

ဘယ္တုန္းက ၿမိဳ႕ျပန္ေရာက္ေနတာလဲ
သိပ္မၾကာေသးပါဘူး လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ ၂ပတ္ေလာက္ကမွပါ အေဖ အသည္းအသန္ ျဖစ္လို႔ေလ
ေအာ္ ဟုတ္လား
ဘယ္ကတည္းက ျပန္ေရာက္ေနတာလဲ
မေန႔ကပဲ ေရာက္တယ္ အငယ္မ မဂၤလာေဆာင္လာတာေလ
ေအာ္
...
အခိ်န္ရတယ္ မဟုတ္လား လၻက္ရည္ဆိုင္ ျဖစ္ျဖစ္ ခဏေလာက္ထိုင္ၾကတာေပါ့
သြားေလ

လူႏွစ္ေယာက္ လမ္းမေပၚမွာ မထင္မွတ္ပဲ ဆံုတယ္... သူတို႔ဟာ သိေဟာင္းကၽြမ္းေဟာင္းေတြ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ၾကၿပီး ႏွစ္အေတာ္ၾကာ အဆက္အသြယ္ျပတ္ေနၾကပံုပဲ။ သူတို႔ရဲ႕ အတိတ္က ဆက္ဆံေရးက ဘယ္လိုပံုစံလဲ…ငယ္သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြလား…လုပ္ေဖာ္ကိုင္ဖက္ေဟာင္းေတြလား…အဲ.. ငယ္ခ်စ္ေဟာင္းေတြလား???

သိခ်င္ရင္ ဆက္ဖတ္ၾကည့္ေလ…တကယ့္ အျဖစ္အပ်က္မွာေတာ့ သီဟနဲ႔ သီရိ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး... Peter နဲ႔ Amanda ပါ...

“And so, Peter, did you become a foreign correspondent?”
“Not exactly,”... “I’m a lawyer, believe it or not.”
“You enjoy it?”
“Yes,”...“And you? Are you a world famous artist?”
“Well, …no.”
“So, What are you up to?”
“Nothing much,”... “I’ve tried a few things...”
“So you are not painting at all?”
“Only doors and walls,”
...
“So where are you in London?”
“North,” ...“And you?”
“South. It’s okay, I rent a room.”...“But I’m thinking of buying somewhere. It’s one of the reason I came home. I want to sort things out a bit,”
...
“Oh, Peter, I don’t know why I left that day,”
“It’s all right,” ... “We were young. Young people do things like that all the time,”
“I suppose you’re right.”
...
“Well, I ought to be going,”
“Already? I thought you had time to kill.”
“I did,” ...“But I ought to get back now to help my mother with the wedding.”
“I understand,”... “Shall I give you my phone number. Perhaps we could meet up?”
“perhaps,” “Thanks. Goodbye, Peter.”
“Goodbye, Amanda.”

ကဲ ..သူတို႔ ေျပာပံု ဆိုပံုေတြ ၾကည့္ၿပီး ရိပ္ဖမ္းသံဖမ္းေတာ့ ရွိလာၿပီ မဟုတ္လား…သူတို႔က ဇတ္လမ္းေတြ ရွိခဲ့ပံုပဲ…အျပည့္အစံုေလး သိခ်င္ရင္ေတာ့…

They walked towards Gaby’s, a small café just off the high street. They had spent hours there when they had first met, laughing and holding hands under the table, and discussing their plans for the future over cups of coffee.

“And so, Peter, did you become a foreign correspondent?” she asked, remembering the places they dreamed of visiting together – India, Moroccco, and Australia.
“Not exactly,” he said. “I’m a lawyer, believe it or not”. She looked at his clothes, and she could believe it. They were a far cry from the second-hand shirts and jeans he’d worn as a student. “You enjoy it?” she asked.
“Yes,” he lied. “And you? Are you a world famous artist?” He’d always loved her pictures. He remembered the portrait of herself which she’d painted for him for his twentieth birthday. He still had it.
“Well, …no.” She tried to laugh. She wondered if he still had her self-portrait. She’d stopped painting years ago. He looked at her hair, cascading in dark unruly waves over her shoulders. He could see a few white hairs now, but she was still very beautiful.
“So,” he said. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing much,” she said. “I’ve tried a few things.” She didn’t want to tell him about the succession of temporary jobs that she’d hoped might lead to something more permanent but never had.
“So you are not painting at all?”
“Only doors and walls,” she joked, and he laughed politely. She remembered the evenings they’d spent in the bedsit that they rented together in their last term at college. He’d sit for hours just watching her paint. She filled sketch book after sketch book.
“So where are you in London?” she asked.
“North,” he said. It was a three-bedroom flat in Hampstead. Nice in an empty kind of way. He thought about all the evenings he wished he had someone to come home to.
“And you?” he asked, after a pause.
“South. It’s okay, I rent a room.” She thought of the small room with the damp walls which she rented in an unfashionable part of Clapham.
“But I’m thinking of buying somewhere. It’s one of the reason I came home. I want to sort things out a bit,” she signed, thinking about the letters from him that she’d found in her old bedroom. She’d been reading them only yesterday.
“Oh, Peter, I don’t know why I left that day,” she said at last. He looked up at her.
“It’s all right,” he said, remembering the evening she hadn’t come back to the bedsit.
“We were young. Young people do things like that all the time,” he added, knowing that this wasn’t true, knowing that he hadn’t deserved such treatment. He thought of all the letters he’d sent to her parent’s home. He’d written every day at first, begging her to return or at least to ring him. He’d known even then that he would never meet anyone like her again.
“I suppose you’re right.” She swallowed hard, trying to hide her disappiontment and hurt that he seemed to have no regrets.
“Well, I ought to be going,” she said.
“Already? I thought you had time to kill.”
“I did,” she said, blinking to hold back the tears. “But I ought to get back now to help my mother with the wedding.”
“I understand,” he said, though he didn’t. Surely her parents would understand?
“Shall I give you my phone number. Perhaps we could meet up?”
“perhaps,” she said. He wrote his telephone number on the back of the bill and she tucked it into the zipped compartment of her handbag.
“Thanks. Goodbye, Peter.”
“Goodbye, Amanda.”
Years later, every so often, she still checked that compartment to make sure his number was there.

သင္တန္းမွာ သင္ခဲ့ရတဲ့ Fiona Goble ရဲ႕ Things we never said က စာအခ်ိဳ႕ပါ။ Perfect tense ေတြကို ေဆးေရာင္ေလးခ်ယ္ျပထားပါတယ္။