“Honey, we are running low on cooking oil. Could you go to the provision shop for a bottle?”
That dreadful, high-pitched yell came from the kitchen. Oh how he disliked that phrase. How he wished that his wife would stop going to him for household expenses. She had a job had she not? He needed cash too! How many days had it been since his last pint of gin? Two? His daily alcohol intake was suffering a beating from the household expenses. He had to speak to his wife about it. He simply had to.
For the moment though, he had better to do her bidding, and smolder his anger for another day. He ought to build his courage. Getting up to leave for the market, the thirty-nearing-forty year old reached for his battered leather wallet.
The walk to the market was a short one. The father of four hastened to complete his errand, then came to his favorite part of such an outing. He lingered a little longer than usual in the glass front of the liquor shop. Standing like a little child before a candy store, staring dazedly and dreamily at what laid inside, the husband could see tall shelves that stretched to the ceiling, all filled to the brim with expensive wines. In his mind, he would calculate his resulting bank balance if he bought three, four, five of those bottles. Finally, he would conclude that it was all not worth it, and make a silent retreat back to reality-his life.
That day was a little different, though. For some reason, he wanted to spend. His pocket was a little heavy that day after receiving his paycheck. The nearly-middle-aged man instantly thought of one thing-a cheaper liquor shop someplace in the outskirts of the town. There, he would be able to get what he wanted without causing his bankruptcy. Why, his own wife was a descendent of a considerably noble and respectable family, fairly well to do in fact. Come the sad time when fortune was split, however, his wife had received nothing. They were sad, and the absence of the inheritance saddened them further. They watched in envy as her siblings lived with riches, while they themselves wallowed in rags. Then he recalled how badly he had treated her after that day.
Now he regretted his actions-whispers of anger directed at her, and all his attempts to antagonize her. It was not her fault, certainly not, but all his jealousy he had directed at her. Now he repented, and wanted to make it up. Suddenly, he knew where and how to spend his heavy coins. He knew of a second-hand bookshop not far from his home. He would go there and make her a present of a storybook he knew she liked immensely. He still remembered their conversation on her birthday when she spotted that book among the bits and pieces of that old shop.
“What a lovely book!” said she.
“We cannot afford it,” came the staunch reply.
“But please, honey, I had such a book when I was young. I liked it so much. It was from my father’s library, but I lost it for him,” she pleaded.
“Then you have experienced owning it before. You don’t need to own it again.” She had pouted for the rest of the day.
This time, he was going to surprise her. He would buy that book as a little gift for her, get it wrapped with colourful paper and tied up with ribbon. She would be so surprised and pleased that it was almost worth his pint of gin to see the look on her face. The husband hurried to the bookstore.
It was quite a while before he made it home; a bottle of cooking oil was carried strenuously in his left hand, and the precious present cradled gently in his right. He hid the gift until dinner time when the entire family sat down to eat together, whereupon the present made its stately appearance. He could never forget the look of joy, surprise and please that spread across her face when she took off the wrapper and saw the book (sadly a little tattered and torn) underneath. Beaming with happiness, she threw her arms around him and very nearly hugged him to death. For a minute or two, this display of expressive gratitude continued until the lady calmed down enough to resume dinner, and the children were scolded enough to cease laughing. Dinner was continued with a happier atmosphere and without further disruptions.
When the table was cleared and the children resumed their own activities, the couple sat down together at the empty table to converse. The wife toyed with the book, flipping through the pages with nostalgia washed over her face. The husband was busy telling her how he gave up his liquor money so as to obtain that gift for her. He secretly hoped that by doing so, he would rise higher in her esteem. She was, however, more concerned about her book than his story.
She thumbed the pages several times, - an action which caused a slip of paper, wedged within the pages, to dislodge. It fluttered to the ground, and the wife bent down to pick it up. She was a trifle surprised, and read it aloud:
“My dear child, when one of you finds this book, you are in for a surprise. Here I would tell you the location of a secret treasure hoard in which I have hidden some small fortune. You know that I have been trying to instill in all of you a love for reading since you were all young. Now if you carry this habit, you would have gone through all the books in my library, and chanced upon this particular book, and the key to my hidden treasure. Congratulations to you then, lucky finder and avid reader. Now I will tell you the exact location of the little treasure I have saved just for you…”
The poor couple sat dumbstruck at their table, anxious to find an answer to the mystery. The wife was the first to speak up, “I…believe…this…is….my…fathers…own…book…from…his…library…”
They hastened the front page, and confirmation lay there. Written in the unmistakably familiar hand of the lady’s father, was the name they both recognised well. Still puzzled as to how it ended up in the bookstore, the lady suggested a possible explanation.
“I had lost the book when I was a child. In most probability, I had dropped it in the playground where many passer-bys frequent. It must be then, that somebody found the book and decide to sell it. There was a bookshop at that time that accepted old books for a meager sum, and it is highly probable that someone had sold it there.”
“And there it lay for so many decades, untouched. The not instide addressed to you or your siblings still remained inside” added the happy husband, “then there I went to buy it, and here it is, back in your own hands.”
The couple rejoiced in their own small cozy home. Needless to say, they did follow the instructions in the sheet, and recovered the hidden treasure. The old man was generous and gave a considerable sum. It put them through a comfortable life. Every now and then, however, the husband and the wife would stop to wonder, was there some other force at work to arrange such a coincidence to happen to them, at a time when they needed the money most? Perhaps there was.
