Both for War

It was an old house―one story, brick exterior, paint peeling off the walls. There was nothing quite remarkable about it―people drove past it every day without ever thinking that something would happen there.

The owner was never around. The house was almost always deserted. It was perfect for the man in the grey suit.

The man was tall, had a dusky complexion and silvery grey hair. His arms bulged. He didn’t look like he belonged in the grey suit, rather in a tee-shirt or climbing a mountain. His advisors were hardly typical either. They wore conservative suits, each with a little flair to them: yellow handkerchief, white socks, odd hat.

At a table they sat―papers shuffling, keys being hit at breakneck pace. Click-clack, click-clack, clickety-clack. The man kept dictating the speech. His advisors were tired, stunned. What had made their boss in the grey suit so confident to write like this? Never before had he displayed such an aptitude for words. Click-clack, click-clack, clickety-clack. It was just an announcement of a candidacy. He was talking so fast that he was almost incoherent. Click-clack, click-clack, clickety-clack. The speech was done, printed, prepared. The man’s characteristic pertinacity shone through in every line.

As they were leaving, the man slipped away and threw a scrap of paper into the fire; it was never to be seen. The source of the words that had shocked his advisors would be lost forever.

The man in the grey suit whom the passerbys had not noticed would soon be surrounded by an entirely different complement dressed in black. And people would only need to see the head of the motorcade to know who was coming. No one knew what was written on the scrap of paper that had started it. Those three words, so simple, that started a hurricane. Three words. “Both for war.”

And the old house, the one which nobody ever noticed, would soon belong in the Smithsonian.

~ Rohit N.