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planning go to the USA to stay with Julian Fernandez who has offered to guide her with her painting. “I hate my father touching me with that hand”. She said unemotionally. “Julian is a great artist. Shane hates him, but I get along well with him. I was completely neglected by my mother, and I never liked my father.” She bid farewell to me after getting some money from Shane. I wondered why she told me all this if she had already decided to forsake her studies. I tried to convince myself that I had perhaps made an impact to her as a teacher. I came home that day with a heavy heart. I tried to philosophize on the futile attempts of us human beings to get a meaning out of life. The Victorian poets did not offer a satisfactory answer to my doubts on such a general condition of life. They seemed to make it sound more complicated, especially the old chap Browning. Benjamin remained silent about Susan for the next week. I started paying the full fare to him, but did not think of disappointing him by choosing to travel by bus. He seemed dejected, despite everything. I met Shane at the restaurant on Sunday and he told me that Susan had left for the USA. He said he was close to Susan, but she had a very complex character that he failed to comprehend. “She lives in an imaginary world created for her own sake. She should have completed her studies”, he said. “She was a very good student”, I was obliged to say. “I am ashamed to say this, but she is in love with Julian, my father. And it’s he who ruined her. She is living with him as his wife now”. I managed to ask him how he was doing, and he said he was sorry about Benjamin. He said he found it difficult to accept Benjamin for some strange reason. “But it was entirely my own fault. I was spoilt by my mother. He gave her a very good life, and she deceived him.” I did resist the temptation to ask how, but he continued. “She died by jumping from the terrace of our home, without provocation. After all these long years of happy life… I left the house because I could not stand the memories of our happy times there.” I was perplexed, since what he said seemed like an entirely different version of the story Susan told me. I kept my strategic silence, and tried to suppress my curiosity. “It is true that she had some disappointment about not becoming a writer or an artist, but she was always grateful to Benjamin for saving us at a crucial time. I am at times ashamed of myself, because I could not explain my behavior. I could never connect with Benjamin. We never talked to each other.” At this point, Shane had to attend a customer. I was sipping my coffee and contemplating on leaving the place when he came back to me. “I did hate his right hand. I was afraid of him touching me with it. He lost the fingers during work, when he was young. I hate the way he uses it as if it is normal.” I bid farewell to Shane in a hurry. I wondered who among Susan and Shane could be considered to have a character more complex! I did not try to find answers to any of my queries in the Victorian poets, and tried to sleep. But the image of Benjamin’s right hand did haunt me in my dreams. I could see how he missed the invisible extensions of the stumps that remained.