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Beauty in the Dark (a romantic joke)

By S.M. Zakir Hussain (Bangladesh)

Here is another piece. It is not my own composition. I collected and retold it when I was a student of MA (applied linguistics). Please see the file attached.

Beauty in the Dark (a romantic joke)
(Collected and retold by S. M. Zakir Hussain, Bangladesh)
 

It all happened only in a moment – within a few seconds. She didn’t do anything. The only allegation that could be made against her was that she was exceptionally beautiful. Well, let me tell you what really happened.

It’s a story of the time when the train first appeared. One day, in a small compartment of a train running along the countryside in England, there were four travelers. One of them was a young woman. She was quite pretty and seemed to be a college girl or a new recruit in a company. She was so beautiful that she could easily make a man forget himself with her presence. There was another lady, who was in her mid-thirties, dressed in black. The third one was a young army officer, looking spruce for his tidy uniform and proud poise. And did I mention the casually-dressed Cockney, who was by nature prone to making jokes?

The train was moving with them all, but, for reasons not known to anybody on earth, the eyes as well as the minds of the two men got fixed on the young lady. And time seemed to have come to a standstill for the army officer, who might have been fighting a battle inside himself against his own mind.

With the four people frozen by the spell of passion as if painted on a huge canvas of silence, the train suddenly entered a tunnel. And as the lights were not on, a blanket of pitch-black darkness covered the entire train.

In some cases darkness may also mean stillness. However, there was a sudden smack of a large kiss followed by a loud sound of slapping. And nothing more was heard.

When the train came out of the tunnel, it was seen that the army officer’s nose was bleeding. His eyes were swollen as well. Sad and bewildered, the poor young man remained speechless. Seeing that, the old lady thought, “How bold the young lady is! She didn’t even feel afraid to slap on the face of such an army officer!” However, a different kind of thought haunted the young lady’s mind: “What made such a smart army officer so attracted to that shabby old woman? Am I not more attractive than she is?” They both looked at each other in wonder.

The train kept running. The Cockney now felt more relieved and brisk. With an enigmatic smile, he said to himself, “How can you people know what really happened? I just kissed the back of the palm of my left hand and then punched the officer directly in the face.”

It was a mystery indeed. Nobody said a word. Nor did the army officer utter a protest. After all, he couldn’t but feel the justification of the slap as a reward for what he felt he actually had been doing in a dark corner of his mind.