Lennie

By Edilberto K. Tiempo

“Normally,” Vic told Sheila mock-seriously, “I don’t accept any invitation from a student who rates less than “B” in my class. As of now you range between “A — ” and “B+” and, moreover, since your fiesta falls on a Saturday, your invitation is heartily accepted. Could you invite Kevin, too?”

“Safety in numbers,” she said laughing. “Don’t you worry, there’ll be a lot of people to serve as your cordon sanitaire.”

If there was any hint of flirtation in her remark, she handled it well. It was this gift of ambiguity that struck Kevin Donlevy about Sheila. Kevin had taken over Vic’s class in anthropology for three weeks when Vic had to take a leave. They had been classmates in a few courses at Berkeley two years before. After Vic finished his work, Kevin followed him to Dumaguete, to make Silliman University his base while doing research on the folk beliefs of Siquijor; this island was just an hour and a half by pump boat across the channel, so he managed to earn his keep teaching two sections of an introductory course in anthropology.

“That girl Sheila,” said Kevin, “is fascinating.”

“Is it her face or her mind?”

“Both.”

After his return from Berkeley, Vic had been wary of any kind of entanglement. Flor and he had been going together for two years and when he received the fellowship they planned on getting married upon his return. He had thought he could finish the doctoral work in two years; he had had three semesters and a summer of doctoral credit. In the first semester of his third year in Berkeley Flor married a medical doctor who had had seven years of successful medical practice in Manila. Vic was still bitter about it; at the same time he admitted he couldn’t make further demands on her patience. Curiously, in the past year or so, he had a recurrent dream, changing in some details but essentially the same situation: he was in his middle fifties and he realized with anxiety and alarm that he was still unmarried and sadly wondering where the years had gone. It was a relief to wake up. Approaching thirty-one why should he have this dream?

Sheila’s house was on a beach in Bacong, eleven kilometers from Dumaguete. She came from a close-knit family of four. Her brother, seven years older, who owned a large hardware store in Dumaguete, helped to build the house on the beach, thinking to bring his family there on weekends. The house was in the middle of a curving shoreline. Lining the littoral were coconut trees, some of them bending seaward. The coconut plantation, extending beyond the national highway and covering more than a hundred hectares, belonged to Sheila’s parents.

In one corner of the wide open porch, which was an extension of the living room but separated from it by glass panels, Kevin and Vie sat around a table with eight other men. There were several kinds of drink: Fundador, White Horse whisky, beer, and tuba. Kevin was concentrating on the tuba. They had eaten a heavy lunch and the maids were clearing the buffet table, which had remnants of two lechons, stuffed ducks, baked fish, and platters of nearly emptied dishes. Most of the guests had left.

After three bottles of beer Vic was feeling a little drowsy. He left the table and followed the shoreline, wishing to doze off in the shade of a coconut tree. There was heat haze above the slate colored sand, and he took the elevated edge of the littoral, which was almost all unbroken shade from the coconut trees. Apparently Sheila’s family did not want any of their tenants to build even a shack along the shoreline; he did not see a single hut between Sheila’s house and the point of land two hundred meters away. He stopped under a talisay tree; its three tiers of horizontal branches formed like the spokes of a wheel gave a pleasant shade. He sat and leaned his back against the trunk and stretched his legs.

The sea was unusually still, but two hundred meters from the shore the water was white with bubbles and cottony caps induced by the turbulence of the undertow. There was the ever-present undertow in the channel, the current moving either northward or southward, depending upon the change in the tide. Siquijor was a dreaming dinosaur twenty-three kilometers away, its bluish outline softened by a thin mist. If it were not for the Bacong fiesta Kevin would be out there in Siquijor, probably digging away in one of the numerous caves along the coast, some of them ancient burial grounds. Five months before, in one of the caves whose two-meter-wide opening was only three feet above the waterline at floodtide, Kevin had dug up a skeleton; there had been no trace of a coffin. Kevin gathered that it had been a local practice for a person without a family, knowing the time had come, to crawl inside a cave and await death inside.

Vic was steeped in the drowsy heat and the beer was really working on him now. He drew up his legs to pull off his shoes. As he eased his back on the sand his eyes caught a figure swimming shoreward, probably a hundred fifty meters from the shoreline. Vic thought the man had been snorkeling because he had not seen him until this moment. The crawling strokes were steady and spare, those of a trained swimmer. When the figure was fifty meters from the shore, Vic was not sure the swimmer was a man because he could see shoulder-length hair trailing along. His drowsiness was gone. A few minutes later he realized the swimmer was a girl. Striking bottom the girl walked straight toward him. She had a swimmer’s figure in the one-piece yellow-green swimsuit, except that she was not flat-chested. A prominent bustline could cause a drag, the reason planes and submarines were constructed with the configuration of sharks and dolphins. She was perhaps half an inch taller than Sheila, maybe a close relative because of their marked resemblance, except that to Sheila’s Malay-Chinese features was added an Iberian nose on the swimmer’s face, a combination probably traceable to three generations back.

“You have appropriated my tree,” she said, not in accusation, plopping down companionable a couple of feet beside him. “You are from the university, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “Are you?”

“I was, three years ago. If I’m not mistaken you were digging square pits in the quadrangle near the flagpole. Did you find anything there?”

“A few shards. Enough to indicate Dumaguete might have been a trading settlement six centuries ago. Anyway, carbon dating confirmed the age of the shards.”

“To anthropologists like you the time element seems to be extra important.”

He turned to look at her. She had a clean cut profile. There was a sad far-away cast to her eyes, in contrast to the casual, quite informal air she presented from the moment she had declared his invasion of her tree.

“Time is important — especially to a girl, isn’t it?”

“Is that intended to be a loaded question?”

“Just now I was thinking of a girl I used to know.”

“What happened to her sorry, you don’t have to answer the question.”

“She decided she couldn’t wait. Junked me for another man. When did you graduate from Silliman?”

“Three years ago. In my last two years there I was on the varsity swimming team. Shortly after your quadrangle digging you seemed to have disappeared.”

He felt complimented she had noticed him at all. “I was out of the country for a while.”

She stood up. “It’s about coffee time. Will you walk with me to my place, have coffee with me? Or some cold drink. It’s only a hundred meters from here. I hope I’m not being forward — you’re not a complete stranger after all. “

“This is a great pleasure.”

Walking on the higher slope of the littoral she was almost as tall as Vic. Hidden behind a row of talisay trees was a concrete wall six feet high topped by three strands of barbed wire stretched on cut-up pipes bent outward from the wall top. The side fronting the sea was protected by thick interlinked wire on a concrete base. The back porch was even more spacious than the porch at Sheila’s, as though life in the house was sea-oriented. The family didn’t seem to be around. What first caught his attention was the marble floor, in rectangular blocks, not marmolized, but true Romblon marble, with blue-grayish veins. This was the second house he had seen with such a floor; in the first, belonging to a distant relative, the marble appeared slightly ostentatious; here it found a home. The furniture in the living room was solid hardwood, built to last a thousand years, low, capacious armchairs that seemed rooted an the floor; ornate, magisterial dining chairs; a coffee table with legends shaped like lion’s paws. While Shiela’s furniture was cushiony, with a lot of throw pillows scattered around the living room, here the effect was that of inflexible rigidity at the same time affording a good amount of relaxed accommodation.

“Now, then. Hills Brothers or native coffee? There’s coke, too, and a few carton packs of chilled juice — orange, pineapple, or guayabano.’7

“Native coffee, please, if it’s no trouble.”

“No trouble at all. While I heat the pot, I’ll change. Meantime, there are a few things to read.” She indicated a long shoulder-high bookstack on one wall of the living room and some magazines on top of it: Cosmopolitan, Time, National Geographic, Asiaweek. The only local magazine was Mr. and Ms. All were neatly filed, the latest issues on top. But those on top were dated one year before. Perhaps the family had been away, had traveled for a time. He bent down to look at the books on the shelves. There were only four rows of shelves running from one end of the living room to where the baby grand piano dominated the corner. On the top shelf were the Great Books set, standing out because of their different sizes and thickness, the Harvard Classics, four volumes of the Encyclopedia of Health, and ten volumes of How-to books; the end of the shelf held reference books: a world atlas, Oxford books on English and American literature, as well as Greek literature, and a 1982 edition of Guiness Book of Wonders. By this time Vic sat on a stool with rollers which he moved from one end to the other without any exertion on his part. On the second shelf from the top were novels, mostly of the nineteenth century: a few Dickens, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Jane Austen, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy; Europeans like Dumas, Zola, Flaubert, de Maupassant, Conrad, Tolstoy, Chekov, Dostoevsky. The books on the next shelf were mainly American: Henry James, Stephen Crane, Howells, Twain, Garland, Dreiser, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and more than fifty paperbacks by contemporary writers.

The lowest shelf was a miscellany: anthologies of poetry and drama arranged by centuries. The last volume intrigued Vic: Hydriotaphia, or Urn Burial by Thomss Browne. On the flyleaf was the Silliman library stamp. He pulled out other books from the other shelves at random: they carried the family bookplate. Obviously the girl had forgotten to return the Browne book.

When the pot started to whistle, the girl, in t-shirt and slacks, and a towel wrapped around her head, appeared in the kitchen. She laid out a silver coffee set on a two-handled silver tray, together with a pair of cups and saucers, and took them to the table on the porch.

“You have an impressive collection of books in the house.”

“They aren’t exactly for display. Reading is my father’s chief occupation. He has more books, mostly on history and philosophy, in his room. I must have inherited my taste for reading from him.” She poured coffee. “I’ve read most of the novels in the house.” She passed the sugar to him. “My father has a twin who takes care of a family business in Manila. But we’re really based here — we have a piece of land here, really my mother’s, one good reason my father left the business to his brother.”

“What’s your father like?”

“I know why you ask that. You probably want to ask, Is he stern, is he a disciplinarian — all this heavy furniture in the house, and the heavy books. My father has a compulsion to build things, whether of stone or wood, to last. Like many of the books here. The paperbacks are my acquisition. What kind of man is my father? He is gentle and very affectionate. Not only toward me, an only child. My father and my uncle should have been one person. My father is the originator of ideas. My uncle executes them — and happily, too. My uncle, incidentally, is a celibate. Had he been a priest there wouldn’t be any of the usual problem about breaking the rule of celibacy. But if my father and uncle were one person, my father wouldn’t have enjoyed the life he’s had. My father is essentially a lazy man — like myself. A year after graduating from Silliman the department chairman wanted me to join the English faculty. I was tempted to accept the offer, but due to my inherent slothfulness — one of the seven deadly sins — I turned it down. The same sin kept me from pursuing graduate work.”

“By the way, Sophie’s Choice, one of your paperbacks, is dedicated to Lennie. Is that your name?”

“Yes. Lennie is for Leonor.”

“Alvarez from the bookplate completes your name?”

“Right. What’s yours?”

“Vic Santaromana.”

“We might have gone on without names.”

“Possibly, but inconvenient. You’ve talked about your father. How about your mother?”

“She’s possessive, extremely so, and on the flighty side. Complementing my father’s reserve.” She pointed at the piano in the living room. “My mother has a degree in music. She had dreams about becoming a concert pianist. But she couldn’t make it. She probably had technical skill, but doesn’t have the spirit. I owe her a lot. She failed in making me play the piano, but gave me a healthy respect for good music. I’d like you to come sometime to listen to some of the records and tapes.”

She indicated a long console against the wall opposite the bookstack. “Perhaps because my mother was a frustrated pianist she decided she’d have a first-class, or so she thought, listening equipment. Can you come?”

There was an earnest appeal in her voice. She thought he had no objection and went on, “Tomorrow’s Sunday. Come tomorrow morning and have lunch here.”

“I would love to come but, sorry, not tomorrow. Next Saturday, if it’s all right with you.”

“Good.” She raised her cup. “How often do you come to Bacong?”

“Rather rarely in spite of your fine beaches. A student of mine invited me and a friend to the fiesta here. Sheila. You must know her. Her house is only three hundred meters from here.”

“She’s a cousin. Our mothers are sisters. How’s she in your class?”

“Very intelligent. I told her if she rated below ‘B’ I wouldn’t accept her invitation.”

“I take it you can’t be objective in your evaluation. Because Sheila is a most attractive girl you can give her just what she deserves. If she wasn’t you’d be inclined to be generous the other way around?”

He laughed. “No, not the other way around.” He looked at his watch. “My friend Kevin must be wondering where I’ve gone. It’s been delightful being here with you, but it’s time we get back to Dumaguete.”

“I’ll walk with you to my tree.”

The tide had receded and they walked on the edge of the waterline. They walked in silence; there seemed to be no need for talk. When they reached the talisay tree she said, “Please don’t say anything to Sheila about your having gone to the house.”

He looked at her wondering.

“It’s a whim. Would you please not tell her — or anyone. Please. “

“All right. Thanks for a beautiful afternoon.”

“Thanks for the visit. See you Saturday.”

At the junction where the national highway hits the road to DYSR, Vic was caught in the rain so that when he parked his motorcycle outside the gate facing the sea he was completely soaked.

“Oh, Vic, why didn’t you wait till the rain stopped?”

“The sun was out when I left Dumaguete.”

“Come on in. I’ll see what I can get from Daddy’s closet that’ll fit.” A few minutes later she came out of one of the rooms with a pair of pajamas and a bathrobe and three hangers. “Here. Sorry about the pajamas. Daddy’s pants would be too short and too wide around the waist..,~he hangers are for your clothes.” She pointed to the bathrooms

He came out holding his wet clothes. “I feel like a displaced Bedouin. Where do I hang these?”

“Let me have them.”

“No, no. dust tell me where.’

“While it’s still raining, on the porch sill. I’ll iron them later in the afternoon.”

She was choosing records from the two shelves in the lower section of the console when he joined her. “Any particular preference? — orchestral, vocal, baroque?”

“You’re the teacher. Make the choice for us.”

“Fine. Get yourself into Daddy’s definition of a comfortable chair. We begin with a flute concerto by one of Bach’s sons, Emmanuel. Father Johann Sebastian would have been proud to have composed this. The flutist is Pierre Rampal, supposed to be number one in the world. Old man Bach himself, as you know, was a pioneer of the classical movement, but the first two parts of this concerto anticipates the romantic. The third movement is pure baroque.’

Vic was shortly surrounded by sounds, by separated instruments. There were two large speakers eight feet from each other at the ends of the long console. Vic looked up to see two other speakers installed in opposite corners of the ceiling above the bookstack. The opening passage was a lively, exciting statement of the flute counterpointed after a few minutes by a grieving cello. In the middle section, a slow movement, the strings introduced the flute once more, sounding wounded, poignantly crying its soul out. In the final movement the mood suddenly changed: the flute was a blithe spirit skipping around in breathless ecstasy, the strings pursuing but never catching up. Vic followed the impetuous chase, imagining the flutist doing the impossible feat of breathing and fingering, smiling to himself, pleased with his own virtuosity, triumphing over the composer’s challenge: do this if you can.

Lennie came from the kitchen with chilled guayabano juice for Vic.

“Do you think there is any flutist in this country who can play it half as well?”

“I doubt it. I wonder,” said Lennie, “if there is anyone else in the world who can duplicate Rampal’s performance. She bent over the console, sat on a stool on rollers. She opened the shelf above the one for records, pulled out a casette, and adjusted it on the tape player.

After a while Vic said, “A Gregorian chant, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Lennie had sat down in a deep armchair facing the sea.

The melody was profoundly haunting, old and remote and uncomplicated. Lennie’s face caught the other-worldliness of the music. She didn’t speak until it ended.

“Have you seen Zeffirelli’sRomeo and Juliet?”

“Yes, I have. Also another version of it played by actors I can’t remember. And a stage version of the play in Berkeley.”

“Which of the film versions did you like better?”

“Zeffirelli’s. And it was not just because of the nuptial scene which revealed the lovers’ nakedness. Most people remember that. “

“Did you know that the music played for that scene was the Gregorian chant we have just heard?”

“Perhaps nobody would notice the Gregorian chant watching that scene. But why a Gregorian chant?”

“I asked Father Haney the same question. He was a Redemptorist priest from Ireland who urged my family to see the movie. He used to come here from Dumaguete on his motorbike. Believe it or not, Father Haney was the family’s movie guide. But of course he probably wanted a change of diet from the monastery menu.”

“What was Father Haney’s explanation for the Gregorian chant?”

“The nuptial rite, he said, is a holy sacrament. What more appropriate music for it than a Gregorian chant?”

She moved over to the stool, pulled out a record. She or her mother had arranged the records by composer on the two shelves under the components. She placed the record on the turntable. “The Romeo and Juliet Overture, Tchaikowsky’s interpretation of the same nuptial scene.”

She had a curious smile as she reclined in the armchair once more. “‘A drama Professor of mine said Tchaikowsky’s composition Is perhaps the most erotic ever written. He said the overture is nothing but a series of climactic and anticlimactic etcetera. Mr. Torralba, incidentally, directed a fine Romeo and Juliet on the Silliman stage.”

“Did you play Juliet?”

“Oh, no. I was a member of the stage crew.”

Back on the stool she rolled it over to the vocal section on the lower shelf. “Are you ready for lunch?”

He looked at his watch. “It’s only eleven ten.”

“Then we have time for two vocal soloists — Anna Moffo, an operatic star, and Christopher Lynch, an Irish tenor. In these two records they sing popular songs. Moffo’s are all love songs, Lynch’s love and folk songs. It seems operatic singers ‘stoop’ to do popular songs for record companies, for the money, obviously. Lily Pons, Irna Sach, Eleanor Steber, among others. You’ll recognize the list of songs on this Moffo record: ‘If I Love you,’ ‘I’ll See You Again,’ ‘Stars in My Eyes,’ others like those.”

The full-throated operatic voice of Anna Moffo registered effortlessly from contralto to coloratura, and at certain moments Vic wondered how she could sustain a high note for an incredible stretch without collapsing.

After three songs, in a gesture almost of impatience, Lennie turned off the record. Moffo’s strangled voice sounded like a cock’s crow interrupted by a knife’s swipe at its neck.

“What do you think, Vic?”

“She has a rich voice with a wide range.”

“‘True. But it is wasted on sentiment oozing with cliches and the songs sound bloated, hollow, insincere.”

She picked up the Lynch record. “The songs here are also familiar: ‘Kathleen,’ ‘Annie Laurie,’ ‘Danny Boy!’ . . .” Father Haney left this record with me when he returned to Ireland after seventeen years as parish priest in the Redemptorist Church in Dumaguete. He also gave me two books by James Joyce — Portrait of the Artist and Dubliners. By the way, he was a boxer before he became a priest.”

Before replacing the Moffo record she bent down to look over the stacks and got out one record. This she put on top of the Lynch. She went to the dining room and started setting the table.

When the Irish songs were done. Vic was surprised by a woman’s voice singing one Visayan song after another: ‘Sa Kabukiran,’ ‘Ako’y Pobreng Alindahao,’ ‘Matud Nila.’ It was at the close of the last song when Lennie rejoined him and switched off the record as it started another song.

“What do you think of Christopher Lynch?”

“This is the first time I’ve heard him. There were moments when his voice sounded like a woman’s.”

“That’s the Irish tenor for you. Some of the songs are also sentimental. But don’t you agree with me, Vic, that he sounds honest and sincere?” She didn’t give him time to answer. “What do you think of the Visayan songs?”

“Most refreshing. The third one was especially moving. In the first one, ‘Sa Kabukiran,’ the singer demonstrated some of what I call pyrotechnics — I don’t really know the term. In the Moffo manner. “

“Our country can produce singers the likes of Beverly Sills and Renata Tebalde if given similar training and opportunities. By the way, the Filipina singer we’ve just heard — her name is Carmen Velez — she sounded as sincere as Christopher Lynch, didn’t she?”

He laughed.

“Why are you laughing?”

“That was the second rhetorical question you asked in the last three minutes.”

She laughed, too. “I do sound bigoted and dictatorial — brooking no opposition. But it’s rare, Vic, I assure you. This morning I happen to be overflowing with sincerity — and bile. But it’s time to eat.” But before proceeding to the dining room she bent down again and opened a shelf. “Vic, help me choose. This is the baroque section. We don’t have to really listen to baroque when we eat or read or anything.” Albinoni, Boccherini, Califano, Corrette — they were all arranged alphabetically — Gabrieli, Haydn, Leclair, Loeillet, Praetorious. Lennie pulled out five — Purcell, Samartini, Scarlatti, Teleman, Vivaldi — and stacked them on the record player.

Vic pulled out one record. Tadao Hayashi. “Japanese, isn’t he?”

“Yes. Actually he writes jazz, but some of his music sounds baroque. Let’s have him.”

“Playing only one side you have two hours of baroque there.”

“That’s one good thing about this player, you can listen to three Beethoven symphonies without having to change records. Just the kind for three lazy people in the house.”

“Where are the other two people?”

“In Manila.”

The dining table was a round one that could seat six. Made of narra, the fine wavy grain stood out; one would think the table was one whole piece because the line where the two panels were joined was not noticeable. In the center was a rotating disc, two feet in diameter, also of narra. On it she had placed the dishes, condiments, and drinks, so that they could serve themselves. There was clam soup, beefsteak; a vegetable tray with carrot, cucumber, sweet turnip sticks; a small platter of sliced mangoes, papaya, and chicos; and a bottle of Japanese Suntory honey-wine.

Lennie, he thought, was the perfect hostess. There seemed to be no help in the house. “Did you do all this by yourself?”

“Nothing to it. By the way, baroque was the kind of music in eighteenth-century Europe played during the intermission in concerts. Sometimes it got more attention than the main program itself.”

She seemed to be shy about dwelling on her culinary skill.

“One may only half-listen to baroque. It just hovers around like a companionable sound.”

“You’re an excellent cook, Lennie.”

“I’m glad you think so. While I clear up the table and kitchen, you may stretch out on the lounging chair on the porch or in my father’s room.”

“I’ll do neither. I’d rather help you clear up.”

“Then pick up the dish towel. While I wash the dishes you wipe.”

“You know if someone suddenly shows up and sees me in my Bedouin attire, wouldn’t you feel compromised?”

“Not at all. I’d introduce you as a week-end guest.”

Later she brought the coffee tray to the living room. “While we’re having coffee can you stand listening to a couple more compositions?”

“Let me tell you something. Whenever I was preparing for an examination at Berkeley, or doing a paper, I tuned in to an FM station playing nothing but classical music. These stations specialize in one kind of music or another, playing non-stop twenty-four hours daily. And no ads. Having that kind of music in-the background helped a lot, at least reduced the tension. I wish we had that kind of FM station around these parts, without ads.” He stopped and said earnestly, “And so today is special. One memorable experience I had, Lennie. Three classmates and I one summer were crossing through the Mohave desert in an old car that had no airconditioning. We were visiting an Indian ruin in Arizona. Perhaps you have an idea how suffocating the heat can be in the middle of sumer through desert country. What saved me from collapsing, believe it or not, was Rachmaninoff’s Symphony №2 on the car radio coming suddenly from nowhere. I can’t remember titles of musical compositions, but that one I remember because it was a life-saver. Do you have that piece here?”

“Sorry, no. We have all of his four piano concertos. I didn’t know Rachmaninoff had written any symphony.” She sat on the stool and wheeled toward the right end of the console. She pulled out an album containing the seven symphonies of Tchaikowsky and got out two records. She rolled the stool to the other end and chose two others, and stacked the four on the player.

“The first two are Tchaikovsky’s Symphony №7 called the Manfred. The other two I haven’t heard for some time, Concertos 1 and 2 from Bach’s Brandenburg series. I’m sure you’ll like them. Manfred is a special favorite of mine. I play it once or twice a year. Tchaikowsky was known to have written only six symphonies, but after his death it was discovered he had written an incomplete draft of a seventh. Forty years ago a Russian composer and music professor, Bogatyryev, reconstructed the symphony from scattered drafts.” She pushed the starting lever, sat down in the deep armchair, facing the sea, and stretched her legs.

The piece opened with a long drawn-out blare of the brass, dominated by trombones and trumpets, announcing without preliminaries what sounded like the theme of a funeral march. The strings and woodwinds developed the theme in melodic elaborations, producing the most anguish laden music imaginable. The mood changed in the second movement, which was serene and prayer-like, but the lighter voices of flute, piccolo, and harp had the contrapuntal horn in the background so that the elegiac element in the first section hung like a pall.

Vic regarded Lennie, very still in her armchair and squinting at the sea. As far as she was concerned she was the only person m the room; he was non-existent.

In the first half of the third movement the impish, gnome-like quality was followed by a gradual subtle recapitulation of the original lament; it seemed that all the light-hearted divertissements couldn’t bury, indeed they deepened, the anguish.

Tears streamed down Lennie’s face. She did not make any attempt to wipe them, perhaps not wanting to call attention by the gesture. After a while she closed her eyes to stanch the flow, but the tears kept coming. The record played on; a distant bell was tolling, followed by another, and a third, and a fourth; after the fifth the bells faded away.

He wanted to go to her, but remained in his chair, deciding not to intrude. She looked more beautiful with the tears on her face.

A few moments later the record rumbled forth drums that announced a gathering storm and in the exploding percussion Lennie’s hands tightened on the arms of the chair. Vic himself felt engulfed in the cacophony of clashing brass and cymbals and booming drums, the whole orchestra itself turning hysterical, wave upon turbulent wave churning debris, finally exhausting itself in troubled calm before settling into preternatural stillness, made more still by the plucking of harp strings like wind chimes, the chimes themselves magically transformed into butterflies skittering over quiet water shimmering in moonlight. That’s how, it seemed, the symphony ended.

Lennie opened her eyes, turned to him, looked at him in wonder, and then her face cleared up. “I’m sorry. Just got carried away. Music like that does something to people. Not just the sad pieces. The happy ones, too, like the Brandenburg.”

She stood up. “You listen to the Brandenburg while I iron your clothes.”

“No, Lennie, please. I can wear them as they are. I’m riding the motorbike anyway.”

“Let me have my way, Vic. Ironing a man’s clothes is something I’ve wanted to do.” She walked over to the porch to fetch the clothes.

Alone in the living room he was not listening to the Brandenburg, because he couldn’t. His mind was on Lennie. A fascinating, unusual girl, and intelligent. Her candor was perhaps another evidence of her intelligence. This was their second meeting, but it seemed he had known her for a long time; he wondered if she felt the same way about him.

The second record of the Bach concerto was halfway through when she returned with his clothes. “Now you get your clothes on, Vic, and we can stroll on the beach for a change.”

The sun had slanted the shadow of the coconut trees across the littoral up to the waterline. Lennie suggested they leave their shoes on the porch, and they followed the wet sand. Seeing a tiny crab she chased it to its hole near the edge of the waterline. A few minutes later seeing another scampering crab, a smaller one, she reached the hole first and laughed triumphantly, but the crab sought refuge in the water. “It’ll come home after a while.”

She was a different girl here. A stone’s throw from the house she picked up a hermit crab. The creature had retreated into its shell, the big pincher tight against the aperture.

“Watch, Vic.” She coaxed the crab into peeping out by softly whistling into the opening. A few moments later the principal pincher moved, a pair of hairs bristled out, and slowly the smaller pincher stirred, followed cautiously by the rest of the curled claws finally sticking out. As the crab, feeling confident, exposed itself some more, Lennie’s finger snapped at the crab’s head, pinning it against the shell opening. Holding the head and claws firmly with finger and thumb, she gently drew the crab out until the stubby end of the body was out of the shell. Lennie held it out before Vic.

“It feels exposed, doesn’t it?”

“Sure does.”

“I’ve played this trick with the poor hermits since I was a kid.”

She thrust the tip of the crab’s body back into the aperture, and the crab gratefully retreated into its house, the main pincher tight against the opening once more. Lennie set it on the sand. After a couple of minutes the shell moved, and they watched it creep slowly away.

“The hermit crab is a house stealer. It’s unlike practically all the edible shells that grow bigger as their inhabitants grow. What do you think is the reason, Vic?”

“Ask the biologist, not the relic hunter.”

“The Tabon caves in Palawan — weren’t they, in a manner of speaking, the discarded shells of their inhabitants? Why did the Mayas leave their impressive stone cities?”

Impulsively he placed his arm around her shoulders. In the corner of his eye he saw a woman watching them twenty meters away. The woman, apparently living in the vicinity, was looking at Lennie strangely.

Lennie appeared not to notice the woman. They went on walking, not saying a word. Fifty meters later she suggested they turn back. By the time they were back at the place where Vic had seen the woman, there were two others, a man and a woman, watching them covertly. Lennie appeared to be unaware of them. They walked quietly past the house and walked on until they reached the point. For a while she stood in front of the talisay tree and looked at the area where Vic had first seen her a hundred and fifty meters away as she crawled toward the shore. She seemed to discourage conversation as she continued to scrutinize the sea for some floating object.

“Hi, Lennie. You look so remote.”

“One true measure of companionship is to be quiet once in a while. I can relax here — the reason I’m quite possessive about this place. Besides, didn’t you think I was loquacious in the house?”

“No, you weren’t.”

“That’s one of the nice things about you, Vic. You listen more than you talk.”

“I talk a lot in the classroom.”

“I doubt it. I think you’re the kind who encourages-students to think and talk. Generally, it seems, talkative teachers carry their talkativeness outside the classroom.”

She turned to the sea again and, without looking at him, asked, “Do you have a girl?”

She waited. After a long silence he said, quietly, “There was.”

She didn’t say anything. After a long silence he felt compelled to explain. “There was a girl. We had been going together for three years. And then I had this offer of a fellowship to return to Berkeley. We agreed to marry in two years. I thought I could finish the doctoral work in two years because I’d had three semesters and one summer of it. When I couldn’t get home in two years, she married another man. That’s the story.”

“What about Sheila?”

He was taken aback.

“She is a beautiful girl. And intelligent.”

“She’s my student.”

“Eloise was a student of Abelard.”

“I haven’t said anything to her.”

“You don’t have to say anything to a girl, do you? Or the other way around.”

Before he could reply she went on, “When we were walking from the house toward the other direction, you placed your arm around my shoulders. What happened? You suddenly thought of Sheila?”

He laughed. “No, Lennie. I’ll tell you. While we were listening to Manfred and I saw you crying, I wanted to stand up to wipe your tears. But I discovered I had no hankie. Besides you look more beautiful crying. And then when you were chasing the crabs and coaxed the hermit out and returned it to the shell, you were like a little girl and on impulse you got into the ambit of operation.”

“You go by sudden impulses?”

“Not generally. A man starting his thirty-first year — the climacteric for some men — becomes over-cautious.”

“The reason the impulsive gesture wasn’t completed?”

“It would have been completed, but there was a woman watching.”

Lennie’s playful mood vanished. She stood up. “Let’s go, Vic.” They said nothing more until they reached the house. The sun had set, but the gauzy clouds against the blue sky above the sea was luminous in the afterglow.

“This has been a most beautiful day for me, Lennie. May I come again?” Before she could answer he said, “In fact I’ll invite myself.”

“Do come. Next Saturday? And bring along your swimming trunks. “

As he was pulling his motorbike out of the gate, she said, “If I’m not in the house Saturday, just go to my tree at the point.”

“I’ll do that.”

The gate was closed and so Vic rolled his motorbike to the back of the house, and finding the gate there open parked the vehicle inside. He walked over to the point. Twenty meters or so away he saw her lying on her stomach, her head only a couple of feet from the talisay trunk, her crossed arms pillowing her head. He stood contemplating her figure. She was in the one-piece swimsuit she had on when she came out of the water two weeks before. She was asleep, so he sat down and stretched his legs. In prone position she appeared to be slimmer and couldn’t be the same girl that cut the water with such clean, vigorous strokes. He was about to reach out ostensibly to wake her up but really to feel her arm muscle when she opened her eyes.

“Oh, Vic. How long have you been here?”

“An hour.”

“That wasn’t fair. That’s sneaking, you know?”

He laughed. “I came only a few minutes ago. In fact before you opened your eyes I was about to wake you up. But really to feel your muscles. Because you don’t look like a varsity swimmer at all. “

“How’s a varsity swimmer supposed to look?”

“Wide, muscular shoulders, invisible buttocks, huge feet at the end of thick ankles for powerful propulsion.”

“Vic, you’re describing a man.”

“That’s why I’m surprised you could swim the way you did.”

She turned around to face him and becoming self-conscious because of his measuring eyes she sat up, her clasped hands around her knees.

“Well, are you ready for the swim?”

He looked at the talisay tree. “I see a dressing room behind it.” He took off his pants and shirt and stood beside her in maroon swimming trunks.

“You don’t look like an anthropologist.”

“How’s he supposed to look?”

“Fan-shaped feet, spindly parenthetical legs, hollow chest from blowing dust off shards, sunken cheeks and bulging eyes behind thick glasses.”

“Don’t you worry, in time I’ll look like that.” He reached out for her hand and pulled her up. “Anthropologists don’t usually search for sunken ships and so don’t swim too much. I can understand the fan-shaped toes; they clamber up slippery caves for skeletons — ”

She jerked her hand from his, ran seaward, and splashed into the water.

“Hey, wait!”

She was crawling faster and faster.

Startled by the jerky withdrawal of her hand, and irrationally irritated by it, he plunged into the water and swam after her. I’ll teach you, witch. I’ll teach you….

He was making faster progress now, in spite of the choppy sea. But he was not gaining on her. She was twenty or so meters away. But I’ll get you. Take it easy, man. What’s got into you? She was just impatient to get to the water. She was now one hundred twenty-five meters from the shore. She was not gaining too much on him either. You can’t go beyond three hundred meters out there. You have to turn back. And then I’ll . . .

Suddenly there was a constriction in his right leg. He couldn’t move it. Frantic he shouted, “Lennie, I’ve got the cramps!” He flailed his arms on the water. “Cramps, Lennie! Cramps!”

Lennie turned her face around.

“Cramps!” And he started sinking.

She was racing toward where she saw his head and flailing hands. “God, God . . . “ In less than a minute she dived where she thought he had disappeared, circling around the murky water. She surfaced for air and dived again. God, please. Down at the bottom she saw the body face down half inclined. In a couple of seconds her left hand was on his chin and she was pulling him up. Surfacing she dragged him shoreward. It seemed an eternity before she touched sand. She didn’t know how she was able to push him up the beach but she did.

She lay him on his stomach, placed her hands under it, and began pumping water out. Water streamed from his mouth and when no more came out she turned him on his back, felt for the heartbeat. There was none. God! She started pumping his diaphragm. Doctors and nurses taught you this at the gym . . . Nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Theory, theory. You had a live person between your knees. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three . . .

She put her mouth on his. Inhale, exhale; inhale, exhale; inhale . . . All the while one hand on the chest. No movement. Please, God. Inhale, exhale; inhale, exhale; inhale . . . Seventy-four times now, wasn’t it? Exhale; inhale, exhale . . . What was that? She pressed her hand harder. That was a heartbeat! A faint one. Inhale, exhale; inhale, exhale. There’s a lot of beauty in the world, Vic. Come on. Come back to it. It’s a movement all right. Thank you, God. You’re going to live, Vic. Thank God. You’re alive. She pumped his diaphragm again. After a few minutes she pressed her hand on his chest again. The beating was distinct now, normal it seemed.

She got his clothes from the foot of the talisay tree, struggled to put them on. She bent over, placed her ear over his chest. It was really functioning normally now. The pallor on the face had gone. The color of his mouth had returned. She bent down to kiss him. Oh. Vic. She embraced him. She was sobbing now. I love you.

He opened his eyes. The sun, thirty degrees behind him, was blocked by a huge cloud, but a little way to the east, the sky was a blue pasture with scores of sheep grazing. He heard the sloshing of waves collapsing on the shoreline. He wondered where he was. He lifted his left hand; it was unusually heavy, but he was able to raise it and saw it was three seventeen. Now wait a minute. He moved his head, stretched his neck as far as it could. There was the talisay tree. Didn’t he have a swimming date with Lennie today? This morning about nine? He had come from the house and saw her lying prone, asleep, near the talisay tree. She woke up and they walked hand-in-hand to the water; she snatched her hand away, and he was swimming after her She was twenty-five meters ahead of him. They were far from the shoreline when he had the cramps. He shouted to her before he started sinking. He had seen her turn her head and hurry toward him. But where was Lennie?

He propped his elbows so he could raise his head. He had extreme difficulty raising his body. A general tiredness overwhelmed him. By supreme effort of will he raised his head and then his body so that he was finally in a sitting position. His socks were on, his shoes beside his feet. He was confused. He crooked his elbow to look at his watch. Yes, it was Saturday, October 28. Then he saw that the part of his pants over the swimming trunks was wet. He did come this morning, swam with Lennie. He had the cramps . . . Where was Lennie? Had she put his clothes on him herself? He closed his eyes, had them closed for a few minutes, to clear the cobwebs m his mind. He heard her voice again, calling from a distance, across some gulf, her voice very faint, almost inaudible. You’re going tolive. And, triumphantly, you’re alive. Farther back, farther back, she was saying something about beauty. To come back to it. And later, much later, he heard her sobbing. I love you too, Lennie. But where are you?

Bending down to reach for his shoes he found breathing enta~led some effort. He inserted his-foot very clumsily into a shoe. God, he was tired. The other foot. His strength had been drained out. But he must get out of here before it was dark, to get to Lennie s house. He braced his hands to push his body up. He tottered almost toppled over when he was on his feet. When he made his first tentative step the earth whirled around him. He must get to the house even if he had to crawl. He sat down. Rest for a while. Even lie down for a while if he must. Perhaps Lennie had to fetch a doctor. She had to be sure he was alive before leaving him. She might have gone to Sheila’s house to get help.

He flexed his arms, kneaded the muscles of the right leg, and the muscles of the left. Later he flexed his right leg and then the left, back to right, and the left. After fifteen minutes of this he stood up. He still felt wobbly, but after half an hour, stopping to rest now and then, he managed to reach the house. It was closed, the windows were shut, the way it was when he parked his motorbike inside the gate in the morning. He called out to Lennie several times; there was no answer. He went to the front gate. It was closed. Once more he called out Lennie’s name. No answer.

He decided to go to Sheila’s house. Using the motorbike was out of the question; he didn’t even have the strength to move it from the back to the front gate. The three hundred meters to Sheila s house on loose sand was exhausting. It took him more than one hour to reach it.

It was Sheila herself who opened the door. With her in the living room were her parents. “You look fagged out. Come, sit down. Have you Just come in from Dumaguete?”

“Has Lennie dropped in?”

“Lennie?”

“Yes, Lennie. Your cousin living in the beach house three hundred meters from here. “

Sheila’s parents were staring at him.

“Sir, are you all right?”

“What do you mean, am I all right? Of course I’m- all right. Has Lennie dropped in?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about your cousin Lennie.”

“Are you sure it’s Lennie you mean?”

“I’m asking about L-E-N-N-I-E. Lennie. Leonor Alvarez.”

“But you can’t be talking about Lennie!”

“Why can’t I be talking about Lennie?”

“Because Lennie is dead.”

“What do you mean dead?”

“She died a year ago. A day before the town fiesta.”

“But I was with her in the afternoon of your fiesta two weeks ago. You remember I disappeared shortly after lunch? I took a walk up to that point of land where a talisay tree stands. Just as I: was about to doze off I saw someone — I thought it was a man — a hundred fifty meters in the sea crawling toward the shore. It turned out she was a girl. Lennie. She came to where I was sitting; we talked for a while, and then she invited me to have coffee in her house. Before I left her that afternoon, about four, she invited me to come again to listen to recorded music. I went there last Saturday, listened to a few of her mother’s records; she was a frustrated concert pianist, Lennie said, and then we had lunch. Lennie even ironed my clothes which had got wet in the rain coming over. In the afternoon we went out walking on the beach south of her house. A woman saw us and on our return two other people saw us. Before I left in the late afternoon she asked me to come again — today. I brought along swimming trunks. We swam together. She’s an excellent swimmer. She was twenty-five meters ahead of me, and a hundred twenty-five meters from the shore I had leg cramps. I shouted to Lennie. And then I started sinking. The next thing I knew, at a little past three this afternoon, I was lying down on the beach in front of the talisay tree. I walked to her house. It was closed. “

Sheila’s father was a quiet, soft-spoken man. “Dr. Santaromana, Lennie’s mother and my wife are sisters. When Leonor died, her parents were so broken up they left the house and went to Manila where Leonor’s father has a business partnership with his twin brother. They left their property here — they have a large coconut plantation — in my care.”

“Mr. Tan, I seem to be losing my mind. That’s how I felt after regaining consciousness on the beach this afternoon. Apparently, Lennie saved my life. I’d like us to go to her house. There’a a book there I found rather odd, the only one that belongs to the Silliman honorary. It is the last book on the lowest shelf, beside the piano. If it’s there, then I can prove to you and to myself that I am not insane. It is important to me that we go to that house, Mr. Tan.”

The father looked at Sheila.

“Please, Mr. Tan.”

“Excuse me. I’ll get the keys.”

“Vice” said Sheila, “how did she look?”

“You and she have strong similarities, except that whatever Spanish features she has are more pronounced than yours. You’re lighter, her skin’s olive. When I first saw her coming out of the sea, she was wearing a yellow-green one-piece swimsuit. She wore the same swimsuit this morning. Have you seen her in it?”

“Yes.”

“What was the cause of her death?”

“The day before our fiesta last year she went out to swim in the same place where you saw her. She was an excellent swimmer, the captain of the girls’ varsity swimming team at Silliman. She just disappeared. The channel has a very strong undertow. Lennie took special pride in challenging herself. It’s possible she might have developed cramps when she was out there, the kind you said you had this morning.”

“What about sharks?”

“If you go to the Dumaguete market any day, you may find shark meat for sale. Yes, there are sharks around this area. Only recently there vitas a young American tourist who also disappeared while snorkeling off Apo island, which is only a few kilometers from here.”

Sheila’s father rejoined them. “You want to come along?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

Santaromana was tottery so Mr. Tan drove to Lennie’s house. -When they entered the living room, Vic pointed at the end of the lowest shelf next to the piano. “The last book there, Sheila, is Rydriotaphia by Thomas Browne.”

She picked up the book and saw on the borrower’s slip the date the book was scheduled to be returned: November 3, 1984, five days after Lennie’s death; she showed the slip to her father.

“You’d been here before Lennie’s disappearance?”

“No, sir. The first time I came here was two Saturdays ago, the day of your town fiesta, when Lennie brought me here.”

Casually, Sheila’s father asked, “How did you come today?”

“On. my motorbike, It’s parked; inside the gate facing the sea.”

Mr. Tan switched on the back porch lights, unlocked the door, and went down. He locked the gate and rejoined his daughter and Santaromana in the living room.

“You have to spend the night with us, Doctor. You can pick up your motorcycle in the morning.”