“Tell me how it was — the vacation, the wedding,” she said, watching him as he helped Marta prepare an extra plate at the table.
“I had not expected you here,” he said.
She laughed softly. “Poor Luis — always acting surprised. I was in your office yesterday, and today I called up Eddie about you.” Her laughter trailed off into another question: “How does it feel to be married?”
“I thought you wouldn’t want to see me again, least of all come here,” he said, not bothering to answer her questions. “What is it that’s bothering you, Ester?”
“You don’t have to ask me that,” she said flatly. “But you can ask me why I am not on my knees.”
They sat down to dinner, but Luis nibbled at his paella, his favorite, which Marta had prepared. Ester, too, did not seem hungry. “Well, I must want something to be here. Aren’t you curious enough to find out?”
“Tell me.”
“That’s game of you, Luis,” she said. “I just want to hear you talk, really, about your town, your big house, your father’s hacienda, and of course your wedding night. Know something? I have always known that Trining was very possessive about you, that she really wanted you. Were you nice to her — I mean, gentle to her?”
Her prattle had become quite unbearable. “What are you trying to prove?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
He stood up, and because she made a motion to rise, he went to her and eased her out of the room. They went together to the azotea, out of Marta’s presence.
“You know everything. You don’t have to ask questions,” he said. She sat close to him, so that he could smell the fragrance of her hair. When she spoke again, it seemed as if she had suddenly aged and her voice was feeble. “Yes, I used to think that I knew most of the answers, that I could even guess what you would do. Tell me how it happened. It was not what I expected of you. Not that I do not think Trining is a good girl for you, but you had some ideas, and marrying your cousin — that was not in the stars.”
“Yours,” he said, “not mine. Do you find anything immoral about it?” He was defending himself and Trining.
“That’s nice of you, thinking that I am still concerned with morality.” She had become curt. “Do you love her?”
“Does it really matter?”
She turned away.
“I have no explanations,” he said simply.
“I didn’t ask you to unravel your dark thoughts,” she said. “I can only guess. You know, Father did not approve of you — he thought we were going to be really serious. He wanted me to marry my cousin — you must have seen him. He is old enough to be my father. He is balding, has bad teeth and bad breath — but who cares? He is the only heir on his side — and the family wealth, you know, as the cliché in Negros goes, must not fall into the hands of others.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Luis said.
“Yes,” Ester said. “So you are very rich now, Luis — richer than you thought you’d ever be. Was it your father who told you to marry your cousin, so that your hacienda won’t be split?”
“That’s not true!” he said, glaring at her.
“All right, then.” She drew back. “It may not be true, but it’s a fact, isn’t it?” She walked to the door and crossed the hall to the foyer. Luis followed her, and for a while, when she turned to him it seemed as if she had regained her spirit, for a smile played at the corners of her mouth. “But we must really see each other again, although the rules are now changed. After all, you are a married man now.” She broke into a nervous little laugh. “You must come and see me tomorrow — at six.”
He did not answer. She smiled again and did not wait for him to accompany her down the driveway, where her car was parked.
When she was gone he went to his room to think things out. He was not going to see her again. He was going to steel himself against the compulsion. To Trining, he was going to be the husband that his father had never been to his mother.
Yet it was only a little past five, and here he was, on his way to Ester’s house. The sun was still hot on the pavement, glittering in the shop windows and bouncing off windshields in blinding flashes of silver. It was an easy drive after he had extricated himself from the traffic in downtown Manila.
When he drove in she was reading in one of the wrought-iron chairs that lined the porch of the Dantes residence. Casting her book aside on the low glass-topped table, she raced down the driveway to meet him. She wore a green print dress, and her eyes were alive. Only the nervous flutter of her hands as she clutched at his and the tremor in her voice gave her away. “You are extremely early, Luis”—she smiled at him—“and look at me, I haven’t even made myself up.”
“You are prettier in the raw,” he said.
She pivoted him out of the porch and the shade of the bougainvillea trellis to the lawn, into the cool shadow of the house, and they sat in the garden chairs. “I’ll go get some drinks,” she said, and went back to the porch, where she vanished behind a ripple of violet-and-green curtains. She had not asked him what he wanted, but Ester was always full of surprises. He felt the old familiarity return. He remembered how he had sat in the same chair, how her mother had always asked him inside, how he had always said that he preferred it here — unless, of course, it was raining — among the palmettos and the well-kept hedges, sipping Coke and nibbling at cookies and exchanging inanities. Those were, of course, the days before they started arguing with each other, before this wall between them was set up by pride, by misunderstanding.
She returned, looking anxious, and placed the cold drinks on the low table. “Pineapple juice,” she explained. “I was tempted to fix you a bourbon, but I want to break your old habits.”
“You are incorrigible, Ester,” he said lightly, “just like me.”
“What do we do now?” she asked as she sat before him. “Shall we go see a movie or talk, or shall we go for a ride, like old times?”
“Anything you say.”
She started sipping her drink, and sometimes she would look furtively at him. Their talk drifted to Rosales, to his father, to Trining. “Why didn’t you bring your wife with you? That’s a bit unfair, isn’t it?”
His casual reply: “She has to take care of Father for the time being. Besides, she will be with me perhaps on weekends.” They rambled on — about the new book she was reading and how difficult it was to get certain titles because of the import controls, until she suddenly apprehended him: “Luis, you are not listening!”
His mind had wandered away to Sipnget, to what he had written and sent down to the press — the utterance of his anguish. He turned to her. The brightness in her eyes had dulled, and in them he saw the shadow of a hurt. She folded her hands serenely on her lap and admitted, “It is difficult to talk as if nothing has happened, when we have really been set apart. Luis, why did we have to quarrel?”
“I don’t know,” he said dully. “It couldn’t be helped, I guess.”
“Why did you come to see me?”
“You asked me to.”
“You did not have to come.”
“I owe you at least an explanation.” It was not really that which he owed her; he was drawn to her because she was truth, because she was the mirror in which he could see himself, and he had come to her for sustenance. Indeed he would need her now as man needed light.
“I don’t need your sympathy,” she told him. “I was wondering — just wondering — I wanted to tell you yesterday, but I couldn’t. There are many things you have not been aware of.” She turned away, as if she was sorry that she had again taunted him. “I didn’t mean to spite you,” she added hastily. “Shall we go now for that drive? I promise to keep quiet most of the way.”