We all contemplated the question in private silence.
“Have you heard about this new man in America,” Mr. Maldonado asked when no one answered, “who has a theory that all of us, and all of the different ways of being, are just different organs in the same body?”
“I don’t see what’s new about that. Don’t the Buddhists say since forever any path is only a path?”
“Do they include their own in that?”
“Yes.”
“That is honest of them.”
“Do you have to follow a known path, or is it permissible to create your own?”
“Even if we follow a known path, aren’t the steps we make our own?”
“I’m not that advanced yet.”
We had a lively debate, and I was impressed by their learnedness, and the seriousness with which they took their inner lives, and the inner life of their society, as we talked under the stars until the embers faded and the bugs on the patio grew too fierce.
As we began to move inside I was overcome with drowsiness and made motions to leave. My days started with the sun; they were all still on city time. They were adamant I remain, though, to keep even numbers as we split into teams to play a card game, and later, charades with the names of movies, which was difficult since I did not know the local films, and also because some names were completely different in translation.
I feared making a fool of myself, but my self-consciousness quickly gave way to laughter, although Sylvie took glee in ribbing me.
“Señor Roland is clever,” she said, as I mimed a title. “For a gringo.”
Her aunt began to reprimand her, but stopped when she saw Mr. Saavardra shake his head in bemusement. We played the levitation game after that, and everyone was full of pleasure and the oxygen-rich ocean air increasing our majestic mood.
Mrs. Maldonado, who reminded me of Bea, was inspired to sing, and soon we all were. When I heard Sylvie sing I was surprised by the strength of emotion in her voice. Not for the first time that night, I found myself trying to reconcile the qualities about her I did not like with the feeling here was a person of substance. As I listened to her sing I also wondered what shelter she had lost, what child of hers murdered, or gone astray, what husband she witnessed wither with work, to make her sound so ancient and wise.
“Harper,” Thiago asked, the formality having melted hours earlier. “Do you by chance play tennis?”
“Not well,” I said.
“We have a lovely court,” he offered, “which you should feel free to use.”
“I saw it when I arrived, it is a lovely court. Thank you.”
“While the weather holds, please feel free to play whenever you wish.”
“Would you like a game?” I asked. “As long as you don’t beat me as badly as you did at bocce.”
“I’m afraid my knees do not allow me to play much anymore, and when I ignore their advice it is my pride that puts an end to it. Sylvie is quite accomplished, though.”
“You played competitively?” I asked.
“Not seriously,” she said modestly, “but I played.”
“When did you stop?”
“When my father lost all his money.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“No, it made me know something about life.” She looked me directly in the eye with the full, steady gaze of someone who has done copious self-reflection. “What it means to have things, and what that is worth. What it means to lose them, and be without, and what that teaches you. But mostly, what it means to dream and to chase recklessly.”
“He get what he was after?”
“It cost him a family.”
She did not say it with bitterness, but a matter-of-fact evenness that touched me that much more. I did not know whether her sadness was in the past and healed or permanent, but she seemed sterling clear, without either illusion or anger, and there was no question that I liked her. Not with lust, simply the way some women make you think about family.
“Do you still enjoy the game?” I asked, turning the conversation back to tennis, and our plans for the next afternoon.
“I enjoy what it shows about people,” she answered, with what seemed to me a challenge.
“Don’t be lulled,” Mr. Saavardra cautioned. “If she offers you a wager, don’t accept.”
“I won’t bet,” I said, “but I’ll play.”
She and I talked in the airy living room a while longer, sometimes disagreeing strongly, but whenever she laughed I saw how alive and free she could be, which softened any edge.
When our conversation broke off we looked around to see everyone else had gone to bed. Realizing we had talked so intently, we grew awkward and I stood to say goodbye. She looked at me full and steady again and smiled with the transparency of those who might see us fully, and I was arrested another moment, sensing some unseen possibility and abundance just out of reach.
There was nothing dramatic; a tiny lunette opened — unformed desire — until our shared question — fear, uncertainty, caution — was whether we would leap through the high, small pane or flee. It was a feeling I knew not to trust. The pain of erring was too much.
We broke apart — the tension between us alive enough to name. The current was soon replaced by awkwardness, as I thanked her for her family’s hospitality and excused myself to walk back around to my own side of the island; feeling, as I made my way through the dark, the quick pulse of want and hope from some other body hidden within me that wished to override the rest with its own certainty. I silenced it with the simple, rational knowledge that I did not know her. It was merely something in my subconscious that had caught and fought back irrationally, and difficult to resist.
23
Thiago answered the door the following afternoon when I arrived.
“I hope we did not keep you up last night,” I apologized, as we waited for Sylvie in the vestibule.
“I am sorry we did not say goodnight,” he said. “But we did not wish to interrupt your conversation. You know, Sylvie is an excellent person, a deeply good woman.” He nodded thoughtfully. “The women on that side of the family can be real forces.”
“Friends should not be involved,” I said.
“True, but men and women need each other. What are rules in the face of that? Some of them matter some of the time, and others are arbitrary. Even those that matter become irrelevant when you have in mind the thing you must do in work or life. There is no authority above that. Power, consequences, perhaps. Authority? Not for people who know what they are about. You elect your values and burdens and way of being after considering carefully the options available to you, and their cost. Who is great serves what is great, and pays the cost. Who is less, serves something less and pays for that. But I think you know this already. It is something we hear in the first part of life, and only understand in the second.
“I trust you, in any case, to know what you are about. If you do, everything else is in compliance. Things will work out or not. The rest, only the two of you can determine: whether she is whom you would be responsible to, and entrust with your life, and vice versa. If so, the only thing for me or anyone to say is, Olé, señors.
“If she is not, you will know in an afternoon, and she will know inside an hour. Whatever this true voice says, you will abide by. That is the way to be gentle with each other. You are young, enjoy your game.”
“Thank you,” I said, as Sylvie entered the hall breathlessly. His exhortation in another context might have made me apprehensive, but here it only made me glad to see her so well loved.
“Whatever my uncle said, don’t listen,” she said, looking at each of us as he went back to his study. “He is old-fashioned and patriarchal. Did he tell you I’m an innocent virgin?”