The Transparent Sun - Linda Ty-Casper
Scenes from the short story "The Transparent Sun" by Linda Ty-Casper
from The Transparent Sun and Other Stories
from an email sent by playwright Alberto Florentino
"That woman is back," Zenaida said, her voice at the near edge of contempt. She swung away from the window that looked across to the governor's office at the provincial capitol. Before the full-length mirror on the wall, she stopped to check her teased hair. Her knees were white and smooth beneath the tight pink jersey. Then she entered her room, pulling the door severely.
A plaster crucifix near the entry trembled with the closing. Her cat, a ball of petulant sun, jumped up onto the piano stool and with pink eyes peered timidly about the long hall adorned with old portraits so faded they looked like sun stains on the shellacked walls of narra.
Don Julio glanced up from the morning papers which had just arrived from Manila, and looked after the closing of the door, trying to decide what his wife had said. The precise click of the door lock alerted him. He had married each of his three wives when they were barely twenty but now at seventy, he could no longer understand youth or Zenaida, a white skinned mestiza who had been cashier at his theatre, the only moviehouse in the capital.
"What is it?" he asked, leaning forward in the rattan chair against the wide restarms of narra, the newspaper creased between his belly and knees, his fingers marking the obituary page which he consulted first and last to follow the demise of friends long scattered about the islands.
"That woman," Zenaida shouted from her room, her voice clear and as sharp as claws.
Don Julio lifted himself above the window sill, peered through the vines of pink and white cadena de amor that hung over the window grilles like the scattering hair of the woman who stood at the gate, in plain brown skirt, faded overskirt and loose white camisa. Her feet, encased in brown plastic slippers, were trying to find balance over the gravel driveway.
"Open the gate," Don Julio called to a servant and placed the newspaper on the sidetable, carefully folded on the obituaries. A quick eye disclosed the death of Don Esteban…fallecio en Manila…se ruega no envien flores…Because he believed a debt of honor binds a man more strictly, being a measure of his manhood and life, Esteban had repaid a wartime debt that, unwritten, could have been annulled in court. ...
Don Julio walked over to his wife's room and stood outside. "It's my cousin. Don't call her 'that woman.'" He waited for her answer. When none came he took the courage to try her lock. ...
The smell of stale perfume crumbled about his face as entered. ... the yellow drapes, sunstreaked and brittle, salvaged from past housekeepings, shut the room from malicious eyes at the capitol. He avoided the dresser mirror; no longer relishing any sight of himself…Zenaida was brushing her fingernails, her back against an impressive collection of jerseys printed in the colors and foliage of some overripe garden.
"Don't call her that woman," he said in the same voice he coaxed her to bed.
She looked up at him, around him to their huge wedding portrait: Don Julio secure on a red cushioned chair and she, the young succulent wife, looking to the side, distracted.
"She's your cousin, not mine," she finally said, blowing at her cuticles, and dangling a leg over the newspaper spread with pictures of society ladies, a pink satin slipper caught deliriously over her toes, an amused smile playing on her face.
"Return the necklace," Don Julio said, approaching his wife slowly so as not to startle her, a hand extended to touch the hair brittle with applications of hairspray, a special concoction of beer and essences from Jolo.
She flounced her eyes at him.
"Return them, hija and I will make it up to you…The necklace is old anyway. Old and tarnished…It does not become you. ..."
"What necklace?" Zenaida sprung away from the intended touch, leaving Don Julio poised to caress the vacated air. She laughed at his discomfiture, a tiny kitty laugh that disclosed her fine teeth and exquisite darting tongue. "She must have told you lies, I know of no necklace…that belongs to her you say, to an old woman?". ...
Don Julio restored his hands to his sides, groped the pockets of his purple dressing gown…the waist sash, tied indifferently, sagged over his hips.
"Give it to her, hija; you do what I tell you and you will receive something several times in value... something young and precious, something new…you can choose it yourself."
"I still don't know what necklace." Zenaida paused before the dresser to pat her hair and spray her ears with Gloria de Paris. The spray hit her eyes. She grimaced and rubbed them hard, like a child waking up from an afternoon sleep. She peered at herself. No lines on the forehead, none around the eyes. She was barely twenty, barely beginning to live. She smiled at herself, her eyes glinting as though to coax a secret lover who provoked her in the presence of the old man. ...
Suddenly the mirror wings of her dresser disclosed Don Julio struggling across the distance between them. She moved away from their reflection on the mirror and watched him, amused at the way his wrinkled feet slid in and out of his purple slippers when he walked. ...
"What do you want then? Anything. ..." Don Julio hunched his shoulders o restrain his lungs, leaning onto the back of the chair on which Zenaida had sat, unable to lift his feet farther.
"This," Zanaida said, opening the wardrobe with the dragon lock, her fragile fingers long and white against the mahogany.
Don Julio looked up, his eyes consumed by the gold filigree necklace, by the glass pendant that contained a relic, by the cross inlaid with green bits of glass.
Zenaida held it up, swung it before him' watched him follow with frayed eyes the flaring trace of sun it left in the air. * "It's an old necklace," Don Julio said, looking at his cousin Sepa who sat at the edge of her chair in the living room, her old face more faded than the portraits on the walls. He could no longer recall her young face. He had not seen her in years, not since his firs wife, Gloria died in childbirth.
Sepa did not speak, as though to hold intact the pieces of her face. Head inclined to one side she stared at the cup of chocolate before her, not following the flight over it of a large green fly, not interested in anything that fell outside the fixed arc of her sight. Her hands on her lap, she rubbed the fingers slowly as if trying to feel the texture of her own skin. She sighed and inclined her head to the other side and closed her eyes to the glint of sunlight on the waxed floor.
Sepa came prepared to redeem the necklace she had come to the house the month before to pawn. She could have gone to one of the agencias but she did not trust them. She told her granddaughter, Antonia, "Julio will give me more and will let me buy the necklace back as soon as I am able." She had sold various pieces of her inheritance, but the necklace, the only piece left, the one she had coveted from childhood, she could only pawn. She had pledged it once to Gloria, the first wife. They had all grown up together…Julio was not in the house when she came to pledge it again, for a small loan for Antonia's tuition. Zenaida in his stead, had generously offered the money…Sepa watched her try it on, negligently viewing herself in the full-length mirror…the long white fingers enclosed the gold filigree necklace that hung wantonly from the young neck, the way Sepa had often dreamed of it hanging upon herself; though she never dared to put it on…"Take your time repaying, Sepa. We trust you. And come anytime you need us. If you have any more old pieces…jewels in your family for years. ... I would like to see them."
"Is there anything you need?" Julio asked. "Antonia. ... I can support her through school. My son, Gloria's first born and mine…you remember Federico…he is now a school superintendent and he will hire Antonia at my slightest word. So let her have the necklace. ..."
"I have come to redeem the necklace," Sepa said, her voice quiet and apologetic…She pulled out a handkerchief secured to the inside of her camisa with a large safety pin. She looked at it for sometime before untying the knotted ends. Carefully she unrolled it, pressing it onto her lap. Tight as little dried worms the rolled money emerged. One by one she placed them on the palm of one hand, balanced them there tentatively before extending them to him…the shades of brown and orange and white becoming blurs in her eyes. Then she brought the handkerchief to her face, rubbed her eyes with it. Sobbing quietly, not knowing how to make him accept the money, she sobbed quietly, rocking herself at the edge of her chair.
"Stop, Sepa, you're too old for that," Don Julio said, glancing about the hall, eyes darting to Zenaida's room. The door was closed. He reached over to pat Sepa on the hand. "Don't cry. Let us talk this over. ..."
"I remember your father," he told Sepa. ..." Don Macario used to take me in his quelis the horses golden in their bronze harnesses…He looked up to the portrait of Sepa's mother on the wall. When Don Macario's house burned down, Gloria borrowed those portraits…claimed Don Julio's non-existent ancestry through them in order to impress friends. Don Julio himself never disclosed that he was brought to Don Macario's house as a servant, a distant relative whom Don Macario raised as a companion to his own son. ...
"Remember, Julio, when Mother died and her jewels were being distributed among us?" Sepa asked, her fingers tight around the rolled money in her palm. "I asked only for that necklace, but Ate, being older, acquired it. Remember you promised to get it back for me?"
Though he was barely thirteen then, the pride of growing manhood demanded that gesture of gallantry.
"Remember, Julio, you bought the necklace from Ate with the first big money you made? It was your wedding and you laughed as you handed it to me, and said, instead of my giving you a gift, you were giving me one. That's why I pawned it you, first when Gloria was still alive… then now."
Don Julio saw the warped fingers extending the tightly rolled bills and looked away quickly. Sternly, a man bent in repaying a debt of honor, he walked over to Zenaida's room. The lock would not turn.
"Zenaida" he shouted. "Bring that necklace. Now."
Zenaida remained in her room.
Don Julio's hands clutched the knob, tried to force it. It sounded like his bones rattling. He released the knob, started to turn away but unable to look at Sepa, he knocked softly, with his head bowed against the door.
"Zenaida," he said, his voice crumbling against the wood. "Someone is here to see you."
Then he walked to his own room across the hall and waited for Zenaida's clear voice, like sharp claws tearing the long hall's silence.
---
election night, march 22 2006, 1:12 a.m.
from The Transparent Sun and Other Stories
from an email sent by playwright Alberto Florentino
"That woman is back," Zenaida said, her voice at the near edge of contempt. She swung away from the window that looked across to the governor's office at the provincial capitol. Before the full-length mirror on the wall, she stopped to check her teased hair. Her knees were white and smooth beneath the tight pink jersey. Then she entered her room, pulling the door severely.
A plaster crucifix near the entry trembled with the closing. Her cat, a ball of petulant sun, jumped up onto the piano stool and with pink eyes peered timidly about the long hall adorned with old portraits so faded they looked like sun stains on the shellacked walls of narra.
Don Julio glanced up from the morning papers which had just arrived from Manila, and looked after the closing of the door, trying to decide what his wife had said. The precise click of the door lock alerted him. He had married each of his three wives when they were barely twenty but now at seventy, he could no longer understand youth or Zenaida, a white skinned mestiza who had been cashier at his theatre, the only moviehouse in the capital.
"What is it?" he asked, leaning forward in the rattan chair against the wide restarms of narra, the newspaper creased between his belly and knees, his fingers marking the obituary page which he consulted first and last to follow the demise of friends long scattered about the islands.
"That woman," Zenaida shouted from her room, her voice clear and as sharp as claws.
Don Julio lifted himself above the window sill, peered through the vines of pink and white cadena de amor that hung over the window grilles like the scattering hair of the woman who stood at the gate, in plain brown skirt, faded overskirt and loose white camisa. Her feet, encased in brown plastic slippers, were trying to find balance over the gravel driveway.
"Open the gate," Don Julio called to a servant and placed the newspaper on the sidetable, carefully folded on the obituaries. A quick eye disclosed the death of Don Esteban…fallecio en Manila…se ruega no envien flores…Because he believed a debt of honor binds a man more strictly, being a measure of his manhood and life, Esteban had repaid a wartime debt that, unwritten, could have been annulled in court. ...
Don Julio walked over to his wife's room and stood outside. "It's my cousin. Don't call her 'that woman.'" He waited for her answer. When none came he took the courage to try her lock. ...
The smell of stale perfume crumbled about his face as entered. ... the yellow drapes, sunstreaked and brittle, salvaged from past housekeepings, shut the room from malicious eyes at the capitol. He avoided the dresser mirror; no longer relishing any sight of himself…Zenaida was brushing her fingernails, her back against an impressive collection of jerseys printed in the colors and foliage of some overripe garden.
"Don't call her that woman," he said in the same voice he coaxed her to bed.
She looked up at him, around him to their huge wedding portrait: Don Julio secure on a red cushioned chair and she, the young succulent wife, looking to the side, distracted.
"She's your cousin, not mine," she finally said, blowing at her cuticles, and dangling a leg over the newspaper spread with pictures of society ladies, a pink satin slipper caught deliriously over her toes, an amused smile playing on her face.
"Return the necklace," Don Julio said, approaching his wife slowly so as not to startle her, a hand extended to touch the hair brittle with applications of hairspray, a special concoction of beer and essences from Jolo.
She flounced her eyes at him.
"Return them, hija and I will make it up to you…The necklace is old anyway. Old and tarnished…It does not become you. ..."
"What necklace?" Zenaida sprung away from the intended touch, leaving Don Julio poised to caress the vacated air. She laughed at his discomfiture, a tiny kitty laugh that disclosed her fine teeth and exquisite darting tongue. "She must have told you lies, I know of no necklace…that belongs to her you say, to an old woman?". ...
Don Julio restored his hands to his sides, groped the pockets of his purple dressing gown…the waist sash, tied indifferently, sagged over his hips.
"Give it to her, hija; you do what I tell you and you will receive something several times in value... something young and precious, something new…you can choose it yourself."
"I still don't know what necklace." Zenaida paused before the dresser to pat her hair and spray her ears with Gloria de Paris. The spray hit her eyes. She grimaced and rubbed them hard, like a child waking up from an afternoon sleep. She peered at herself. No lines on the forehead, none around the eyes. She was barely twenty, barely beginning to live. She smiled at herself, her eyes glinting as though to coax a secret lover who provoked her in the presence of the old man. ...
Suddenly the mirror wings of her dresser disclosed Don Julio struggling across the distance between them. She moved away from their reflection on the mirror and watched him, amused at the way his wrinkled feet slid in and out of his purple slippers when he walked. ...
"What do you want then? Anything. ..." Don Julio hunched his shoulders o restrain his lungs, leaning onto the back of the chair on which Zenaida had sat, unable to lift his feet farther.
"This," Zanaida said, opening the wardrobe with the dragon lock, her fragile fingers long and white against the mahogany.
Don Julio looked up, his eyes consumed by the gold filigree necklace, by the glass pendant that contained a relic, by the cross inlaid with green bits of glass.
Zenaida held it up, swung it before him' watched him follow with frayed eyes the flaring trace of sun it left in the air. * "It's an old necklace," Don Julio said, looking at his cousin Sepa who sat at the edge of her chair in the living room, her old face more faded than the portraits on the walls. He could no longer recall her young face. He had not seen her in years, not since his firs wife, Gloria died in childbirth.
Sepa did not speak, as though to hold intact the pieces of her face. Head inclined to one side she stared at the cup of chocolate before her, not following the flight over it of a large green fly, not interested in anything that fell outside the fixed arc of her sight. Her hands on her lap, she rubbed the fingers slowly as if trying to feel the texture of her own skin. She sighed and inclined her head to the other side and closed her eyes to the glint of sunlight on the waxed floor.
Sepa came prepared to redeem the necklace she had come to the house the month before to pawn. She could have gone to one of the agencias but she did not trust them. She told her granddaughter, Antonia, "Julio will give me more and will let me buy the necklace back as soon as I am able." She had sold various pieces of her inheritance, but the necklace, the only piece left, the one she had coveted from childhood, she could only pawn. She had pledged it once to Gloria, the first wife. They had all grown up together…Julio was not in the house when she came to pledge it again, for a small loan for Antonia's tuition. Zenaida in his stead, had generously offered the money…Sepa watched her try it on, negligently viewing herself in the full-length mirror…the long white fingers enclosed the gold filigree necklace that hung wantonly from the young neck, the way Sepa had often dreamed of it hanging upon herself; though she never dared to put it on…"Take your time repaying, Sepa. We trust you. And come anytime you need us. If you have any more old pieces…jewels in your family for years. ... I would like to see them."
"Is there anything you need?" Julio asked. "Antonia. ... I can support her through school. My son, Gloria's first born and mine…you remember Federico…he is now a school superintendent and he will hire Antonia at my slightest word. So let her have the necklace. ..."
"I have come to redeem the necklace," Sepa said, her voice quiet and apologetic…She pulled out a handkerchief secured to the inside of her camisa with a large safety pin. She looked at it for sometime before untying the knotted ends. Carefully she unrolled it, pressing it onto her lap. Tight as little dried worms the rolled money emerged. One by one she placed them on the palm of one hand, balanced them there tentatively before extending them to him…the shades of brown and orange and white becoming blurs in her eyes. Then she brought the handkerchief to her face, rubbed her eyes with it. Sobbing quietly, not knowing how to make him accept the money, she sobbed quietly, rocking herself at the edge of her chair.
"Stop, Sepa, you're too old for that," Don Julio said, glancing about the hall, eyes darting to Zenaida's room. The door was closed. He reached over to pat Sepa on the hand. "Don't cry. Let us talk this over. ..."
"I remember your father," he told Sepa. ..." Don Macario used to take me in his quelis the horses golden in their bronze harnesses…He looked up to the portrait of Sepa's mother on the wall. When Don Macario's house burned down, Gloria borrowed those portraits…claimed Don Julio's non-existent ancestry through them in order to impress friends. Don Julio himself never disclosed that he was brought to Don Macario's house as a servant, a distant relative whom Don Macario raised as a companion to his own son. ...
"Remember, Julio, when Mother died and her jewels were being distributed among us?" Sepa asked, her fingers tight around the rolled money in her palm. "I asked only for that necklace, but Ate, being older, acquired it. Remember you promised to get it back for me?"
Though he was barely thirteen then, the pride of growing manhood demanded that gesture of gallantry.
"Remember, Julio, you bought the necklace from Ate with the first big money you made? It was your wedding and you laughed as you handed it to me, and said, instead of my giving you a gift, you were giving me one. That's why I pawned it you, first when Gloria was still alive… then now."
Don Julio saw the warped fingers extending the tightly rolled bills and looked away quickly. Sternly, a man bent in repaying a debt of honor, he walked over to Zenaida's room. The lock would not turn.
"Zenaida" he shouted. "Bring that necklace. Now."
Zenaida remained in her room.
Don Julio's hands clutched the knob, tried to force it. It sounded like his bones rattling. He released the knob, started to turn away but unable to look at Sepa, he knocked softly, with his head bowed against the door.
"Zenaida," he said, his voice crumbling against the wood. "Someone is here to see you."
Then he walked to his own room across the hall and waited for Zenaida's clear voice, like sharp claws tearing the long hall's silence.
---
election night, march 22 2006, 1:12 a.m.
posted by ulanmaya at 1:12:00 AM
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