SOFIA

Sofia had broad shoulders and large feet which reminded everyone who knew her of her deceased father. Her face had a perpetually anxious, questioning look. She spoke little and was often seen to be reading – either a newspaper or a magazine or a book she had checked out from the library. She was considered a woman of pure and unblemished spirit, one whose name had never been sullied by unsavory gossip – no never, not even when she was much younger and had been considered pretty.

She lived in a dusty town on a Philippine island. Next to her house was the cemetery where Sofia’s parents, grandparents and siblings had been laid to rest. Wonderful Sofia! Whose intuition and perspicacity had been honed to such a fine point during her long life, during a life that had been spent, mostly, in avoiding excitement, and hence, shame. All these decades, no one had whispered things about her.

As far as admirers, she had had two. She had no idea what qualities had attracted these boys. They were shy, the kind who read books and wrote poetry and felt better if they treated a woman with gentleness. Since nothing about them excited her, after a few dull outings, which vexed Sofia because she realized she had nothing she wished to share, the boys shrank back. The boys saw, despite Sofia’s careful words, despite her reticence, the look in her eyes that said, You will be making a mistake.

Then, when she turned 50, Sofia realized that she could do whatever she liked, have a man or men over, have them stay late, and no one would suspect her of indiscretion. Because she had become old. She was beyond thought.

The story begins when Sofia is just a week shy of her 54th birthday. It was the first morning in many weeks that it had not rained. Sofia was impatient to start pruning her roses: she always completed this chore by Valentine’s Day. She enjoyed caressing the twiggy canes, feeling for the fat, swollen buds, the ones she had coaxed full of reddish nodes, full almost to bursting.

The man who visited her that day was wearing a white suit. He came up quietly and stood there for a few moments, watching. It took Sofia a few moments to sense his presence: he was so quiet, as if he had glided rather than walked. He was actually standing very close to her, less than a foot away.

He was not a good-looking man. Neither was he an ugly man. Sofia had a feeling that he was not old – though his thick hair was a stunning white – but neither was he young. He possessed an air of gravity, but there was a kind of restlessness in his eyes.

When she was almost 40, not yet old, she had chosen a man. There was no one but herself to blame. For once in her life, Sofia had thought, for once in her life, let her experience without fear.

Yes, she had experienced. It was very brief: only a few weeks. The man was overwhelmed with guilt, with thoughts about his pretty wife, waiting for him at home. It was the most base sort of sneaking around. They had even, once, rented a motel room for a few hours in the middle of the day. The man had lied to his boss and said he needed to visit his ailing mother in some far-away province.

After the second week of their affair, he acted as though he were disgusted with Sofia. He stopped calling. Sofia tried waiting for him outside his home. She caught a glimpse of him in his living room: he and his wife were sitting together on the couch, which faced the picture window. The wife’s head was resting on the man’s shoulder. Sofia observed the expression of contentment on the wife’s face and in her half-closed, almost-dreaming eyes. Sofia saw that her lover was happy in his home, and that when he embraced his wife he was gentle. As Sofia hurried home, she realized what a fool she’d been. She did not try to contact the man again.

Several years after this, there was a young girl who Sofia had allowed to be a kind of companion. The girl had a family that, she said, mistreated her. Her mother was jealous and made her daughter have meals in the kitchen with the maids. Her name was Lucy.

Lucy was always running to Sofia, overwhelmed with fear and anxiety. Sofia wondered to herself, What is it, what is it about this girl? The girl, in spite of the great difference in their ages, seemed to enjoy conversing with Sofia. She loved looking at Sofia’s wonderful books, most of which were biographies of free-spirited women, like Cleopatra, Isadora Duncan, and Frida Kahlo. It had felt natural for Sofia to invite her to stay in one of the rooms of the large, empty house. The girl brought her things over, just two days later. Then she began hanging up her own paintings, hammering late into the night. When the girl went out, Sofia sometimes peeked into the room, to assess the damage to the walls.

The paintings were posters of Impressionists like Degas and Monet. They were clumsily framed and when Sofia tilted them so that she could inspect the walls behind, she found that Lucy had changed her mind more than once: a constellation of small holes lay behind each frame. Sofia was annoyed, but said nothing.

There were further discoveries. Lucy liked to wander around the house in her underwear. It startled Sofia to realize that the girl had a sensuous figure. When a man came to fix the leaky kitchen faucet, Lucy was standing at the stove, in a short, white dress that gave ample view of her white, heavy thighs. When the man appeared in the kitchen, Lucy showed not the least embarrassment. Sofia thought: what have I gotten myself into? The man stared at the girl openly, with admiration. Sofia caught that look, directed at the girl.

After a brief nod to acknowledge the man’s presence, Lucy had turned her back to them and nonchalantly resumed stirring something on the stove. Sofia could not see Lucy’s face but she saw, in the slight adjustment Lucy had made in her stance, in Lucy’s pronouncedly languid movements, that the girl felt pride.

Oh! It was Sofia who was embarrassed, though whether for herself or for Lucy, she could not say. Sofia stepped away, telling the man that she would be in the living room if he needed her. She sat on her flowered couch, her back very straight, and tried not to listen to the silence that seeped out of the kitchen, where Lucy stood at the stove and the man crouched under the sink.

She felt – no, knew – that she was invisible to them.

The following week, Lucy and Sofia had an argument. Lucy had allowed a male visitor to spend the night. Not the man who fixed the kitchen faucet – another, much older man. Sofia guessed the man was married. Lucy said No.

The next day, when Sofia happened to wander into the girl’s room, the paintings were gone and the bare walls, with their clusters of holes, were horrifying. Sofia had sat on the bed, whose sheets were rumpled and still smelled of Lucy, of her sweat and her secrets. She got up eventually, and closed the door to the room. She did not enter it again for almost a year, and then all she did was strip the bed of its soiled sheets, and open a window, wide.

Sofia pretended at first not to notice the stranger. Eventually, however, without pausing in her pruning, with her head carefully turned away from him, she said, “I did not call you. Why are you here?”

“I never wait to be called,” the man said. “You must know that.”

Yes, she knew. But she was weak. And just a little afraid.

She said, “To have had a child – that would have been nice.”

The white-haired stranger nodded gravely, as if he were in complete agreement.

Sofia did not believe in A Great Being. She had read Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Hugo, Tolstoy, Dickens, Thomas Hardy – She had nothing if not time on her hands. She had even read David Foster Wallace. These writers had convinced her to stop attending mass, to stop offering prayers.

When I die, she sometimes thought. When I die – what? Nothing. There will be nothing.

“I had expected a woman,” Sofia said.

“I can be a woman, if you like,” the man said. “If that would make this easier.”

“Nothing can make this easier,” Sofia said. She put down her pruning shears. The gesture made her sad. She said, turning to face the man, “You must be busy.”

“This week has been very busy,” the man said. “Mostly because of the typhoon.”

Ah! Sofia remembered. On the island of Leyte, a whole city had been demolished, and with it thousands and thousands of people. Many had died under the rubble of the cathedral. Sofia dragged her mind back from the images of destruction. It was difficult.

“Where is my mother?” she asked suddenly. She had not thought of her mother in many years. This question surprised even herself.

“How is she?” Sofia asked. In truth, they had never been close. Sofia’s three brothers had loved their mother with a fierce love that was returned, note for note. Sofia’s love was a limp, passive thing. Her mother had brushed it off, as one would brush off a fly. When Sofia tried to recall her mother now, it shocked her to realize that she could remember only her mother’s back, her long and sinewy back, and her mother’s bony neck, and the hard knobs of her mother’s shoulders and the long, grey hair piled high on the very top of her head in a sloppy bun.

The man remained silent. Could he read Sofia’s thoughts? Abruptly, he sat down on the green bench under the orange tree and began to loosen his tie. Sofia expected him to begin removing his coat, but he did not. The sun had made his face red.

“Why now?” she asked. She had not meant for her voice to tremble. Have I been happy, she wondered, then said aloud, “I wanted – but I was weak.”

The man shrugged. “There is far too much emphasis on happiness,” he said, “in this day and age.”

“Did you have to travel far?” Sofia asked.

“No,” the man said.

“The weariness,” Sofia said, “made me think you had come a long way.”

“Do not mistake my sympathy for weariness. For me it is no trouble. Merely the motion of blinking an eye.”

“I see,” Sofia said. “And when I come with you now, will it also be as easy as that, like blinking an eye?”

“It will be a bit more troublesome, there may be a little pain. I have found that it always helps to relax the shoulders. But it will be quicker than you think.”

“And what of my body? How shall it be arranged?” Sofia asked.

“Do not trouble yourself about that,” the man said. “If you like, I will leave it here, under the orange tree.”

“And my arms, how shall they be positioned? Crossed over my chest, as if I were praying? But I never pray. Should I fling out my arms, as if I were taken by surprise?”

“Flung out,” the man said. “That always makes quite an impression.”

“I wasn’t aware I could be quite so dramatic,” Sofia said.

The man’s lips moved, but no sound issued forth.

“And my mouth– open or closed?”

“Open,” the man said. “But just a little.”

“I see,” Sofia said. She thought for a few moments. “And what was the cause?”

“There is a small pistol in the shed, I believe,” the man said.

Yes! Yes, she knew it. She had always known it.

“But I don’t want people to see my teeth,” Sofia said.

“What people think of your teeth is of no importance,” the man said. “Indeed, it is of no importance even now.”

“Right now, at this moment, I have moved on? Already?”

“In essence, yes. You are merely taking leave of your body. It does sometimes take time. People become attached to things that are really of no importance, that are merely unnecessary complications.”

“I can still feel my arms and legs, the heat on my skin.”

“Vestigial impulses. Nothing more. You are in fact seated right next to me, here, on the bench.”

“Ah, not so much pain,” Sofia said.

“You are quicker than most.”

Sofia sat down. She glanced at her fingers. She was gripping a rose stem so tightly that she could see tiny points of blood beginning to emerge on the palms of her hands. But, no sooner had she taken note of them than the blood began, as if by magic, to vanish.

“It does not hurt,” she said, wonderingly.

“You have your mother’s hands,” the man said.

“Who are you?” Sofia asked. “Are you a relative?”

“I am your great great great grandfather, once removed. My name is Basiliso.”

“You were Spanish.”

“Yes, but I was born right here, in the Islands.”

“And what did you do?”

“I was a platero. You know? A silversmith.”

Sofia gave a start.

“The friars collected the town’s silver, and I fashioned them into lovely karwahes which were used to transport the figure of the Santo Niño during the Holy Week procession. People asked me how I was able to accumulate so much wealth, but I do not give away my secrets. Even now. Are you ready?”

“Not yet,” Sofia said.

The man sighed. “You are stubborn.”

“I wish someone had told me,” she said.

“My dear, you ask far too much.”

“I don’t like to be taken by surprise.”

“And that was always your trouble.”

Sofia felt anger flash. “And how would you know what trouble is? You have never had a mother like mine.”

“Ah, but I have. All women in our family are alike.”

“My father was sad, when she passed.”

“The women in our family are very charismatic. No one can resist them.” Sofia thought about that for a moment.

“It’s been 20 years,” she said. “He still keeps that picture of her, the one taken in Hong Kong, when they were on their honeymoon. He keeps it under his pillow in the Home.”

“Why do you check? It is clear that your father loved your mother.”

“He’s had it there, ever since she died.”

“You are fortunate, to have such a father.”

“He doesn’t remember anyone else.”

Basiliso was silent.

“All right,” Sofia said. “I am ready. Shall I lie down?”

“But you are down already. See?” Basiliso indicated a spot behind her. Sofia did not turn her head.

“I wish –” she said. The words hung. Sofia could no longer complete them.

“You wish you had more time.”

“No. Not that.”

Basiliso waited.

“Today, I read a book. It wasn’t a very good book. I shouldn’t have wasted my time with it. And, just a few minutes ago, I finished all the grapes in the white bowl on the kitchen counter. I was greedy, that was always my problem.”

“Well –” the man cleared his throat. He did not continue.

“But I don’t really like grapes. So why did I eat all of them?” When the man did not respond, Sofia said, wonderingly, “Food is life. That’s why I ate them. Or perhaps I was feeling lonely. I always eat more when I’m lonely.”

She went on. She couldn’t stop talking. Perhaps it was the man’s stillness. “I always hated my name. I wished I could have been named Serena, or Lily.”

“Sofia is a beautiful name,” the man said. “You are the only Sofia in our family. And you will be the only Sofia for two generations. You will be unique, for a while.”

“Oh, it is good to know that there will be another,” Sofia burst out. “Do names have any meaning – there?”

“No.”

“What meaning, then? What meaning, if there are no names?”

“There is no sorrow.”

“My life was not that unpleasant. The only complaint I have is the loneliness. Am I going to purgatory?”

“Purgatory! A figment of a friar’s over-active imagination. There is no such thing.”

“If I told a lie, in school, the nuns said I would end up in purgatory.”

Basiliso snorted. It was an odd sound. But now Sofia saw that he no longer had a face, only a dull orb, where she had expected to see eyes, nose, mouth – something at least comfortingly familiar.

“I can’t talk to you anymore; you have disappeared.” Basiliso answered; to Sofia it sounded like the dull roaring of the wind through the trees, in the aftermath of a storm.

She would not be happy in that other place, she knew. But not to have sorrow was a good thing. One cannot have everything. She stood. She wondered what she would say to her mother. She wondered: Who will find me?

Basiliso raised his right hand and lovingly touched Sofia’s cheek. “My dear –” he said. “Why are you crying? There is absolutely nothing to be afraid of.” The hand on her cheek felt gossamer thin, like a spray of fine mist from the ocean.

Marianne Villanueva is the author of the short story collections Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila, Mayor of the Roses, and The Lost Language. Her individual stories have appeared in a wide range of publications, including The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, Bellingham Review, Juked, Jellyfish Review, and Quarterly West. She has been nominated for the Pushcart and shortlisted for the O. Henry Literature Prize. With the poet Virginia Cerenio, she co-edited Going Home to a Landscape, an anthology of Filipino women's writings. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.