The Woman in the Lighthouse

CRISTINA PANTOJA HIDALGO

I came upon the lighthouse by accident. Having finished my business in town

earlier than I had expected, I had decided to rent a car, buy a map, and do a little sight-
seeing. I have always liked small provincial cities. Someone told me there was an old
church and a pretty beach farther north, so I thought, I would look them up.

From the highway, I saw the little white lighthouse, perched on its promontory.
The highway wound around the mountain, climbing steadily, and presently, I came to a
small dirt road branching off from it. This road cut through the dense foliage, overrun
in some sections by thick grass. At one point, it was eroded and seemed too risky for the
car, so I decided to proceed the rest of the way on foot.

Past what looked like an open gate, but turned out to be solid slab of stone, the
road bent sharply to the left. And, quite abruptly, I found myself in front of a flight of
stone steps leading directly up to the lighthouse.

It was an old lighthouse, the plaster peeling in some spots, exposing the bricks
beneath. It had been built by the Spaniards, with slave labor, the keeper told me, and
had withstood several earthquakes, not to speak typhoons.

The steps lead up to a kind of terrace, which was the base of the lighthouse. Here
the wind was so strong that I found myself grasping the iron railing, as though to keep
from being blown away; and the view of the surrounding countryside and the South
China Sea was literally breathtaking. I had reached the northwestern tip of the country,
the keeper said, adding that I could go higher up if I wished.

I stepped inside the tower and climb a narrow, spiral staircase to confront a view
even more awesome. Far below, the sea dashed against the rocky shoals, sending up
spray a hundred feet into the air. And through the thick glass walls, I could hear the
wind moaning and feel it buffering the tower.

When I emerged once again into the terrace, another person was standing against
the iron railing with his back to me. Not the keeper, but a slim young man, wearing
jeans and a beige-colored jacket, its collar turned up against the wind.

I stepped up beside him, and he turned to give me a small nod. Then I saw that
he was not a young man at all, but a woman. The cropped hair and trim figure had
misled me. Nor was she that young. In her late thirties, perhaps, but still quite
attractive.

She had shifted her attention back to the spectacle before us, and now seemed
totally oblivious of me.

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 Wanting to get another glimpse of her face, I said the first thing that came to my
mind. “Some view, huh?”

She replied in a low voice, “Nothing quite like it anywhere in the world.”

The accent struck me. It was not American, nor was it British. Certainly was not a
Filipino. Now, I wanted to hear her speak again. “Excuse me, are you a tourist?” I asked

She shook her head. “I came…to see someone.”

“In this lighthouse?” I asked, bemused.

She gave me a half smile. “No, Near here.”

She had sad eyes. They remained sad even when she smiled.

I decided to push my luck. “You sound somewhat foreign,” I said.

“I am, in a way,” she said.

“Balikbayan?” I asked

“Yes…I suppose.”

There didn’t seem to be much else I could ask without appearing downright
rude. And after a couple of minutes, the woman said, “Well, I’m off. Have a good day.”

This, again was so foreign-sounding, she herself was so intriguing, that I couldn’t
bear to let it go at that. With uncharacteristic haste, I scrambled down the stone steps
after her. But when I reached the bottom, she was nowhere in sight. She couldn’t have
disappeared so quickly. Had I imagined her altogether?

Feeling a bit shaken, I decided to return to the lighthouse terrace. Perhaps she
had simply gone around to the other side. And then I noticed a little structure to one
side of the tower, its door standing open. The woman was having a coffee with the
lighthouse keeper.

He invited me in for a cup, and I accepted with alacrity.

It was a simple room, bare except for a rough wooden table covered with a piece
of linoleum, three chairs, a small counter with a sink, some cupboards, a cot in the
corner.

The keeper was telling the woman about the last storm. He had been trapped up
here for three days. The other man could not come up. Luckily, they always kept a
small stock of provisions. One never knew when one would be unable to leave, he said.
The light must never be untended, particularly during a storm.

The woman listened, her eyes on his face, her hands cradling her coffee cup.
They seemed comfortable with each other.

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 When she rose to go, I got up too. We thanked the keeper for the coffee, and she
told him she would see him again the following year.

“Are you really coming back next year?” I asked my companion as we walked
down the road together.

“Yes, I am,” she said. She had the brisk light stride of someone who enjoyed
walking.

I felt she had again forgotten all about me, and, somewhat annoyed by my
inability to retain her attention, I spoke again. “Didn’t you bring a car?”

She seemed startled. I repeated my question.

“Oh, yes. I left it down there.” She said.

“May I give you a ride down, then?”

“No, thank you. I’m fine. I like walking.”

“Are you staying in town?”

“Yes I am.”

“At a hotel?”

“No I’m staying with a friend.”

We had reached my car. Was this it, then? Determined that it shouldn’t be, I took
a deep breath and plunged in. I gave her my name, the name of my hotel, my reason for
being there. If she was surprised at these unexpected revelations, she did not show it.

“Looked, please don’t think I’m trying to pick you up,” I said, flustered. “I’m not
that sort of guy. It’s just that I don’t know anyone in town. In fact, in the entire
province. And I thought…that is, I would like very much to…spend the evening with
someone I find interesting. So…I mean, would you have dinner with me tonight?”

She regarded me with mild amusement. “Do you find me interesting?” she
asked.

“Very much so.”

She gave this a moment’s consideration, and then, to my immense pleasure, she
said, “All right. Where shall I meet you for dinnrt?”

I suggested the coffee shop of my hotel simply because I could think of no other
place. She said she would be there at seven thirty.

Five minutes later, on my way back to town, I realized I had not asked for her
name. I considered going back, but decided it would only make me look more foolish

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than I must already seemed. If the woman in the lighthouse wanted to keep her date
with me, she would.

At exactly seven thirty that evening, she walked into my hotel’s little coffee shop.
She had changed into a soft silky dress, the color of old roses, her short hair looked
newly washed, and there were small golden hoops in her ears.

I apologized for the shabbiness of my coffee shop, but she brushed this away,
saying she knew the place well. Had I tried its specialty? She asked.

I had not, so she ordered for both of us, not bothering to look at the well-worn
menu.

Over dinner, which turned out to be surprisingly good, we talked about

impersonal things-old church architecture, the province’s reforestation program, the
beaches.

I watched the light from the overhead bulb, in its dusty capiz-shell cone, glinting
on her small golden hoops, and the shadows cast by her lashes on her cheeks when she
lowered her eyes. And I listened to that accent which I could not place.

As we were waiting for our coffee, she asked me for a cigarette. I lit for her, and
watched as she blew smoke up at the light bulb.

“We will probably never see each other again,” she said abruptly.

“I guess not,” I said.

“I would like to tell you a story,” she continued.

“Do you mind?”

I assured her that I didn’t.

And the woman smiled that lovely smile which did not change the sadness of
her eyes, and told me this story.

Anna was looking for a home. All her life she had lived in countries not her own.
So, although she had known many houses, she had never had a real home. She had a
vague notion that a home was a place where one could contribute something, feel
needed, find fulfillment. Above all, it was a place where one could belong.

Wanting her to remember home she had never known, her mother had spoken to
her iridescent corals under a lapis lazuli sea, of emerald terraces climbing to the sky, of
sunsets more splendid than a painter’s canvas, of the scent of flowers that bloomed only
at night, of mangoes so sweet they seemed dipped in sugar, of dawn masses and
lanterns shaped like stars, of May time fiestas and pretty girls walking by the light of
candles, their hands filled with flowers.

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 But their visits to their country were always during the months of the monsoon.
So Anna knew only of heat and the wetness, the mud and mosquitos, the dust and the
fumes, beggars and fat policemen and traffic jams, aunts and uncles to preoccupied to
do more than exclaim about how tall she had grown, and cousins to shy to do more
than stare at her whenever she opened her mouth.

Anna had gone to fine schools, had found interesting jobs, had been loved by
fascinating men. None of them —the schools or the jobs or the lovers — had retained
her interest for long. So, at thirty, she decided to look once again for the emerald islands
and mountains, the luminous corals and splendid sunsets and mangoes so sweet they
seemed dipped in sugar. But also to look harder and longer at the beggars and fat
policemen and the fumes and the floods. To do her bit, to pitch in, to help out, to find
reason and meaning for her own life.

With disenchantment awaited her! Half of her countrymen thought her mad for
having left the comfort and security of an expatriate’s life. The other half thought her
mad for thinking anything could be done to save her country. Everyone knew that it
was irrevocably sinking of its own weight into the lapis lazuli sea.

In the beginning, Anna ignored them and plunged enthusiastically into many
things, involved herself in many causes. Eventually, however, she realized the depths of
her delusion. She had been too long. She could accept poverty, but not everything else it
seemed to engender: the inefficiency, the stupidity, the corruption, the demoralization.
She did not understand her country, and it did not understand her.

So, Anna decided to give up.

This saddened her new friends, but no one could think of an argument
convincing enough to make her stay. Perhaps many of them thought that it was best
that she should go.

But Pia, who had worked with Anna for a little while in a museum. Told Anna
that she must first take a trip out of the city.

Pia had frizzy hair and eyes that twinkled merrily behind spectacles that kept
sliding down her nose, and a laugh like the twittering of birds. She wore clothes which
she designed herself and cooked marvelous dishes which she invented as the mood
seized her. Anna had liked her from the first because she was different from everyone
else she had met since coming home.

“I have taken trips out the city, Pia,” Anna said.

“In fact, I have been to all the tourist spots-“

Pia laughed her laugh that was like the twittering of the birds. “Oh, not those!
Why come to my home for instance?”

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 Her real home was in the north, Pia said. And Anna would like it. She peered at
Anna over her spectacles with her merry black eyes. “Your last memories of your
country must be good ones. Then you will be able to return.”

So, Anna agreed to make the trip with Pia.

But a few days before they were scheduled to leave, Pia called to tell Anna that
something urgent had come up and she was taking the plane that very night.

“You will have to drive up by yourself,” Pia said.

“But don’t worry. I’ve made the detailed map. You will have no trouble finding the
place.”

Anna was hesitant. Was it safe for a woman to drive so far by herself?

Pia laughed. “Why, listen to you, Anna! Three years ago that question would not
have been occurred to you.”

So Anna drove up by herself. The map Pia had left her was an extraordinary one.
It only showed the roads, but also the stops which she thought Anna would find
interesting, and houses of friends where she could spend her nights. Anna made her
way with growing delight…stopping at towns where baskets we woven; at villages
where little wooden figurines were carved; at roadside stands which sold grapes from a
nearby field. Or duct eggs from a nearby farm; at a little old church with its original
organ still impact intact; at another one with the stained glass window as exquisite as
jewel…and spending the night in simple houses with people who welcomed her with
warmth reserved for special friends.

It was only when she was very close to her destination that something
unexpected happened.

First, there was a fork in the road which was not on Pia’s map. Anna decided to
take the road to the left. It took her past some farms, swerved suddenly into a sandy
stretch covered with scrub pine, and came to an abrupt halt before some large sand
dunes.

There, amidst the sand dunes, was a truly astonishing sight; a sprawling Spanish
Villa. A graceful villa, with a red-tiled roof, brick walls, arched doorways, wide terraces,
vine-covered pillars a garden planted to thick grass and palm trees and a profusion of
flowers.

Anna pulled up to get a better look. Was it a monastery? A private mansion? A

mirage?

A man was working in the garden, planting some saplings. As Anna

approached him, he straightened up.

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 “Hello,” he said.

Anna stared at him. Something had just dropped into place somewhere in her
mind. But she did not know this man. He was a stranger, stripped to the waist, soil on
his hands, the sun in his eyes, and the wind in his hair.

“Good afternoon.” She said. “I think I…took a wrong turn somewhere. I seem to
be lost.”

“What are you looking for?” He asked.

Anna mentioned Pia.

He shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know her. But I know someone who
probably does. Come inside.” He wiped his hands on his jeans, picked up a white t-shirt
lying on the grass, and slipped it on with one quick movement.

Up close, the brick house was even lovelier than it was from the road. It seemed
to bask in its own air of tranquility and repose. The stranger held the door open for her,
and as Anna stepped inside, she thought she heard music.

“I’ll be back,” he said, leaving her in what looked like more a hotel lobby than a
private sala. Cane chairs had been arranged in pleasant little groups around low
wooden tables. There were fresh cut flowers in glass bowls. A long hallway led to what
seemed like the garden.

Anna began walking down this hall, trying as she walked, to place a faint music.
Presently, she realized that it was just the house itself, whose parts were in such perfect
harmony that their effect on the senses was like a melody. Actually, everything was
absolutely still.

At the end of the hall, Anna found herself in a courtyard in the center of which
stood a small fountain. And the plashing of the water on the grey marble, like the light
breeze drifting gently through the courtyard, was part of the music of the place.

But now Anna saw that what she had taken for a large villa was really a two-
story building constructed around the courtyard. All the rooms opened into little
balconies, tiled, arched and balustraded, and the building’s wings were connected by
covered walks like the one she had just passed through.

There seemed to be one about, but the place did not feel deserted. There was a
reassuring calmness and friendliness about it. She had the curious feeling that at any
moment, doors would be thrown open and happy laughter would spill out into the
courtyard.

Anna wandered down another corridor, and found herself once again in the
garden, which appeared to border an expanse of sand, and then drop down sharply to

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the sea. She crossed the lawn, walking past flower beds and stone benches, and
followed a flagged path across the sand, and down some steps to the beach.

Here she found a scene of strange desolation. No sea shells, no corals, no fishing
boats. No trees of any kind. Just the unbroken line of the beach, and the water,
stretching out beyond the imagination. No color save shades of grey. Even the sea was
steel grey, and white where the surf foamed and heaved before the lashing the shore
with uncontained fury. The sky, too, was a somber grey, streaked with silver where the
sun tried ineffectually to push through marble clouds. And the wind was so strong that
it created ripples on the beach—light and shadow chasing after each other—and flung
grains of sand against her bare legs, where they stung like small thorns.

“I thought angels had carried you away,” a voice said, close to her ear.

Anna turned around to face the gardener. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay,” His eyes laughed at her. He was slightly taller than her. And deeply
tanned. There was a mole just over his upper lip, on the right side. “I knew you’d be
here”

“Why?” she asked.

“This sea calls to those it does not frighten away.”

“It’s usually so placid and pretty in this country.”

“Not this sea.”

“Are we at the edge of the world?”

“Not quite, but it looks that way, doesn’t it?”

They stood there a few moments, riveted by the wildness of scene. And then the
stranger told Anna that he had found out where her friend lived and could show her
the way.

“Shall I drive?” he asked when they reached her car.

Wordlessly, she handed him the keys, and slipped in beside him, surprised at her
acquiescence.

He drove easily, smoothly, pointing out landmarks. She listened, nodded, made
mental notes, wondering why she was bothering. She was not likely to come this way
again.

When he shifted gears, she noticed the muscles on his forearm, and remembered
how he had looked as he worked in the garden of the brick house by the sand dunes.
Though he had changed his shirt and washed his hands, his jeans were dirt-streaked,
and his rubber shoes were caked with mud.

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 He brought the car to a halt where two huge balete trees arched over a little lane.
“It is that way,” he said, “but now I have to ask you to drive me back as I have no way
of getting home. Do you think you can find your way here alone?”

Anna was certain she could. She changes places with him, and found the way
with no trouble. And this time, the stranger spoke of other things, about life of the
people in little villages, farmers and fisherman, their crops, their children. He seemed to
know them well.

Before she dropped him off, he asked if she wanted to see the real edge of the
world.

“Do you mean it’s near here?” she asked.

“It’s not very far.”

“I do want to see it.”

He said he would take her next morning.

The lane between the balete trees led to a little wooden house standing in a tree-
shaded yard. Pia was waiting for Anna at the front steps, in a flowered sarong and a
fringed gypsy shawl, her face framed by the frizzy halo of her hair.

They sat in the front porch, eating freshly boiled peanuts and drinking dalandan
juice. And Anna watched two hens pecking about in the yard followed by a flock of
furry, yellow chicks, as she told Pia about her trip.

Pia listened, nodding her head, smiling; making small, chuckling noises of
approval.

When Anna came to the part about the fork in the road and the brick house
among the sand dunes. Pia sat up attentively.

Anna told her about the helpful stranger.

“Were you not afraid that he might harm you?” Pia asked.

“No,” Anna said. “I felt safe with him.” She tried to describe the feeling…a
lightness, a serenity, the same feeling she had when she stepped into the brick house
among the sand dunes.

“Did he tell you who he was?” Pia asked.

“Yes. He said he was called Noel,” Anna said. “And he said he would take me to
the edge of the world.”

While Pia fixed their supper, Anna wandered to the back of the house, to where
some bamboo trees grew on a little ridge that separated the backyard from the rice

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fields, then drifted back to the front yard, to examine plants which she recognized from
her mother’s tale of her own childhood, plants which no longer grew in the gardens in
the city…the white and lavender chichirica, the platito with its little bowl-shaped
leaves, Corazon de maria and bandera espanola, the wild makahiya, mayana the color
of burgundy wine, cadena de amor, dama de notche, red and pink and salmon-colored
gumamela…

The next day, Anna went back to the brick house in the sand dunes. The man
called Noel met her where the road ended and the garden began. He was wearing jeans
and white t-shirt again, and the same old pair of rubber shoes, everything spotlessly
clean. And he was carrying a small package wrapped in brown paper.

She assumed he would drive without asking if he wanted to. And as he slid into
the driver’s seat, it occurred to her that it would look great on a horse.

They drove the farther north, keeping close to the sea, climbing more and more
steeply, until they came to a small dirt road. They left Anna’s car there, and walked up
to the road, which was like a shady green corridor, fragrant with the scent of unknown
flowers and bright with the song of the unseen birds. And there at the top was a white
lighthouse.

When she saw it, Anna felt, once again, something clicking into place in her mind
— a recognition, a home-coming. But she had never seen a lighthouse before.

She stood on the sunlight terrace with a stranger called Noel, and the wind swept
free around them as they gazed down at the ocean hurling itself against the land. Anna
wondered if the people living in the small inland farms felt its force, as they went about
their tasks, piling grain into carabao carts, stirring rice in their pots, calling children in
to supper. Did they feel its strength, and shudder? Did they smell the salt in the wind,
and long to set off faraway lands?

She turned to Noel. “What is that place,” she asked him, “the brick house by the
sand dunes?”

He hesitated for a heartbeat before replying. “It is a seminary.”

“A seminary?”

“A place where boys study for the priesthood.”

After another heartbeat, she said, “Then…you are …”

“I am a priest.”

They drove down in silence.

As they approached a town, he asked if she would mind their stopping there for
a while as he had a package to drop off.

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 They stopped at the parish church, a small one painted a startling, garish green.
The young priest was recognized and instantly surrounded by clamoring children. He
picked up the smallest one and lifted him to his shoulder without breaking stride, and
disappeared into the door of the tiny parish house, followed by the noisy, barefoot
pack.

Anna walked slowly towards a tree in the churchyard, and leaned against its
trunk, thinking: a priest, he’s a priest! A small breeze stirred the little pile of dried
leaves near her feet. A brown manang hobbled past, carrying a bunch of lilies for the
church altar. She smiled at Anna. “The fruits are good,” she said, indicating the tree
“Taste one.”

Anna reached for the nearest fruit, and held it in the cup of her hand. It was bell-
shaped, its skin a deep, satiny rose. She did not know what kind of fruit it was, could
not imagine its taste.

“Do you like it?” Father Noel asked, coming up beside her.

She shook her head. “I haven’t tried it yet,” she said. “I wanted to wash it out-“

He took the fruit from her hand and bit into it with relish. “It’s clean,” he said,
handling it back to her with a grin.

She ate the rest of it in the car, enjoying the pungent, sweet-sour taste, while he
told her its legend.

“In a small village not far from here, there was a little bell, much treasured by the
village people because it was the gift of an anito, and could be rung to bring the rain
needed for a good harvest. But people from neighboring village were envious and
plotted to steal it. The keeper of the bell was told to hide it, and he buried it deep in the
forest. Then a great battle ensued. Many men were killed, among them the keepr of the
bell. So now, no one knew where the bell was. For the first time, the fields were
parched, and prayers brought no rain. One day, a small boy lost his way in the forest
and disappeared for three days. When he returned to the village, he told a wonderful
tree, which had kept him alive with its beautiful, bell-shaped fruits, the people of the
village asked the boy to take them to the tree. And when they found it, they saw that,
indeed, its fruits were like little rosy bells. The people examined the tree carefully,
reverently. They slowly dug around its root…and there they found their precious little
bell! The oldest of the villagers rang it, and its music was carried by the breeze. The
breeze grew stronger, the sky darkened, and a gentle, healing rain fell upon the land.”

“Why did you not tell me you were a priest when we met yesterday?” Anna
asked Father Noel.

“Because I was afraid,” he said simply.

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 He did not tell her that he was afraid because he knew—as she knew—that
something was going to happen, had started happening. The fairy tale, the song, the
story, which everyone wanted to believe in only very few actually ever lived. And he
knew that instead of bringing him joy, it would bring him…and her…untold pain.

Instead, Father Noel told Anna of the package he had brought to the little church.
It was a book in Braillle, he said, for some blind children. They were going to be taught
to read by a woman in the parish whom he had trained. He was trying to do it in
several towns—find blind and deaf children and try to help them. They badly needed
help, he said. Even in the capital, the government barely took notice of them. And,
given the ignorance and meager resources of their own parents, they were the most
neglected of all-the handicapped children of the poor.

And Anna told Father Noel about all the different things she had tried —and —
failed – to do in the three years since she had come home. About her frustration in the
face of so much apathy and ineptitude.

He told her about his childhood in his father’s tobacco farm, about the treasured
comic books which an aunt of his used to send him from the city, about the fifth grade
teacher in his small school who had told him solemnly that because he was so bright,
God would always expect so much more from him.

And she told him about her own gypsy childhood, about saffron-robed monks
marching in a single file at dawn, begging bowls in hand, about a goatherd playing the
flute under a lime tree and a camel festooned with blue beads and garlands, about a
black prince with a white cape and a great green stone on the middle finger of his left
hand.

They were making up for lost time, and they had yet to loose. Strangers together,
destined to meet at the edge of the world.

She asked him whether it was not disturbing for the boys studying to be priest to
live in such a beautiful, tranquil house, beside such a barren beach and such a turbulent
sea. And he shook his head. What more apt metaphor for what they were there to learn:
grace and beauty and fruitfulness amidst aridity; discipline and order and precision
amidst disorder; and God’s awesome majesty overall?

“When I told you about the brick house among the sand dunes, did you know it
was a seminary?” Anna asked Pia.

Pia said she did.

“And when I told you about Noel, did you know he was a priest?”

“Yes,” Pia said.

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” Anna asked.

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 “Since it happened that way, since you found the fork in the road, and the
seminary among the sand dunes…and him…I saw that it was meant to be,” Pia said.
“Nothing happens by chance.”

Anna went with Father Noel to the other towns where he had begun to do the
work he had chosen for himself, to meet the handful of blind and deaf children whose
parents had entrusted them to him, and the young men and women whom he trained to
teach the children, and who do it for free in the time they could spare after their own
hard chores were done. For living quarters, the children had a little corner in the
humble homes of a few generous townspeople. For schoolhouse, the parish church
itself. For school materials, whatever Father Noel could beg or buy. For hope, his own
unflagging enthusiasm and energy.

“Why this?” she asked him, appalled at the immensity of the task. “Surely there
must be easier but equally useful work?”

He only laughed at that, saying, “Nonsense, Anna. I’ll bet you never choose to do
something because it is easier.”

“Don’t you want to teach at the seminary?” she said looking away from him,
fighting the urge to touch the mole above his mouth.

He shook his head. “They don’t need me there. The children do.”

And Father Noel went with Anna to Pia’s house, to taste the wonderful soups
and salads that she made with vegetables and herbs growing in her backyard, and to sit
quietly in her front porch, listening as she sang long forgotten songs, while the fireflies
flew in and out of the copitas, and the dama de notche spread its fragrance over the
October night.

Once they passed a town celebrating its fiesta, complete with karnabal. And,
because Anna had never been to one, they lingered there, to eat rice cakes, ride the
creaky carousel, play a game of bingo, watch the amateur singers and the babeng
aswang and the man who pretended to eat live chickens, feathers and all.

Father Noel asked Anna with a boyish smile, “Having fun?”

And, because she was having such a grand time, Anna said, between mouthfuls
of suman, “Wonderful! Think of it, Noel, if you weren’t a priest, we could do this all the
time!”

Then she saw the stricken look on his face, and bit her lip, muttering, ‘Oh, God,
I’m sorry. I…didn’t mean to … hurt you.”

He said, so low that she hadn’t been standing very close to him. She would not
have heard it, “Anna, just being with you hurts me.”

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 But, all the time, that which they would not speak of grew and deeper, until it
occupied all their thoughts and haunted all their dreams, and they could only wait —
she with aching anticipation, and he with fevered anguish—for what they both knew
had to happen.

The first time that they made love, it was on a starless night, below the sand
dunes, beside the wild sea. A rapturous coming together in which the very elements
seemed to participate.

Afterwards, when she would again distinguish the pounding and hissing of the
surf from the throb and rush of her own blood, Anna laid quietly beside Noel, thinking;
surely he must know that this is right.

But now that they were lovers, she stopped going with him to visit the blind and
deaf children in the parish churches, and he stopped going with her to Pia’s house to eat
her food and listen to her songs.

Like all other lovers, they met in secret, sought solitude and silence and
darkness. But after the frenzy and the transport, even when he was most tender, she felt
his sadness. And, when he thought she was not looking, she saw the torment in his
eyes.

He chose to tell her of his decision in brilliant daylight, on the lighthouse terrace.
“I shall leave the priesthood, Anna,” he said. “I want to be free to ask you to be my
wife.”

Later Anna would remember how blue the sky had looked, lapis lazuli blue, a
thought inseparable from the wave of joy that swept over her, a joy so deep that it
frightened her.

Much later, she tried to recall the exact moment of her own decision, and found
that she could not. Perhaps it had been decided from the start.

“He is such a good priest,” Anna said to Pia, keeping her voice light. “Is someone
playing a joke on me you think?”

“Maybe a small ironic joke,”Pia said gently.

“Doesn’t life play many of those on us.

Anna did not tell Noel of her decision until she was set to leave, so that there was
only time to say goodbye, standing in the golden sunlight of the seminary garden,
where she had first met him.

She could see that he had never loved her as much as at that moment. And the
she thought: if he touches me, if he asks me to stay now, we are lost…

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 He moved towards her, and she waited, trembling, for him to take her into his
arms…But he only reached out with his right hand, and touched her sleeve, holding the
material between two fingers for a second…And then his hand dropped, and he took a
step backward, frowning from the effort of it, withdrawing, releasing her.

“And that’s the end of the story?” I protested.

The woman looked at me. “You don’t like it?” she asked.

“I’m not sure I understand it completely,” I said, wondering at my own

dissatisfaction.

“Shall we have more coffee?” she said.

I signaled for the waiter to refill our cups, and then turned back to my
companion. “Why did Anna have to give Noel up?”

“He was never hers to give up,” she said, running a hand through her sleek,
shiny hair. “She knew what a tremendous sacrifice he was offering her. He was a priest;
he had never wanted to be anything else. His love for her—great as it was—did not
change that.”

“Was she a Catholic?”

“A Catholic? Actually, no…not in the sense you mean.”

“Well then?”

“But he was. Not just a Catholic but a Catholic priest and a good one.”

“But if she did not believe in the same things he did-“

“She believed in him. And he believed in her. So, you see, there was only one
thing for them to do.”

“They had to renounce each other?”

“Yes.”

“So it was all for nothing.”

“Ah, but that’s not so,” she said. “For one thing, it was good for the little blind
and deaf children.” She was smiling now. “The children that Father Noel was trying to
help, remember? That became a really big trying to help, remember? That became a
really big project. The first center was set up here in this province. Later, others were set
up in the rest of the region. They are all over the country now, supported by an
international foundation.”

“And that was Anna’s doing?”

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 “Partly.”

We sipped our coffee in silence. Then, I said. “So she still sees him still?”

“No,” she said quickly. “She never seen him again. She has never even written
him. What you call their ‘renouncing’ of each other would have been impossible
otherwise. But he is not there. He is often in the south now, working with the children
of families displaced by the fighting between the army and the Muslim rebels. It is quite
terrible out there…Anna is trying to raise funds to help with that as well. She meets
with his assistants, they take her around, tell her the problems. She does what she can.”

After another pause, she continued, “There is something else she does though.
An indulgence she allows herself. After her work was done, she retraces the steps of
that first trip north, visits with Pia, goes all the way up to the lighthouse. A harmless
thing, she feels. And she brings some things she thinks Father Noel could use
personally, but will never ask for, or buy for himself—books, tapes, sometimes a VCR
movie. She leaves them for him at the seminary among sand dunes…

“One time, in the report that he had left for her, she found a photograph of
himself with the children. He was smiling looked good…she thinks it was his way of
letting her know that he is well. They keep in touch in their own way, you see. They
remain a part of each others lives.”

“So,” I said satisfied at last, “you found what you were looking for…Anna.”

“Yes,” she said simply. “He gave me my country.”

“And what did you do for him?”

She seemed to consider the question for a moment. And then she replied softly,
“I think perhaps…I gave him the measure of his love for his God.”

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