Between here and there . . . (part 4)

By Emmanuelle

. . . one stumbles upon heaven and hell on earth.

      Manta graduates from one of the country’s most exclusive colleges, specializing in music and mathematics for kids. Aside from being adjudged by her mentors as a most innovative instructor in elementary math, she would encore on stage as piano and marimba soloist, a sometime flutist, and a jazz ballet experimentalist. With a bow and a flourish, she would flow in fluid harmonic motion from one discipline to the others. She is her worth in full measure with an octave to spare.

      Full-pledged and all grown-up, not anymore a child, she rushes home and to him, refrains of their voices in her ears. I wait for you. Uhuh. I rush. 

      Lo, behold, alas. He now shares his home with a woman of his age, Manta holds her breath. Chuck can almost see her heart stop in mid-beat. What have I done? He grasps those cold, colder, freezing hands. He tells her to breathe their beat, to let the lead strings find its way through the thundering drums. He bends his head to hold steady those big brown eyes gone cloudy, misty.

      He talks to his nymph. This fallen god says he is bonded to this other woman with his needs, but no, never, with his love. He was hounded by his long wait for Manta. He was haunted by their music. Worse, his music started to sound like violins beseeching, a wail ascending to ear-splitting crescendo.  And worst still, the news of the magnificent splash of his little whippoorwill that was Manta had reached him a long way to here and it humbled him to ineptness, to being bashfully outgrown. He felt he was losing her, and that loss he cannot bear. So, he shielded himself with a body, anybody, who was a lot warmer than the distant and still-distancing portrait of a weirdly bewitching child dancing . . .

      . . . at the tip’s end of the sun’s rays shafting through the leaves of trees.

      She listens to him quietly, water pouring from her eyes. So, this is how it feels to be a fish from the sea finding itself suddenly on dry sand. Flap, flap the fins.  Gasp, gasp the gills. Crack. She hears her heart break. Click. She listens to her mind shut-out the pain. It hurts, oh how this hurts!

      Then, it seemed a new person peeped out from behind her eyes. She begins to see each drop of water as a note, thus an endless stream of strings and stings. From afar, she hears him, what he was saying and what he was not. 

      Her tears stop, her eyes flicker. They keep no other memories beyond holding hands, but they have more. Their souls had reached out, and had once-and-forever entwined! She breathes one big gulp of air, then more. We have our music! And come to think of it, that is more than enough. And from now on, it will have to do enough.

      Gently, she releases her hands from his tight grip. She gives him the hugest hug. He opens his eyes. He looks around. She is gone.

      Chuck rubs his arms her skin had touched as her arms went around him, He touches his cheek her tears had cooled. Finally, he breathes in the scent of her lingering farewell. It is not even a goodbye, the scent whispers.  And the lightness of her aura lends itself to him. It is forgiveness which only she can give. And that, she has given.

      Author’s Notes: The writer would have liked to end here, at this point. She wished it so, sincerely and fervently. A story of heart-break deserves an ending of heart-mend. A dispensation of good feeling around to the one who writes and the ones who read the past four series.

       It does not end here. As all true stories go, it simply does not go every which way the writer’s whim goes.  The writer cannot bend this ending to the might of her will.

       He would go on, making beautiful music with his band. God does really work in so many strange, wondrous ways. Chuck was gifted with the sight and the facility to create music as he sees, hears it in his mind’s eyes and ears. God’s creations speak to only a few, and when they do, one does not turn his back from the frenzy of re-creating.

      Only this time, Chuck’s music does not run. Neither does it hop and jump from rocks, across mirrors of water left by the rain. This time around, it plucks the strings of the heart, and retreats just before the tears come. It shrieks of anger, then goes on to a whine of lost chances, to end with the throb of the pulse, slowing, slower, slow. 

      One night, two years later, Chuck slouches tiredly home after his band’s stint at a bar. He passes by an ice-cream parlor. Manta’s favorite fabulous, for the favorite banana splitenders and the fabulous peachy imelbafic. Her words. He sighs without glancing up or around.

      Then he senses a presence, a sniff of an unmistakably familiar fragrance. Of mountain fog, crushed flowers, and baby talc. By impulse, he looks up. He gets the biggest shock of his life.

      Manta! And around her shoulders, the arms of a man he knew. In fact, a man he knows pretty well.  A man one must know if one must survive his kind of life. Especially when one composes, or one is with a band, or one must make beautiful music every night.  (To conclude next week.)

(Readers may reach columnist at jingmil@yahoo.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/feelings/
For reactions to this column, click “Send MESSAGES, OPINIONS, COMMENTS” on default page.)

Share your Comments or Reactions

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments