Tiêu đề Three Kisses by Ma. Elena L. Paulma - 1st prize.doc ✅

Page 1 of 25 Short Story – 1 st prize CPMA Research Facility copy Three Kisses These mornings, Nina awakened not just from the cold that numbed her nose, but also from a deep sense of loss, of something missing or forgotten, the cause of which took her some time to remember, perhaps because she did not want to. The cold, although still unbearable, she had learned to live with, but this new sadness which greeted her even before she opened her eyes bewildered her, so that her first consciousness was always that of confusion. On this her first morning back from the hospital, she wondered at how this bed she was lying on and the gray ceiling above her had remained unchanged. Slowly, so as not to awaken the sleeping man beside her, she turned her head a little so that her eyes just made out the closed door, next to which stood the walnut wardrobe, brought all the way from the old house. Inside would be clothes, his on the left side and hers on the right, neatly folded and hung, carefully arranged according to their colors. Facing the bed was the window. Outside, the flower shrubs that lined the path toward the entrance of the apartment building would be covered with December snow by now, for the flakes had begun to fall last night as they were coming inside. The half-light of the early morning filtered through the coral blue curtains which she had chosen for this room, half-drawn across the window to satisfy both her need for it to be pulled back completely and his desire for it to be fully drawn. Ruben had packed the old beige curtains from the old house, but she had insisted that they buy new ones for the apartment. She turned her head away from him, sleepily aware of the hazy outlines of the nightstand to her left, on which resided a lamp and a small picture frame standing a little askew. She had dusted and looked at this picture so many times before that she could remember each detail even without
Page 2 of 25 looking at it. In it was a photo of a couple during happier times, the younger version of herself smiling up at the man who now lay beside her. The glass surface of the picture reflected some of the glow from the nightlight which was plugged behind the nightstand. Both of them could not sleep in the dark. She had discovered this on their first night together in the old house at Kessel-lo. “Can we keep this on?” she had asked, pointing at the lamp that stood on the nightstand, and speaking slowly, for he was just learning how to speak in English. She had been dismayed when he shook his head, “Nee, nee.” He bent down behind the nightstand, and there was a click. The sudden glare from the nightlight made his hair look whiter, tracing the smaller wrinkles on his lined face. He turned off the lamp on the table, casting his face in shadow, and for a moment, she had wondered if she had done the right thing. That had been all of two years ago, she realized with some surprise. When they first met, she had been 62 years old and about to retire from her third managing stint in another dying hotel in Cebu. The daughter of Mrs. Borromeo, owner of The Penthouse, had already begun scolding the staff about the baduy arrangement of the seats in the lobby, asking who on earth had told them to put bougainvilleas on the steps leading toward the entrance. Next, she had complained about the bottomless iced tea in the menu. Later, it was the way the napkins had been folded during a wedding reception. The staff had wanted to protect Nina, but they were helpless against the irate questioning of Miss Boromeo. “Madam Nina told us to, Ma’am,” they had to say. She had been in a similar situation before. The wife, or sister, or daughter would note how well she got along with the owner and the staff, and how much power she was given over the hotel, and the complaints would begin. She had always been offered a job by one or another of the hotel owners who had become her friends, but at her age, she was not sure anymore if she would still be
Page 3 of 25 offered another job in the same position. Nina’s friends, hoteliers like her, had set her up with Ruben, who was a friend of the husband of a friend of a friend now living somewhere in Europe. One day, she had received a letter from a Ruben Peeters, from 15 Stratenhaus, Kessel-lo, Belgium. “We gave him your address!” They had all exclaimed at the emergency get-together that had been arranged on account of the letter. “And your picture,” added Susan, the one closest to her. Nina was meticulous with her looks, making sure to dye her short curls and to dress in the smartest outfits. It was mostly her vivacious warmth, however, that drew others to her. “He must have been bowled over!” cried another one, and everyone had laughed. “You shouldn’t have!” she had scolded, looking at the fair-skinned, white-haired, blue-eyed man in the picture that had been included in the letter. “Dear Saturnina,” she had read to her nieces gathered around her bed, and they had giggled at the way she read her full name with a grimace. One of them had grabbed the picture and said, “Hmmm, not bad. And he’s young, Auntie, only seventy years old.” And everyone had burst into laughter as the picture was passed around. His English had not been perfect but she had answered the second letter, thinking it wouldn’t hurt to have a Belgian pen friend. Susan’s daughter had married a German. She had sent Susan enough money to renovate their house. All of Susan’s friends, including Nina, had gone to the house blessing, where Susan made sure everyone saw the numerous pictures of her daughter in front of beautiful castles and gardens all over Europe. Said daughter had come home looking very glamorous in her European clothing and make-up, handing out lipstick and perfume, and treating everyone to a night at the Casino. Nina was drawn to the Casino. She loved riding up to the Cebu Plaza Hotel with her friends, alighting at the glass doors and taking the escalator that led them to an arched entrance on the second floor where, in their pearls and georgette blouses, they would stand in excited anticipation as
Page 4 of 25 they surveyed the ballroom sized Casino, the green carpet on its expansive floor muting the clinking of trolleys that held chips for the card games and coins for the slot machines over which hovered a haze of smoke. Nina preferred the slot machines, even when the round tipped metal lever that made a satisfying growl at every turn evolved into the red and green buttons that one could press at a higher speed. The excitement was the same, as the images rolled on the round screen and the boxes fell into place, the ding ding as the credits multiplied every time two or three of the images matched. She often ran out of coins, and spent more than she had planned, but she always came back for more because who knows, the next roll might hit the jackpot, and she wasn’t one to miss her chances. Ruben had replied to her first letter, and began calling her long distance after three months. Somehow, she had gotten through the conversations, feeling exhausted after listening closely to Ruben’s thickly accented Flemish-English. When he sent her a ticket to Belgium, her friends had shrieked in delight and inundated her with outfits, her nieces giggling as she modelled them around the bedroom. He looked shorter than she had imagined as he stood waiting for her at the Brussels airport terminal, holding a placard that clearly spelled out her name: Saturnina Dimaculangan. She winced at the unglamorous vowels, but gave him her dimpled smile nevertheless. They shook hands and she had turned on her famous charm. Ruben’s face was red from laughing when they arrived at his house. Some of his friends were there, with their Filipina wives, to welcome her. “Hallo!” They all gathered around her, shaking her hand. Some of the wives laughingly showed her the Belgian kiss. Once, on the right cheek, another on the left, and yet another one on the right cheek again. She was delighted at their niceness, especially when she discovered that some of them also came from the outlying towns of Cebu. After a while, Ruben had taken her away from the excited Bisayan babble, and shown her around his house, which was a sprawling bungalow