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By Jun Terra
The amusements, however, were but mere
adornments to the charm of Doņa Leonora. During the course of the
evening she would do the rounds and speak to everyone in the party.
Those she spoke to felt special. During these brief conversations,
she seemed to take them into her confidence and open up the wondrous
mysteries of her being to them alone among the hundreds of guests.
Women were flattered and the men instantly and absolutely fell in
love with her. Every man became her suitor, and she acknowledged
them with equal attention, dispensing delicious mannas of hope.
Everyone basked in the after glow of the encounter that made the
evening a magical experience.
Despite the seeming happiness, veils of
melancholy surrounded her in the midst of the gaiety and kept her
apart from everyone, a fact unnoticed by the guests. It was no
coincidence that Doņa Leonora always invited gypsies, clairvoyants
and sorcerers to her parties. They entertained the guests by
divining the future from tarot cards and chicken entrails. They
tried to summon up the spirit of the departed during seances which
made some ladies faint and the others gasp in amazement and anxiety.
They provided piquance to the sweetness of the parties, a dose of
seriousness into the general frivolity, and the necessary darkness
to mould and define the light.
It is said that there were days when Doņa
Leonora would descend to the cove where the waves were most
treacherous and breaking eddies were like long strands of hair
flaying the base of the rock. From this cove she and Don Fernando
would look out into the infinity of the sea.
As the house on the rock had windows all around,
when the chandeliers were lit, it was ablaze with light, resembling
a constellation from afar, or a lighthouse, a beacon. In fact ships
entering the channel used it as a guide. From the time Doņa Leonora
moved back into the house on, accidents like those that claimed Don
Fernandos life immediately ceased. Was it because of the light
provided by her almost nightly parties, or were there other reasons
the non-superstitious would hastily dismiss? Many ordinary people
for instance claimed that the sea had become more tranquil and
benign ever since Doņa Leonora returned to her childhood home on
the rock.
The goddess of the enchanted rock
Whenever Doņa Leonora descended from the house
to visit her lands below, a cheer would resound from the fields
where the farmers toiled. Ang Diyosa sang balay nagpanaog para
maghatag sang iya nga bendisyon. Kabay nga maglawig ang iya kabuhi..
(The goddess of the house has come down to shower us with blessings.
May she live forever). Then she made her rounds distributing salt
and rice to the needy and medicines for the sick. Many of those
bedridden by illness attributed their recovery less to the efficacy
of the medicines and more to the personal visit of Doņa Leonora. It
was as if their will to regain well-being grew stronger with her
mere presence. But you would expect stories like these from simple
folk.
She never failed to visit the farmers toiling in
the flooded paddy fields, walking on the narrow raised footpaths
that linked them, and sometimes wading in the mud to inquire about
their work. These visits provided them an incentive to work harder
and their feelings of tiredness vanished. Their harvests prospered
and this they attributed to the mistress of the enchanted rock.
From the fields, she would go and drop into the
small huts of the fishing communities along the shore. She
distributed clothing to the children and small coloured cards
illustrating the miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the child
Jesus as depicted by the sweet paintings of Murillo, Raphael and
Corregio. Needless to say, the fisherfolk attributed their plentiful
harvest from the sea to the regular visits of their mistress.
The life of the people of the island, although
humble never wanted in necessities. Their fields yielded more grain
than they needed, the orchards blossomed and bore the most luscious,
juiciest fruits. The mango and papayas for which the island was
renowned became ten times sweeter and merchants from the surrounding
islands competed to market them. The catch from the sea was always
bountiful. The tidal waves that sometimes washed away whole
communities had ceased since Doņa Leonora returned to the island.
Yes, their humble lives even had intimations of illimitable
happiness and peaceful contentment.
Then one day with the same suddenness that she
woke up from her mourning she vanished. The immediate conclusion of
the people from town was that she must have drowned. She had been
seen on many occasions descend to the coves of the island. The
townsfolk joined her relatives in the search party. The best divers
were sent to look around the peninsula in all the coves and inlets.
There was not a trace of Doņa Leonora. The search was only given up
after months of heartbreaking effort. Many years on, people in the
town still talked about her unexplainable disappearance. Her memory
burned like a beacon in the imagination of the people.
Some cynics said she did not drown at all.
Otherwise there would be signs: her slippers, or torn clothes, for
instance. They said she must have eloped with one of those sea
captains; or the poet with the brooding eyes. She could have run
away with the handsome young hacendero from the island of Mindanao
who avidly courted her, giving birth to numerous children while
leading an obscure and unremarkable life.
The people of the island, however, refused to
accept the loss of their goddess. They said she never left the house
on the enchanted rock, and came down as she always did to shower her
blessings upon them. Even if they did not see her physically, they
felt her presence among them. Why was it that their harvests were
bountiful and the sea yielded a good catch? Moreover, the palpable
air of happiness that pervaded the island since Doņa Leonora came
back to live on the enchanted rock remained. How could they explain
this? They had no reason to mourn her loss: she never left.
Captains of ships say that sometimes in bad
weather, when heavy fog covered the sight of land and water at the
entrance to the channel, and waves rose roof-high, the house would
suddenly light up and guide them into the safety of the harbour.
Others say that on occasions they would see a woman, radiant with
unearthly light, walking on the waters and parting the fog for the
ships to pass through. Tales like these circulated and were
doubtless embellished. Who knows which ones were true and which were
invented to be grist to the imagination of the credulous. One thing
is certain: time, which was not capable of erasing the memory of Doņa
Leonora, passed it on from one generation to another, infusing and
deepening it with mystery and ceaselessly transforming it in its
slow but relentless passage into the future.
juntrr@yahoo.co.uk
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