Love Beyond: Walang Hanggang Pagmamahal

by Grant Leishman

  The thought was enough to jolt her into full consciousness and she sat up, pulling herself back to try and create some distance between her, those haunting eyes and that oh, so delicious, smell. Her eyes, now fully focused flashed around to take in her surroundings. She was on a bed of some sort in a very sparsely furnished room. She could see a table and chair in the far corner, with papers stacked high on it, a small dresser across from the bed and oh, yes, a tall, rather handsome young man, with a slight smile crinkling the corners of his mouth.

  “Where... where... am I?” she managed to stutter out. “Who are you?” she finally added. Looking down at herself in the bed, she gave a tiny scream as she realised the covers she had over her had slipped down and she was sitting up in a strange bed, with her two breasts exposed and pointing directly at a man’s face. Horrified, she pulled the covers over her to cover her modesty. The man merely responded by chuckling softly to himself. Almost afraid to look, she lifted the covers and peered down at her body, in the bed. Gulping deeply, she realised she was totally naked in some stranger’s bed. Oh, my God, she thought. What have I done? What has happened to me? Father will kill me.

  Hernando, realising from her stricken face, the cause of her concern, sought to reassure the girl. “Don’t worry Minda, I didn’t undress you. One of the ladies from the camp village assisted you into bed. I am an officer and a gentleman Minda, I would never presume to take such liberties with a young lady’s person.”

  She let out a loud sigh of relief at his pronouncement and looked more closely at this young officer who still stood, concern written all over his face, just inches from her bed. He was indeed handsome, she thought to herself. His long, aristocratic face with those deep, blue and searching eyes was framed with shoulder length hair that was currently tied back. His chin sported a fashionable goatee beard and a thin, but acceptable moustache completed the picture of an officer and a gentleman as he had earlier described. He was still dressed in his stiff-necked, high collar, with the pips on the side, a pair of braces visible beneath his jacket, and grey trousers. But, it was his lips she felt herself most drawn to. They seemed to be fixed in an almost half-smile and laugh lines were clearly visible around the sides of his mouth. She decided this was a man who laughed often and loudly. For some reason, that comforted her greatly. As she continued to examine him microscopically, suddenly something seemed to break through to her thought processes and demand some explanations. Chiding herself for allowing the man’s beauty to take away from more pressing thoughts, she quickly turned her attention to the matters at hand.

  “So, Sir, as I asked earlier, where am I? What am I doing here? How do you know my name?” she tapped her finger absentmindedly on her chin, before adding as an afterthought, “and more to the point, just who might you be?”

  Hernando grinned and made a move to sit on the side of the bed. Minda shrank back and pulled the sheets even higher up to her neck so that all that was exposed was her startled face. Still smiling he settled himself down on the edge of the bed and without warning reached out his right hand to brush a few wayward strands of hair that had fallen in front of her eyes. The gentleness and the humility of the action pierced straight through to Minda’s heart and she felt a twinge of excitement and deep emotion for the simple, caring gesture. She sighed, unintentionally, but she was thrilled to see his smile broaden and his eyes flicker with happiness at the soft exhalation of her breath.

  “My apologies Minda,” Hernando began. “How rude of me not to introduce myself properly first.” He stood and jumped to attention, saluting the now slightly amused Minda, with gusto and precision. “Senorita Minda, I am Captain Hernando Alvarez de Abreu, of her Majesty’s Colonial Army, currently serving with the third Spanish Cavalry Unit and I, Senorita, am very much at your service.” She just couldn’t help herself and she found herself giggling aloud at the formality of Hernando’s introduction.

  He also began to chortle softly and took the laughter as a good reason to sit back down, onto the bed and lean forward to again brush a few straggling locks away from her face. Ah, that face, he thought to himself. He’d decided, as he sat beside her bed, hour after hour, waiting for her to wake up, that it really was the most beautiful face he had ever laid eyes on. Minda’s colouring was just a light caramel and it served to make her appear exotic and exciting to the young, testosterone-driven, Hernando. No, he decided, she wasn’t exotic, she truly was beautiful. Her long, black hair that framed her wide forehead was lustrous and thick. When he looked at her all he wanted to do was to run his fingers through that hair and to wrap the strands around his face and bury his nose in the delicious aroma he knew would be there. Her thin angular face, with the slightly turned up nose and the flaring nostrils, excited him. He couldn’t help but wonder if those nostrils quivered when she got angry or excited. But, Minda’s crowning glory, in Hernando’s viewpoint, was her eyes. Dark brown, almost to the point of being black, they nonetheless were rimmed with a light hazel colour, with tiny flecks of gold and there was a mystery in them, a deeper knowledge, a secret even, that captivated him and excited him no end.

  Shaking his head quickly to dismiss his silent reverie and inventory of her bounteous assets, he quickly answered. “Well, to answer your questions in order. You are in my quarters at our base camp. I brought you here to recover after you were accidentally kicked in the head by me after we ran into your family on the way home from Church and I know your name, because your Mother told me it, Luzviminda.”

  The way he said her full name, rolled off his tongue in a sensuous, sultry way. She shivered involuntarily. Taking in the information he had given her, her forehead creased in consternation. She was in a Spanish Military Camp? Worse than that, she was in a young Spanish Officer’s room in the military camp, not to mention naked in his bed. Oh my goodness, she thought. What would mother and father say? Her face began to frown as she realised she was in fact “fraternising” with the enemy. I hate the Spanish, she berated herself pointedly. Glancing at the young Hernando, she added in her mind, pretty hard to hate that handsome hunk of a man, though, hehe. She rubbed her chin, her fingers beating a pattern on the dimple to the left of her jaw. “You kicked me in the head accidentally, you said? How can you kick someone in the head accidentally, pray tell?”

  After Hernando had calmly and apologetically explained the circumstances of the unfortunate accident, Minda couldn’t help but feel impressed with the young officer’s chivalry and gallantry. She knew most Spanish soldiers would have done what the rest of his men obviously did, laugh at them, or even worse, they could have beaten or killed the men and then raped her mother and her. She knew she was fortunate that Captain de Abreu... Hernando had been there to take control of the situation and look after her. She felt a surge of gratitude toward him, but she couldn’t dismiss the thought that here she was, a Filipina, with a hatred of the Spanish, their attitudes and their bloody Church, lying naked in a Spanish Officer’s bed.

  Biting her lower lip, to concentrate, she forced the words out that she didn’t really want to say. In fact, she rather liked the bed, it was so much more comfortable than her bed-mat at home and more importantly, she had a feeling she and Hernando could well have a wonderfully enlightening and educational discussion. She was forced to admit, she liked the man... in more ways than one.

  “Well, Captain, now that you’ve explained things to me, I must thank you for your wonderful hospitality and your gallantry toward me.” Looking him directly in the eye she added, “I promise you I will not forget what you have done for me this day.” Taking a large breath and regretting the words she said, the minute they left her lips, she finished, “but, I should be getting back to my family now. What have you done with my clothes?”

  Hernando looked crestfallen to be losing her so soon, just as they were getting acquainted, but he put on a brave face and smiled at her. “Don’t worry. I had one of the women wash everything for you. Your clothes were covered in mud and muck from the rice field. I’ll jus
t go and get her to bring them to you and assist you in getting dressed.”

  She smiled sweetly at him. “Thank you so much, Captain, you truly are a gentleman.”

  “It has been my pleasure Senorita and please, call me Hernando.”

  “Thank you, Hernando, I appreciate it.”

  He coughed to cover his sadness at her leaving and stood up from the bed. “Right then, I’ll send someone in with your clothes and I’ll bid you a fond farewell. I’ll get someone to escort you back to the town.” Suddenly he leant forward and lightly kissed her on her cheek. With his face rapidly turning a dark shade of red, he quickly stuttered, “till we meet again, sweet Senorita,” before spinning on his heels and exiting the room without even a glance backward.

  “Till we meet again,” she softly repeated to herself. “Till we meet again… Hmmmm, will we?”

  ***

  HERNANDO:

  After Minda had left, Hernando stood at his window, watching Sergeant Molinero leading the young woman across the parade ground toward the entrance gate. The Sergeant was the only one of his men he felt he could fully trust to escort Minda back to the safety of her family. A pang of deep loss rushed through his body, as she slipped from his sight and he shook his head in wonderment. How could this young woman have made such a big impact on him, so quickly? That she had, was beyond question. She was now all he could think about. When he closed his eyes, her smiling face, that dimple on her left cheek, the long, shiny hair, those mesmerising eyes, the small but thrusting breasts, and those round, juicy hips, it all taunted him, tempted him and left him feeling in a state of unrequited lust. Was that all this was, lust? He didn’t think so. Minda was the first Filipina woman he had met in this country and something about her told him she was different from others. In the short time he’d talked with her he had a real sense of a deep intelligence inside that pretty, little head and a wry sense of humour that appealed to his nature. God, he had to see her again. He knew it would be a mistake, but he also knew he couldn’t help himself. He really had to spend more time with her and explore her as a person and maybe, even, as a woman.

  Taking a large breath he let it out slowly and tried to picture his father’s reaction if he knew his son was becoming infatuated with a “native”. He could almost see his father lecturing him now. “Son,” he would say, in that incredibly condescending manner of his, “those native women, they’re not like us. Yes, they’re pretty and they want to please, but good God, boy, at the end of the day, they’re just savages.” He would then place his arm around Hernando's shoulders and whisper conspiratorially in his ear. “By all means, boy, get your rocks off if that’s what you need, but never forget who they are and what their place is. We are Spanish, son and more than that, we are Spanish aristocracy. We have a duty to keep the bloodline clean and pure.” He would then pat his son on the back and finish with, “have your fun boy, but don’t get involved, yes?” He’d heard the talk, from his father, on numerous occasions prior to his departure for The Philippines and it never failed to disgust him. Why could his family not see that we were all human beings, we are all the same, no matter the colour of our skin or where we were born? He sat down in his chair and placed his head in his hands, closing his eyes and picturing his beautiful, capricious, delicious, mysterious, and unobtainable Minda. Yes, he would see her again, of that he was certain. He would make sure he made it happen.

  Locking his room door, he grabbed a bottle of Madeira and a cup, sitting it on the table, before surreptitiously, despite his room being empty, creeping over toward his bed. He lifted the corner of his mattress and felt around, before emerging with a hard-covered book that had obviously had much use. He smiled gently as he looked at the well-worn cover of a book that gave him more inspiration and pleasure than any other book he’d ever read. He’d read this particular, massive tome from cover to cover, on five separate instances now, but still, he would return to it time and time again to re-read the now familiar passages that never failed to stir his blood. Laying the book, almost reverently on his table, he opened the front cover and traced his fingers over the title page. “Les Misérables” by “Victor Hugo”. He could recite the famous paragraph from the preface of the book, by heart. It was these words that first inspired him to look beyond the aristocratic ways of his family and to consider the need for equality and social justice in Nineteenth-Century Spain. It was these words that inflamed the passion inside of him to make a difference. He would not and could never sustain the notion that one man was better than another, dependent merely on the accident of his birth. As a man and as a person, he truly embraced the simple creed of the French Revolution: ‘Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity’. These were three ideals, so sadly lacking in most of Nineteenth-Century Europe and especially in Spain, where the aristocracy and the monarchists still held absolute power.

  He was well aware the book was considered seditious and even treasonous in Spanish Society and he knew the Catholic Church had banned the book, meaning in highly Catholic Spain, it was considered an absolute travesty to own a copy, let alone to read it and subscribe to its ideals. But, he truly believed it was time for change and he hoped and planned to be at the forefront of that change, not in some stuffy political forum, but out here, on the front line of the Spanish civilisation. It is my bounden duty, he thought, to live my life as a Spanish Soldier to the highest of those ideals espoused by my hero, Hugo and to show that change is not only possible but desirable. Leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes, he softly repeated the paragraph that had forever shaped his young mind and turned him from a spoilt, aristocratic brat into a caring, concerned human being.

  “So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.”

  (From Les Misérables by Victor Hugo: First published in 1862)

  “These truly are words to live by,” he muttered to himself as he finished his recitation.

  Hernando drained his cup of Madeira before quickly filling it to the brim again. As he flipped through the pages of his book, stopping from time to time to reflect on certain passages, the Madeira continued to flow and he found his mind drifting off the topic of the French Revolution and firmly focusing instead on a pretty, young girl by the name of Luzviminda Torres. He ran the name gently over his lips as he recalled her dark, warm, entreating eyes and her shapely body. As he slipped off to sleep, still sitting in his chair, there was a soft smile on his lips and a hardening throb in his groin.

  ***

  Hernando jerked awake at the sound of a rifle shot that appeared to have come from the parade ground. Momentarily confused by his awkward stance in the chair and his head still swimming somewhat in the befuddlement of the Madeira, he didn’t react or move, for some ten seconds. When he heard further shots and screaming voices he forced himself to his feet and swaying slightly scanned his room for his pistol and sabre. All of them were hanging where he’d left them on the back of the door and after thrusting his feet into his boots he quickly grabbed them and strapped them on before rushing out of the door to determine the cause of the commotion.

  The eastern sky was just beginning to show the faintest of lightening in its black shroud as he stumbled onto the parade ground to be confronted by men milling around in confusion, as shots continued to pepper the air with their fearsome cracks. Hernando felt something whistle past his ear and instinctively put his fingers up to check. He felt the stickiness of the blood that dripped from his earlobe but oddly felt no pain. Determined to bring some order to the shoutin
g, rambling group of soldiers that were his command, he drew his pistol and fired directly into the air.

  Just then, a massive explosion ripped through the compound and Hernando felt himself hurled backward by the force of the blast. Sitting on his backside in the dirt, he shook his head to try and stop the infernal ringing in his ears. He could feel the small runnels of blood trickling down his cheeks but he knew he wasn’t seriously injured. Grabbing his bandanna from around his neck, he wiped his face and cleared his eyes, where blood was threatening to seep into and ruin his vision. “Damn!” he cursed softly to himself.

  Looking in the direction of the explosion, he could see a large part of the camp’s wall had literally been demolished. The parts of the tall, bamboo structure that encircled the camp, which were still standing, were leaning drunkenly outward and already on fire. He knew the fire would quickly take hold and was fearful of it spreading to the main camp buildings and especially the livery stables. Taking a few more seconds to regain his equilibrium he pushed himself gingerly to his feet and after a quick feel of his extremities just to ensure all his bits and pieces were still where they should be, he glanced around at the carnage. There were a few soldiers, who had been near the fence when it exploded, who were clearly dead. He could see the torso of one man, minus both his legs and another soldier whose body lay spread-eagled in the dust, yet oddly was headless. The sight caused his bile to rise and he dry-retched, before reaching a decision.