Love letters from Rody

(Conclusion)

Two Mondays ago, I featured the first of two typewritten love letters that I had found, folded and unsent, between the pages of an old book from the 1950s that I recently bought. As I mentioned then, I felt embarrassed to suddenly become privy to someone else’s most personal displays of affection, but was at the same time transfixed by the literary qualities of the writer’s prose.

I’m aware that back then, it wasn’t unheard of to employ templates — form love letters commissioned and sold in books by enterprising publishers to help verbally-challenged Romeos along. Somewhere in my collection is one such book, from the early 1900s and in profusely ornate Tagalog, offering letters for every possible occasion along the courtship timeline — including a letter to the girl’s parents, imploring their tolerance and understanding. By the 1950s and 1960s — as I recall from my sorties to the bookshops and newsstands along Avenida Rizal — these were available in English (thankfully I felt no need to resort to them, although my versions probably made their recipients cringe).

Our present suitor, who signs his name “Rody,” clearly dipped into his own trove of metaphors in addressing his unnamed beloved, with such choice passages as “rich jewels in an Ethiop’s ear.” From this second letter, we can divine that he had gone to college to study Medicine, had been confined at the hospital where his beloved worked and nursed him back to health, only to afflict him with a fatal passion; in despair over failing his school exams and hearing nothing from her (despite which he takes her silence for love), he joins the US Navy, and is now on the eve of sailing for San Diego (where, ironically, this column is being written, on our annual visit to our daughter Demi). Let’s hear it from Rody, and pray that whoever he (and she) was, he found love and peace in his later life.

Dear --------------,

It has been a long time since my last letter and the urge in me to write you is at its topmost height. Your lengthy silence is an inducement for me to break the ice — that silence made me jump to the conclusion that — you love me.

I am the happiest guy nowadays in the whole wide world. No poet can best express in words the joy and bliss deep in my heart. Not even the immortal Allan Poe who can speak to the crags of the sea.

You are the only girl I cared for and you knew that even from the very start. You are the girl who can make the torch of my life burn bright with clear and unending light. You are the only girl who can walk straight with me through this vale of tears.

Although it is despicable and unbecoming for me, I cannot help but be humble and confide in you my downfall. I vowed never to let you in on my secret but vows can never be sealed for life and vows are made to be broken. Besides many say that sincerity is truth. Now have this: I incurred failures the last semester and am debarred from the College of Medicine.

There really is no one to blame but me. I wasted a lot of time on nonsensical things that I never had a minute to devote to my studies. Time is precious for medical students and that I know. I was not a conscientious student and can never be one. Once I said to myself: you won’t make a good doctor anyway, so why bother to be one?

After the inevitable thing happened I became desperate and disgusted with life. I began to complain to the heavens why life was treating me this way. I felt the urge of ending my life, but consolation came in the nick of time and only then I knew that God was with me. That consolation was in the form of silence and the silence meant you love me.

You gave me hope amidst my tears and misery. You nursed my illness and brought me back to life. Now I feel a new light guiding me back to life. Only now I know that God is my co-pilot.

I have no more interest to pursue my studies. I no longer have the appetite to swallow the hectic life of a college student. I got my fill of studies that I joined the United States Navy.

Our ship is leaving for San Diego by next month to this date. The beacon of the Navy is timely but sad. I miss you more than anything else. I will miss that comely look and that Mona Lisa smile. But bear in mind that you will always be the girl I love.

I long to talk to you and bid you good-bye but time is stingy and never gave me a chance. Last Sunday I intended to visit you at the Nurses’ Home and discuss with you matters at hand but you were on duty. I can make it this Sunday, will you be off by then?

I hope this letter will reach you before the time, and see you then.

Lovingly yours,

Rody

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Email me at jose@dalisay.ph and visit my blog at www.penmanila.ph.