Hermin: A Simple Friend
I met Hermin in 1991, our second year at CSU, Fresno. We were the only two Asians staying in Aspen Hall, a quiet, coed dorm on campus. She had a single room, and I shared a double room with a roommate. I didn't have many friends that year in the dorms. My roommate drank too much coffee, watched too much football, and listened to too much country music for us to have anything in common to talk about.
I can't remember how Hermin and I first met. I guess it was on the way to the dining hall one day when she introduced herself to me. Since then we became dining partners. We went to dinner together almost everyday, sometimes with a tall Japanese girl from another dorm who didn't speak much English.
Hermin had a simple but not plain appearance. Her clothes were always neat and comfortable. Her hair was black, long and straight, her skin fair and fine like ivory. Her eyes were clear and piercing, and her expression was steady, distant, sometimes with a hint of sadness. Her speech was clear but biting. She rarely smiled, and if she did, her smile looked rather false or forced. At the beginning, the sternness of her look made me uneasy, and I had to tell countless jokes to make her laugh. I felt accomplished when I saw her laugh.
Hermin was originally from the Philippines. Her family immigrated to America some years ago and settled in San Jose, a city I had never heard of back then.
She had three older sisters. They were triplets. I had never met anyone who was from a family with triplets, so I thought she must have had an interesting life. But she didn't like that at all. “Whenever we went out, the three of them always walked ahead and talked to one another. I was left alone”, she complained.
Besides dining, we tried to do other things together as friends. Once when a professor from my department wanted to invite me and one friend of my choice to an opera to “support the arts in Fresno”, Hermin agreed to go with me. In the theater, when our hosts asked Hermin if she liked operas, she replied eagerly, “Yes, I love operas! I went to the Phantom of the Opera last year with my brother, and that was so fantastic!” We wanted to explain to her the differences between an opera and a musical, but the curtain opened. During the play, I observed Hermin’s difficulty to stay focused, and I felt embarrassed and guilty. Nobody enjoyed the opera. It was Madama Butterfly that night.
That semester for the first time in my life I had a crush on a guy, and I desperately needed a girl friend to hear my suffering from unrequited love. Hermin was the perfect friend. She always listened in her reserved and cold manner. If she ever responded, her words were short, direct, and rather abrupt. Her indifference usually calmed me down.
Sometimes when we worked in the study room, she would suddenly stop all motion, sat still, gazing straight beyond the walls, as if her soul had escaped into another world. In her trance, a mist of peace came over her and she looked very beautiful.
I had never expected to participate in her mystery, until one day she said to me in her usual monotone, “I have been secretly in love with a professor for over a year.”
“A professor!” I exclaimed, “But you are only a sophomore!” I tried to pretend that I wasn't in a complete shock.
“Let me show you his picture”, she ignored my comment.
She asked me for my school catalog. His picture was in the catalog from the previous year, on the page titled “Business Management”. There he was, a young instructor, in early thirties, dressed in dark suit and tie, sitting on the edge of a desk, giving a lecture. The sight of his picture in that instance completely transformed Hermin into another person—animated, enthusiastic, and radiant.
“Isn't he handsome?” Her eyes pierced into me, seeking my approval.
“He looks better than Tom Cruise!” I assured her. She dissolved into a big smile and told me her story.
Towards the end of her senior year in high school, she was still clueless about college. One day while idly browsing through various school catalogs, she accidentally came across the magic picture. The moment she fixed her eyes on his picture, her heart was locked onto him. After high school, she left home, came to the small city Fresno, and majored in business management, with the great expectation that some day she would uncover the identity of this charming prince in the picture.
“But all you saw was this picture! How did you know if he wasn't just a student giving a presentation? And what if he had already left Fresno? Or maybe he was just some representative from a corporation?” I doubted her brave instinct.
Yet she remained in her otherworldly smile.
Hermin went through the first year of college without knowing anything more about him. At the beginning of the second year, she found out that he was indeed a professor—Mr. Keppler, she called him so—in business school. He was teaching an advanced class which she was not qualified to take, but she signed up anyway. For two hours a week, she sat in a corner of the classroom, admiring at him from afar, meeting his smiles, daydreaming.
After she first revealed her secret to me, she would share with me every details of the love development. “Mr. Keppler doesn't wear a ring!” she triumphantly announced. Every casual glance, every random nodding of the head, every incidental smile from him would excite her for days. Her life depended upon those sprinkles of unintentional encouragement, and she dreamed on. Then one day she made a fateful discovery—Mr. Keppler had a twin brother—and his twin brother was married to a Filipino!
At that news, even I became encouraged. I began to urge her to confess her passion to her beloved professor. But whenever I mentioned it, she became unreasonably panicky and said no, she could never do so. And our conversation would end right there.
Our lives crossed only when we exchanged our infatuations about men, yet we were each in our own isolated fantasy, indifferent to each other. Most of the time, she was never quite aware of things around us. Nothing could stir an expression onto her face. But when she talked about Mr. Keppler, her whole countenance would lighten up. Her voice became sweet and dreamy. Her eyes sparkled with hope and joy. She cast a smile into a faraway world.
This went on for a couple of months.
Then one late afternoon when I was reading in my room, she rushed in, trembling. “I told him! I told him! I told him everything!” said her agitatedly.
“What? What happened?” I held my breath.
“This afternoon, I went to his office. Finally! But I didn't know where to start. I just walked back and forth like this. Then I gathered the courage. I didn't know from where. I just told him! I said I had been in love with him since high school, and I came to Fresno State just to see him. I said I love him. I didn’t know what to do. I made a fool of myself. I was so scared! But I told him everything! Everything!” She was restless, walking up and down in my room, dissipating away.
“And then?”
“Well... he smiled at me”, smiled her, voice softened, “and he said it wasn't surprising, ‘cause it had happened to him before, a couple of times. He said he was really flattered. And he told me he's got a girlfriend right now.” While Hermin was relating his reply to me, she kept smiling, and indulged in her first private conversation with him, as if the content of his words meant nothing to her at all.
For the whole evening, she remained very excited about the encounter. Her soul was in her other world, reliving, rejoicing. I began to worry about her. Would she change her major? Would she continue her study here? Would she become depressed? Would her world collapse? I observed her, trying to find a clue to her future.
However, she never mentioned Mr. Keppler again after that.
That semester was soon over, and we each went home for winter break. After the break, I was occupied with graduation, and we did not go to dinner together anymore. She returned to her cold and reserved state, as if nothing had ever happened. Our friendship faded away.
I have only a few things to remember Hermin by: two pictures we took together on campus—she looked rather fiercely in those; one Christmas card—thanking me for my “help and support to finally have the guts to face her only source of inspiration here at Fresno State”; and one small portrait of her as a graduation present.
It is a black and white portrait. Half of her face is in the light, and the other half is mysteriously hidden in the shadow. She wears her usual expression—stern, cold, and reserved, but very beautiful. Her lips are tight. Her eyes are deep, dreamy, and distant. On the back, she signs,
“A simple remembrance from a simple friend. Love, Hermin.”
I have not heard from her since my graduation. Over the years, whenever I go to San Jose, I always try to look her name up in the phone book, hoping to find her again. Yet, she has simply disappeared, into this deep, dreamy, and distant world.
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First draft: May 1, 2000
Revision: May 21, 2000
Revision: April 12, 2001
Revision: January 17, 2004
- 阿珊,this piece is beautifully written, I am over-whelmedposted on 01/19/2004
you should think of publishing this story in a magazine.
it truely is a good story. weill-organized, if you want, it can be develeopped to be a short novel.
this story help me, this morning ,I have had another block, i can not write a single word. Your story opened me up and I can write freely now. Your protagonist inspired me. - posted on 01/19/2004
I have written a few of these, but this one is the first and the most moving I think. Your Cafe has encouraged me to revisit these pieces and to start writing again. I should thank you. I'd like to have this story published eventually, but I don't know where to submit it (as I myself don't read newspapers or magazines). Do you or anyone here have some recommendations?
Also, in a true story like this, do I have to change the names of the people?
Hmm, I just googled this Keppler and am surprised to find him and his picture! After this 12 years! Yet, I still can't find Hermin..... - 阿珊,我在想是否可以把这个故事改编成小说?posted on 01/21/2004
如果你同意,我想用中文来试一下,情节结构和人物有改动,可以吗? - sure, if you want. i think it will be very different.posted on 01/21/2004
- Re: sure, if you want. i think it will be very different.posted on 03/03/2004
Without homosexual stuff to blend, it can't be a story or fiction the kind of which Maya wants to remold into.
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