by Gina Apostol
“But I saw Manong Babe—,” I said. I heard myself, sounding strangely croaked, a tone in my voice like a keening. Could it be possible? I felt a dry, slow whiplash in my chest.
Maring began shaking again.
My mother was impatient. “And you say it was Babe, Maria?” she asked.
“They found him in the Pasig,” Manang Maring sobbed. “I saw him, I saw him.”
“I saw him, I saw him,” I repeated.
The maids were looking at me. I was horrified to hear the strange feeble groaning: I was bleating like Manang Maring.
7
I AM A SICK woman, my memory certifiably unreliable. It’s all in a document, clinical. Anyone will tell you that. But I remember that on the last day of the tournament Uncle Gianni called for me.
“D’you see him?” Uncle Gianni asked me. He was strolling around the soccer area, an anxious host. “Did he arrive yet? Go look around for him, Sol.”
I could tell in the tight movement of his lips that he was annoyed about something, either angry or nervous, and it was betrayed only in brief expressions and that taut nerve on his temple.
A lot of people sought Uncle Gianni at the games, old and young women, housemaids and businessmen, all of whom he charmed and flattered with his eagle attention, and I was sent to look for his prey, Colonel Grier, who had promised to attend the tournament.
Jed strolled to the car with the bags while I went off to look. I took a turn around both sides of the field, down to the far reaches where some men rested in the shade, watching Belgium, those extraneous Italians, thrash Team Malta. And though many of the stalwarts of the tournament, fleshy, grinning men, had a counterfeit haunch or profile, or simulated the Colonel’s bald gravitas, none of them had the upright, scary posture I’d recognize with clairvoyance now, I could spot him in my sleep.
There was no Colonel Grier. I reported to Uncle Gianni.
“That son of a bitch,” he said.
I stood before him, letting it pass. I held a hand out before my face to shield myself from the sun’s glare.
“The shit. He’s been playing with us for too long. He thinks he calls the shots. We’ll see. He’ll see who’s boss.”
I cleared my throat.
“Uh, Uncle Gianni. I’m going now. I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said.
“It’s all your fault, Sol.” But Uncle Gianni was grinning at me.
“What?”
“I heard about it—the little escapade at the Colonel’s house. Very funny. I told your Pa it couldn’t have been you—maybe it was your evil twin. You never drink coffee in the afternoon.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t worry about it, Sol. It was a lousy trick—but the guy’s an ass. A chump. Frankie fixed it.”
“What did Pa do?”
“He said you were ill. D’you see Spain kick the Philippines? Wasn’t that too bad. I was rooting for those kids. That was too bad. I should have rigged the teams a bit more.”
“But that’s cheating,” I said.
“Sol, it’s my tournament.”
“I know,” I said.
Then I kissed him on his thin, hot cheeks.
“Oh yes,” he said. “The young man is here. Well, take care of yourself, kid. I like that boy. Jared, his name is? Mariano’s boy.”
“No. His name’s—well, anyway, bye, Uncle.”
“Oh all right. You won’t talk about him, but I’ll find out. You’ll see. Ciao. Be good now!”
BY THE CAR, I saw Manong Babe. He wore his usual pressed outfit, a man of dignified order amid the naked slovenliness of the event. He met me with that wide smile, his mole folding into his flesh like a buried volcano, his eyes squinting against the sun.
“Ma’am Sol, you didn’t wait for me,” he said, his hand shielding his eyes. “Did sir Jed play?”
“Uh, well, no, but Jed is here. Jed!”
Manong Babe and I walked toward him. A little heart of dust had formed on Manong Babe’s wingtips. He noticed it and stooped to wipe it off.
“Oh, Manong Babe,” I said, “when will I ever see you in slippers, or even sneakers? You’re such a neatnik.”
“Never, Ma’am Sol,” he said, grinning, “God willing.”
Jed came up to us.
“So you played, sir?” Manong Babe said, pointing to Jed’s bag. “I did not see you in the tournament.”
Jed swung the bag behind him, as if trying to hide its bulk. “No, no, not this time, Manong,” he said. “How are you?”
“Good, sir, good.”
Manong Babe, it occurred to me, might be as infatuated with Jed as any silly girl. Whenever Jed was around, he spoke only to him.
“Can you take Sol home today, Manong?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Be sure she gets there safely now.”
“Of course, sir! I always do that.”
“Salamat, Manong,” Jed said. “And how’s your son these days? Did he like his present?”
“He plays with the basketball everyday, thank you, sir. My eldest, Chitong, is back from Jeddah for Christmas.”
“You must be very happy. And your girl Nene?” Jed asked.
“She’s on the honor roll again, sir. She says thank you for the books.”
“Good,” said Jed. “And your wife?”
“She’s still sick in bed. But all her children are home to help. I’m a lucky man, sir, with friends like you. And Ma’am Sol, too. Thank you so much, sir.”
Jed strode to his car, leaving me behind. He was trying to open up the trunk while he held on to his heavy burden, when Manong Babe came over to help him, lifting the bag.
“No, no, Manong,” Jed said. “Don’t bother.”
“It’s heavy, sir, let me take it.”
“No, no,” said Jed.
Manong Babe patted the bag, its hard bulges.
“More Christmas gifts, sir?” he asked, smiling.
Jed heaved the bag into the trunk. “Yes,” he smiled, “more gifts.”
“But Christmas is over, sir.”
“I know,” said Jed. And Jed smiled at him, while Manong Babe beamed back. “They’re gifts of the magi,” Jed said, grinning.
“More surprises for people, sir?” Manong Babe asked. “You’re a good man.”
OF COURSE, I could dwell on the conversation, as if it were exactly as I record it—as if life really did have foreshadowing, as if it could be lived backwards. And now the scenes are tainted with the suspect vision of foreknowledge. Little counterfeit shivers of premonition.
I could find an ironic moment in the statement “But Christmas is over.” I could witness a gleam in Manong Babe’s eye. I could make the conversation a puzzle, an ambiguous dialogue, teasing me with the knowledge Manong Babe may have had. I could turn on the words “gifts of the magi”—a password that escaped me? A symbolic code? Gold, myrrh and frankincense, the Feast of Ephiphany: January 6. What secrets were between them, lost to me?
But it does not convince me. Manong Babe took me home, as I said, though I protested. It was no great incident. I do remember my short, heated argument with Jed—a jealous fit in the raging sun. It was muggy, and the crowd was in some uproar—a tied game.
Nothing was resolved that day.
Jed went on his way, and I returned home. Manong Babe delivered me safe and sound. It’s true: that was the last I saw of Manong Babe.
I know that never in his life would he give up his car or allow someone else to drive it; a decoy theft, a faked carnapping? No: Manong Babe would not have allowed it. And the car abandoned on the side of the road by the so-called getaway men? Manong Babe would never have abandoned his car.
In fact, the news had already cleared my suspicions—the abandoned car, in all subsequent reports, was a basic-blue Toyota, a beat-up Corona stolen from an expatriate in Makati.
I do not imagine they will ever find the white limousine.
The fact is, these last conversations I remember were small, passing moments,
not worthy even of a chronological place in my report; and if I had had any suspicion then of Jed’s duplicity, of our own twin trap, that in effect we were leading Manong Babe to danger like one of those peasant teenagers I once saw dead in a funeral chapel with Soli, many months ago, those five young corpses in their biers whose faces remain buried in my blind brain, I didn’t think of it at the time. I never believed that Manong Babe could have been part, actively, of the plot.
I heard instead, and this is what I remember clearly, the gentleness in Jed’s voice when he said, “Salamat, Manong.” And how Manong Babe looked happy, beaming with gratitude over Jed’s gratitude. I remember that moment because it struck me at the time—it struck me how easily Manong Babe learned to love.
What I do not accept is the accusation the events leveled against Jed when Manong Babe’s body was found in the Pasig—miserably naked. They had taken away his modest undershirt. Only his mole identified him. They’d stripped him even of his shoes.
I was bleating in the kitchen, lowing like a calf. It was then that I knew it, the irrevocable, vast burden—and I would never cast it off. It remains with me, my knowledge, with the flow of my blood. It was then that I realized, with a whole heart splitting, a soft, mewl-ing disintegration—that yes: we had killed a man.
8
“I SAW HIM. I saw him.”
Everyone in the kitchen was staring at me.
My mother looked stricken by Manang Maring’s report and was giving instructions to the staff.
“I will visit Babe’s family,” my mother was saying. “If anyone wishes to come with me, you may come. We’ll get to the bottom of this. Do you want to come with us, Sol?”
But I was already on the way to my room. Soli, I thought. Soli. They had found something out about Manong Babe. I thought about it, a flash of panic: What were those names, those clues again? What was that my mother had said?
Had I been looking in the wrong direction, my heart praying for the wrong name?
“Your friend, the dark one, Sally Soledad.”
Had she ever met Soli? Why don’t I remember?
I ran up the stairs to my room.
I whispered Soli’s name as I searched for the clues. Sosolosolosol. I hunted for the back copies of the papers. I needed to look at each of the lists of names. There were four morning newspapers carrying the event; in addition, a women’s magazine had started a foldout special on expatriate lives, with a centerpiece on the American colonel and his family, lifestyle, and passions. A photo spread, all blurred and furry in the cheap newsprint, included a snapshot of a plumpish blonde with a baby—they sat at a swimming pool’s edge, the newsprint water behind them; the same lady, but pregnant, wearing a mini skirt and high heels and holding on to her husband at an airport (the ovoid woman in an awkward pose was waving, but the Colonel would have nothing of her joy and stood scowling at the sun, ramrod-straight, grim even on vacation); the smiling exonumist in a flowered shirt, showing off a glass case of valuable Roman stamps (no one ever got things right); and one more rendition of the shattered car, glass and newsprint-blood on the street, a dark swimming-pool puddle: in the background one could distinguish a brief, gray flash of tropical plants—an ordinary path cleaned regularly by Metro aides and favored with civic street gardens.
I tore through the magazines and papers and impatiently read through the text until I arrived at what I wanted. I looked at the lists of names, I read and examined them. Sure enough, there seemed to be a rhythmic pattern.
A crafty interchange of names. Soleado Soldado in one. Soltera Soleado in another. Even in error, a chiasmus. In yet another, Solidaridad M. Tangere was incriminated; and in a one-off tabloid insert on the scandal, a name was reported as an alias, “aka Fili Solidaridad.” And was it a calculated mishap, these epistrophic shifts? Sally Soliman. Sandy Soledad. The way syncopes abounded. Alias Victoire in one, alias Victor in another. In the first day’s reports, she had been nonexistent, not part of the event. But already, slowly there began in small, creeping increments, in tiny, restrained clauses I had barely noted, an emerging portrait of a rebel. Teenage Terrorist. Sparrow Queen. Ridiculous labels. Brief, sensational possibilities for glib caption writers and alliterative pens.
In any case, none of the lists ever got the names right. Perhaps they were waiting for the last report. I checked the date: it was the only paper I hadn’t read, the one I had left behind that morning. The morning’s news. Solidaridad “Soli” Soledad.
“Soli,” she had introduced herself. “As in the revolution. You know.”
I read the morning’s report. It was almost expansive: a little talambuhay. She was Visayan, it said. From Leyte. A brief toccata on a provincial life. Academic record. Salutatorian, Philippine Science. Coconut federation scholar. Campus activist. Tragically misled. Seventeen years old. Kinse—kinse anyos—. Possibly a liaison or a lookout. Objects found in her possession: Mao for Beginners. The triteness almost makes one laugh. The Little Red Book (in a hoard of coins, a rattling box). Full-time in the underground. A full-scale launch for her arrest. Bounty on her head. Missing.
I read it again.
Missing.
I knew exactly when I had seen her last.
Missing.
I looked at my organized, ransacked room. I checked—I moved quickly to a drawer. I searched everywhere for the rattling can. The tin container of Fox’s Glacier candy, with the pamphlets in it. The Little Red Book. Cartoon Mao. Society and Revolution. Small change you could find in Popular Bookstore: all you needed to do was stroll in and look. I looked for the coins, the copper centavos. Copper. For smelting.
It was strange not to have seen the irony all along. There was I, a gun dealer’s daughter, scrounging around for copper coins. Copper five-centavo coins, with the ancient smelter, Panday Pira, on the obverse, and on the reverse the seal of the Philippine Republic. These were the only copper coins in circulation in the country—the only coins you could smelt into bullets. And I, the gun dealers’ daughter, kept collecting my redundant hoard.
I found a tidy layer of notes—unaccountably well arranged, my diary, sheaves of paper. The tin container was gone, or maybe it was that I didn’t look hard enough; at this point, it’s hard to tell. I lay on my bed, on the morning’s newspaper sheets.
I looked at the line of names. It was odd. Slowly, as the news progressed, there turned out to be no trace of him, none of him at all. Jared Margaux, Joaquin River, Jet Migra de Bel Vedere. His name slowly disappeared. In its place were other priorities, all unknown to me: who knows how they picked up names. Not so randomly, I knew. There had to be a name to present to the public, after all. Habeas corpse: rescue me, over someone else’s dead body.
9
WHEN A BODY is missing in a city like Manila, there are known avenues of retrieval. Countryside sections of the southern coastline, jungle areas near the North Luzon Expressway, goat-ridden ramparts off of busy decrepit roads. In the old days, they might have been havens for native bandits, escapees from the polo, or righteous tax-evaders: now they were spaces forsaken by townspeople and forgotten by law. Nature is not the least subversive of the elements in the countryside. Lastly, of course, there is the accommodating river Pasig, so intimate with death as it weaves through the miserable, littoral municipalities of Metro Manila that it holds sway in our dreams: the last witness of the ever-loyal city’s grief.
“It is better to die in the water,” the gardener Armando was saying to the maids as I came down the stairs. “You do not see what happens to the body. Everything is erased.”
The girls did not look convinced.
Is there, really, comfort in effacement? Mutilation, electrocution, unthinkably refined savage acts—can the river hide it?
“Well, are you coming with us, Sol?”
It was then I looked at my mother.
She had been sharp and impatient with me throughout the furor. She was lucid and alert. For weeks, I understood her presence in the bustle of the maids around me. My father w
as gone again on one of his trips—was it around the country? To Indonesia? Another rushed visit to some dismantled air base in Europe? Now my mother wore her matriarchal demeanor, her hair teased up, her high heels like steel. She stood with her faithful flock, the household staff gathered around her.
“We’re all going to Babe’s house in Punta, Sol. Are you coming?”
And I asked my mother from my perch on the stairs: “What did you do to Manong Babe, Ma?”
She had moved amid the crowd so that now she was distinguishable mainly by a nest of hair.
“What are you talking about?” came her reply. She walked closer, away from the servants, her voice coming near.
“You knew who was part of the group, Ma, the group who stole your guns—you knew all about it. You knew who was going after the Colonel.”
My speech sounded silly. It sounded only like a madwoman’s digression, a wild guess, in this hubbub of grief. It came out of me in a splatting croak, like soprano gibberish. The servants stopped moving. The maids, carrying their food hampers and Tupperware trays, the water jugs and cookies, heading for an ever-more-sumptuous wake as the car was loaded with pastry, dregs of a pig’s head, leftovers of leche flan—the parade of busy mourners stopped. My mother moved toward me, her arms in the air, and the laden servants followed, atomized and distracted.
My mother’s eyes were wide, in shock or rage, it didn’t matter.