White Turtle

by Merlinda Bobis

  Photo: John Borthwick

  Merlinda Bobis was born in the Philippines and now lives in Australia. She is the author of four poetry books and four plays. Her radio play, “Rita’s Lullaby”, won the 1998 Prix Italia, a prestigious international award for radio fiction, as well as the 1998 Australian Writers’ Guild Award for best radio script, and the 1995 Ian Reed Radio Drama Prize. She has also received Philippine national awards for her poems in Filipino and English, and has performed her poetry as theatre in Australia, the Philippines, France and China. Currently, she lectures in creative writing at the University of Wollongong.

  OTHER BOOKS BY MERLINDA BOBIS

  Rituals

  Ang Lipad ay Awit sa Apat na Hangin/Flight is Song on Four Winds (Bilingual Edition)

  Cantata of the Warrior Woman Daragang Magayon (Bilingual Edition)

  Summer Was A Fast Train Without Terminals

  White Turtle

  a collection of short stories

  Merlinda Bobis

  Spinifex Press Pty Ltd

  504 Queensberry Street

  North Melbourne, Vic. 3051

  Australia

  women@spinifexpress.com.au

  http://www.spinifexpress.com.au

  Copyright © Merlinda Bobis, 1999

  Copyright © on layout, Spinifex Press, 1999

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

  Copying for educational purposes:

  Where copies of part or the whole of the book are made under part VB of the Copyright Act, the law requires that prescribed procedures be followed. For information, contact the Copyright Agency Limited.

  Cover design by Deb Snibson, Modern Art Production Group

  Edited by Lucy Sussex

  Typeset in Janson and Boulevard by Claire Warren

  Made and printed in Australia by Australian Print Group

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  CIP

  Bobis, Merlinda C. (Merlinda Carullo)

  White turtle.

  ISBN 978-1-74219-267-3 Master e-book ISBN

  ISBN 978-1-74219-478-3 (ePub Format)

  ISBN 1 875559 89 2

  I. Title.

  A823.3

  This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government

  through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  For my parents, Mama Ola

  and John

  Acknowledgements

  A number of these stories were originally published in Australian Short Stories, Heat, Hecate, Philippine Free Press, Philippine Graphic, Picador New Writing 4 and Southerly.

  “An Earnest Parable” was broadcast by ABC Radio National as one of the winners of its 1997 Books and Writing Short Story Competition; “White Turtle” has also won the 1998 Ashes Trans-Tasman Short Story Competition.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  An Earnest Parable

  Fruit Stall

  Fish-Hair Woman

  Colours

  Storm

  White Turtle

  MacDo

  The Curse

  The Long Siesta as a Language Primer

  The Kissing

  The Review

  Pina and the Flying Cross

  Dream Stories

  Shoes

  Triptych

  Border Lover

  The Sadness Collector

  Before the Moon Rises

  Frock

  Jar

  Flores de Mayo

  Splinter

  The Wind Witch

  An Earnest Parable

  As it was his turn that day to lose his tongue, he had for breakfast the creamiest latik, a dish of sticky rice in coconut milk, served with a large, ripe mango. Then he sang two serenades about love and volcanoes in the Philippines. He was making the most of his chance for taste and speech, because, an hour later, his Sri Lankan neighbour would be at the door, awaiting her turn. Already, she would be dreaming of pappadums and hot curries, not quite as spicy as her dialect which would melt on the much-awaited tongue. Their communal tongue.

  Bessel Street’s most precious possession. Last week, it lodged with the Italian butcher who earlier had picked it up from the Australian couple. The butcher was not one to waste time. Immediately, he laid this soft, pink flesh, moist with the previous owner’s steak and peppercorns, inside his mouth. Then he ran to the mirror with his wife and three daughters and began savouring his first words after weeks of silence: “bellisima, bellisima!” The whole family marvelled at how, like a pink animal, the tongue rolled its tip to the roof of the mouth in an intimate curl—“belllllllll-isima…” Then they passed the tongue around, taking turns to relish old, native sounds, after which they dined on home-made pasta in a piquant marinara sauce.

  The residents of Bessel Street were kin in tongue. The pink flesh toured up and down that street, went into homes, into mouths of different origins. There was the baker from Turkey, the Filipino cook, the Australian couple with the fish shop, the Italian butcher and the Sri Lankan tailor.

  One tongue for five homes. Not really an inconvenient arrangement, mind you. Of course, when the tongue was accommodated elsewhere, one could not eat with the usual joys of the palate. But the pleasure of the ear was enough compensation. Every tongue-owner’s soundings, especially those that were heard as foreign noises, seemed to orchestrate in everyone else’s middle ear into something intimate and comforting. This was inevitable for, muted at different times, they learned how to listen intently to whoever had the chance for speech or song—and how they spoke and sang and even told stories, usually with words of beauty and kindness. The moment of speech was too dear to be wasted on loose, heart-less talk. It was a shame not to do justice to the little, pink animal in the mouth.

  Thus everyone spoke, ate and listened with care and passion, and shared various languages and delicacies. Last week, for instance, the word “bella” found its way into a Turkish ditty whose refrain would later inspire the new name of the Australian fish shop, which supplied the mussels for the butcher’s marinara that sneaked into the Filipino chef’s kitchen, where it was blessed—Dios mabalos!—as an afterthought, with a dollop of coconut cream and some red chillies, well, to give it teeth, the Sri Lankan tailor reckoned, before the dish was resurrected among the pides of the Turkish baker.

  Indeed, on their respective days of owning the tongue, each of the neighbours could not help but echo the mouth of the previous owner. The Italian family eventually developed a taste for the occasional cardamom tea, the Filipino adventurously spread some Vegemite on his pan de sal and, at one time, the Australian couple stirred fish heads into their sour soup. Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan began hosting summer feasts by the barbie, and the Turkish baker even serenaded his wife with songs about love and volcanoes as he prepared a tray of almond biscotti for the oven.

  You see, the tongue had an excellent memory. Even when it had moved to a new mouth, it still evoked the breath of spices, sweets and syllables of the former host. It was never known to forget anything, least of all the fact that it was once the soft, pink flesh of a South Coast mollusc; it yielded itself to a higher good one winter night when the ocean was formidably wild. The six households understood this origin in their mouths. The tongue was a gift of the landscape. The pides and gulab jamuns, the daily bonjournos and even the highly spiced curries and love serenades could never drown the unmistakable tang of Austr
alian surf and grit—and, truly like surf, after this home truth was dramatised on TV’s latest culinary show, the heart of one viewing nation swelled and swelled with pride.

  Fruit Stall

  I am forty. Divorced. No children. I own a fruit stall in Kings Cross. And I am Filipina, but this is my secret. People ask, are you Spanish? Mexican? Italian? A big man, brushing his hairy arm against my waist, whispers in his beer-breath, aha, Latina! Cringing, I say, si, si, si to him, and to all of them. I am Filipina, but this is my secret.

  I dyed my hair brown. It goes well with this pale skin from my Spanish grandfather whom I never saw. He owned the hacienda where my grandmother served as housemaid. They sent her away when she grew a melon under her skirt.

  Melons have their secret, too. No one knows how many seeds hide in their rose-flesh. Or who planted them there. Mother used to say, it is God, it is God who plants all things. I don’t believe her now.

  “Is this sweet?”

  “Very sweet. And few seeds.” I pretend to know a secret.

  But he’s not interested. This man frowning at the melon sounds like a customer back home. He touches the fruit doubtingly, tentatively. His hand is smooth and white against the green rind.

  “Want a taste?” I offer the last slice from a box labelled “For Tasting”. I pretend I am a fruitseller at home where we let the buyer sample the merchandise before any business takes place.

  Sample the merchandise. This is how the men, who go to my country to find themselves a nice, little brown girl, put it. They’re great, these rice-ies. Give them a bowl of rice and they can fuck all night! An American serviceman said this once, grabbing me by the waist. I was twelve then. I remember I went home crying.

  He gets it cheaply. He walks away with the melon now, the man with the smooth, white hand. More like the hands of my grandfather. Mine are white, too, but hard and rough.

  So father said, papayas are good for your skin. Mash them well with your hands tonight, so they get soft and smooth when Jake arrives. Remember to be nice to him, ha? And fix that face—Dios mio, will you stop snivelling? Jake, the old Australian, whom my father had met in the city, became my husband. It must have been the papayas.

  They’re too small here and not as sweet. See these here? Too expensive, but not as good as the papayas back home. The tourists go gaga over our papayas there. They are sun-ripe, tree-ripe, we say. And cheap, Have dollar, no problem.

  “How much for this?” Her hand on the papaya is very tanned, with fine golden hair. She’s wearing a T-shirt with a coconut print. She looks happy. Good holiday. I want to ask, did you go to my country? But I keep my secret safe.

  She frowns though, when I tell her the price. You see, papayas are expensive here. Go to my country. We sell them cheaply. I bite my tongue.

  “And a kilo of grapes as well, please.”

  My youngest brother ate himself sick with the grapes which Jake brought from Australia to our village. It was the first time my brothers tasted grapes. It was the first time our neighbours tasted grapes. Jake was very pleased with himself. He promised more grapes. A week before the wedding, my father strutted about, imagining himself the father-in-law of a grape-king. When I came here, I found out grapes are very cheap, especially in late summer.

  It was getting cold when I arrived. Autumn is cold for me. Winter is freezing. Hardly any grapes by then. Jake said we were too greedy—why are you always sending something home? He must have suspected I sneaked in some grapes in my letters. He opened them. He frowned at my dialect on paper. What stories are you telling them, huh?

  I can tell many stories about sweaty white hands running all over me in front of other men nodding over their beer. Guess where she’s from? Oh, no, I didn’t get myself an Asian with small tits. This is no Asian. Look at her melons. And they taste like plums—don’t they, luv? He laughed until he was beetroot-red, while his fingers fumbled at my buttons, much to the joy of his clapping and stamping mates. My ex-husband was a fruitseller. I learned my trade from him, and I learned to say, si, I am Spanish. Or, Mexican by birth, Señorita. Or, Italian, Signore.

  He reminded me of the pet monkey we had when I was young. My father gave it away, because it would wake up the whole house in the middle of the night with its crazed monkey-sounds. Jake did the same, chattering away about his great big white banana getting bigger and harder—turn over. On your belly, quick. He was very quick. Then he snored his way through a land of fruit. I imagined it had an overripe smell that made me sick. After a while, I learned how to doze off dry-eyed and dream of fruit-flies tracking down the smell, feeding on the smell, until each one dropped dead from too much sweetness.

  I keep my stall clean and insect free. White people are particular about what they put in their bellies. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t say this is bad. I only say they’re lucky, they have the choice to be particular. That’s why I like it here. Actually, I liked it more after the divorce papers were signed. Oh, yes, I love it now, I do not wish to go home any more. Who would want to see a divorced woman there anyway? My mother with her strange God? My grape-less father? Never mind. I can have more than grapes here. I also have mangoes, pineapples, avocadoes, even guavas around me. I smell home each day.

  “Kumusta.”

  The woman with the red headband must have smelled what I smell. She smiles with the greeting I know so well. The blond man beside her is smiling, too, at her expectant face.

  “Kumusta.” She is in earnest.

  He shifts his gaze at me.

  “You mean, como esta?” I pretend to look confused. “Of course, of course—muy bien.”

  “Told ya, yer wrong, hon.” He strokes her hair.

  “But—” she searches my unsmiling face—“you’re not Filipina?”

  “You’re Filipina.” I stare back.

  “Yes, oh, yes,” she nods vigorously. “Arrived two months ago with my husband here—your mangoes, very expensive—”

  “From Queensland, that’s why,” I shrug.

  “May I?” She lifts a mango and smells it hungrily.

  “Geez, isn’t she pretty?” The husband runs his fingers through her hair again. The red band gets caught in his large, white hand.

  “This one, please.” She lays the prized fruit on the weighing tray and quickly rearranges her band.

  “Only one? Let’s have a kilo—nah, two kilos, if you want, hon.” He winks at me, before proceeding to stroke her hair again. “Ain’t I lucky?”

  “Where I lived, we have a yard of mangoes.”

  I go for mangoes, too. Jake said we were not only grape-starved, but mango-greedy as well. I told him I would be asking for green mangoes if I were back home. He didn’t understand what I meant until I started having fainting spells. He took me to the doctor “to fix me up”. He did not want brown kids. I never told anyone.

  “Let me tell ya, the Filipino kumusta comes from the Spanish como esta. The Philippines was once under Spain, y’see,” the husband lectures me on my ancestry.

  “Spain very far…” Her sweeping gesture leaves an unfinished arc in the air. “A long way?”

  “The other side of the world, honey.” He brings her hand to her side, then draws her closer.

  “Hard for you, yes—?”

  “One gets used to it—ten dollars for these, thanks.”

  As they turn to go, I notice the blowfly, a big black seed dotting the last slice of melon for tasting. Must have been here for ages! All because of that bloody chatter—I roll a newspaper and get a good grip. Ay, my knuckles had never looked so white.

  Fish-Hair Woman

  Lemon grass. When the river was sweet with its scent, they came for me. Half an hour after the Angelus, kang nag-aagaw su diklom buda su liwanag— when the dark was wrestling with the light, as we say— they came in a haze of the first fireflies. Tinsel on the green uniforms of the three men, bordering a sleeve here, circling a belt there, filling buttonholes, dotting an insignia, and smothering the mouth of the M16 slung over a sergeant�
��s shoulder. He of the sullen face—young Ramon, wasn’t it? So like a dark angel then with his halo of darting lights, harbinger of omens from the river. I’m sure it’s lemon grass and, putang ina, too many fireflies, he said, swatting the light on his pouting lips. That night, the roots of my hair knew this was going to be the last time, the last time, and I heard keening in my scalp.

  A river sweet with lemon grass and breathing fireflies —how could you believe such a tale? I did not want to believe either, but in our Iraya we had mastered the art of faith, because it was the only way to believe we existed, that our village was still alive somewhere in the south of Luzon during that purge by the military. So when they asked me to come with them to fish out the lemon grass scent and give them back the river, the one that is sweetened only by the hills, I believed, and believed too that, just then, every strand of my hair heard my heart break.

  Hair. How was it linked with the heart? I’ll tell you— it had something to do with memory. Every time I remembered anything that unsettled my heart, my hair grew at least one handspan. Mamay Dulce was convinced of this phenomenon when I was six years old. Makarawon na buhok, makarawon na puso—very tricky hair, very tricky heart, she used to whisper to me in her singsong on mornings when I woke up to even longer hair on my pillow after a night of agitated dreams. You had long dreams last night, child, with long memories, too, she would say.