I was now busy with exams and term papers, but I religiously went to the acacia at noon. Sometimes she joined me, though briefly. At one time, she said she was going to India just to be alone. I remember witnessing a Hindu festival in Singapore: men paraded in the streets, their tongues, their cheeks punctured with long thick needles. A bearded man pulled a cart with ropes fastened to his back muscles by iron hooks. There was no blood and my eyes were not fooling me. It was self-hypnosis again, of this I was sure. Now, serious doubts crowded my mind and I worried about Malu coming back, garbed in saffron and chanting on street corners.
It was during the small graduation dinner Mother gave that I presented the ring to her, told her not to open the package till she got home. That same evening, she called and said she would give it back. I asked why and she said she wanted to be fair with me. She said, “Truly, I love you.”
A warm and glorious glow engulfed me. It was the first time she uttered it. Why then give the ring back? I could not understand. How could I compete with something I could not vanquish, least of all touch?
“There is this cause,” these were her exact words, “that will take most of my time, my energies, my precious Teng-ga.”
Malu disappeared during the two-month school vacation and frightened her parents and me. Her mother often called to find out if she had gotten in touch. She had gone to the province, she had told her mother, for another of those teach-ins. She would be away for just a couple of weeks, but on the third, when she did not return, we started looking. She had said she would go again to Bicol; I hastily called Uncle Bert, but neither she nor her group was there. I did not inquire of the army or the constabulary—they were the last people to ask about Malu.
By then, too, I had taken on more responsibilities in our business. I had a desk in Operations and Planning. Mother and my older brothers had thought it best to let me work for a couple of years before going to Wharton for an MBA. It was just as well. I could not concentrate, I brooded over the times Malu and I shared, the conversations and, most of all, that evening in a motel when we held hands and dreamed.
She returned in the first week of June, shortly before classes began. It was her mother who told me she was back. I asked to talk with Malu. Her mother suddenly seemed ill at ease, as if Malu was beside her telling her to say she was not in, for that was what her mother said. I went to her house immediately and was told by the maid who opened the door—she did not let me in—that Malu was still out.
I called again that night and was told she was asleep—although it was only eight. She was avoiding me, she could have easily called. When school opened, I waited for her and this time, there was no escape. She was in the same jeans and formless blouse. She had grown darker and there was a look of unease about her.
“Why don’t you want to see me?” I asked bluntly.
She turned around. We were in the vicinity of the registrar’s office and students were milling about, looking at bulletin boards, checking their schedules. “I will see you in half an hour at the acacia,” she mumbled, her eyes downcast.
“No!” I was angry then. “I will not leave you. I’ll follow you till you tell me what is wrong.”
She bit her lip. She was in trouble and I wanted to help her, if she would only let me.
We walked out into the street, onward to the library, to our tree. The grass was green now, the dead brown of the dry season banished; the first rains of June had done their job and a freshness perfumed the air. Everything about the world seemed bright, except for this gloom which now encompassed us.
We sat on the old and twisted root. She began slowly. She had no more tears to shed. “They are dead, Teng-ga. All five of them. And I am the only one who got out.”
“Who are dead?”
“Bubut, Eddie, Lina, Tom and Alex …” She looked at me, beseeched me. I could not quite grasp it at first, but in the back of my mind was a huge, oncoming wave of fear. What had she done? What had she been sucked into?
They had gone to the south, somewhere in the mountains of Quezon, and joined another group for the duration of the school vacation. Familiarization and training, that is what they called it.
On their way back, they had been particularly careful because they were all unarmed. Alex, a medical student, was an old hand and their guide. They bivouacked in an abandoned farmhouse for the night with Alex outside as sentry. That early morning, a shout erupted from the surrounding green ordering them to come out. Even as they filed out of the hut, their hands in the air, they were mowed down.
Malu had dropped quickly to the ground in abject fear and that was how she was spared.
The armed men swarmed around them. A lean man in jeans, with crew cut, pulled her up from the grass where she was cowering. The men were laughing; they were not in uniform, but they were obviously a commando team. “Leave us alone for a moment,” the crew-cut man said, and the men dispersed to the bushes. The man yanked her inside the hut and told her to undress. She begged that she be allowed to look at her friends, they might still be alive, but he just laughed at her. “If they are, we will kill them all before we leave this place. And, of course, we will kill you, too.”
She said, “My first thought was one of shame. He started to touch me. I drew away and he barked: ‘One more move like that and I will shoot you.’ I tried to push him away but he was strong. He was laughing. He held my hands and repeated his threat. I wanted to live. It was painful at first and I thought I would not be able to endure it. But he took his time before he started pushing. I don’t know how long it took—I was afraid he would kill me when he got through. I thought I would cooperate so he would let me live. And I started pushing, too. He kissed me and I kissed back. I did! Oh, it was disgusting. He seemed surprised and pleased and he said he would not kill me because I was good, but that if I was not gone in another hour, his men would return and surely use me as he had done, then kill me.
“You just don’t know how I hated myself afterwards for doing what I had to do in order to live. Even now, when I remember, I am so ashamed of myself. How can I live with the thought that I am alive, that I was a coward? And after what had happened, I don’t want to see you, ever. I have nothing to give you now …”
Her hand was cold and trembling. I had listened with anger mingled with sorrow, anger at the men who had killed her friends without reason, at the man who had violated her, and even at Malu herself for having brought this upon herself; sorrow at the wrenching pain that she had to endure and which, I was sure, would scar her always. I wanted to scream at her, but she looked so helpless, like a child who needed sympathy, and I realized it was not just sympathy that I had to give; I loved her truly in a manner I had not realized. I could live with what had happened and help her live, too, if she would let me.
“Plat, the ring which you returned—I would like to give it to you still. I want to marry you. With me, nothing has changed.”
THREE
We went to the same motel and decided to get married—“live together” as she put it, with no particular obligations except that we would be faithful to each other. Mother was building a block of duplex apartments in our old compound in Santa Mesa and we could move into the first one finished. She knew of Malu from the beginning and had met her and liked her, but would not approve of the live-in arrangement and neither would her parents. We would lie to them, tell them we had gotten married by a judge in Pasig, that the church wedding would follow after she finished college and we would then leave for the States together.
Because of her trauma, I was prepared to suffer the coldness that she had hinted at. In the apartment, I could sense the tension in her labored breathing, the clamminess in her arms as they encircled me. She tried to be the woman I desired; her kisses, though not passionate, were woman enough, warm enough, and I savored them, gloried in them.
Soon, she began to relax, even to move sensuously. After a time, I throbbed to the strength of her embrace, the quickening thrust of her hips, the contracting and
fluttering of her stomach, and the long drawn gasp at the peak—what I was finally giving her, getting from her. When her movements ceased and she came to rest, I drew away to look at her. Her eyes were bright with repressed laughter. I thought I would begin again; I could feel her twitching, pulsing, and roughly, she pushed me away, saying she was so sensitive she could not bear me moving inside her.
She had phoned home and said she’d be away the whole day. We talked far into the night. We had our meals brought in and after brief snatches of sleep, we sought each other again and again. I finally found the completeness that had eluded me all these years.
I promised not to ask what she did during those two months, who her friends were. My ignorance was protection for everyone, she explained. It was she who brought the sad news to the parents of her friends who, like her, lived very comfortably. They never understood why their children gave up their lives so recklessly.
I decided to draw her away from her commitment, to “domesticate” her, make her a mother and tie her to the home or to a normal career, perhaps dreary but safe and never again would she be close to the vortex of death.
I wanted to tell her father about us, but she refused. “I will just move in with you,” she said. “But let us draw some rules.” She said there would be a time when I would get bored with her. One night a week, I should go out, be on my own, do anything I liked. “Drag to bed any woman—even a whore—and you can tell me if you want to. I will not be angry. I promise. But do not take a mistress, do not get involved with any woman emotionally. And don’t bring home any bugs.”
I listened to her dumbly.
“Will you permit me to have a night out, too?”
That she asked me at all touched me. I had no choice. “But no affairs,” I said.
She nodded. “And someday,” she went on, reiterating what she told me earlier, “if we part, it should be as friends.”
We moved to Santa Mesa without ceremony. She enjoyed decorating the two-bedroom apartment. She bought the drapes in Divisoria—light green fabrics that went very well with the furniture. She also bought the appliances and started learning how to “cook Spanish” to please me. I went to her father and we had a long talk. I assured him the church wedding would be very soon. I could tell that he was glad Malu was with me, that I would snatch her away from the crowd that threatened to push her to an anonymous and lonely end. Her mother came and looked at our place. She brought a lot of linens and saw to it that our refrigerator was always stocked. She also sent one of her maids to help, but Malu did not want her to sleep in the apartment; she wanted just the two of us since it was not difficult, she said, to keep house.
My night out was Saturday and hers was Sunday. I felt awkward at first, going out alone, and in time I did see a former girlfriend. I visited my old haunts in Ermita and wandered along the boulevard, but always, a feeling of guilt hounded me as if I was shutting out a part of myself from her, which was not what I wanted for I longed to share everything with her—my time, my possessions. In the end, I gave up going out alone.
She continued, however, to go out every Sunday night. Sometimes, she returned just before daybreak. I would lie awake waiting for the taxi or the car that would bring her home, pretending I was asleep, listening to her undress and finally cuddle close to me, her breath smelling not of wine or of cigarettes but of the same familiar scent. I was curious and jealous every time I heard a man outside saying good night, although sometimes it was a woman, for I always peered out and watched but did not ask.
I went to Cebu every so often to check up on our subsidiary there and called her twice a day, sometimes three, just to hear her voice. If she was not in the apartment, she was in school. Sometimes, we would be unable to connect because she was calling me.
We continued the little debates; I asked her once what her group was doing now and she said, “Don’t bother your reactionary head with proletarian politics.”
I reminded her again that it was not a crime to be wealthy. I cited how our employees were getting much more than the minimum wage, that they had health and insurance benefits and paid vacations without their asking.
“Paternalism,” she said, cutting me short.
No matter, it was a year of blessed happiness which flitted by so quickly that I was hardly aware of the time passing.
I wanted her pregnant so that she would, by force of circumstance, be cut off from all those demonstrations that have now become massive, intermittent, and fraught with danger. All the shops in Ermita were now boarded with plywood and the electric posts and embankments all over downtown Manila screamed with the posters of revolution. Chaos pervaded the universities and classes were haphazard and often suspended.
With my motive urging me on, there was no night that we did not embrace. When a long weekend came, we motored to Baguio. Our house, which we seldom used except during Holy Week or when we had guests, frightened her a bit … six rooms upstairs and two downstairs and we were the only occupants because Mang Pedring, the caretaker, and his family had their own quarters above the garage in the rear. We turned on all the lights.
It must have been the Baguio cold, and remembering our first night there afterwards, she said, “Dios ko, the whole night. I was never so tired in all my life.”
A month after our short vacation, she was pregnant. She could not believe it; she waited for the second month. She consulted three doctors and all the tests were positive. I was ecstatic.
I bought several books on prenatal care and continually asked Mother’s advice. Malu’s parents were very happy, too, and they often asked when we were finally going to be married in church.
We discussed it once; if we did not get married, her baby would be a bastard. She thought it was very funny, but I did not. “We will have it simultaneously then,” she said gaily. “First the wedding, then the baptism.”
I looked after her diet carefully and worried that she might start smoking. I told her that whatever she took in, her baby would take it, too. That early, I started buying baby things—diapers, baby powder, safety pins. She said it was all too soon, her stomach did not even show. It was noticeable to me, though, and soon her belt would no longer buckle. She took to wearing larger blouses. She went to school much later and came home earlier. She had cut down some of her activities, even her visits to the spiritista chapel in Navotas. But her Sunday evenings were still hers and she kept them all.
One evening, after she had returned from her “free” night out, we talked about the baby’s name. I meant it as a joke when I asked, “Are you sure it is mine?”
She glared at me. “Now, what the hell do you mean by that?”
I was still in a joking mood, but I suppose my niggling doubts came through. “Oh, your Sunday nights, you know.”
She turned away and in a while, she was shaking violently and when I went to her, sobs were torn out of her in anguish and bitterness. I cradled her in my arms, kissed her hair, assured her that I knew I should not have even hinted that I did not trust her.
I don’t really know what happened. She was under expert medical care and I tried my best to make allowances for her moods. Could it be that what I had said bothered her so much? Could it have been caused by the disappearance of many of her friends? At the end of the third month, she started bleeding one afternoon after she got back from school. I rushed her to the hospital where she stayed for a week after she lost her baby, then another two weeks in bed at home to regain her strength before the doctor permitted her to move about.
Now, she was listless and there were times when she was cold to me. I could sense that she was blaming me for the loss. There was milk in her breasts—they were no longer “as small as kalamansi.” The loss of her baby—it was a boy—was a deep affliction of the soul and I consoled her by saying we could always return to Baguio. We were, as a matter of fact, planning it. I was anxious that she become pregnant again and the doctor said there would be no problem, but that we should be more careful now.
We were to leave that morning. But the papers did not appear and there was no radio either. Something was wrong—so we did not move. When martial law was finally announced on TV, Malu was white-faced. She made some hasty phone calls and talked guardedly. By midday, she said she would go to the university. All she took was her handbag. When she did not return in the afternoon, I called her department. They had not seen her. In the evening, I hurried to Dasmariñas; her parents had not heard from her either. A week later, I received a letter postmarked Manila.
My Precious Teng-ga,
I am very sorry that I had to leave without explanation, without good-bye. Please believe me when I say that I love you and that I will always love you. But duty calls and I have to go. If I don’t see you again, just remember that I have always been true. Please forgive me.
Plat
I realized then that she had not abandoned the cause and that it was far more important than I.
Without Malu, I should not have remained in the apartment but I did, hoping she would return. I could not attend fully to our business, but fortunately, we had hired good people. Oh, so many hours alone, going over her books, the papers she wrote, bringing out her clothes, rearranging them in the cabinet—the old and faded jeans, the battered sneakers, and the cotton blouses.
I went to the university. Now, I regretted that I did not know her friends, that I had considered them muddle-headed adolescents unfamiliar with the realities of power—things that an economist or a businessman like myself understood almost as second nature.
Alone, confined to the prison of this skin, this skeletal frame, this net of nerves which relayed nothing but my own despair, I wondered about what I did not know so that I could have restrained her. I was nagged by lassitude, by feelings of worthlessness. Mornings: hard-boiled eggs, sugarless coffee, the prattle of people, the noxious gases of a deadened city, and a vigil in the morgue of evening. I would lie in the dark aching for the phone to ring, a taxi to stop before the house, wondering where she was and the hopes that we had fed on.
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