by Nick Joaquin
Thus musing, the Archbishop sped in his carriage along the river, the apocalyptic river, toward the village of the cave. It was a night of moon but the lonely countryside lay empty. When they reached the grove of the cave, Gaspar half-carried his master through the dark woods and down the rocks of the bank, till they came to a level where they looked down on the mouth of the cave but were hid from it by rock. The cave opened halfway up the steep bank and rocks formed steps from its mouth down to the water.
Hardly had master and servant positioned themselves when the air flapped with huge wings and the moonlight darkened to a swarm of bats wheeling over the cave. As though they were bell or clock sounding, the woman emerged from the dark cave, in her rags and shroud of sacking. Prostrating herself on a slab of stone, she began to pray; and such a keening rent the stillness it seemed that here wailed the whole world’s conscience in contrition. The moon rose high, and still higher, and the night chill sharpened, but still the prostrate woman prayed, moaning and groaning, lifting imploring hands to heaven, like some mythic victim of the gods chained to a rock. But at last silence seized her, and more than silence; and the watchers on the rock above saw her as though dragged up by the hair, and dragged up to her knees, her arms opening, and dragged up to her feet, her arms opened wide and her veiled face wrenched toward heaven by a bliss that shook the air. The tremor lasted but a moment, and she fell, as though dropped, on her knees, where she stayed a while, swaying and shivering, her face in her hands. Then she rose and disappeared into the darkness of the cave.
Squatting motionless and cross-legged on the rock above, the Archbishop lifted his face to the moon. But Gaspar said to him: “Truly, my lord, this is a holy woman and one dear to heaven. So do you stay here while I go and upbraid the brutes that persecute her.” But the Archbishop, still watching the position of the moon, gestured with a hand for silence.
The moon was now at its noon; and once more there was a sudden flapping of wings and a darkness in the air as the great bats, reappearing, wheeled slowly over the cave.
And all at once the watchers above were aware of a young man in a boat crossing the river toward the cave—a young man gallant in hose and doublet and plumed hat. Reaching the bank, he sprang out, made fast his boat, and darted up the stair of stone to the cave, where radiance awaited him, and a pair of arms that flew to embrace him and to draw him into the cave. From the rock above, the watchers saw lights twinkling in the cave and dimly heard music and revelry.
Rising and drawing his sword, Gaspar said to his master:
“Truly, my lord, this is a damned witch and one near to hell! So do you stay here while I go and slay the noxious dam and her tupper.”
And on the instant he was scrambling down the bank to the cave where, marveling, he noted no lights nor sound of music and revelry, but only silence and darkness. And venturing inside with drawn sword, he glanced about and at last made out the form of the woman lying alone on the ground, covered with her rags and sacking, but not stirring to his call nor to the prodding of his sword. Lifting away the shroud with his sword, he perceived, in the beam of moonlight that fell on her aged face, that no breath moved in her. He touched her and felt her flesh as cold as the night wind, and he dropped to his knees and whispered a prayer over her.
Returning to the rock above, he told the Archbishop, who still squatted motionless and cross-legged in the moonlight, what he had seen, but the prelate seemed unsurprised, murmuring only, as he bade Gaspar take him home at once, that he, too, felt his hour upon him. “For tonight,” said he, “I have gazed on my own ghost.”
Carried, as he had bidden, to the hut of his retreat on the river-bank, he lingered there three days more, in his bed by the window that overlooked the water, his dying eyes never moving away from the river, the eternal river, until, on the third night, as though he had espied something there (and the deathwatchers said there was a fleeting radiance on the river, and a form as of a woman sailing swiftly past on a boat, her face lifted to the moon and her unloosed hair all about her), the dying man started abruptly from his pillows and, raising his hand as though to wave, or to salute, or to say aye, or to submit and accept and surrender, he smiled slightly, closed his eyes and sank back, and gave up the ghost.
• • •
From that day, Doña Jerónima has been sharing the Pasig with her lover.
The cave she occupies was, in pagan times (’tis said), the abode of a nymph who was gay and kind. Fishermen who chanced to see this diwata sitting outside her cave on the riverbank, combing out her long hair, knew the river would teem with fish for them. At night they often saw lights twinkling in the cave and dimly heard music and revelry (for the nymph was fond of feasting the world of faery). Next day, the gold gleaming under the water would be her plate laid out on the riverbed to be washed (for the lazy nymph let the river currents do her dish-washing). Lovers who lay in the woods often woke up to find their hands jointly clasping a jewel—which, however, turned into stone if they quarreled over it. Brides on the eve of their wedding heard laughter outside the window and, looking out, would find a gift from the nymph at the door. But she who was sensual could also be cruel. If she fancied a young man she lured him into her cave and fed him off her golden dishes; he would be found at dawn dazedly wandering in the woods, and thereafter would wander out of his wits.
When Cross and Conquistador came, the nymph departed forlorn. Her cave fell silent.
No more did fishermen hail it as they rowed past, nor their women come to lay offerings of white chicken there. No more did the cave gleam with lights at night there or tinkle with music and revelry—until Doña Jerónima appeared.
For at dawn of the night the recluse died in the cave, the villagers beheld Doña Jerónima sitting outside the cave, young and beautiful, and they knew she was kind.
Ever since then has the cave been alive again with its new diwata, and the river too, for Doña Jerónima and her lover range the whole route of the river, riding as swift as light, in their faery boat, from the dawn country upstream, where the Pasig flows from the lake, to the sunset land downstream, where it flows into the sea. You will know they are riding past if you hear a flapping of wings and look up and see no wings: Doña Jerónima’s bats are wheeling overhead. And happy fishing will he have who catches a glimpse of the lovers as they fleet past, she reclining and combing out her hair, he rowing and gallant in hose and doublet and plumed hat, and both gazing into each other’s eyes. Therefore do fishermen salute the cave of Doña Jerónima as they row past.
Many a night of moon does the cave gleam with lights and tinkle with music and revelry. Next day, when the river folk see golden dishes shining under the water they wink at each other and say: “Doña Jerónima has been dining with her lover.”
Sometimes is she beheld seated on a rock outside her cave, a mere glimmer in the half-dark of dusk or dawn, her lovely face grave and her unloosed hair all about her, blowing in the wind, and her lover on his knees by her lap, looking up at her with eyes in which burn all the fevers of the world, his hands tucking flowers in her hair, while overhead creak the ghost batwings as the air darkens round the lovers.
And thus will it be with them—forever shall he love and she be young!—till the river yield up again the Archbishop’s ring.
THE ORDER OF MELKIZEDEK
Toothbrush in raised hand, to tell Customs it was all his gear, Sid Estiva, lately come down from heaven but now unwinged by the general guilt, slunk past the courts of the baggage inquisitors, was thumbed the way to the airport lobby, stiffened to see a thin aisle through a crowd that smiled or smirked as he shambled by, ran smack into a tall woman in green who thrust her mouth at his face as if to kiss him. Were anyone here his welcomer it would be his sister Adela, but this woman was his sister only if Adela had been growing again in middle age. Besides, he and Adela now seldom kissed. The snouting kisser, however, aimed at neither his mouth nor cheek but an ear.
/> “Toothbrush!” she hissed.
His head jerked back in alarm.
“Drop the toothbrush!” snarled the woman. “People are looking!”
Suddenly aware that his right hand still held the toothbrush aloft, he clasped the shocked hand to his heart. Someone guffawed. He bowed coldly to the woman: “Thank you.” But she had seized him by the other arm and was dragging him aside.
“Hey, what’s this!”
“Shh,” whispered the woman, peaked mouth again in his ear. “Walk out to the driveway and wait on the sidewalk. The car’s a green and brown Chevy station wagon. Keep the toothbrush in your hand so the driver can spot you. But you don’t have to hold it up all that high, my God!”
“Listen,” cried Sid Estiva, “will you tell me who the devil you are?”
“Not here!” gasped the woman, eyeballs shuttling right and left; and indeed they were being engulfed by the two tides of welcomers and arrivals. “Here!” said the woman, thrusting a card into his left hand and scurrying away.
He glanced at the card. A toothbrush, bristles up, was sketched in black ink above a typed text. Before he could read the message a cry rang out and the crowd in the lobby swayed toward the entrances. Crushed forward, Sid Estiva shoved card and toothbrush into pockets, then fought his way up against the current. He was panting when he reached the bank of the airline counters. Whatever had driven up at the airport had disappointed the crowd, which was now surging back from the entrances, howling humorously. Sid Estiva could not place the tone: was it praise or protest? This was his first time back in Manila in ten years. The sweat that dewed his eyes like tears bewailed the amount of clothes he had on. His body sweltered that had been wintry only two days ago. He did not remember it was this warm here in mid-December.
“Mr. Estiva?”
The girl at his side was in gray sweatshirt and stretch pants and wore her lank hair down to her shoulders. Sid Estiva recognized the man haggardly peering over her shoulder as a co-passenger on the plane.
“Mr. Estiva, there has been a terrible mistake,” the girl was saying. “You were given something intended for Mr. Lao here. He says you met on the plane.”
The two men nodded at each other.
“Well, yes,” began Sid Estiva, “there was this large female in green—”
“Our Mrs. Mañago,” smiled the girl, “is not as capable as she looks.”
The three of them looked around as another cry swelled from the crowd; some kind of tumult traveled the farther end of the lobby.
“Tell me something,” said Sid to the girl, “what’s going on here?”
Her glance back at the crowd was sad.
“A lynching, Mr. Estiva. We’re supposed to have been insulted again by some foreign pop singers.”
“Those guys over there?”
“No, those are just the managers. The boys haven’t arrived yet. Mr. Estiva, do you have the card?”
“I put it in a pocket—” He began to knead this and that bulge on his suit. “I can’t remember which one.” Every pocket he delved into blocked his fingers with layer upon layer of handkerchiefs, cigarettes, match folders, aspirin, chewing gum, keys, and coins. Who the devil invented pockets anyway. The girl and the haggard man behind her tensely watched. “I can’t seem to find it,” groaned Sid Estiva, limply producing at last only his toothbrush. His two watchers flinched.
From the street came a wailing of sirens. This time its own roar seemed to blast the crowd away from the entrances and, knocked off balance by the recoil, Sid Estiva found himself falling now backward, now forward, now sideways, but somehow never down, propped up by the crowd that swept him along, his heels crisscrossing. A thickening of the mass slowed down the stampede and stood him up at last; nowhere in sight were the girl in gray and her haggard companion. He dug heels in; the crowd slid past round about him and cluttered up a stairway, leaving him at the foot of what he now perceived to be a stopped escalator. As he eyed that latest enigma he was seized on an elbow and whirled around: the large woman in green once more confronted him.
“The card!” she sputtered in his face.
The heels he now dug in had contacted mother ground; he was no outsider here to be pushed around but a proprietor, native to these shores, rightful breather of patrimonial air. He hardened eyes at the woman as, with thumb and finger, he plucked her hand from his arm.
“Go,” said he, “to hell.”
Turning his back on her, he marched up the unmoving escalator, not once looking back to see if she had followed.
On the second floor, which was lined on one side with bars and shops, the hunt had caught up with the quarry, or part of it anyway. Sid Estiva saw a white man fallen down on hands and knees to the floor trying to crawl away from the young wags poking at him on rib and rump. Girls in brief skirts and white boots wailed aloud as they tailed the procession, like the Marys on the Via Dolorosa. Sid Estiva had no idea if this sort of thing was as common here in the Philippines as in American cities, but this particular local march against the white man struck him as more downright than the civil-rights demonstrations he had watched—and watched uninvolved—in America. Here, to stop his blood from running with the hounds, he went into a bar, picked out a corner table, ordered a beer, and emptied his pockets.
He found the card crumpled into a handkerchief.
The typed message was about as mysterious as the sketch of the toothbrush:
Tuesday a.m. Appointment with dentist. Must.
Tuesday p.m. Get-together of section managers and trainees. Cocktails.
Wednesday noon. Luncheon meeting. Election.
At the Sign of the Milky Seed. Deck Six.
Sid Estiva amused himself with the card over his beer. What organization man was he ruining the schedule of by not surrendering this piece of pasteboard? That haggard man, Mr. Lao, hardly looked the organization type. Maybe he was only a trainee? On the trip from San Francisco, every time Sid glanced across the aisle, he had seen Mr. Lao huddling on another side in his seat by the window, sweating, it seemed, in spirit, a soul in discomfort. The stewardess had several times paused to indicate where the throw-up bag was.
He should, thought Sid, finishing his beer and a cigarette, return the card somehow and not add to poor Mr. Lao’s agonies. He slipped the card into his breast pocket, then tried to catch the waiter’s eye until he remembered that one didn’t catch Philippine waiters’ eyes. One hissed or hoy’d at them. The chit paid, he tarried in the dim cool bar, wondering again if he should have responded at all to the urgency of sister Adela’s cable. Had he been drawn back by more than brotherly concern? He had landed at noon; it was now mid-afternoon; Adela might be worrying—or had she even bothered to check which plane carried him? As he rose he caught the waiter clearing the table watching him from the corner of an eye.
The escalators were moving now; they had, he supposed, been turned off just to spite the pop singers, now unfaithfully departed. In the lobby below was no sign of the large female in green or the girl in gray or Mr. Lao. Why did the bare lobby look so soft?
A man interrupted his vague searching.
“Taxi, mister?”
Poor Mr. Lao would just have to go on anguishing. Sid Estiva followed the driver to his taxi, crawled into his back seat, and gave him Adela’s address. She had a new house in the suburbs. As he leaned back in the taxi Sid fleetingly thought that no beer in the world was quite like San Miguel beer.
When he next opened his eyes his first thought was that the new suburbs of Manila were even lusher than he had been told. To the right of him were rolling meadows fringed by woods: perfectly re-created countryside. But where were the chateaux? Then he glanced to the left. The body of water in the distance, sparkling in the afternoon sunshine, could not possibly be the Pasig or the bay. A sixth sense warned him not to start up. He had recognized the blue sparkle as the lake, which meant they
were driving away from the city. He lay still, eyes half-closed, memorizing the taxi’s name and number, printed on the inside of one door. The driver just glanced around as the taxi turned right into a narrower bumpier road. Sid Estiva caught a glimpse of a large billboard announcing a “memorial park.” The American way of death out here? He had thought what was happening to him now only happened in James Bond movies. He had been warned against the taxis of Manila—but he was carrying no luggage and no money.
This was no more than a trail they were jolting through, a gothic aisle of boughs. Birds twittered in the green dusk where sunlight was but a neon edge on leaves. Eyes narrowed at the driver’s mirror, Sid Estiva crept a finger to his breast pocket, fished out the card in there, crumpled the card up in his fist, then shoved it down an edge of the upholstery.
As though abruptly awakened he sat up and yelled:
“Hey you, where the hell do you think you’re going!”
Not even looking around, the driver swung out his right arm. The backhand caught Sid in the face and flung him back against the upholstery. Round a bend appeared a green and brown station wagon parked beside a hut in a clearing. Two men in black jackets stood in front of the car, looking at the arriving taxi. The instant the taxi stopped Sid found himself dragged out by hands and feet and spread-eagled on the ground. He just had time to check on the theory that at such moments one’s life passes before one’s eyes. Nothing passed before his eyes; the enormous moment squatting down on him was a halt in time, a stoppage of breath and thought, a suspension of feeling. He could not even make himself make a sound, yet was aware of himself as being too stunned to be aware.