by Nick Joaquin
“You go on home, too,” said Sid. “I’ll close up.”
Out in the corridor, silent now and deserted, he paused to recall which way one turned for the elevators. As he tentatively walked down one hall a door opened and he was yanked in. He was in a dim room, between two familiar figures: the black-jacketed goons who had stripped him in the clearing.
“The boss,” said one of them, “wants to see you, pare.”
“Do I keep my clothes this time?”
“Abah, he’s wise to us already,” said the other, finger on Sid’s back steering him toward another door. He was shoved in and the door pulled shut behind him.
This second room was lit only by a lamp near the door. As Sid looked around a form emerged from the shadows: black suit, flowing hair, gleaming mark on the forehead—Father Melchor.
“Forgive me, Mr. Estiva, for compelling your presence here, but have no fear, you will suffer no harm. I merely wish to talk to you.”
“And give me back my things, I hope.”
“Surely. But not now. We were in such a hurry my men did not think to bring them along.”
“Some religion you have. Using goons and blackmailing women.”
“And did they not use violence and women to drive us out? Why should we not use the same means to come back? I am not one of your moralists, Mr. Estiva, who so naively believe that the end is shaped by the means. The end is shaped only by success. Whatever wins is right.”
“I see. Smuggle back the pagan in Christian disguise. Use Christianity to restore paganism.”
“They used the ground of our cults to implant their faith.”
“And deluding young girls with all this talk of a new image of Christ when it’s really back to the heathen.”
“Deluding—tch, tch, Mr. Estiva. You know that’s not so. The god is worshipped, the true god. Does it matter if we call him Baal or Bathala, Priapus or Christ? What is the point of that passage in the Bible where Abraham and Melchizedek worshipped together? Melchizedek invoked his heathen god El or Zaduk; Abraham prayed to Yahweh. But the Bible makes no distinction between the deities, calling Melchizedek, too, a ‘priest of the most high God.’ And when St. Paul placed Christ himself in the line of Melchizedek, was this not a recognition that the pagan priesthood was resumed in Christ, that the old cults were being continued in the new faith? Abraham had already made such a recognition: he paid a tithe to the pagan high priest Melchizedek. It didn’t matter to Abraham who Melchizedek was or in what name he worshipped God.”
“And it doesn’t matter either who you are?”
“Yes, I hear you have been making inquiries. No, Mr. Estiva, I don’t think it matters. What mattered to Abraham was that Melchizedek was on his side. The important thing here is that I am on your side.”
“My side!”
“You are of those who called me back.”
“I don’t think I ever went that far back.”
“Ah, Mr. Estiva, if you go back at all it’s impossible to set a limit: up to this point and no farther. If you dig up one grave you have also unlocked the ones that lie below. You’ve heard of the diggings during the Renaissance: how it was feared that with the resurrection of their vessels and icons the old gods that had gone underground had surfaced again?”
“And you think that’s happening here now?”
“Oh, I don’t pretend to be one of the old gods. Merely to be in their service—as you are, though you may refuse to admit it. And as your sister will be, when she has gone beyond the Christian image and learns by herself what is the question that must be asked: the name of the god she worships. It will be her illumination. Therefore, I ask you not to block her path.”
“My sister is leaving your gang, is leaving the country.”
“Then I must warn you, Mr. Estiva, that you are invoking forces that are without mercy.”
“I hope quite soon to meet those forces, across a police desk.”
“Very well, Mr. Estiva, I have warned you. It is all I can do. If you and yours move, so will the furies. My men will show you out. The elevators are at the next bend of the hall. And if you think to raise the alarm I advise you to save yourself the trouble. We will not be here when whoever you call arrives.”
• • •
Supper was laid on the marble table on Sonya’s piazza, somewhat to Sid’s surprise.
“I thought I was taking you out?”
She limply grimaced.
“Some other time . . . Not in the mood.”
She was in a sleeveless yellow blouse and black palazzo pants, and from her ears dangled concentric gold triangles. He found his eyes following their swing along her neck. They ate to the light of candles in tiny glass lamps; she ate listlessly, an elbow on the table.
“Tired, Sonya?”
“I did my Christmas shopping after we parted.”
“And cooked all this.”
“It’s my maids’ day out.”
He felt that they were alone within layers of wall—the high walls that enclosed her lawn; the still higher and discreetly blind but whispering walls of the motels roundabout, where air-conditioning eared the mock-adobe with eave after eave of rumor.
“The candles,” he said, watching their glint on her earrings, “are proper tonight.”
“December 21?”
“The eve of the winter solstice.”
“No. Bonfires, I think.”
“But candles too. That’s why we have the Christmas lantern.”
He was now watching the shadows the earrings danced with on her neck.
“Tonight the sun god dies and is born again,” he said.
“So they light bonfires?”
“To help him warm up.”
She shivered and spread fingers over her naked golden arms.
“It is getting chilly,” she said “—but why feast the sun’s dying?”
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
“A rage of food, drink, fire?”
“And love too, and love especially. It was the supreme magic, the magic to ensure that the sun would burn again.”
They were looking not at each other but into their glasses of chianti.
She said, after their silence and a bit of wine: “Imagine all that, when they must have thought it the end of the world.”
“The late late show.”
“Man’s bravado spirit, and bravado from the start. Tell you what, Sid—”
“Let’s celebrate the bravado?”
“And help the sun be born again. There’s that pile of leaves and trash on the lawn.”
Kneeling to the pile, he thrust a kindled rag into it, then settled back on the grass beside her and took her in his arms. The fire grew slowly, the heart of flame burning buried by itself, yielding a coiled smoke as it slowly steadily dwindled, almost on the wane, only a smoldering, before it began to spread, gleaming into a line here, leaping into a burst of sparks there, the traveling tongues that swayed toward each other seeming to yearn for each other and for that heart of heat now swelling to include them too, now glowing into a furnace round which the darting sparks, shattering, multiplied, the thicker smoke pushing in between brightening as, let loose, it uncoiled, unrolled, arose, rippling now from one blaze, one bush on fire, one total incandescence that rose, rushed, rustled, roared, raged, until, at last, finally fluently flowering, oh, oh, the burst body of it broke free, in a fountain of fire springing up to the skies; and they clung fast to each other, shuddering to the ascent.
Later that night, waking up in her bed, he saw a redness at her window that said the bonfire still burned, though more gently now, as if because they slept; but becoming aware that, awake, too, she, too, lay watching that glow at the window, he spoke her name and, needing no other word, turning as one, they fell on each other’s flesh in gluttony.
; When he next stirred, the window stood dark, but her body was a darker shape before it. She glanced around, sensing his awakeness.
“Don’t you want to get up and watch the newborn sun rising? After all, we did help it.”
Naked together at the window, they saw the first edge of sun above the roof of the Taj Mahal Motel.
“We weren’t the only ones helping it,” she smiled.
“Come back, Sonya, come back.”
“It still needs helping?”
“It’s only a baby sun yet.”
After breakfast he had a taxi called. Sonya seemed to have lost her bravura, was again as listless as when he had arrived the night before, and breakfasted with one elbow on the table, the golden triangles swinging from her ears.
He said: “I thought it was the man who was tristis post coitum?”
“Last night always seems last year the morning after.”
“It’s still around three a.m. to me.”
“Don’t take too long to wake.”
“What is up, Sonya?”
“The workaday sun, hon. And look at the mess that bonfire made. We’ll have to clean up the whole place.”
She stood at the gate to wave goodbye, in the palazzo pants and a turtleneck sweater, the earrings flashing arcs on her neck in the sunshine.
When he arrived at Adela’s Adela was at the telephone; it was Mrs. Banaag who ran out to meet him.
“Did you get my message?”
“Good morning, Mrs. Banaag. No, what message?”
“I called you up yesterday afternoon.”
“Here?”
“Here first. The maid said to try Mrs. Borja’s. So I called up there. She said you were expected but had not come yet.”
“What did you want to tell me?”
“They had a gathering last night. In Antipolo. The whole group. Including him, yes, the prophet. And those two goons who murdered the taxi driver. Last night was Father Lao’s turn. I didn’t know what to do. So I called you up. Didn’t Mrs. Borja tell you?”
“No,” said Sid, “she didn’t tell me.”
Adela came back from the telephone.
“I couldn’t sleep all night,” Mrs. Banaag was saying, “and first thing this morning I came here, to hear what had happened. I wanted to call you up again, at Mrs. Borja’s, but—”
“But I told her better not,” said Adela. She gave Sid a look. “It’s all right, Isidro, Santiago was there—oh, very much there. It seems he rescued this Father Lao. And captured one of the gangsters who held you up. This was last night, in Antipolo. On a hill there where they were having some kind of ceremony.”
“Last night.” Sid looked from his sister to Mrs. Banaag.
“The winter solstice,” said Mrs. Banaag.
“Oh my God,” said Sid.
“That was why I was trying to reach you yesterday,” said Mrs. Banaag. “I think they planned to have the ceremony in Intramuros, but Salem House has become hot, so they transferred to Antipolo. And after last night they plan to go underground. All of them. Including your sister. But I told Mrs. Borja all this and begged her to be sure and tell you. Didn’t she?”
“No,” said Sid again. “No, she didn’t tell me.”
• • •
Father Lao and the captured thug were brought back from Antipolo at noon and Sid went to the police station to identify the thug, who was one of the black-jacketed pair all right. Santiago was in a rapture of excitement. Clothes rumpled, the night’s growth on his chin, he looked too happy to be sleepy. He had been on a crusade: Santiago Matamoros! Father Lao, too, though as haggard as ever, and even more rumpled in the gray suit he had traveled in, seemed to move in exaltation. He had rejected the forces of evil, he had performed an act of contrition.
“What I did, cuñao,” related Santiago, “was what we should have done long before but did not do because we are not that kind of people. But after my first interview with Mrs. Banaag I decided to do it. I went to a private detective agency and asked them to trail Guia and her companions. Night before last, when we met at the club with Mrs. Banaag, I had already been told that something was afoot in Antipolo. I had learned from the agents that immediately after your visit to Intramuros Guia and a group drove up to Antipolo and stayed the night there. The place is a very isolated hacienda on a hilltop which belongs to a rich widow.
“So, yesterday I joined the agents in Antipolo. There is a high wall around the hacienda and all about it are woods and very rugged ground, but one of the agents had managed to sneak inside and he reported that a man was being held prisoner in a hut in the orchard, behind the big house. Last night they began to assemble. We saw at least ten cars drive up that zigzag road to the hacienda. I was told that Guia, too, had arrived, with her prophet.
“At first, nothing happened, they were all in the house. We were hiding in the woods outside and had one man up on a tree, with binoculars. Then, around midnight, out they all came to the orchard behind the house. Our man on the tree reported that they were dancing around a bonfire—and they were naked, cuñao, all of them, men and women. It was then that our agent on the tree saw Father Lao, gun in hand, hurrying this thug through the dark area along the wall. I had some men climb on the wall to pull them both up. We took them at once to the town police and Father Lao pointed to this thug as one of the murderers of the taxi driver.
“The trouble was, we then had to wake up a judge and all that to get a search warrant. When we returned to the hacienda it was too late. Nobody was there. They had all fled. But it’s all right, we know where they are. This thug has been talking all night and he has told us plenty. It seems they have a smuggler’s boat waiting somewhere on the Cavite coast to take them away, but the constabulary has gone after them and you can be sure that before this day ends the whole gang will be in the hands of the law. This thug has testified that the girls know nothing of the gang’s villainous activities. So, I have asked that Guia be separated from the group and brought home at once. As soon as he has finished with his statement, Father Lao is coming home with us too. He has nowhere to go, poor man. He went astray but has repented. I have promised to intercede for him with the ecclesiastical authorities.”
In Adela’s den that afternoon, Sid and the Ferrers heard Father Lao’s story. The priest was about Sid’s age, a gaunt ghost with a glitter in his eyes, and still in such an ecstasy his hands trembled uncontrollably as he talked.
“When they first came to me in L.A., I was waiting for a sign. I walked the streets at night waiting for God to find me again. For two-three years—no, longer—God had been absent. It is terrible not to be able to pray. I tried, I tried, but God was not there, God was not listening. This was in a university town in Kansas, where it was always the dark night for me. And because I felt so abandoned I fell into sin. There was this girl—oh, she was a witch, the scarlet woman, the whore of Babylon. She was evil, evil. But I sinned only from despair, because God had withdrawn. And when I was ruined I fled from that town and hid in L.A. I lived among outcasts and was viler than any of them. But now that God had done his worst to me, I said to myself, surely he would now come back to me? And so I walked the streets in my vile state waiting for a sign.
“Then they came to me, with their evil proposition: that I use my sacred priesthood in their service. The service of the devil. Oh, I knew at once it was that, though they talked of history and renewal and the native soul. I knew what I was being invited to. And what a blow it was to me! I had begged God to send me an angel; what he sent me was the devil. And if that was how he wanted it, I bitterly said to myself. Again, if I sinned, it was from despair: God had abandoned me utterly.
“So I went with them to San Francisco and they set me up in a hotel and there they left me to make up my mind. When I flew to Manila I was still not decided. I knew there was hope for me yet as long as I did not traffic with what was most sacred in
me. And all through the flight I entreated God to show me a sign, show me a sign.
“Then it came, at the airport—the sign, the sign I had so long awaited, the unmistakable sign that God cared. They had told me to carry a toothbrush in my hand. That symbol of their abomination was to identify me to those who would fetch me. But when they found me I learned that somebody else had gone before me, carrying a toothbrush—somebody who had been mistaken for me and was given the message intended for me. God had sent an angel before me, to deliver me. Yes, I know it was only you, Mr. Estiva—but don’t you see the miracle of the coincidence? God was using you to communicate with me. And at that moment, there at the airport, I felt the presence of God. God had come back. The desert, the dark night, was over. I could pray again. And although still mystified that God should have involved me in the forces of evil, I could no longer doubt that in this, too, was design; in this, too, was purpose.
“When they came to me in my hotel that afternoon I told them that I could not serve their god. I was forcibly taken to their headquarters in Intramuros and kept there all night and I found that I had indeed fallen among thieves and murderers. I heard how they had held you up, Mr. Estiva, and killed that taxi driver, because he was going to the police. Oh, I know they were trying to terrorize me. But they made one more effort to persuade me peacefully. At noon the next day, a girl came to my cell and talked to me of their religion. How innocent it all sounded, coming from the lips of one who looked so pretty and innocent, but was a witch, was the scarlet woman, was the whore of Babylon, and evil, evil. And then it was that I understood why God had brought me right into the fortress of the forces of evil. It was because I had been chosen the instrument to destroy that fortress and to slay the forces of evil.
“That night I was taken to the place in Antipolo and kept under guard in a hut. I knew they meant to liquidate me: I had sworn to expose them; but only yesterday did I begin to realize how they meant to do it. I was to be sacrificed at their abominable rites even as the heathen offered human sacrifices to their gods. I had heard they would be having a ceremony at midnight. I felt no fear. I knew that God would deliver me and destroy them. I had noticed a man sneaking around the grounds who was clearly not one of them.