by Nick Joaquin
But seventeen going on eighteen was not anymore really a time for that kind of ball. Even boladas were now overacting, unless really savage, like at the Teeners Canteen. One was too busy now worrying over the score of the home team and the score that Cándido kept on one’s family had become embarrassing. There was no team; they were all playing by themselves if not playing against each other. One’s father fumbled, making too much of fouls, exaggerating the groan each time he faltered. (Cándido would call that offkey.) One’s mother hustled sarcastically, making too much of having to do all the running and passing but not missing any tussle at all. (Cándido would call that overacting.) One’s brother Junior was the cute rookie playing to the galleries and concerned only with trying to sound even younger than he was because that was how you got what you wanted, by staying the baby of the family. (Cándido would call that offkey.) And one’s sister Sophie was the prima donna player hogging court and ball and despising everybody for being so clumsy because nothing was a game with her, everything was one more step up in the world. (Cándido would call that overacting.) Even one’s maid Inday faked it, with all that jumping about as the overworked slave was just overacting too because he knew very well that when nobody was around or watching, which was most of the time, she just sat stretched out flat in the kitchen scratching her pits or had the chauffeur next door in and very much in.
He had not wondered about his merely watching all this when he should be on the team himself until yesterday morning when the combo came to rehearse for Sophie’s party and the strange thing happened. But he had not wondered for long; he had realized why he stood apart.
The combo was called the Vultures after their gang, of which they were the originals, and had him on the drums, Pete Henson as lead guitar, Willie Veles as rhythm, and Rene Luna as bass, and they had this style he had stopped calling progressive jazz because going around saying you only liked progressive jazz was overacting and anyway nobody understood what he meant or really liked what he and the combo played. The Vultures were not what you might call popular and never got engaged for really important parties like debuts but what could you expect of ignorant kids. They only liked flashy playing and a lot of noise and the drummer rolling his equipment just to get noticed, my God, and the sort of “stagemanship” that meant gaudy uniforms and everybody jiggling back and forth and sideways all together, my God, like some awful PMT drill. He had taken the uniforms and all that awful stagemanship out of the Vultures; each was to move when and how he liked and not care a damn how the other guys were moving as long as every movement was to an impulse of the music or how the music made you feel and you couldn’t help yourself. If it was suddenly all of you being so good together it made you feel like jumping into the air, then, man, start jumping. But the feeling had to be genuine or else it was just overacting and he had to keep a special eye on Willie Veles who got easily carried away but they had now developed into so tight a combo it was oftener a case of feeling the impulse together, not all exactly at the same time, one getting it a bit ahead and sort of infecting the others, the spirit jumping now here, now there, and him rolling the drums, which would be honest rolling then, until they were all jumping together, and glancing around, winking, smiling, singing, hooting, glowing at each other, but their fun was mostly a private fun not appreciated beyond the bandstand. Well, what could you expect from those dumb kids. Those dumb kids were always too busy showing off to each other on the dance floor, not even dancing together, just dancing at each other, and they only squealed at what everybody else was squealing at. If you were an expensive popular name combo you could play any which way and they squealed. Or if it was the song hit of the moment you could play it corny, my God, and it didn’t matter a bit, they’d be squealing the moment they heard the introduction. He had had to keep the Vultures from playing high hat, disdaining the dance floor, though you couldn’t blame them if they did, what with people saying oh the Vultures are all right only they lack pep. Pep, my God. They wouldn’t know pep unless it came in a bottle with a label on it. They thought noise and all that stagemanship was pep. He sometimes wished he could take the gadgets off an electric guitar but still keep the sizzle in.
Well, yesterday morning the Vultures had come to rehearse for Sophie’s party. Sophie’s mouth had curled when Mommy said why get the Moonstrucks when there’s a combo in the house and anyway it’s not your coming out yet dear and he had felt like kicking both of them but because it was your sister’s birthday he had called a rehearsal so Sophie and her stupid crowd could have their stupid mau-mau. And so Pete Henson had to show up with Pompoy Morel because, said Pete, he might not be able to make it to Sophie’s party, having just been circumcised and he had heard the third night after was the toughest but if he couldn’t make it, Pompoy, though a Vampire, was willing to pinch-hit. Why anybody should wait till they were seventeen to get circumcised stumped Bobby and if Pete had to have it at last why ever time it to a combo engagement and why, for God’s sake, get Pompoy Morel for a replacement?
Pompoy Morel was the exact picture of everything Bobby meant by overacting. Bobby often said all that Pompoy needed was a placard across his breast saying “I Am a Teen-age Teenager.” Pompoy wore Beatles hair, cowboy boots, vests at the slightest drop in temperature, and the reddest shirts and tightest pants, my God, you ever saw. He had a Honda and he dressed for it, wearing that black leather jacket when it was ninety up in the shade. And he had all these Canó slang terms to crush you with when you said ’Lis ’jan, siga.
But Pompoy was not just a stupid siga to laugh at. Pompoy was mean. Pompoy was the kind of guy who twisted with a girl and when the girl was all set up, twisting away, her head tossed back, her eyes on the ceiling, her motor running, and simply going for lost, would leave her there on the dance floor, jerking all by herself like a damn fool, while he watched from the sidelines and joined in the laughing at her. Many a poor girl had fled from a party sobbing because Pompoy had shamed her that way. Pompoy packed knife and gun, robbed small kids of their school money, used elbow and knee in a friendly game of basket, cheated at billiards, turned ugly after one round of gin, hung around the Rizal Avenue corners to be picked up, and always knew which girls were going for lost because he always claimed to have been first there and he told you their names and what they did and how far they would go for lost. But what made all the guys nervous was what Pompoy knew about boys’ mothers because he knew all about that too and would tell you which boy’s mother had fiddled with his zippers or let him feel her and whenever Pompoy joined a gin-and-dog session there was always this or that guy there worrying which boy’s mother Pompoy would say was now going for lost.
Yesterday morning on the piazza Pompoy had been told not to sit in but listen first so he wouldn’t come in right away with that awful siga overacting of his and the Vultures were working on the stupid mau-mau tune, Bobby trying to figure how it could be done Vulture style and still be what the kids wanted, which didn’t seem possible after they had all crashed against each other during the first run-through, but Bobby said let’s try it again this time with my drums coming in after four bars instead of eight when he heard his mother behind him asking was anybody for cokes and sandwiches and he had glanced around and seen her standing there stark naked.
He had gasped and would have run to push her back in when he noticed that nobody else was gasping or acting surprised, Pete and Willie and Rene just shaking hands as usual and nothing in the direction of their look to say they saw what he saw and it was then he realized, realizing it from his mother’s gestures—pulling at a sleeve, adjusting a belt, slapping a fold of skirt—that she had clothes on and only he didn’t see them, only he saw through them, only he saw only her. She had paused before him still stooped over his drums: “How’s it going, Bob?” And he had shot up to see her so close that way but had managed to say calmly enough: “It’s not going at all. Let’s forget this rehearsal, boys. Everybody go home.” But she had smiled and said: “Oh, why? Yo
u just started. If it’s me, don’t mind me, I’m leaving.” But she had gone over to the edge of the piazza where Pompoy stood with three or four other Vampires and Vultures. He saw them all dressed, only his mother wasn’t, and he had seen Pompoy looking at her, looking up and down and all over her that slow way he had of looking at women, and he had seen her nakedness, though she wasn’t then even looking at Pompoy, react to his look, with a twitch, a throb, a kind of thrust, a shiver, and he had run in and gotten his father’s automatic from the dresser and run back to the piazza and pointed the gun at Pompoy Morel: “I said everybody go home. That means you, Pompoy. You get out of here!” But they had all just stared at him. So he raised the gun and fired three times. Next thing he knew he was in his room, sitting up in bed, listening to his mother trying to sound calm on the telephone.
He was thinking: God has punished me, God has punished me; and his head sank until it rested on his drawn-up knees. Hadn’t he often wished he could see through women’s clothes? And the wish had come true as a curse: he had seen his mother naked. He shuddered to hear her step coming and in panic began the Act of Contrition, jumping with each footfall he heard, begging God to take this away. Suddenly she stood in the open doorway of his room. His heart dropped through space. She was still naked. “Bobby, I’m going to Mass. I think you should come along.” He rose and stepped into his shoes and followed her out without even stopping to look at himself in the mirror.
“And I think you should go to confession,” she said in the church. He had knelt down at the box praying this would lift the curse. He could hear Father O’Brien confessing a girl on the other side who had a shrill voice and long sins. She finished at last and the window opened. “Forgive me, Father, for—” That was as far as he ever got because he had seen the father inside stark naked, and the nakedness in a state of excitement, and he had jumped up and run out of the church.
But now the clothes were falling off everybody. A woman in black came up the church steps with a gay look and suddenly the black dress melted away and he was looking at a body with one breast gone and the other swollen. A man in brown pants and Hawaiian shirt and both hands in his pockets ambled by thoughtfully and suddenly the brown pants and Hawaiian shirt dissolved and he was looking at a naked man playing with himself. He shut eyes to such sights, pressed a hand to his eyes, and trembled, yet heard himself saying: Now, look, this is what I call overacting. And suddenly, standing there on the church steps shuddering, a hand pressed to his eyes, he had noted an odd ring in those words. He had not said: Cándido would find this offkey or Cándido would call this overacting. He had said: This is what I call overacting.
But that wasn’t Bobby: this isn’t Bobby.
And now he knew what had happened.
He had become Cándido.
• • •
Seeing with Cándido’s eyes he had looked around at his mother tugging at him by an arm and he had located with a glance the zone where the youth of her face ended and the oldness of her body began but the core of her burned as young as her face though all around it was beginning to be ashes, and he had, in the taxi, sobbed for this division in her, while she comforted him, not knowing it was she he wept for, she who sat so pitifully naked, half-young and half-old, and calling to Bobby, Bobby, until he had shouted in pity: I’m not Bobby, I’m not Bobby! Stop calling me Bobby!
So she took him to Dr. José, who was the doctor who had brought him into the world, and Dr. José had peered into his eyes and tested his throat and poked him on the body and listened to his insides, asking questions all the while, and he felt tickled because they were examining Bobby’s body but were really looking for Cándido without knowing it and this was like a game of blindman’s buff because he could feel Cándido dodging this way and that as Dr. José groped and probed and applied instruments, sometimes suddenly stopping, his eyes glazing, as though he had caught a glimpse of Cándido, or suddenly bending down closer to listen, as though he had heard Cándido, and he had almost shouted to Cándido to be still, being now unable to control his giggling at the puzzled prancing of the doctor, especially since Dr. José had started out with white clothes all over him but was now grayly naked and it turned out he looked exactly like those witch doctors you see in cartoons, a little monkey of a man hopping about and chattering and scrambling all over you as though you were the wire netting in a zoo cage.
Then they went home and he was given a pill and sent to his room and he had woken up to find his father sitting on his bed and his father had said to tell what happened and why did you do it, son, and about appreciating one’s advantages and what your parents did for you and, yes, this was a terrible time to be young, nothing’s sure in the world anymore, boy, but if anything puzzled or worried one there was one’s father to go to because one’s father was one’s best pal, wasn’t he; and looking at his father sitting there on the bed, in a narrow olive suit and white shirt and clay-colored tie, he had at first felt this might really be Dad, the old Dad, come home but suddenly the clothes were not there anymore and he was looking at the naked man and he saw that everything in this man had, like his hairline, receded—the muscle of arms and the bulge of breast and the swell of the stomach and even the dangle of the man stuff—everything had receded and the stoop of his body had a shrink to it like somebody waiting to get hit; and he was reminded about what they said was the difference between siga and rugged: that some boys thought they were rugged and acted siga until they got one real thrashing that knocked the wind out of them and after that they could never be confident again, but the real rugged could get beaten up till they were half-dead but they would only go for lost afterward and act as though life were just something to throw away—“Kung mapatay di madeadball!”—and he saw now that the old Dad, so full of charm and jokes and pep and confidence was not the real man but just a siga who burst like a balloon the moment the wind was knocked out of him and the real Dad was this naked stranger with a shrink to his stoop and everything about him so receded you could see from his eyes as he talked he wasn’t really there and was just broadcasting a speech and how could you be pals with a man who wasn’t there, who couldn’t even be pitied as one’s mother could be pitied, in the taxi, because she was still divided, while this one was already old all the way and had given up and left everything behind; and feeling left behind and abandoned and alone, completely all alone, and suddenly afraid, he had cried out something like Oh Dad, what shall I do? And the man on the bed had coughed and stood up and stepped back and said what about lunch.
Going to lunch, he had paused on the three steps to glance around, at the white floor, the stuffed furniture, the curtained windows, and across at the polished table with yellow curved chairs around it, and it had been funny to see his family sitting all naked at that rich table, as though they could afford marble for their floors and upholstery for their chairs and brocade for their windows but not a rag for their bodies. It had been funny to see things so richly clothed and the people not. The people might have been the things there—his father a post, his mother a clock, Sophie a dummy from a showcase in a dress shop, Junior a toy you wound up, and Inday a very ripe dark fruit that had burst in places and oozed. He had been startled to hear the fruit speak, and speak angrily, when he came upon it bottom side up in the kitchen.
They had said he could go to school and he had gone out into the world and there were no clothes falling off now, there were no clothes to fall off, everybody was naked already, though here and there, mysteriously, alone by themselves, were persons who had kept covering and dignity, but they and himself were the only ones clothed in a naked world. He had seen the world become one big burlesque house and everybody was going for lost.
When he got to school there was some fuss about his being in a Beatles shirt; it was some sort of progressive school that didn’t require uniforms but put you on your honor not to wear anything improper; but when those lewdly naked people said he wasn’t dressed properly he had felt li
ke retorting: Why, just look at you!
In history class Mr. Diaz, writing something on the blackboard, had dropped the chalk and stooped to pick it up and he had seen a rose there and as he looked a drop of blood had formed on the rose and trickled down as another drop formed. And he had stood up and said: “It’s bleeding, sir.” “What’s bleeding, Heredia?” “Your . . . your behind, sir.” And Mr. Diaz had sent him to the principal’s office. Mr. Calalang the principal had a hernia that swelled down to his hips and when he sat down and crossed his legs, he had cried out: “Oh, sir, you’ll crush it!” And Mr. Calalang had sent him to the prefect of discipline. Mr. Quison the prefect had withered breasts and a white round belly but only part of his equipment and he remembered having heard Mr. Quison had been in an airplane crash or something while he was studying in America and he had asked: “Did you lose it in the accident, sir?” And Mr. Quison had sputtered and grown black in the face and told him to stay in the office till his father came. But waiting in the office, with the door open, he had watched the faculty hurrying back and forth in the corridor outside and there was this intentness in their hurrying, this cruelty in their old bodies that made him think, hearing children screaming beyond, that this was a grim place, an evil place, a place where children were bought and sold, and he had felt so sick he had rushed out—out of that cell, out of that prison, out of that torture chamber.
He had found himself heading for Minnie’s place. He had a date with her. Cándido didn’t know but Bobby’s body remembered. But when he got there that awful Glo Ramos was spread out on the porch steps, and all that cogon on her, and when he referred to it she became hysterical. He didn’t know why he had come at all. Poor old Minnie whom he had loved to feel was a wet baby he felt like washing now when he took her in his arms, or putting diapers on. Her nakedness was so nursery and smelled of bathrooms and he had giggled to hear her say love when she meant her teething rattle. He had rocked her in his arms as she bawled and bawled and then had firmly set her down and left. He was too old now for babies.