by Nick Joaquin
“I never know how people look,” he said.
She tried not to hear his tactfulness. She thought: he sees a fat hag.
“But that’s wrong, Bobby! You must look at people and see them, be aware of them. Why, that’s half the fun in life, watching your co-passengers. Don’t be a snob, boy. At your age is when it’s thrilling to look around. Girls in their first gowns. Smart women walking past. All this world of charming faces and beautiful bodies. Would you think to look at me now I was once considered a beauty?”
“I can see that, Tita.”
Both of them saw a long slender laughing girl with short hair in a square dress without sleeves.
“I’ve seen old photos of you,” he said, and tried to fasten the laughing girl with short hair onto the bald skelton on the chair but could not keep it there nor remember how this pile of bones and jewels looked the two times he had seen it in the flesh.
“I was milk and roses,” the skelton was saying, articulating joints, waving spiky extremities, “and the belle of the ball. It seems one long ball now, those days, and myself young. I believe, do you know, we never stop being what we were, young. We don’t shed that young self, we just put on other skins, one cover after another, but somewhere in us is still that self we were before we fell, before we started covering ourselves. And all the rest of our lives we’re trying to go back, we’re looking for it, what we lost. Maybe that’s why the creed promises a resurrection of the body, for all those who didn’t find what they lost. Maybe that’s why I came home, to look for it. And because I sometimes feel I have found it I almost—”
She was talking to herself but became aware of the boy in the bed staring—staring not at her, she could see, but through her, and not with horror, and the old pleasure of being eyed for her beauty suffused her.
“Oh, you can see it too, Bobby! Yes, that’s what I am—not a fat old wicked woman but this. Milk and roses, Bobby, and young and pure and happy and lovely. . . .”
He had hardly been listening to her and was startled to see, in the three gaping holes in her skull, three drops of tears as big as stones. He had been staring at something behind her: something lurked in ambush there, behind bone or chair. He had thought he had seen the ultimate strip but a last cover had still to drop off, a last hid thing was still to be revealed. Only, this one was not just going to offer itself. He would have to go after it, look for it, find it. It was somewhere there on the chair now—and he wished that silly old skeleton would stop rattling about.
But she read insight in his look and was blinded with tears. She groped for handkerchief and blew her nose, then sprang from the chair and whirled around the floor.
“I feel young, Bobby. This is me again young, Bobby. And I could dance and dance . . .”
He saw the skeleton jerking its kneecaps and rattling its claws as it spun around and the something hiding was there now in the whirl of the dance, asking to be chased, bidding to be caught, felt now so intensely he pushed covers away and crawled out of bed and tiptoed panting, in jockey shorts, into the circle of movement, groping for what must be caught but himself gripped instead by hard claws.
“Yes, Bobby, come, dance! Let’s dance, Bobby, dance with me!”
And he felt himself dragged round and round, struggling, trying to break loose, to grab that something felt hovering now here, now there, always just out of sight, and yet within reach, but unreachable, because his hands were being gripped hard by the bony claws, by this screaming skeleton now rattling in every bone, the hovering something ever mocking him as he whirled toward it and was whirled away again, beckoning to be pursued as he and the skeleton waltzed round and round and round, till, in utter frustration, he dropped down and burst into tears.
“Bobby! Oh Lord, I’ve excited you too much.”
Whatever music had been spinning in her brain stopped. The boy knelt sobbing and she drew him up and led him across the room and put him into bed.
“Now promise you’ll try and go to sleep.”
She pulled the sheet up to his chin and the music started again in her head and she smiled and did not fear now to bend over the boy, who, eyes wide open, suffered the huge toothy grinning kiss of the death’s-head.
He could hardly wait for her to go out of the room. But when the door had closed on her, on her regrets and her vanity, nothing beckoned to be pursued.
The room was empty.
• • •
Waking to dusk in the room he lay a while listening to sounds out in the garden. They would be fixing it for the party. Corridor and sala were dark; open doors showed empty rooms. No one was in the house. While in the bathroom he heard a voice saying testing, testing on the piazza. Well, Sophie would have a discotheque instead of a combo. Back in his room he found his cabinet locked and the clothes he had worn gone. He padded into his parents’ room but his father’s cabinet had been locked up too. Then his eye fell on the laundry hamper. Right on top were the soiled Beatles shirt and beige trousers. He glanced out a window. Several skeletons were setting out tables in the garden.
He stole out of the house through front porch and driveway. Twilight deepened the gloss on lawn and pavement along these polite streets where the insides of houses showed dark save for corners where lamps glowed. A Corvette stopped before a gate and the skeleton at the wheel waved to another skeleton framed between the while pillars of a porch. On a front lawn two skeletons playing badminton hopped about shouting and laughing unhurt though the wind blew as freely through their bones as through their net. Up on a railed embankment a family of skeletons stood in a row at their fence doing nothing and you saw their fine house through their ribs. Maybe they were looking back on the way they had come to get up there. You didn’t need the checkpoint to know you were out of the Village. In houses beyond lights lighted up the whole room instead of just corners.
He hurried to the Elvis Billiard Hall hungry for companionship. Three skeletons at a table hailing him were Pete, Willie, and Rene. He told them he didn’t feel like playing and just stood around and watched them, just wanting to be with them, but found himself still hungry and lonely. He remembered how last night, at the Chinese restaurant, he had looked on these guys and felt overcome by love for all of them together, but he now could stir up no feeling at all for these three identical skeletons hovering over the green cloth. They were not Pete, Willie, or Rene. They were just things. You could not have companionship with things. Anybody in the flesh now seemed better, even the politicos lined up naked on the stage. He ached with the wish this was last night again and he could bury himself in a crowd of people and feel their contact again. No, he would not be horrified now. No, he would not flee from them now. No, he would not loathe them or despise them or judge them or feel sorry for them. His Tita Menchu was wrong. People were not half the fun in life: they were all the fun.
He thought of what he had been taught about the flesh being a rotting garment you had to shed before you could become capable of feeling a greater love. But without the flesh you couldn’t even feel, as he could feel nothing for these three skeletons that were no longer Pete, Willie, and Rene because they had lost, in his eyes, the rotting garment which alone made them Pete, Willie, and Rene. Feeling was of the flesh, personality was of the flesh, companionship was of the flesh, friendship was of the flesh, love was of the flesh, contact was of the flesh. They had been told in Religion about a saint who licked the sores of lepers and he guessed that saint had gone through what he was now going through, had started out feeling so superior and sneering at people for overacting and all that until he got punished and had to wander about in the night, banished from the world of the flesh and trying to find companionship among minerals or some such “clean” things, and when he had learned his lesson and was forgiven and came back to his senses, flesh had looked so good to him that even in its filthiest, smelliest, horridest, rottenest state, like in lepers’ sores he saw it still as clean, swee
t, beautiful, holy, and he had fallen down on his knees and kissed that leper’s sores, my God, in sheer adoration, having found God there. Sarcastic idiots kept saying this about beauty or manners or what-have-you being only skin-deep. That was their ignorance. He had learned that skin was the deepest thing of all, deeper than earth, deeper than ocean, deeper than outer space, its depths being the joys of human contact, and if God was to be found at all it could only be in those depths.
God. My God! That was what had been lurking in the chair, when Tita Menchu sat there, and in the room, as she danced around. That was what had beckoned to be pursued, wanting to be revealed. That is what I have to chase, to hunt, to look for, to find. God has blotted out all other faces so I may see the face, the ultimate face—the face of God.
And his hair stood on end as he realized that even now God was here, here at this billiard table, beckoning there, and he lunged toward the spot, popping up behind, and he spun around, no, now across the table, and he darted there, he darted here, he ran round and round, bumping again and again into the three skeletons—“Hey, Bob, watcha doing!”—but too intent on pursuit to even hear them, his hair rising, for this was a terrible place, God was here, God was now in the doorway, and he rushed there only to find that God was already down the street, somewhere out on the street, and following, running, groping, calling, stopping every now and then to pick up the scent, he dashed into the lobby of the Village Theatre, where skeletons were lined up at the ticket booth, and into the Ritz Supermarket, where skeletons clawed at cans on shelves, and across the cement of the Village Gasoline Station, where tiny skeletons flew screaming about on rollerskates, and into one beer joint after another, where skeletons put bottle or glass to their teeth not knowing there was nowhere for the beer to go into, and along the talahib fields on the highway, where paired skeletons huddling in the grass embraced and kissed and rattled bones together, and into the split circle of the Crossing, where there was a miting again and the scent was strongest, was clearest, was closest, here in this crowd of skeletons scurrying, jostling, chattering, laughing, and shouting at a skeleton on the bright stage hugging the mike, here in this riot of bone and bawl, this mass of grinning death’s-heads, through which, panting, sweating, pushing, reaching out weeping, he fought his way frantically, what he hunted always just a skeleton away, just a bobbing skull ahead, fighting his way in a zigzag into the core of the crowd and then round and round again back to its edge, speeding after God, who was now there at the checkpoint, there in the Village, himself panting in pursuit, hot on the heels of God, past the checkpoint, past the belt of park, past the lawns where cars shone huge eyes on driveways, past the dark windows where corners of light showed where the elegance was, past pairs of maid skeletons lugging out the garbage, past a line of cars and the chauffeur skeletons smoking cigarettes, past a final wall and into a gate he didn’t know was his own until he was running up the driveway and up the porch and across the dimmed-out sala and toward the lights and noise and action beyond on the piazza, suddenly standing there in the doorway and sort of glowing at all those young skeletons jumping about on the stone floor, at those holed skulls jumping to the giant music and the swing of the colored lights and the joy of the flesh he couldn’t see, jumping in surprise now, because he was there, jumping toward him and squealing—“Why, it’s Bobby!” “Look, it’s Bobby!” “Hey, you there, Bob!”—and he was dragged here, dragged there, swung around, danced around, he was in the thick of it now, half-weeping, half-laughing, for this was no dance of death, though the bones were bare and the skulls hollow, this was God’s a-go-go, God was here, God was dancing, and so near now that suddenly reaching out he almost touched God, almost grabbed God, who was now hopping off the piazza, himself in pursuit again, hopping off the piazza too and across the garden, running from table to table, where the startled skeletons clutched at him laughing—“Bobby,” his mother’s voice, “where have you been!” “Bobby,” his father’s voice, “who you looking for!” “Bobby,” his aunt’s voice, “aren’t we going to dance?”—clutching at him but in vain, calling after him as he paused now at this table, now at that one, with a smile, with a bow, with a quick look, and then running on, running deeper into the garden now, where it was darker, running toward the bamboo grove, where mosquitoes hummed, and as he plunged into the thicket his flesh tingled, his hair bristled, he was warm now, he was close now, God had been tracked down at last, God has been cornered, God was at bay, God was waiting for him who had to bend away this last prickly bamboo, who was parting this last curtain of foliage, who stepped out now from the thicket and saw the wall before him—and there indeed was God, against the wall, waiting for him, and he had smiled at God, he had glowed at God, he had flung his arms out to hail God, but God held a thunderbolt in his hand, God was raising the thunderbolt in his hand, and then the thunderbolt blazed lightnings and he felt a fire on his shoulder and cried out in joy, for God had hit him with love, God had pierced him with love, God had burned him with love, and he could feel the smile on his mouth as he staggered and swooned with the rapture, seeing, as he touched ground and the dark came swooping, that God had the face of Pompoy Morel.
• • •
“Gate-crashers,” said Ineng Heredia to her husband, “may be criminals in the eyes of the law but they are artifacts in our culture. No party’s complete without them.”
“Are they also supposed to shoot down their hosts?”
“Look, darling, our Bobby was, as the young put it, hunting poor old Pompoy. And when he spotted Pompoy and cornered him against that wall, what was Pompoy to think? How could he know Bobby only wanted to shake hands?”
“I still want that jerk in jail.”
“It was only a flesh wound, Totong. Bobby himself doesn’t want the poor boy punished. He’s been wanting to have Pompoy visit him here but I thought that might not be wise. Anyway, he’s all right now and Pompoy’s being shipped to his mother in New York. His grandmother didn’t make a fuss the other time; why should we make a fuss this time?”
“How about what my son went through?”
“A week in the hospital? We were going to have him in one anyway. And the shock has been good for him. He’s back to normal now. Actually, all this has been a blessing in disguise, Totong.”
She fixed a look at him standing there in the hospital corridor working his jaw up and down but he refused to meet her eye.
“Is Mamá going to be in there all morning?”
“You have to be back in the office?”
“Not until I have taken the boy home.”
“Let them talk, darling. Bobby asked her to come.”
“Why don’t we just go in?”
“No. Come and sit down beside me and stop raging.”
But she rose instead, seeing her mother-in-law emerge from Bobby’s room. She kissed the old woman on a cheek. Totong kissed his mother’s hand.
“Is the boy ready, Mamá?”
“He is up and dressed, yes, and has put his things in his bag. But ready for what do you mean?”
“To go home.”
“Ah, I fear there is here a small war of succession. Look, Totong; listen, Ineng: your son called me up very early this morning, insisting he had to see me. I said but was not today when he would leave the hospital? He said yes and that therefore we had to discuss where he was to go. Alarmed, I came in a hurry, you can imagine, and we had our little conference, all very serious. Totong, things are bad. It appears your son does not want to go home with you and Irene. He says he wants to come home to me.”
“He said that.”
“That he said, my dear, and more. I told him the thing was not for me to decide, I was not his parents. I refused even to wait, as he begged me to. So I rose and kissed him and walked out. Now it is your turn in there. I have fired my shot in the war of succession.”
“Could we not,” said her son, “all go in there and face him together?”
“Very clear,” said Ineng Heredia, “but you must not worry too much about this, Mamá. The boy merely feels embarrassed at the moment about going home.”
“My children never felt embarrassed about their home. It gave them no reason to be. But it is of the old style, no? Bobby understands style. It may be he is too fastidious about style. He wants the style authentic. He knows that style is having grandfathers. But he must not reject you for them. That would be sad. Talking with the boy has made me sad, do you know? I shall have a temper today.”
“Are you not well, Mamá?” asked her son.
“Ah, you know me. A little chill and I take to my bed and call for the sacraments. Next morning I am having chocolate and asada and, well, it is viva’ paña again. Totong, you will decide carefully?”
“I have already decided.”
“And where is the boy going?”
“To the optometrist. Doctor’s orders.”
Mother and son gravely eyed each other.
“And now I must go,” she smiled.
“Let me take you down,” said her son.
Waiting on the corridor bench Ineng Heredia pondered the blue door shut between her and her son. Then Totong came striding back, dropping a Come on, gal from the side of his mouth, like Mickey Rooney, as he went past so rapidly he was already into the room before she could catch up with him, was already into the room before the boy sitting on the edge of the bed could spring up. When he did spring up his parents were already bearing down on him and there was a flash of panic in his look.
“Dad, Mommy,” he said.
And Bobby Heredia knew he was going home.
• • •