Merla looked at the sky, then the trees and the rocks around us. ‘It’s not nature’s fault if people charge for things they don’t own,’ she said.
She paused and then continued. ‘Besides, we bought the tickets just to get through the gate, and after that everything is free.’
I didn’t comment on what she said even if I wasn’t convinced, since because of our age difference, which seemed massive, I thought that Merla was wise and understood everything. I also wanted to avoid getting into an argument with her, because I would lose in the end as usual, and because, as a boy of fourteen at the time, I voluntarily deferred to the judgment of a girl of eighteen.
We were in Biak-no-Bato that day, some time in 2002. It’s an awesome place on a giant scale, with massive trees that reach the sky and giant boulders overhanging steep cliffs. It was my first trip with Merla so far from home. I looked like the travellers I had seen on television. Like an explorer, I had a backpack with everything I needed for the trip. I wore shorts that went just below my knees and that looked baggy because they had so many pockets, and high boots that were good for walking on rough, stony ground. Merla carried a flashlight that we used when it was dark in the caves. She wore a white blouse with short sleeves and very skimpy denim shorts, and tied her hair back. Damn her! If only she weren’t my cousin.
Obviously she was my guide, because she had visited the place before, and she asked the official guide not to come inside with us. I followed her, listening to her explanation. ‘Many years ago the heroes of the revolution stayed in these caves,’ she said, ‘making their plans for revolution out of sight of the Spanish occupiers.’
She talked a lot about the history of the place. When the path was clear I listened, but I ignored what she was saying when the going was tough, for example when we had to climb steps through clefts in the rock. When I felt dizzy halfway across a wooden suspension bridge I asked her to stop talking. She made fun of me: ‘These bridges and stairways were made for people like you, you wimp!’ she said. She pushed me on, urged me to keep walking. ‘These bridges and stairways didn’t exist when the heroes of the revolution stayed here,’ she added.
‘So how did they move from one cave to another?’ I asked.
‘They were heroes and . . .’ she said, sticking out her tongue to make fun of me.
‘And what?’ I asked, wondering why she hadn’t finished her sentence and impatient to hear her answer.
She pointed at the massive boulders. ‘The rocks must have been in league with them when they let them stay inside the caves,’ she whispered, as if she didn’t want the rocks to hear her.
With my cousin Merla even ordinary stories became fantasies. She had an amazing ability to turn the simplest of stories into myths. She was a magician, Merla.
She was walking along, and I was following, looking at her body from behind – its curves, the way she swayed when she walked, the softness of her legs, the MM tattoo on her arm. I wanted to remove one of the M’s and put a J in its place. The dream I had had a few days earlier was very much on my mind as I watched her. The only thing that distracted me from my fantasies was the feeling of claustrophobia when the path took us up between massive boulders and the tangled branches above us blocked out the sunlight and the breeze.
Halfway across one big wooden bridge between two bluffs on either side of a large lake, Merla stopped and pointed down.
‘Lots of workers drowned in this lake when they were building this bridge,’ she said.
I held tight to the ropes on the side of the bridge. I plucked up courage and tried to look down, but it was no use.
‘They say this bridge couldn’t have been built here without some sacrifices,’ Merla continued.
She put her hand on my shoulder. A strange, unexpected feeling came over me. She slowly brought her face close to mine. I shivered with pleasure and closed my eyes. I moved my face closer to hers, but suddenly she hit me on the head with her flashlight.
‘What are you doing, you idiot?’ she shouted.
Confused, with the palm of my hand I rubbed the spot at the front of my head where she had hit me. I didn’t say anything because it was obvious what I had been about to do. Merla got over what had happened, as if nothing had happened. She opened her eyes wide and finished off what she had been saying before I had closed my eyes.
‘The workers who drowned,’ she whispered, ‘were sacrificial offerings to the spirit of the place, to persuade them to let humans build the bridge.’
She shook her head sadly. ‘They must have been good people,’ she said.
And because I didn’t pay much attention to what she was saying, she carried on explaining. ‘Rizal said the victim must be pure and spotless if the sacrifice is to be acceptable,’ she said.
I wasn’t thinking about the tragedy of the dead workers when they built the bridge, or about what Rizal said. I was too busy thinking about the bump that had started to form on my head and Merla’s expression ‘the spirit of the place’. My mind wandered. I looked around at the big rocks, the giant trees and the vast caves. I swear I could hear the rocks groaning around me, the leaves rustling, the trickling of the water, everything whispering something in languages I did not understand.
Ever since that day I’ve believed that everything has a spirit. Everything. Looking at the lake below the hanging bridge, Merla said, ‘I’d like to end my life by jumping from this bridge.’
I looked at her suspiciously and said, ‘But my mother says only cowards who can’t face up to life try to commit suicide.’ She didn’t hear me, or perhaps she just pretended not to hear.
While we were on the bridge, the birds in the sky suddenly disappeared. ‘Follow me,’ said Merla as she headed deeper into the forest. We could hear the birds twittering and making other calls from somewhere in the trees. As we walked along, Merla said, ‘Hurry up. It’s going to rain.’ I looked at the sky through the tangle of branches but I couldn’t see any sign of clouds.
‘How can you tell that, Merla?’ I asked.
She pointed to the trees. ‘See how the birds have hidden away,’ she said.
Then she turned to a wall of rock on her left. ‘Look here,’ she said.
Thousands of ants were climbing the wall.
‘What’s that got to do with rain?’ I asked.
‘You don’t understand anything,’ she answered irritably.
I hated the way she boasted that she knew everything. Sometimes I had questions to which I didn’t know the answers. I would be about to ask my cousin, who had more experience than me, but I would hold back in case she gave me her usual answer: ‘You don’t understand anything.’
We kept walking along the narrow paths that overlooked the deep valleys between the massive rocks. Clouds gathered and within minutes they blocked out the rays of the sun. Claps of thunder started to shake the place, and torrential rain soon followed. The clouds just dumped all the water they were carrying, proving to me that I really didn’t understand anything.
We ran between the boulders and took shelter in the largest cave. We sat together on a big rock inside the cave. All we could see through the entrance to the cave was the rain pouring down in sheets and a dark green haze. The place was very damp inside and the combined smell of wet earth and bat droppings gave me a strange feeling. Merla turned on her flashlight and swept the beam over the rocks above us. There were hundreds of bats hanging head down from the rocks.
I was right next to Merla. My leg was touching her wet, bare leg. I had various feelings, but not fear. I would never be frightened in Merla’s presence, even if we faced death together.
I remembered the dream. A sense of numbness began to seep into my body from the part that was touching her leg. I could feel the pulse in my temples, and the humidity, wherever it came from, added to my sense of confusion.
‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Merla.
‘Nothing,’ I replied without thinking, as if on the defensive against some implied accusation.
The raindrops pounded the rocky ground outside the cave with a staccato rhythm matched by my heartbeats. ‘For some time now, the way you look at me, the way you behave,’ Merla continued.
She moved her face close to mine. I could feel her breath. The air she breathed out went into my lungs as I breathed in. Her eyes stared into my eyes. My eyes, open this time, were fixed on her flashlight. The blood throbbed under the bruise on my head.
‘What you’re thinking is impossible, José,’ she said.
I felt a fear I had never known in her presence. ‘Yes, yes, impossible,’ I agreed.
We were still face to face. ‘Why is it impossible?’ she asked. ‘Do you know why?’
I looked straight into her eyes. ‘Because you’re my cousin,’ I said.
She smiled a strange half-hearted smile. ‘A silly reason like that wouldn’t stop me doing something that I really wanted,’ she said.
She turned to face the entrance to the cave. ‘There’s another reason that prevents me,’ she said.
She switched off the flashlight. The light was so faint I could hardly see her face. ‘If you weren’t a man . . .’ she continued.
19
‘José, José, José.’
I was fed up with being summoned by my grandfather. The grievance rankled, but it rarely came to the surface and never passed my lips.
When my mother talked about how she had suffered, psychologically at least, when working for the old lady in Kuwait, I didn’t understand what she meant until I found myself working so hard for Mendoza.
After a long, exhausting day, I would leave my window open to hear the sound of the crickets, but that was rarely the only thing I heard.
‘Damn you, bastards!’ Mendoza’s drunken voice, alongside the sound of the crickets. ‘Merla.’ He said Merla’s name in a hushed voice, then shouted out my name: ‘José!’
I didn’t answer.
‘You bastards.’
I opened my eyes. The shadows of the bamboo plants danced on the walls of my room, cast by the flickering candlelight that shone through Grandfather’s window.
‘José!’
I stuck my fingers in my ears. The silence was unbearable. I took my fingers out. I listened carefully. The crickets came back, and . . .
‘José!’
I pretended to be asleep.
‘I know you can hear me.’
The sound of wood knocking against wood. A cup of tuba on the table.
‘I hate bastards!’ shouted Mendoza.
I jumped to the window, put my arms through the iron bars and imagined I had my hands around his neck.
‘I’m not a bastard,’ I said.
Mendoza didn’t respond. Might he perhaps come through the door behind me? He didn’t stay silent for long.
‘Can you prove that?’ he said, and burst out laughing, then started to cough.
‘Curse these crickets. I wish they’d come and live in my room, so that I could hear them and close the window at the same time.’
I brought our brief conversation to an end by slamming the window shut.
* * *
‘José!’
Now it was the next morning. ‘Bring me a banana.’
‘A yellow banana,’ he added after a moment’s pause.
Of course the banana should be yellow, so why did my grandfather insist on saying what colour. Ah! He knew the banana trees around our house only had bunches of small green bananas that weren’t ready to pick yet. I hate you, Mendoza.
‘The bananas are still green, Grandfather.’
He pretended to be angry. ‘You must be able to find a yellow banana,’ he answered in his annoying voice.
‘No, there aren’t any,’ I replied, my patience exhausted.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ I said, though I knew what he was planning to say.
‘OK, I hope you grow a thousand eyes so that you can see things clearly,’ he said, raising his voice.
‘I’ll pray to the Lord to make your wish come true, Grandfather,’ I answered him calmly.
He didn’t reply. I was sure he was about to explode with anger.
I was fourteen then, and Mendoza’s wish still frightened me as much as it always had.
* * *
For years I used to wake up every morning to the alarm clock next door: ‘José!’ As soon as I opened my eyes, I would run my hand over my face, and thank the Lord when I had checked it was still covered with skin.
Grandfather was cunning. He knew the effect the old legend had had on me since I was a child – the legend of Pinya.
He had fun frightening me with a fate similar to that of the girl in the legend. If he couldn’t think of any other tasks for me to perform, he would ask me to bring him something – anything from anywhere. Because he knew that the thing wasn’t where he sent me to find it, he would be waiting impatiently for me to come back empty-handed. Then he would spring his malicious little curse on me: ‘I hope you grow a thousand eyes so you can see things clearly.’
I wasn’t yet seven when Mendoza started frightening me with this wish of his. As soon as he said the words I would be off, running in fear like a mad thing, looking for whatever it was in the place he suggested, and in other places too, while he roared with laughter behind my back.
* * *
The story of Pinya was one of many that my mother and Mama Aida used to tell me before I went to sleep. I would ask them to repeat the stories and I enjoyed them every time as if I were hearing them for the first time, except for the legend of Pinya. I hated that one from the first time I heard it, and I asked Mama Aida not to repeat it. Even so, I couldn’t forget it.
* * *
Once upon a time, in a certain village, there lived a woman with a beautiful daughter. The daughter was spoilt because she was an only child. She was badly behaved and lazy and she had no initiative. Her mother met all her demands anyway, because there was nothing in the world she loved more than Pinya.
Pinya was well-known in the village and the other children envied the advantages she enjoyed that weren’t available to them. One day Pinya’s mother fell ill. She wanted to get well as soon as possible so she could look after Pinya, but for the moment it was the mother who needed looking after.
’Pinya, Pinya,’ she called weakly, unable to get out of bed. ‘Come here, my girl. I need you for something,’ she added.
Pinya was busy playing in the backyard.
‘OK, Mama. What is it?’ asked Pinya, standing at the foot of her mother’s bed.
‘I’m exhausted. I can’t get up,’ her mother said. ‘I’m hungry but I can’t eat anything solid. I’d like you to bring me a bowl of congee.’
Pinya was surprised.
‘It’s very simple, Pinya,’ her mother continued. ‘Put a little rice in a pot. Add some water and a little sugar, then leave it to simmer for a while.’
‘That’s really hard to do, Mama,’ Pinya said impatiently.
‘You have to do it, Pinya,’ her mother said weakly. ‘What will your poor mother eat if you don’t?’
Pinya dragged her feet downstairs to the kitchen.
She got the pot ready, and the rice, the sugar and the water, but she couldn’t find the big spoon. ‘How can I stir it without the spoon?’ she wondered. She shouted up to her mother, ‘Mama, where can I find the big spoon?’
‘It’s with the other kitchen stuff,’ her mother groaned. ‘You know where I put it, Pinya!’
But Pinya couldn’t find the spoon with the other utensils and didn’t take the trouble to look for it anywhere else.
‘I can’t find it, Mama,’ she shouted, ‘and I can’t make you congee without it.’
‘Oh, the lazy child,’ her mother sighed, half in despair and half in anger. ‘You haven’t even looked anywhere else,’ she shouted down. ‘I hope you
grow a thousand eyes so you can see things,’ she added angrily.
As soon as she uttered the words, the house fell silent. There was no more clattering of plates in the kitchen. ‘Perhaps she’s started cooking,’ said Pinya’s mother, trying to reassure herself.
A long time passed, and all was still in the house. There was no sound of pots and pans in the kitchen, and no smells of cooking from downstairs. The mother grew seriously worried about Pinya. With all the strength she had left, she shouted out, ‘Pinya! Pinya!’ But Pinya didn’t answer.
The neighbours noticed that Pinya’s mother was calling her and crying. ‘Oh! You know how Pinya behaves. Don’t worry. She must be off playing with her friends somewhere,’ said one of the neighbours, trying to reassure her. ‘Perhaps she’s upset you asked her to make congee. She’ll come back soon,’ he added.
Pinya’s mother was comforted by what the neighbour said but the feeling didn’t last long. She struggled out of bed to look for Pinya in the village and ask people if they had seen her, but there was no trace of the girl. Her mother was exhausted. She cried and sobbed, but Pinya still couldn’t be found.
One sunny day, as Pinya’s mother was sweeping the backyard, she spotted a strange and unfamiliar fruit, about the size of a small child’s head and with thick green leaves sprouting from the top. Surprised, she went up to it and ran her fingers over the outside of the fruit. ‘It feels strange. It has a thousand eyes,’ she said. Then she repeated that last sentence to herself and suddenly remembered the wish she had made for her daughter.
Pinya’s mother was convinced that Pinya had turned into the fruit and now had a thousand eyes, as she had wished, but none of the eyes could see or shed tears.
Because Pinya’s mother still loved her more than anything else in the world, she tended the fruit and, faithful to Pinya’s memory, made a vow to collect the seeds of the strange fruit and replant them. The plants multiplied in her backyard and she started giving some of them to her neighbours and to the other villagers, who called them piña, pineapple, after the unfortunate girl.
The Bamboo Stalk Page 8