‘Let’s go, José,’ said Merla. We crossed ourselves over the body and left him in the tranquillity of the church.
On the way home, I asked Merla to go on ahead. ‘I have something to do. I’ll join you later,’ I said.
I went back to the church. The man in charge had switched off the lights and was about to close up. I asked him for a little more time to pray for my grandfather. ‘I’ll be back in five minutes,’ he said. He went to a table, took a candle and lit it. He gave it to me before leaving.
Holding the candle I went to Grandfather’s body and looked at his face. His eyes, his nose, his lips and the other parts of his face all seemed to be moving because of the candle flame flickering in the dark. I turned to the coffin lid, reached out, and with my thumb and index finger I pulled off the strip of cloth that had my name on it.
‘Sorry, Grandfather,’ I said, looking at his face behind the glass. I closed the coffin lid and walked down the short corridor that led outside, with the candle in one hand and the strip of cloth in my other hand. ‘That way you won’t be reminded you have a grandson called José,’ I said to myself as I walked away, leaving the coffin behind me.
At the door I stopped and turned, facing the coffin. I rounded my lips to blow out the candle, confident that I would never again hear that call of Mendoza’s: ‘José, José, José.’
9
The White Rabbit appeared without warning five days after Mendoza died. Maybe it had been waiting for him to die.
I had been waiting a long time, rabbit, for you to appear in front of me. I would follow you, trip up and fall down a hole that leads to my father’s country. But apparently falling down a hole isn’t as easy as I imagined.
* * *
At noon on the fifth day after his death a luxury limousine, decorated with vast quantities of flowers, carried away the body of my grandfather Mendoza. He who had never travelled in such a car in his lifetime did so in death, on his journey to the cemetery near his piece of land.
The wheels of the limousine turned slowly. The family and the many other mourners walked behind it, carrying wreaths of flowers and umbrellas to keep off the sun, as they took Mendoza to his final resting place.
Meanwhile the White Rabbit was waiting for me somewhere, wearing his famous waistcoat, holding his pocket watch and counting the time.
A week before Mendoza’s funeral the White Rabbit had been at another funeral, saying his own last farewells to a friend, after a separation that had lasted fifteen years.
* * *
Mama Aida was at home. She hadn’t come to the burial with us. Although my mother and Uncle Pedro had tried to persuade her, she flatly refused to come. ‘As far as I’m concerned, my father died a long time ago,’ she said, ‘when we were children. The only new thing today is that you’re throwing his body in a dark hole like the hole he pushed me into when I was seventeen. Off you go and take the children with you.’
When the burial was over and we were together at home, Mama Aida said someone had called to ask after Mother. ‘I asked him to call back in two hours,’ she said. Right on time, the rabbit called.
‘Yes, I’m Josephine,’ my mother told the caller. She jumped to her feet in surprise. ‘How could I not remember you? Of course I remember you, Ghassan.’
Ghassan. The name hit me like an electric shock. My father’s friend. The fisherman. The soldier. The poet who played the oud.
The memories teemed in my head and all my senses came to life: the music I had heard in Boracay, the smell of fish and other disgusting smells, maybe the smell of the bait in the plastic bag that Walid was carrying in the old photograph.
As soon as my mother said the name Ghassan, I couldn’t help rushing upstairs to Merla’s room, where there was another telephone. I picked up the receiver and put it to my ear to hear their conversation – my mother and Ghassan.
‘I imagine it’s time for him to come back,’ said Ghassan in a rough voice that was nothing like that of a poet, maybe the voice of a soldier. ‘That’s what Rashid wanted, fifteen years ago,’ he continued.
My mother breathed faster when she heard my father’s name.
‘I asked Rashid to look after my mother if anything bad happened to me. In return he asked me to look after Isa if anything happened to him,’ said Ghassan.
‘Rashid? Something bad?’ my mother said, so quietly I could hardly hear her.
‘I had great hopes he’d be released from detention,’ said Ghassan, his voice gentler now and hesitant. ‘I’m sorry but . . .’ he continued. The soldier’s voice was gone and he went on in the voice of a poet. ‘One week ago the Tarouf family received the remains of Rashid from a mass grave in southern Iraq.’
My mother didn’t say a word.
‘Doesn’t he want to come back to Kuwait?’ Ghassan asked.
My mother started crying and I answered on the other line. ‘Yes, I want to go back, I want to go back,’ I said.
Ghassan promised us he would look after everything. ‘I know people who can help us bring him back,’ he told my mother. To me he said, ‘Give me some time to prepare your papers and get you a Kuwaiti passport.’ He said he’d like to come to the Philippines to bring me back to Kuwait himself but there was a reason why he couldn’t do that.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ the rabbit concluded.
10
Death is strange. It comes and then lingers, moving slowly and looking for someone else whose life it can snatch. As long as it’s passing this way, why bother to go away only to come back later?
Five days after Mendoza died we received the news of Rashid’s death. A week after the burial of Mendoza, death went off with the soul of Inang Choleng.
The neighbours noticed that the bowls of food outside the old woman’s door hadn’t been touched since the morning. ‘It looks like Inang Choleng is ill,’ one of them told Mama Aida. Aida went to the old woman’s house and came back minutes later with her face frozen in shock. With dry, trembling lips she picked up the phone. ‘Josephine, come quickly,’ she said, then burst into tears. ‘The old woman’s dead.’
She threw down the phone, then threw herself on to the sofa crying hysterically. I was so shocked I was tongue-tied and couldn’t think straight. She didn’t cry when her father died, I thought. Uncle Pedro came in looking pale and my mother arrived leaning on Alberto’s arm, followed by Adrian with his mouth open and large drool stains on his shirt. Mother sat down next to Mama Aida, covering her face with her hands and crying. ‘The poor woman’s died after waiting so long,’ she sobbed. ‘She died when her only hope died.’ What’s going on here, I wondered. I looked around at their faces: Mama Aida sobbing, my mother in tears, Uncle Pedro sad, Alberto silent, Adrian in his own world and the neighbour puzzled.
I went upstairs to Merla’s room, sat on her bed and picked up the phone. ‘Inang Choleng’s dead,’ I told Merla.
‘That’s sad, but what’s wrong with your voice, José? The woman was close to a hundred, maybe more. Did you believe the children when they talked about Inang Choleng as the witch who would never die?’ Maybe I did believe in the legends about the old woman, but it wasn’t her death or the legends about her that puzzled me.
‘Hello? Hello? José!’ Merla shouted, breaking my train of thought.
‘Come, Merla,’ I said at the end of our conversation. ‘Something strange is going on downstairs with my mother, Mama Aida and Pedro.’
* * *
Everyone but me went to Inang Choleng’s house. I sat waiting for Merla and as soon as she arrived, she asked where everyone had gone.
‘To the old woman’s house,’ I answered. She looked at me in surprise.
‘José, you frightened me. What’s going on?’ she asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I don’t know,’ I said uncertainly, ‘but . . .’
I didn’t finish the sentence. She took my hand and pulled me away. ‘Let’s have our first and last look at the inside of the old woman’s house,’ she said.
I didn’t want to let go of her soft hand but I did. ‘Are you mad?’ I said. ‘You’re going to go inside the witch’s house?’
She looked at me in surprise. ‘So why did you ask me to come, José?’
I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t know what had made me do it.
‘I don’t know, Merla. But your mother was really sad, my mother and Uncle Pedro too. Their reaction when they heard the news was weird.’
‘Everything’s weird in Mendozaland, everything,’ she commented.
‘But my mother said the old woman had waited a long time,’ I said, interrupting her.
‘Don’t be silly, José,’ said Merla, interrupting me this time. ‘What else would a woman her age be waiting for, other than death?’
I didn’t say a word.
‘So let’s go and see the old woman’s shack.’
The neighbours were gathered outside Inang Choleng’s house, at least the men and the women. The children were watching warily from a distance. Uncle Pedro’s wife and children were outside. My stepfather Alberto was sitting on a rock nearby. When Merla and I approached, Uncle Pedro’s wife said, ‘Pedro and Josephine and Aida are with the priest inside. Aren’t you going in?’
Merla looked at me and waited for me to reply.
‘No, there’s no need for us to go in,’ I said.
Alberto came up to us and said, ‘Merla, José, you have to go inside.’
Merla came close and whispered, ‘I was planning to go in, but the way they’re insisting has made me worried.’
Pedro’s wife went to the door of the house, opened it and beckoned us in. Merla went first, reluctantly, and I followed her, even more reluctantly. The house was small on the outside and seemed even smaller inside. There was a bedroom, a bathroom, a small kitchen in the corner open to the main room. It smelled of damp, rotten food and death. I felt sick. At the wooden bed my mother and Mama Aida were solemnly saying prayers, while Uncle Pedro sat on a chair nearby.
Inang Choleng was lying on the bed under a white cover, with only her head and shoulders visible. There were three pillows supporting her hunched back. The priest was anointing her forehead with holy oil and saying prayers. He was incredibly brave. Her mouth was wide open, showing a few teeth here and there. I was dripping with sweat as I waited for the priest to finish his task. I half-expected the old woman to spring into life and dig her remaining teeth into his hand.
I was frightened. My guilt about stealing her food years before was encouraging the bee in my head to start buzzing again. My mother and Mama Aida crying, the buzzing in my head, my heart throbbing in my temples, and my limbs shaking – everything encouraged me to leave. Before I could do so, Merla nudged me with her elbow. I looked at her. She was looking at one of the walls. I looked in the same direction and my eyes popped out in disbelief. There were black and white photographs of Mendoza on the wall. One of them I had seen before on his army identity card. In another one he was standing with a group of men in military uniform. In a third he was sitting on a bench with a woman, two girls and a boy between them. There were other old photos of Mendoza I hadn’t seen before. I looked to Merla for an explanation for the photos. She leaned over and whispered in my ear: ‘You don’t understand anything.’ She knew that what she said would hurt me. I look at her disapprovingly. ‘Our wily grandfather had admirers!’ she said.
‘But I never saw him go anywhere near her house,’ I replied, completely mystified.
The priest left after he’d performed the rites. As soon as he was through the door, Merla asked the question in a low voice. ‘Why are there pictures of Grandfather on the wall of Inang Choleng’s house?’
Uncle Pedro went out after the priest. My mother pretended to be busy clearing the place up. Only Mama Aida spoke and even she didn’t look at us. ‘Nothing strange about a mother putting pictures of her only son on the wall,’ she said.
Merla and I looked at each other in disbelief. ‘So Inang Choleng was Mendoza’s mother?’ I asked Mama Aida.
She nodded, and floods of tears rolled down her cheeks. My mother turned her back and pretended to be doing something. Her shoulders were shaking from crying. I went over to her and looked in her eyes but she looked away. ‘That old woman was Mendoza’s mother. So who was his father?’ I asked her.
She looked at me with tears in her eyes. ‘He didn’t have a father,’ she said. The words were like a slap in the face.
The bee in my head stopped. The buzzing disappeared. I closed my eyes and tried to detect it but it had left my head to join a hive of other bees, in Mendoza’s head.
11
Six months after Ghassan’s first phone call, and after months of bureaucracy, I finally picked up my passport from the Kuwaiti embassy in Manila. I went straight from the embassy to the cathedral. Now that I was certain to be travelling, I felt confused and afraid of the unknown.
In the cathedral I sat in the front row. I put my hand on the cross hanging round my neck, the one Mama Aida had given me after my confirmation ceremony years earlier. I started to pray: ‘Our Father who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name; Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive those who trespass against us; And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. Amen.
‘Our Father, I am going back to where I was born, to the land of the father I have never known, to a destiny known only to You. My mother says a beautiful life awaits me there but no one but You knows what really awaits me. Our Father who art in Heaven, in my hand I have a blue passport and in my heart I have a faith I fear I may not be able to preserve. Help me to believe in You. Abide with me on my journey. Guide me to what is good and dispel my doubts. Our Father who art in Heaven, are You really in Heaven? Answer me, in the name of Your angels and in the name of Your son the Messiah and of the Virgin.’
* * *
From the cathedral I walked towards Chinatown as far as the Seng Guan Temple. It took me two hours, mostly on foot, simply because I wanted to walk among ordinary people in Manila one last time, breathing in the thick exhaust fumes and trying to look at the sun, which doesn’t look like the sun in Kuwait, and looking at the trees on the sides of the street, with their branches hanging heavy with fruit. I looked into the faces of the people around me and missed them even before I had left them. I wanted to apologise to them all, saying that despite the years I had spent amongst them I did not belong with them.
I stopped three quarters of the way from the cathedral to the temple. I felt tired. I hailed a taxi. ‘To the Seng Guan Temple, please,’ I said.
The driver was surprised. ‘It’s very close to here,’ he said, pointing towards it.
‘I know, but will you take me?’ I replied.
The traffic was heavy and I would have arrived sooner if I had carried on walking to the temple. In the taxi I could see out of the window on my left and through the front window. I saw things as if I were looking at them for the first time. I was finding it hard to breathe, maybe because of all the traffic around me, or maybe because of the tangle of emotions that I felt. I could see misery in many of its guises through the taxi window: the misery on the faces of the vendors, the dirty clothes, the child beggars following anyone who looked clean, the Muslim boys in their caps that had once been white, offering pirated DVDs of pornography and the most popular Hollywood films. On the pavements there were people with carts selling bananas, including Cheng. He looked happy. People were crowding around his cart as though there were a festival on. Yellow and blue were the colours around him: the yellow of the bananas and the blue of his plastic bags.
The driver had a wooden crucifix hanging on a chain from the rear-view mirror, and behind the steering wheel there was a little statue of the Buddha sitting cross-legged with prayer beads in his hand.
‘Why do you have the cross?’ I asked the driver.
He turned and looked at me suspiciously. ‘Because I’m Christian,’ he said.
‘And why the other statue?’ I asked, looking at the Buddha.
He smiled, as if he knew what I was driving at. ‘It brings in business,’ he said.
The taxi stopped outside the Seng Guan Temple and I started to get out. ‘I see you have a cross around your neck. Why?’ the driver said.
I opened the door and got out. ‘It’s something my aunt chose for me,’ I said with a smile.
He pointed to the temple gate and smiled broadly. ‘And Seng Guan, why?’ he asked.
While he waited for me to answer, I closed the taxi door and turned my back on him. But I could hear him through the window. ’Hey!’ he said. ‘I answered you when you asked me a question.’
I kept walking towards the temple gate. ‘Hey, be fair!’ the driver shouted. ‘Why?’
I stopped at the gate and turned to face the taxi. The man was still waiting for me to reply. I looked up and scratched my head to indicate I was trying to think of an answer. ‘It does something for me, but I don’t know what it is,’ I said.
* * *
I stood in front of the glass enclosure in the middle, where there was a golden statue of the Buddha standing. There was a man with prayer beads sitting on one of the low cushions and there was an old woman standing in front of the glass enclosure in the middle praying devoutly. I stood next to her, facing the Buddha statue.
‘Buddha, I don’t know how to pray to you. But if you really are the one who will save mankind from its ordeals and afflictions, then you will hear me and accept my prayer as it is. I don’t know how to pray with prayer beads like the man sitting over there. I don’t see the need to put my hands together and move them up and down in front of your statue like that old woman next to me. But I know how to light an incense stick and plant it in the bowl of soft sand, even if I don’t know why I’m doing it. Help me to believe in you, in your message, your disciples and your virgin mother, Maya, who bore you inside her on the day when her womb radiated light and you were visible inside it before you were born. If you are a god, a prophet or a saint, guide me, be my helper so that, through you, I can see the light.’
The Bamboo Stalk Page 12