Riverrun

by Danton Remoto

  In my dream, my Uncle Conrado comes home. He has left behind him the North Sea cold enough to break your bones. Now he is borne by waves that have slowly shaped themselves into the whitest of wings. The world below is a blue nothingness. The bird glides slowly, reaching an archipelago of the greenest islands, until it reaches the brown filth that is Manila. The bird alights finally at Old Sta. Mesa, and my uncle slides down its feathery body. He waves farewell to the strange, magnificent bird. And then just as suddenly, the bird is gone.

  Down, down, down the steps hewn from stone. The air closing in around my uncle, darkness descending, a door opening and closing on its one rusty hinge. Ramon? Ramon? Where is my son Ramon? Words from the palest lips. The electric volt of pain crackling from one nerve ending to another.

  Sometimes, when we call out a name, even the very wind crumbles.

  How Good That Friday Was

  WHEN THE TEMPERATURE began to rise so high that it threatened to make the thermometer explode, trust that Holy Week was here.

  That morning, my mother gave me a palaspas, the young leaves of coconut folded and woven to form small globes and arcs, even fingers tapering to the sky. The palaspas would always be yellow green, the color of ylang-ylang flowers.

  We all went to the Mass. The churchgoers were more hushed than usual, striking dutiful poses of piety. A woman was worrying her rosary beads behind me, her eyes tightly closed. Her eyelashes seemed to flutter, like the wings of a butterfly coming out of the cocoon, and I stopped the impulse to touch her trembling eyelashes. My sexy classmate Mariani was standing on the next pew, her fingers forming a steeple. Any moment, I thought Mariani would raise her hands, spread them apart, and shout “DARNA!” turning her lacy white dress into Darna’s red silk bikini.

  The long sermon of the now white-haired and semi-senile Padre Pelagio made the men look at their watches, to check if their timepieces were dead again. One or two even took off their watches, put them to their ears, and then shook them vigorously. The other men slowly walked out of the chapel, out onto the garden, to smoke. When the Mass was finally over, Padre Pelagio descended from his pulpit, holding a bowl full of holy water. He dipped the stick that picks up the holy water, then sprinkled the water all over the palaspas we had raised for him.

  Suddenly the color of the air turned lemony green, humming.

  Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday … the countdown began. My grandmother forbade us from taking a bath until Hesukristo had come back to life. In the coma-inducing heat of summer—sometimes the temperature blasted past 100 degrees Fahrenheit—not taking a bath would be an act enough to expiate for all your sins mortal, venial, and in-between; done in the past, present, and future; whether committed in your waking life or on the slippery landscapes of your dream.

  We usually stayed home on Good Friday, listening to the Seven Last Words on the radio with circuitous and flowery explanations from the politicians, their voices grainy with sorrow. Or we would go to church. While there, I would pretend I was listening to the seven generals of the air base explain for us Jesus Christ’s seven last words before He was hung on the cross.

  They would all be there:

  The General who had a mistress in every town within a radius of 50 kilometers.

  The General who headed Finance and Logistics and, of course, would line his pockets first than requisition new combat boots for the men murdering the Muslims in Mindanao.

  The General who wore all the medals (spurious or not) he had won, gleaming like bottle caps on his chest.

  The General who had cornered the forest concession for the still–virginal forest on the edge of town, on the slopes of the Zambales mountain ranges. He headed the Environmental program of the base.

  The General who was turned on by the smell of gunpowder that he led military operations in the South that not only decimated Muslim men, but also women, old people, and children; bud, flower and fruit—to banish the brave, freedom-loving Muslims, on whose sharp, fatal kris—double-edged swords that can decapitate cleanly and swiftly—the sun glinted.

  The General who said he did not intend to die. Thus, the main road was named after him, the park after his wife, and the three commissary buildings after each of his sons.

  But enough of this game of the generals!

  And so we spent one Good Friday in San Fernando. My father was driving; my mother sat beside him, still poised even if the strong wind blasting from the window was strong enough to crumple her red bandanna. I sat at the back.

  I looked outside—sugar-cane fields stretching into infinity, nipa huts and wooden houses roasting in the sun, a warm hush over everything. I went with them because there was nothing else to do. Incorrigible kibitzer that I was, I also wanted to see Daniel Rexroth, Jr. have himself nailed on the cross.

  As my father put it, Daniel had a panata, a yearly vow, to have himself hanged until his American G.I. father, who returned to the United States just before Daniel was born, would return to the P.I., the Philippine Islands of old. And like the great General Douglas MacArthur, the father would return and spring Daniel from the nails of poverty with an American visa, preferably immigrant, and then on to the Kingdom of Citizenhood.

  The nailing to the cross was held in the middle of the barren rice fields in Barangay Pedro Cutud, San Fernando, in the insane heat of summer. Gathered around Daniel were shirtless men with their faces covered with cloth. Earlier, they had used broken glass to slit their backs. Afterward, they deepened the wounds by flagellating their backs with a whip made of rope tipped with split bamboo. Shards of glass were also glued to the ropes. The whoosh! of the whiplashes biting against skin, the flagellants’ backs a merthiolate color, the blood even splattering on the passersby.

  And then there was Daniel. It was a good show, all right, with Daniel wincing and his hands dripping blood and the Americans recording everything with their video cameras. But I walked away from the rice field toward our jeep, telling myself that when I grew older, I would spend my Holy Week in Sagada and watch the fog erase everything, hut, hill, and mountain, or walk on the calm beaches of Palawan, as the sun drowned.

  Of Cakes and Palaces

  AFTER HOLY WEEK, my Papa’s second cousin visited us. She had taken the train from Bicol to Manila, then hopped on the bus from Manila to Pampanga, the moment she heard the news.

  Her son, Berto, had joined her other son, Noel, in Manila. The older Noel worked for a construction company owned by one of the President’s cronies. One of the company’s biggest projects was the Manila Film Center. Billed as Asia’s answer to the Parthenon, this magnificent movie house would be built on the soft, reclaimed land on Manila Bay.

  “There is a hole in the universe,” the First Lady said on nationwide TV last week, zapping the Voltes V cartoon which I was then watching. All the TV stations dutifully covered her interview with the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of the Philippines. The diamonds on her ring turned into petals of fire. She continued: “From this black hole comes the energy field of the universe. This energy field, my friends, is directed at my beloved country, the Pearl of the Orient Seas. Thus, we are truly blessed, because this positive force will lead us to progress, to our dream of development of our dearest Philippines.”

  The foreign correspondents were unusually quiet. The grave air was broken by a question from a Filipina tall and graceful as the bamboo. She asked: “Ma’am, do you intend to write a book about it?” Her name was Dada Walana, a poet who became a journalist who became an official spokesperson of the Press Bureau.

  “Now, that’s a good idea,” the First Lady said spontaneously. “That would be a worthy follow-up to my first book of speeches.”

  And so the brothers Relova worked at the construction site of the Manila Film Palace by the bay. But the First Lady, suffering from her incurable insomnia, would sometimes leave the palace in her long, black stretch limousine, the sirens from her escort cars wailing in the night, and visit the bay. Her long, black hair would be lacquered and erect even
at three o’ clock in the morning. Her red silk scarf would billow in the cold wind coming from the dark sea, and she spoke to the foreman with such urgency. “This building has to be finished in 77 days. Remember, seven is the president’s favorite number.” Then she smiled, but not too widely, for she had just gone through her seventh face-lifting. Dr. Karma, who specialized in lifting faces and breasts and tightening vaginas, told her: “Ma’am, please do not exert undue pressure on your face, for medical reasons.” Translation: She could neither smile too widely nor laugh, for her face might just fall flat on the floor.

  At least, this project was a far cry from her last. As Minister of Human Habitation, she ordered the building of a low-cost housing project on top of the bald Antipolo mountains. Not a bad idea, really, except that she only built 5,000 white American Standard toilets.

  “Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” she intoned during the ribbon-cutting ceremony. “Our many dispossessed know that, and so they will build their own houses around these toilets. We gave them something they can build on.” And so the 5,000 white toilets gleamed in the afternoon sun for many months. The whole, bald mountain, baking in the heat and studded with white toilet bowls, came to be known as Kubeta Village, or Toilet Village. Pretty soon, the toilets all magically vanished, cannibalized by the dispossessed.

  But this promised to be different, this Film Center by the bay.

  And so the workers just kept on mixing sand and stone, water and cement, poured them into shaky foundations, cobbled together one story after another, the whole structure looking like a honeycomb. And one fine, windless day, the bamboo scaffolding just collapsed, sending the men falling down into a pit of quick-drying cement.

  Noel was outside, shoveling sand into a small lake of cement, stone, and water when he heard the screams. He ran inside because his brother Berto was there. The workers had gathered around the pit of cement beginning to dry. Beneath this lay the other workers, including Berto.

  Quickly, the workers grabbed their shovels and pickaxes, even used their very hands to rescue their fellow workers trapped under the rubble. Bits of cement flew and hit Noel in the eyes. He closed his eyes for they had begun to water—the grains scratching against his eyeballs—but he kept on hitting the cement with his pick axe, faster and faster, as dusk began to fall and the bay outside started to display Manila’s magnificent sunset.

  But the next morning they were still trying to crack the cement. Dark circles had begun to ring their eyes. Their stubbles were shadows. They had begun using electric drills. The sound of so many drills was enough to make one deaf for life. But the men kept on drilling. From time to time, they would hit something solid under the cement. Noel was drilling with the purest concentration, his eyes focused on the point where the layer of cement splintered into bits, when a jet of blood suddenly struck him.

  First on the knees, arcing across his thighs, and then splattering on his chest. It was then that he began to cry. He dropped his drill and his hard hat and ran, ran home to the squalor of the slums in Malibay where he lived, grabbed an old duffel bag, threw some clothes into it, and took the first bus back to Albay.

  Now their mother was here, standing silently outside our white door. Her clothes were the color of ash. Red veins ran across her eyes. She had just travelled for 10 hours in an old train rattling on the tracks. Noel had returned to the building site, to continue digging.

  She spoke quietly, softly, to her second cousin, my father, in tones that were respectful, even somewhat distant.

  Mama sat beside her and listened, her eyes beginning to tear as Noel’s mother spoke. I pretended I was merely watching Student Canteen on TV, but I listened intently to her story. In the end, she did not cry, just an old woman with something so deep in her eyes you could not touch it.

  Instantly, Papa went to his boss, the general, who called up the generals in Manila, who then called up the contractor, et cetera. After a whole day spent making these calls, being shunted from one general’s office to another, they finally managed to get through to the Press Bureau.

  But Dada Walana—bright and cheery as a parakeet—informed Papa that “Yes, Sir, there was, indeed, a minor incident at the Film Palace, but only two workers were slightly injured. They were promptly given medical attention upon the First Lady’s express instructions, who went there as soon as she heard of the news.”

  A week later, Noel would come to us. He looked like a ghost. He had lost half his weight, his shoulders stooped from a week of non-stop digging. In broken words, he said that the authorities had wanted the construction to go on as scheduled. And so the foreman had ordered the guards to keep Noel and the other relatives out of the construction site as buckets of fresh cement were poured on the site, stopping the river of blood welling up from below.

  Then they resumed building the Film Center.

  But that would come later, for on this day, after helping Ludy cook Tagalogbistek marinated in soy sauce and small lemons and gabi leaves simmered in coconut milk, the mother of Berto and Noel walked to our backyard, past the star-apple trees, stopped under the acacia, and just looked clear across the dry rice field at the wall in the distance—the thick, gray wall separating our military base from the rest of the world.

  A Dreadful Sunday Afternoon

  IT WAS A DREADFUL Sunday afternoon, the kind of afternoon when it would be impossible to sleep in my room. The sun itself seemed to have taken refuge inside the house, its rays of heat buried inside your skin.

  And so I would run out into the backyard, looking at the play of shadow and light on the leaves of the aratiles tree. Then I would climb the tree heavy with its globes of small, red fruits. From the highest branch, I would pretend as if I were jumping from the edge of a cliff. The ravine would be our roof, a soft bed carpeted with serrated, green leaves and small, brown twigs.

  From that height nothing, nothing seemed to move me.

  And from that height I could eavesdrop on the chatter of adults without being found out. So that summer, while busy eating aratiles fruits on the rooftop, who would cool themselves on the shadow cast by the tree but my two aunts. That day, my mother’s spinster sisters, Tita Bella and Tita Armida, were having a merienda of glutinous rice cakes topped with grated coconut meat and cold glasses of soda.

  Raising their heads and looking around ever so subtly, with only their eyes moving, and noticing that there was nobody around, the two sisters would begin their stories.

  “Our Nuestra Señora de Guia y Buen Viaje in Antipolo is more powerful than the Nuestra Señora in Baclaran,” Tita Armida began.

  “That may be true,” answered Tita Bella, “but tell me, how can you hear Mass in Baclaran when around you would be the squealing of pigs being butchered for the lechon?”

  Tita Armida, who loved to spin a tale, would answer: “Bella, have you heard the story of the two young lovers in Baclaran?”

  “No.”

  “Well—well, then, listen. A pair of teenagers would tell their parents they would hear Mass at the Baclaran Church on a Sunday afternoon just like this. But really, they would just go to a motel across from the church and do it there, while all along, the pigs squealed and the Dutch priest intoned the Sursum Corda in an accent that nobody understood. These young people, Madre de Dios, are such animals.”

  “They are, Armida, they are,” Tita Bella cooed.

  “Anyway, these teenagers told this lie for three consecutive Sunday afternoons, but on the fourth Sunday, something happened.”

  “What?” Tita Bella said, her fork must have been frozen in midair, between the plate and her mouth.

  “On the fourth Sunday afternoon, in the fever of their lovemaking, her vaginal muscles just suddenly locked. Locked. He couldn’t withdraw much as he’d like to, because she was squeezing him so tightly. And the pigs squealed for their lives and the priest raised his golden ciborium and the two young lovers, oh God did not bless them, good for them, they were beginning to turn pale.”

  “And then?” was
all Tita Bella could mutter.

  “And then, she began to scream and scream and scream. The room boy wondered why she was screaming her lungs out, for the couple had been there three times before. But when he heard him scream, he knew that something was wrong. So the room boy grabbed the key and ran to the room of Mr. & Mrs. Angeles (the names they wrote in the guest book with its oily synthetic-plastic cover), and found the couple, indeed, joined to each other. The room boy gasped, ran down the stairs, and fetched the doctor who lived down the block.”

  “Hay, salamat naman,” Tita Bella said in mock gratitude.

  “Well, it turned out that this old doctor was a Born-Again Christian who was scandalized the moment he pushed the door of the motel room on the two lovers joined to each other. After raining down a mountain of curses on the couple in dishabille, he injected a muscle relaxant on her. And then the doctor continued giving them the sermon of his life, JesusMaryJoseph, doing this in the heat of a Sunday afternoon, right in front of a church! The young couple was almost dying from shame because the medicine was taking so long to take effect and their organs were really very sore. Already. But when the medicine did take effect, he quickly withdrew and put on his clothes as fast as he could. She also covered herself modestly with the white blanket, grabbed her clothes, said “Thank you” to the doctor, then walked to the bathroom. When she came out, wearing a white dress that was cut way down her knees, and a blue sash wound around her waist, the doctor told them the wisest thing would be to go to church that afternoon, confess their sins, and attend Mass. And so, ushered by the doctor on one side and the room boy on the other, seemingly ushered by an old angel and the young acolyte, our young couple finally went to the Mass they have, uh, missed for the last three Sundays.”