A tear slides down Cate’s cheek. The consul grasps her hand. “Oh my dear, it’s okay now. You’re safe.”
Cate notices another man by the window, looking out. He is Filipino, much older, in fact gray, and grim. His shirt reflects the colors of the star above him.
“They’re not safe…” she whispers.
“Yes, Cate—did you want something?”
“Nena and Noland, where are they?”
“My dear, everything has been taken care of—”
“Are they okay?” She clutches the arm of the consul, who gently disengages herself.
“We’ll be in touch. We’ll take care of everything.”
As the consul leaves, Cate notes the two Americans in the adjoining lounge. There’s another one in the lobby and one parked in the street. This is a private hospital, respected and very discreet.
“Please—we’ll keep this short?” the doctor murmurs, checking his watch: an hour before midnight. He shuts the door quietly.
The man at the window pulls up a chair and sits, facing her this time. He nods at her but doesn’t say anything. It’s David Lane who proceeds with the necessary business. He can’t stop it now, since he was pushed into this bizarre case. His superiors think he’s the man for the job. Youthful and unthreatening, a convincing public face. The people’s colonel, no less.
“So Cate, you’re doing a Ph.D. at Cornell. Literature? I was never any good at it. You like it there? Oh yes, we’re practically neighbors by the way. I’m from Ithaca.” His smile is disarming.
Who is this man—and that other one?
The American smiles amiably. “Winter can be miserable, I know. Nothing like a break from the cold. So you came for a holiday, landed on the nineteenth—how was the flight?”
“What do you want?”
“I want to help, if you allow me.”
“And you are—I didn’t catch your name—”
“David—David Lane—from the embassy.”
“And who’s he?” She points to the man at the window.
“A friend, Roberto Espinosa. Our friend.”
The friend nods, forces a smile.
“From the embassy too?”
“He wants to help too. We all want to help.”
“You mean, you want to interrogate me.” She shuts her eyes, then after a while, “Okay, I’m Cate Burns. I’m here as a tourist. I wasn’t shot. I saw him shot. I wasn’t abducted. I was rescued. That boy and his mother saved my life. If you want to help me, you should—”
“It’s just a chat, Cate. Of course, we want to help you.”
She opens her eyes again, reaches out to the tall American so neat in his white shirt and crew cut, perfect against the antiseptic walls. “If you want to help, then please tell me where they are. Are they safe?”
The Filipino is all ears. Under the star his sobriety is lit, made colorful.
“That boy’s sick, something terrible happened to that boy.” She attempts to raise herself from the bed. “He needs help, please.”
David grasps the outstretched hand. “Why—what happened, Cate?”
“I—I don’t know, you have to find out, you have to help.”
“Is he hurt?” David asks. “Did someone hurt him?”
“I think—”
“You think—”
She flops back on the bed, exhausted. In her head Noland is staring from the mat, no longer solemn but with a dark look, full of foreboding, eyes afraid, unrecognizing, as if they’ve never met before.
“I think … I don’t know.” She closes her eyes, cups her hands to her ears. Nena’s screaming again before those masked men but the boy’s silence is louder. It hurts, it hurts her ears.
“Cate, it’s okay, it’s okay … you’re doing fine, Cate, doing fine. Now please tell us about the shooting. This Pizza Hut delivery man or boy—did he shoot at you?”
“No. I already said that.”
“Are you sure?”
Cate doesn’t answer. She runs through the scene in her head, the sound of shots and she turns around and the man is slumped on the wheel and the motorcycle’s coming at her, then she’s in the cart and hurting—was she shot at? She can’t breathe.
David smiles kindly, murmuring, “No pressure, take your time.”
What did his superiors say before he left Iraq? The young colonel was a model soldier, decorated for bravery in Afghanistan, just like his grandfather in the Second World War, though the old man didn’t crack up. Fallujah was a shock, but Lane’s made some significant contribution, and we must take care of our own. Besides he’s damned good with other negotiations, he’s psych ops material. He may not be one for the rough and tumble of the field, but he can extricate the truth nicely. Send him for some R and R in the tropics. He’ll be okay there for a while.
“Forget the shooter. Where was this boy who saved you, Cate, while all this was happening?”
“He was—with another boy.”
The man at the window leans forward. There were two boys, yes.
The colonel nods, then says gently, “And what were these boys doing?”
“They were—they had this cart—”
“A cart—what kind of cart?”
“No, no, they’re not what you think—they helped me. They took me to the hut in that cart, they risked their lives, they saved me—” Her voice rises.
“It’s okay, Cate, it’s okay, I understand.”
She grabs his hand. “You must understand, please you must!” She keeps seeing how they held mother and son away from each other, and the rifles pointed at the boy, and his face, his face—her voice keeps rising. “They took care of me, his mother took care of me, I was sick, and I couldn’t remember—”
“You’re okay, Cate, you’re doing fine—what couldn’t you remember?”
The door opens; it’s the doctor. “I’m sorry, you should go.”
David nods at the other man, who stands up reluctantly, still silent. “Take care, Cate. We’ll chat again tomorrow. By the way, you should call home—”
“There’s no one home.”
“I still think you should call your husband.”
She’s crying now. “They’re innocent, it’s all a mistake, please help them—they saved my life, I’m telling you, they need help.” She’s almost screaming. “I just know something bad happened—they need help, they’ll get hurt, they’re hurt and I—I—” She’s completely undone.
The doctor opens the door for the men.
She calls out to them. “Please find out where they are, if they’re safe. Please, please ask for me.”
82
“Mr. American, please ask for me.” In Fallujah, a woman grabbed his hand and wouldn’t let go. His men cocked their rifles, ready to frisk her in case this was a terrorist ploy, but she was undaunted. “Ah-med, Ahmed,” she kept chanting the name, broken up by her weeping, begging him to ask about her son who’d been arrested for insurgency. Something about her compelled him to listen, to stay a minute too long. Maybe it was her hand around his, that grip of mothers. Then all went wrong. A shot was fired but it was one of his men who fell. A sniper from one of the houses. The next time they were back in the area, she was no longer there, her house was no longer there. But what made the news were the wounded American soldier and the colonel’s error of judgment that endangered the lives of his men.
That mother screaming for her son. That hut at the intersection. They too will be lost, but how many will ask about their story?
Please ask for me. David sits in his car outside the hospital, his hands immobile on the wheel. He wonders if he did a survey around the world, how many he would find unable to do their own asking about a missing son. How easy for one query to bear the weight of a life, of many lives—the one asked about, the one asking, the one asked to ask who finds himself unwittingly owning the question, owning the lost one. He hears Cate again, her query. Such desperation to know, as if the boy were her own. He inquired about where they were keeping the boy a
nd his mother, but Roberto Espinosa answered with undisguised contempt. “Of course, you had to do all the talking, Colonel. Shoulder to shoulder? What a joke. The case is not about your American compatriot, it’s about my country.”
After David left Cate’s room, he felt again as if someone had knocked him about. He remembers how he rang his wife all the way from Fallujah, because he could no longer find that mother’s house. She had stopped talking to him because of Iraq but for the first time, she took the call. “Come home,” she said. “Just come home.”
He did, because they sent him home, and there she did not know what to do with him. They did not know what to do with each other. Since then she has acted as if she has been grievously wronged, endlessly complaining that when he’s home, he’s raring to leave. That he broods. That he drags a shadow around. That he has lost all desire.
David slumps onto the wheel. It receives his wretchedness, like another face that’s perpetually hard, undaunted by journeys. Come home. Ah, all these wives and mothers waiting, beckoning, as if we’ve just gone to the corner store on an errand and can easily slip back into their arms, a boy again, enfolded.
83
He was coming home after an interview on a corruption case. The police told her he was eating a pork bun. They found the peelings in the car.
Lydia de Vera turns off the television. It is midnight. There’s nothing much to know that she doesn’t already know by heart, and she can’t bear hearing about the mother and child in custody. All that show of force in case the terrorist cult attempts a rescue—it makes her sick. Her husband would have been there, barging into that police compound, pushing and pushing until he found out the truth. He would have been murdered all over again.
Foolish men. Not for a moment do they think of their wives who will be widows or their mothers who will be childless, but about country and integrity, the bigger picture. Always the home is too small. The heroic resides somewhere else. If not the streets, the halls of government, or a war.
Would they have loved them less if they were not heroes? No. They would have loved them longer.
They had the funeral today, barely a flash in the news. Now she must fold her husband’s clothes to give away. At least there’s something to do.
DECEMBER 24
84
The morning star is brighter, perhaps because it’s Christmas Eve. Though it’s only the early hours, pilgrims must be guided to the stable where it all began. But this first story is too familiar and the star has long been unmasked as a planet. Pilgrimages no longer end with epiphanies. We know too much now.
One can know too much at twelve years old. Elvis sits on his favorite bench along Manila Bay, opening and closing the stolen pocket knife. He can peer a little now from his left eye. He runs a finger over it to check if the swelling has subsided. The gesture is as slow as his thoughts. He goes through each event since he sneaked away with his friend to Star City. He hasn’t slept since then. Each little moment adds up to a lifetime in his head.
He wonders how long Noland was in that hotel room.
He comes here for the sea breeze, the constancy of the waves. They settle him after an overnight job. The momentary rest feels timeless. Beside him the statue of the mayor reads his newspaper forever. In the early hours of the morning, this companionable sitting together is fixed. Sometimes he dozes, leaning against the reading man, until the first metro aide comes sweeping by. But now the cold bronze makes him shiver.
He could not shoot that Jesus. That Jesus knew too much, staring at him like that, seeing him weep.
The toy revolver presses against his hip, mocking him. He remembers the folk ditty Leron-Leron Sinta, a silly love song.
Ako’y ibigin mo, lalaking matapang
Hindi natatakot sa baril-barilan
Ang sundang ko’y pito, ang baril ko’y siyam
Isang pinggang pansit ang aking kalaban.
Love me, a brave man
Unafraid of playing shoot-outs
My knives are seven, my guns nine
A plate of noodles is my enemy.
He shuts the knife. A crisp, urgent snap. He likes it—it’s real.
After he left the church, he walked to the old malls. They were closed by then. He hung around the car parks. He didn’t have to wait too long. Soon a man approached. He was much younger than the others and friendly in an ordinary way. He looked concerned about the boy’s bruises. Elvis thought he was Filipino but he couldn’t speak the language, or English. They went to a noodle house, quietly had a bowl each. They went to the toilets. It was quick, easy, no go-betweens. No more five-star arrangements, no lanterns as ploys, no games. He tells himself he likes this better. It’s real and his own call. Like the next one at the car park. That was even quicker, though cheaper. The man was local so he bargained well.
85
“What’s this, a wake?” a lantern seller asks.
“Worse,” another murmurs. “Like some ginger tea?”
At a stall in the intersection, no one has slept. Yes, there’s some relief because the bulldozer is gone, but still everyone wants to keep watch lest the police pick up anyone else. After the arrest they did stall to stall then house to house chats. They were after the men, especially all the male children. They hammered the hut shut and taped it with a sign: “Keep Out.” Two police cars are parked nearby, and the traffic is still being rerouted. It’s unnaturally quiet here where bonds are being repaired.
“I’ve got something stronger—like some?” Mang Gusting offers.
“Saint Michael, preserve us.” Mang Pedring takes a swig.
Ginebra San Miguel. Reliable firewater in times like this. Even the women take turns.
“What misfortune,” Lisa sighs, the fire in her throat and chest not quite a comfort.
“What do you think will happen?” Vic can’t hide his worry, but still he works with meticulous care. Each piece of shell is polished, each held against the light to check for cracks. Everyone wonders why he doesn’t stop, but no one has the heart to query his earnest labor. His brother is absent from this gathering. He took his time before he joined in, getting Vim drunk first so he’d sleep, so he’d stop blabbering about the cold steel on his skin, how he thought—he thought—
“I think you should tell your brother to shut up from now on. Don’t get involved,” Mario lectures him. “To save his neck, you know what I mean?”
“It’s bad-luck Christmas for all of us.” Manang Betya wrings her hands. “But we can shift luck … we’ll figure it out…” But her voice has no conviction and her numbers will never win. Here the odds are greater than the number of stars in the sky.
“Who would ever think that Nena and Noland, plus another boy, they say—ay, it’s too much to think about.” Lisa shakes her head sorrowfully. She has her own sorrows. She’s been trying to catch the eye of Mang Gusting again, with little success. All these fears hanging around have made her even lonelier. “Noland. Of all people.”
“You believe it?”
“Well, they found the Amerkana in there—”
“But a child, and a mute one at that—”
“A child and his mother. Don’t forget they’re together in this.”
“I’m glad that Cate was found, otherwise—a war at our doorstep.”
“We’d have lost everything.”
Saint Michael has passed from hand to hand again; the bottle is empty.
“Bad-luck Christmas for all of us, except Mario, of course. So when did Helen find out, really?”
“She’s probably the only one sound asleep now, with all that reward.”
“How much did she get?”
“You’re rich, Mario.”
Mario waves all the remarks away, saying they haven’t received anything, that it was probably just talk, and if they do, they’ll give a big party and everyone will be invited. How’s that?
Mang Gusting absentmindedly balances the empty bottle on an unfinished lantern, with no success. It topples down. Bad-luck Ch
ristmas. His thoughts have flown away to where someone hasn’t sent a Christmas card. “What you see isn’t always the true story,” he murmurs to no one.
“Of course, how sure are we it’s those kids? What about that Pizza Hut man?”
“That terorista?”
“No, it’s kultong terorista now, didn’t you know?” A terrorist cult, which leaves the others open-mouthed. “You don’t watch the news, but I do. That mother and son are probably part of a cult—”
“Ay, Dios ko, it’s the devil among us.”
“How terrible. Thank God they were taken away.”
“They’re not really from here, though, are they?”
“Yes, they’ve always kept to themselves, they’re strangers.”
The excision is swift and comforting. They’re not one of us.
86
“It’s cooler here in the early hours,” the American journalist notes and Eugene agrees. He shivers. They haven’t left their post outside the police compound. The media have dwindled but a curious crowd of vagrants trickle by. A rice-cake wheelie stall is parked among them. The enterprising vendor has instant coffee and ginger tea on the side. The crowd is fed and warmed.
“How can they do this to a child?”
“You mean, how can a child do this?”
“I don’t believe that.”
“What don’t you believe? Cate Burns was found in his hut.”
“And that means an abduction and the child’s a terrorist—you kidding?”
“A terrorist conspiring with that Pizza Hut man in whom the police seem to have lost interest now. Don’t forget, the first case and the real one is the murder of one of us.”
“And the terrorist cult?”
“You’re pursuing the American conspiracy line.”
“I pursue every line in my job.”
The conjectures usher in the day, and the casual rounds of the police to keep the small crowd from the gate. They’ll all go home soon. It’s Christmas Eve. The lanterns around the block flash a reminder.
The Solemn Lantern Maker Page 14