She closes her eyes, opens them again. After days in that hut and the creek nearby, she drowns in this antiseptic smell, with a touch of flowers. She squints at the wall, so white now, as if someone has painted it afresh. No, not so white, but empty. The television is gone.
Yesterday when her visitors left, Cate thought she could ask someone, anyone, in the hospital for news. She opened the door. The two Americans stood up simultaneously, trying to look solicitous. “Anything you need, Cate?” She shook her head, shut the door again. She paced till midnight, pushing her panic down. From the window she saw a busy street dripping with fairy lights, figured her room was high up. She changed into street clothes, but what could she do? She lifted the phone. Who does she know in this city? She turned on the television, and laughed at her last resort. How absurd: when in trouble, watch TV. But surely there will be news about her rescue, about them.
The programs were mostly Christmas extravaganzas she couldn’t understand. She flipped channels and found CNN. She stopped, distracted, not by the news but by the inflections of home in the voice of the an-chorwoman. Always an easy confidence, even in stories of disaster. Iraq filled the screen, then the usual honor roll of dead American soldiers, naming each one, validating a life, its loss, the stars and stripes ever present in the picture. Those grim and somber stars.
Then the rhetoric on the war against terrorism, still calm, directed against another part of the globe. She could hardly breathe as she came face to face with herself: Cate Burns rescued from a terrorist cult in the Philippines! The Abu Sayyaf now has its claws into the capital. This hostage crisis is more chilling than the earlier cases in Mindanao, because of its “bizarre circumstances.” Then the clip of the helicopter over the lantern stalls, the railway track, the huts, and Nena and Noland as she had last seen them, while the anchorwoman asked, “Can a child be part of a terrorist conspiracy?”
“How—I—” Cate felt she’d be sick. She burst into the adjoining lounge, heading for the door, but was detained by the guards.
“Can we help?”
“I’ve got to go to them—they’re innocent—”
“Innocent?” One of the men led her from the door. “What do you mean?”
“Nena and Noland, the mother and her son—”
“I’m sure they’re okay. Now go back to bed. Everything will be fine.”
“Don’t patronize me!” she snapped. “I saw them on TV. They said they’re terrorists—how—I must go, they’re innocent, I know it, we’ve got to help them, please, I’ve got to go.” She began to struggle.
“Sorry, we can’t allow—”
“Can’t allow what—innocence?” She hit the arm detaining her. “Of course you’re supposed to be guarding it.”
One man kept leading her back to her room, but the other guard couldn’t restrain his impatience. “Let’s get this clear. The case is a local matter and you’re an American citizen.”
“What’s it got to do with being American?”
“Everything.” The man was shocked that this screaming woman had missed the point. “The last thing we need is a hysterical—”
She slapped him. “Don’t you even fucking care?” Then she kept screaming, hitting at the men dragging her back inside, and the doctor walked in and all went hazy, save for the grim and somber stars.
93
The widow watches the morning news as she sorts the boxes: what will be used for the case, what will be kept, what will be given away. Last night, she packed all her husband’s possessions—mostly files, papers and more papers, and only two boxes of clothes. Her Jimmy never cared about what he wore. His colors clashed; he thought darning socks was a waste of time. He cared only about his stories and the arguments that went on forever in his head. She could hear him thinking while they made love. Once he mumbled something about an extra-judicial killing, perhaps a line for a story. It infuriated her. His sense of justice was more ardent than his desire. She pushed him away and he murmured, “How can I love you if I don’t love what makes us human?”
The news plays again the clip of the mother screaming as she’s wrenched away from her boy.
What makes us human? That mother’s despair, its resonance in my gut. The widow hears herself answering the dead.
The news confirms that the boy was there when her husband was shot. So was an older boy, a street kid, who hasn’t been found, not yet, but they’ve identified him now.
Again and again her hands sweep back her hair, and her eyes gather the room. What makes us human—can she ever sweep this back into place?
The boys sold lanterns together. The mute boy sold her husband a lantern just before the shooting. Was this, in fact, a sign for the assassin? In the boy’s hut, they found blood on his lanterns, possibly the American’s. The investigation continues.
She sighs at the screen. That we can fabricate stories is what makes us human and keeps us at the top of the food chain.
Again the speculation about a terrorist cult, but less incredulous than in last night’s broadcast. And if indeed this cult exists, what happens to the allegations against Senator G.B.? There’s a quick clip of the senator having breakfast with his family. He pours his daughter a glass of milk, he kisses his young wife.
What makes us human? The widow feels sick to her stomach. She wants to argue with the dead.
94
Almost everyone knows about the other boy by now, except the boy himself. He’s asleep beside the mayor reading a paper. A metro aide shakes him awake. It’s midday at the Baywalk. The tourist strip must not be littered by vagrants, at least not this bench.
“Not here, boy.” The metro aide keeps shaking him.
Elvis stares at the tinsel strand hanging over the man’s shirt with the picture of the country’s president. “W-what?” He’s disoriented.
“Sleep wherever, just not here.” The man waves him away.
“You want to sweep me up too?” Elvis is quickly himself again.
“Be grateful it’s me, not the police. By the way, what happened to that eye, huh?”
“I’m awake now, so why heckle me? The police have nothing against enjoying the sea breeze—do you?”
“I’m just being helpful,” the metro aide says grudgingly, and gets on with the sweeping.
“Asshole!” the boy calls out to him in English and feels almost all right again. He pats the gun at his hip, then the knife, runs a hand over his bruises, and buttons up his shirt. The last time he washed was with that tourist who roughed him up in the shower. He grooms himself, wetting his hair with a bit of spit, pulling his collar just so to hide the rip, then puts on his cap, turning it this way and that for the right angle. He takes time with these details, slowly collecting himself, but try as he might there’s a piece that he can’t retrieve. He’ll never know what happened in the room next to his in that hotel. Maybe it was really just pictures. But Bobby is a liar.
The sea breeze is a mercy. Christmas Eve is promising to be even hotter and the traffic is hopeless. The last minute shopping, the rushed homecomings and the revelries buzz around the boy gathering the remains of himself.
95
The man who walks in is not in uniform. He’s gray and small; he looks like someone’s grandfather. Nena is relieved. And he has a tray of rice and hot chicken soup, and Coke and sweet peanut cakes. Behind him, the guard is carrying a table for the lunch and thinking that the prisoners have better fare than he does. He sniffs the air; he can smell pee. He begins to say something but the chief frowns to silence him, shows him where to set the table, then sends him off.
“So Nena and Noland, shall we have lunch? By the way, I’m Roberto. I help around here.” He notes that the breakfast is untouched. “I’m hungry, come.” He begins setting out the dishes.
Nena shifts on the floor; the boy whimpers.
“Are you hungry too, Noland?” he asks.
“Please, sir, he can’t speak and he doesn’t—and we don’t know anything, sir.”
“I kno
w—but call me Mang Bert. And let’s eat.”
“My son, he’s not well—”
“So he must eat.”
The mother whispers into her son’s ear. He whimpers in response. They’re still locked together, trying to look small.
When the senator rang, Roberto felt more anger than dread. He could hardly speak. When he walked in just now, he felt it again. Terrorist cult? Look at them now, cowering against that wall. But he had to smile, had to be nice. He made sure he ordered a good lunch. While waiting, he went over the boy’s angels again, all the winged stick figures, then the phone rang for the nth time: “Move the prisoners away from the media. They’re all out to get me, so do what you can and if you don’t—”
The chief makes sure he does this alone. He will make it as painless as possible. He will try.
“It’s yummy chicken soup, Noland.” He takes it to the boy, close enough to whet his appetite.
The mother receives the soup. She takes a spoonful. “Have a bit, Noland, you haven’t eaten anything since yesterday.” Since you came home, she wants to say. “Just a sip.” She can’t say more.
I sipped so much of the red stuff back there and fell asleep for a long time. Noland remembers but he can’t tell his mother, who turns his face away from her chest so he can have a sip.
“You say he’s unwell.”
She nods as she forces some soup into her son’s mouth.
“What happened, Nena?”
She keeps feeding the boy soup. It runs down his chest.
“Did anyone hurt you, Noland?”
She is crying. It’s good to be asked, ay, it’s good to be asked.
96
The wheelie stall has ditched rice cakes and tea for proper lunch. It disappeared for a while, then returned with a pot of rice, fried fish, and mung bean soup. The vendor even brought a bench for his customers, and his nine-year-old daughter. She’s quick on her feet, used to this kind of work. Only three media people have remained but there’s still talk about possible people power. Business could be good yet.
People power is hope performed. Thank God for the big, fervid show. A dictator, a corrupt president is overthrown. A dam is arrested, a mine, the rape of a forest, the powerful machine churning against us. Masses take to the streets to unhinge the world from its axis. Here’s hoping.
A cameraman texts another activist friend. “I’m sure she’ll come, I’m sure they’ll all come. One more rice, please,” he tells the girl.
He works with Eugene, who wants to snap back, get real! Aren’t you tired of people power? These days it’s more of a mob desperate to get a few pesos, a free lunch, and a T-shirt from whoever is organizing a cause. Years ago, we marched and died on the streets. Now we die in ourselves, in our fear or sheer exhaustion. Or simply indifference, the safest of all.
But Eugene is afraid to speak. He keeps his head down over his meal. The boss in the studio has been ringing them to make sure they return the gear. Not enough cameras to cover Christmas Eve and anyway Eugene should be at the wedding of a politician’s daughter and a shipping tycoon. It’s the wedding of the year, a Christmas tying of the knot by two of the most powerful Filipino families. Why aren’t they answering calls? Because they’re on a stakeout outside the police station, not so much for a story but for hope, which left, piece by piece, as the media went home. See you, call me if anything happens. The barricade is dismantled, the police return inside the gate, or perhaps home.
As Eugene picks the bones from his fish, he thinks of his mother, he thinks of the sea in his village. Wouldn’t it be nice … He’s ashamed of them all, their wish for rest, their resignation.
“Hoy, Eugene, she’s coming after all,” the cameraman waves his phone around as if blessing his mung bean soup. The phone beeps: another message. “And that American who left this morning, he says he’ll come back later and we’ll get that boy out. Oh yes, they’ll all come back.”
Eugene is dying to sleep in his own bed.
97
“Did they hurt your friend too?” He speaks slowly, full of sympathy. He spoons more rice onto the boy’s plate. He’s sitting with him now on the couch, and eating. The boy is ravenous.
“He’s not a friend, sir, he’s bad-bad, a devil boy,” the mother protests.
“Really? And why’s that?”
The mother ignores the question, afraid she’s said too much.
“He could be hungry, too, Noland, wherever he is.”
The boy remembers twelve fish-ball sticks for the twelve days of Christmas, and the noodles at midnight, the McDonald’s pancakes with sweet water on them, and the full revolution of a cap when the tummy is full and warm.
“Where do you think is he, Noland?”
He doesn’t want to remember more.
“Don’t you think we should find out if he’s okay?”
“That whore-child,” the mother says through gritted teeth. The thought cuts through her breast.
“What was that, Nena?”
She stops eating; she has lost all appetite. She puts an arm around her son, pulling him away from the strange man who is trying to be kind. “Can we go home now, sir?”
“Ah … maybe we can go to another home, somewhere secret and safe. Those who hurt your son might return to the hut, who knows.”
“Ay, yes sir. Thank you sir, thank you.” She grabs his hand and kisses it.
The chief feels an uneasy flush in his chest. But he smiles and allows the woman to lap up his benevolence.
98
By late afternoon Elvis is back with the mayor reading his newspaper, an empty McDonald’s bag between them as if they’ve just had a snack together. Earlier he wandered off to the old red-light district, trying his luck, but everyone seemed to be rushing off somewhere, frantic in their revelry, strides purposeful, bags of gifts secure, stomachs primed for the midnight Christmas feast in a few hours. No time for chance adventures. Even the secret brothel behind a moneychanger’s shop was closed.
Elvis huddles close to the mayor. It used to be perfect here, before they added this other man pointing out to sea. The statue of the murdered senator makes the boy uneasy. It’s as if he knows that something’s out there and he’s not telling Elvis. He’s looking far away, unaware that Elvis exists. But the mayor, he’s different. He lends him an arm when he’s tired. In another life, perhaps he would ask him, “What are you reading?” And the mayor would hush him like a proper father and tell him to go and play.
What are you reading? Elvis has no clue that, around the city, many have read about him, the other boy, including Bobby Cool.
In an old apartment above a row of shops, Bobby is waking up with a hangover, and reading the afternoon tabloid makes his head throb even more. He’s like a proper father in his initial shock. My God, where’s that boy now? So it all happened under his very nose. Ah, those sneaky boys made a fool out of him. Then the possibilities unfold. The pimp sees himself saving the boy all over again, the two of them running away from the big city to start anew perhaps in an island resort with all those happy, spending tourists. He could retire from wheeling and dealing through the smog.
It never lifts, not in this part of the city. Over Manila Bay the smog is perpetual; one barely sees the blue sky, but Elvis never looks for it. He cases the passersby, intent on the foreign men, checking for clues. Who to approach, how to approach. He longs to be taken to a hotel, a bed, a shower. Maybe some lonely father-uncle-friend will take him in till Christmas. Once Bobby arranged such a man for him. The Austrian took him to a resort. He took in another boy from the local village. They swam and partied for two days. He taught them Christmas carols in his language. He was the nicest ever.
99
Night has fallen. There are more monsters in the shadows and trust is harder to muster. David is stopped at the gate.
“Sorry, the chief isn’t here. The boy and his mother aren’t here. Do you have an ID, sir? Can we see it, please? Sorry, we can’t let you in.” The guard looks him over
suspiciously.
He tries to be nice, he argues, but knows it’s futile. After the meeting with the consul he drove around, willingly got stranded by traffic, shopped for his daughters, and thought some more. Should he return to the hospital? But what could he say? Should he go home? “Go home, David, Come home, David.” Everyone is sending him home, that vulnerable place which justifies arsenals, the reason invoked when we go to war. We must protect our home; everyone against our home is evil; there’s no other home outside ours. He’s been going home forever. The long journey is a wretched pilgrimage. It does a man in. He can’t return, because he can’t leave what he has become. These days his wife despises him, he’s sure of it; she flinches when he comes close. But his little daughters love him desperately, or maybe it’s the other way round. He’s afraid for them, for all those children he’s seen. He wonders what his grandfather would have said. Surely he would have commiserated with him—he understood war. Or did he? Once as a frail old man, he showed his grandson his medals. David remembers hugging him. Then he heard him whisper, “It’s not patriotism that wins you these, boy … not what keeps you fighting in the thick of it … but because there’s nothing else to do, and you’re so damned afraid the other guy will shoot first.” Then he felt a hand patting his back, a tremulous assurance. “Sometimes … I’m ashamed.”
“Sir—sir, did you hear what I said?”
“Yes?” David realizes the guard has been trying to explain something to him. “I said, I’m looking for Roberto Espinosa—he knows me, Colonel David Lane. I’m here about the boy and his mother.”
The Solemn Lantern Maker Page 16