“I wish it were simpler,” she said. “Any message for me— from . . . ?”
“Not yet. But why don’t you make for the other side of the island? There are friendly fisher folk there. They’ll take you to the next island, turn you over to other friends who’ll take you to a third island where you can catch a plane for Manila. You can be home by evening.”
“I came with friends.”
“Rot. They’ll be safe. They won’t go near the stage.”
“Should I warn them?”
He made an incredulous sound. She shrugged.
“Then I have to stay.”
A pause. Then he shrugged.“Suit yourself. But remember who you are. what you are. You’re in no position to be generous.”He began to unfold his body but changed his mind just as quickly. “Do me a favor. When things begin to happen, head for the other side of the island. The pier here will be secured at once. No possibilities there at all. So head for the other side. No, no; cancel that. Better yet, make for the cemetery, just beyond the town, away from the sea. Stay there until I come for you. Be there alone.”
“But what about—?”
“The well-fed pig?” He spat the words out. “If you keep thinking of that being as a well-fed pig, you won’t have so many problems. And if you kept in mind what you are, who you are, you won’t even have a well-fed pig to worry about.”
“That’s not fair,” she said fiercely.
“So, what is?” He rose now, not looking at her, and threw the rest of his words over his shoulder. “The cemetery. Remember.”
He walked away quickly. She did not try to stop him; she knew he would know where and how to contact her—if she was needed. She waited, forcing herself to breathe slowly, calmly, giving him the time he needed to disappear. It was cool inside the kiosk and odd that, despite the crowds on the lawn and the streets, no one came. Even the drums were muted. She glanced at the ceiling’s arch; the kiosk was obviously quite old. Perhaps, its stones had been glued together with egg whites. The Spaniards had favored such masonry.
She chose to leave by the southern door, sighing as she did so at the scene before her. The town plaza was a riot of confusion with walls of bodies blocking a view of the roads jammed by the parade and dancers. The sun, a white blur in the blue, cloudless sky, was relentless. She blinked her eyes. She caught a flash of olive green; a soldier, barely glimpsed between the crowd and the dark bole of an acacia tree. She sighed again, wondering how much longer the war would go on—this elusive, almost illusory war that was everywhere and yet was nowhere. By some quirk of fate, she had managed to thrust herself right into it. Somewhere, sometime, she had committed herself to what had seemed to be proper action and that was it. All it had taken and all it would take. And the vow she had made, while still a vague child, that she would never, never be involved in any war, whosever war, was broken. All it had taken was the conviction that she knew what had to be done and that she would do it. That was all.
She cut across the lawn, shifting the pouch tied to her waist to a more comfortable position. Voices rose about her, calling, offering wine and food and companionship. It was a rule of the Festival that no one should be left by himself to laze away. She accepted a cigarette from a young man stretched out on the grass and as she smoked, scanned the shifting mass of bodies beyond the trees fringing the plaza. There were no uniforms as far as she could see. Perhaps, it had been a stray soldier, assigned to the island and savoring the celebration.
“Don’t sigh too much,” the young man said to her. He patted the grass beside him, asking her to lie down.
She shook her head but squatted down anyway. “I have to find my friends,” she said.
“Can’t I get to know you?”
She snorted. “If you did, you wouldn’t like me.”
He made a doubting sound. “Are you a whore?” he asked happily. “A party girl? A tourist?”
She cut through his words and rose to her feet. “A widow,” she said abruptly. “With a widow’s woes.”
“I love the way you say that,” he said but she was already walking away.
A ball of anger tightened in her. That wasn’t it at all, not at all, she scolded herself. A widow in the archipelago had freedom equal to a whore and more respectability. That hadn’t started it—but how it began, why it happened, no one could answer. The drums, which answered all questions, merely laughed. It must have been a stranger, they said, a man who one day raised his head from whatever work he was doing and said he had had enough. Of the price of salt, perhaps, the cost of rice, or, maybe, of the five perpetually agape mouths of his family. Or of this or that. No matter. One morning, seven thousand one hundred islands awoke with an ominous roar and the Festival began.
The mountain warriors heard it the day three lowland merchants, pleading the cost of fuel, tried to take away their cabbage harvest for a song. G-strings flapping in a ravine wind, the warriors took counsel with one another and chose one able-bodied youth to deal with the merchants. The young man in turn called on his sworn brothers and, together, they decapitated the traders with machetes while the others rolled cabbages down cliff edges and wished the worms the good fortune of eating.
The youths stuck the merchants’ heads on their spear points and danced back to their village, an impromptu song about death and celebration on their lips. Along the way, they gathered the orange blossoms of the fire-trees and wove victory wreaths while the village gongs announced the coming of the ritual feast that would mark the end of peace. The little thunder of the gongs smashed against the mountainside, bounced on itself, and rolled down to the sea edge where fishermen, sitting before their evening meal, heard and deciphered the message. Their eyes grew wary.
Upending their boats on the beach, the fishermen abandoned the sea. A melancholic wind blew through towns and rolled inland. Milk disappeared; piles of tomatoes, lettuce, and eggplants putrefied into a liquid mess at railroad stations as the farmers, unable to pay the cost of transport, abandoned their produce.
In the midst of this disturbance, the Noble and Ever Loyal City of Manila, hemmed in by the Magellanic and Chinese seas, lay lost in its dreams. So long as the city was at rest, nothing could be wrong. Wise men knew this and one such bureaucrat, feeling the dogs of desperation skulking at the city’s boundaries, spent a sleepless night pondering whether or not to raise the cost of public transportation. He tried to soften the blow by decreeing that fares should be computed, on a graduated basis, by the mile. Thus, his conscience eased, he congratulated himself for making it possible for his countrymen to deal with the terrible increase in oil prices and went to sleep.
Alas, distance was reckoned in kilometers. And alas, he who could rectify the error took off for Europe to try for a cure of his headache at Lourdes. Such a simple mistake—which blossomed rapidly into a monstrosity as fistfights broke out amidst yelled mathematics. How much from Quiapo to Diliman, from Cubao to Diliman, and from Cubao to Quiapo? From the boulevard to the market, from the city hall to the cemetery, and from the cemetery to everywhere? Such a simple error—and yet, along with innumerable other acts of stupidity, it became the final insult in a long string of insults. The man in the street, walking about and scribbling sums furiously with his pencil, sulked and pouted and seethed and remembered all the small grievances of his life which, taken singly, were tolerable enough but when added up—
Some son-of-a-goat had better do something, a bus driver said. A passenger heard and, upon getting off the bus, picked up a stone and hurled it toward the road. To his delight, a barrage of stones and empty bottles followed his virgin throw. In five minutes flat, the boulevard was stubbled with rocks, pebbles, concrete chunks, stones, and broken glass. Now the schoolchildren dumping their books, joined in, filling their satchels with ammunition. By early evening, the main avenues were barricaded and a few thousand men and women warded off the night chill with a bonfire of buses.
Anna and her husband, Manolo Montreal, were eating moon cakes at the intersection o
f Quezon Boulevard and Recto Avenue when a half-dozen military trucks came careening down the road, screeched to a halt, and disgorged soldiers. The two forgot that moon cakes were mandatory when one was young and newly married. They watched enthralled as the soldiers formed groups, fanned out, and disappeared into the side alleys of downtown Manila while a force of maybe two hundred lined up across the boulevard and turned their faces to the distant bonfires. Another hundred positioned themselves behind garbage bins, parked cars, and lampposts. At 10p.m., the order to fire was given. A wind blew through the silence that followed the command. In Anna’s hand, the moon cake shriveled to pellets as M-i6s, 45s, tear-gas canisters, and grenades brought an unexpected New Year’s Eve to the city. The first body to stretch out on the cement cried out for the wrath of God.
Through Molotov flames, pillbox fumes, and pools of blood and oil, the soldiers marched forward, step by step. With precision learned from the firing range, they pumped bullets into the crania of young men and women betrayed by burning vehicles. By this time, Anna and Manolo had dashed up a building’s fire escape ladder and from its safety watched the impossible war. Amazing, Manolo said over and over again, they’re fighting back. Amazing.
And creating music all the way, Anna wanted to reply—for there it was, over the contrapuntal of gunshots and the whoomph of tear-gas canisters, the delicate shattering of glass as the crowd retreated, smashing display windows of unaffordable merchandise. They scattered, regrouped, gave way and regained lost ground, dragged out the wounded and the dead, crawled through debris to hurl pillboxes with their makeshift shrapnel of nails and glass shards, and yelled from time to time, in bitter humor, at the soldiers. Surrender now, they shrieked in half a dozen languages, we are the people! Hearing this, Manolo burst into laughter though tears were streaking down his cheeks and Anna’s nostrils dilated, savoring the words along with the smell of roasted corn for this was October, the time to eat corn still sizzling from the red-eyed coals fanned by iron-haired women squatting at street corners, war or no war.
2
The toke had barely touched Adrian’s lips when the soldier appeared; he could only raise his eyes to heaven and curse his childhood friend and schoolmate Julius who had found him in the Festival and had steered him into an alley flanked by the gray backsides of houses. But Julius flicked a glance at the uniform and grinned. The soldier shrugged and moved away.
“How did you manage that?” Adrian asked, impressed.
“I bought the stuff from him.” Julius laughed.
The others, three young men whom Julius had introduced as junior stockbrokers, nodded knowingly. Adrian exhaled audibly and mumbled something about finding his lost women.
“Trust you to come with not one but two,” Julius said.
“Doesn’t matter. I lost both.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” one of the young men said.
“Adrian never worries,” Julius said quickly. “He was born on the proper side of morning.”
Laughter again. Adrian, embarrassed, wondered what the proper side of morning was to Julius. He awoke each day to the stain of sunlight on the windowsill and cooing from the dovecote in the garden below his upstairs bedroom. Invariably, when he reached the kitchen of his parents’ house, there would be the scent of fresh bread and chocolate. All were a confirmation of his well-being and he had never questioned how it was possible that all his mornings were on the proper side. He was after all heir to seven major corporations, had been an athlete in college, and was all of twenty-three years old. He eyed Julius, noting his Chinese mestizo face and his slim, undeniably Asiatic body.
“Remember the girl you went after,” Julius asked suddenly, “the one you used to say looked absolutely transcendental?”
Adrian made a noncommittal sound.
“She had a spectacular career, friend,” Julius went on. “Taken in a gun battle in Malabon. Rat-tat-tat. Three soldiers killed, two wounded. On the partisans’ side, two killed, one wounded. And there was your lady, cool as anything, shearing a hedge of violets with M-16 bullets. The soldiers barely managed to subdue them, the crazy kids. So they strangled one of the leftover boys, just to even up the score. Your friend went berserk.”
Adrian shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” said one of the young men. “Can’t see why people can’t simply live with it—with all these changes. Everything’s been fine so far.”
“True,” said another. “Kids taking on the entire government. Madness.”
“Yeah,” Julius said. “Anyway, they got her. Disappeared. Thought you’d like to know.” He took a last puff on the toke, eyed it before dropping it to the ground and grinding it under his right foot.
“Who knows what I want to know?” Adrian blurted, his voice harsh. He threw a curt look at Julius. He could feel himself flushing as he clamped down on the memory of a sixteen-year-old body drowning in a loose blue-and-white school uniform with only a foot-long rosary for decoration. He had been young and foolish then, and was still young and foolish now—for the eyes in the face that rose before him were Anna’s: intent yet vague, distant and yet precise. Transcendental.
“You had a genius for nicknames,” Julius said, as though divining his thoughts.
He waved a dismissal at the group and walked away, his shoulders rigid. Around the corner, he came upon a dwarf in a miniature cardboard tank. The dwarf aimed the tank’s turret at Adrian, stuck his tongue out, and fired away, a tinhorn rattle nearly shaking the gun loose. Adrian laughed.
A boy came running, holding up garlands of bamboo whistles on leather thongs. Adrian chose three and paid for them. One he slung about his neck; the others, he pocketed, thinking he would give them to the two women if and when he found them. As he moved closer to the plaza, the crowd began to thicken. A laughing Japanese girl caught him in a pirouette; he danced a measure with her before she ran off, drawn by sudden screams from the crowd. A transvestite appeared, holding aloft a bottle of Archangel Beer, and Adrian obliged by taking two swallows. The beer was cold and good. As he handed the bottle back, he was nearly knocked down by a blond woman who, sprinting from nowhere, sprang on his back and dug her heels into his thighs. He obliged her as well, carrying her toward the noise of the Festival until his breath ran out and his heart thudded against his ribs. He did not hesitate. He shook her off without warning, throwing her into a knot of male teenagers who, with great cheer, caught her in their arms. At that instant, the rhythm of the drums changed; the packed bodies before him shifted and he could see clear across the road to the plaza lawn. Anna and Eliza were sitting on the cement ledge, their arms on each other’s shoulders, their heads touching. Eliza was whispering into Anna’s ear and Adrian could almost feel her moist breath. Anna looked incredulous, the fingers of her left hand half covering her mouth.
He quickened his step but the crowd surged forward and caught him. He rammed elbows and shoulders against the wall of flesh, trying to push his way through. It was useless. Something had wedged the onlookers into a compact mass. The drums drew closer, the whistles grew shriller, and curses began to ring out in the translucent heat. Adrian closed his eyes and shook his head. It wouldn’t do, he told himself, to pass out in that crush. Beer and wine fumes boiled behind his eyes. A current caught, bore him forward.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself standing at the edge of the road. A mini-van was passing in front of the crowd and through a window misted by air conditioning, an oval face looked out—a face perfectly made up, perfectly groomed, the sole concession to the Festival being a red heart stenciled on its left cheek. The mascaraed eyes seized Adrian, lifted him, weighed him indifferently, and, after a second or two, dropped him back into the anonymity of the crowd. The image was gone; the mini-van had moved on and there were other faces in other windows. Adrian felt the uneasy stir of people behind him and, hardly thinking, labeled what he had seen: the Commander’s wife. Of course. They never traveled together.
He had seen
her before, some time ago, when he was young and foolish and suffering from lust for a sixteen-year-old girl with luminous eyes. It was the year of the Great Flood, at the height of the monsoon season, when cloud furrows overhung the city for thirty-two days, turning the air so humid that fish jumped out of the canal murk to walk on grass. Adrian had ambled along then, with the clink of authentic wealth at his heels, wearing the mandatory jeans (Calvin Klein) and T-shirt (Lacoste) of radical chic, while five typhoons chased one another across the skies, the last one roosting over the South China Sea, between Kwangchow and Manila, lashing with her tail of rain and wind the Noble and Ever Loyal City, threatening to return it to the sea of its birth. Not to worry, his grandfather, Old Andy, had said at the time, for Adrian was still living at his namesake’s villa; the city came out of chaos, lived with chaos, and would survive any chaos. The question was, cackled Old Andy, whether it could survive order and reason.
Over the destruction, like a moon of a witches’ Sabbath, the girl had hovered, her fragility emphasized by the sack of a uniform she wore, her powerful neck rising from the white round collar to culminate in a face of impeccable youth. She moved in a translucent light—or so it had seemed to Adrian—which held her above disaster’s tragedy, above the bloated carcasses of cats and dogs and the maze of upended ice cream carts festooned with seaweed, above cars and jeepers stuffed with mud and worms.
For her sake, Adrian painted slogans on walls, on fences, on the church belfry, and on his tennis shoes. Politics, he discovered, was simply a declaration of love. The Poor Are Hungry! His masterpiece of two-foot red letters was the only epistle of romance he would write for her and he bit into a hamburger sandwich as he surveyed his work and dreamed of her approval.
She came; she looked at the school wall; she examined him.
“Should I do another?” he asked in great humility.
State of War Page 2