Once they sat linked in the rocking chair, swaying back and forth, murmuring to each other their desire to be able to do this in the open, in a boat perhaps adrift on a river, under the bluest sky God ever made—on one of those slender skiffs traversing the estero, seemingly propelled by nothing more tangible than the song of summer’s caterpillars. To float naked on a wayward current—the innocence of the thought brought Hans such desperation he began to weep and, because he wept, Mayang was overcome and wept herself. Both realized they had no middle ground; there could be no compromise to this passion. Either they cleaved together forever and ever or walked away from each other’s lives totally, completely, irrevocably. More, they knew what was and wasn’t possible. Thus, clinging to each other, they rocked back and forth, weeping, interrupting their sadness with screams of pleasure until it was time for Mayang to go.
Hans, despite the warehouse madness, remained alert to danger. He was the more astute, finding excuses for her to remain even beyond the two, three hours that the supposed mass and the journey back and forth allowed her. He shopped for her, buying her clothes and shoes, handbags and underwear, so she could claim to have wandered through the business district during those inevitable days when an extra hour together meant more than life itself. Thus, slowly, Mayang discarded her peasant clothes and replaced them with fashions from America—convenient slim, one-layered dresses, with short sleeves hugging her beautiful forearms, and chunky white leather shoes. Finally, she had the stupendous cascade of her hair cut and permed so that Carlos Lucas, sitting down for dinner one night, was struck dumb by the sight of this stranger, a creature who seemed to have stepped out of any of the English magazines that now littered Manila. His heart turned over and, at the meal’s end, he tweaked the edge of her sleeve shyly and said, “Show me that again.”
She would not. She said so over and over again, calmly, without anger but also without pity, despite his storms of rage and pleas, his threats, his drunken bouts, his weeping. She would rather not. She gave no reason, finding none in herself, except that she was truly monogamous. She wasn’t even aware she was paying him back for the months of neglect—for Carlos Lucas suffered the way she had suffered, finding himself at last head over heels in love with this woman, this strange woman with the pert clothes and haircut, this cold- hearted she-dog who simply said she’d rather not and turned over on her belly and went to sleep, leaving him to console himself with one of his forty-two ways of self-indulgence. In desperation, he learned to woo his wife, courting her with flowers and jewelry, with surprise weekend trips to the resorts of Antipolo and Baguio. She only had to hint at a desire and he rushed forthwith like a madman to fulfill it for her. Nothing worked, for Mayang did not even notice Carlos Lucas’s despair, immersed as she was in visions of Hans and the warehouse, so much so that when her husband went down on his knees to beg her to tax him with some task, anything at all that he may prove his love for her, Mayang smiled and said she merely wanted to be left to her devotion to St. Francis.
“The Capuchins have corrupted you,” Carlos Lucas said, his voice broken.
“Nevertheless, that is all I want. All I truly want, dear spouse,” she replied with pitiless courtesy.
One morning she woke up with a lightness in her heart, a touch of inexplicable joy in her limbs. Leaving Carlos Lucas still snoring in bed, she walked to the window and glanced at the sky, at the houses on the opposite bank, and then at the canal. She did not know what had stirred her from sleep at such an early hour; perhaps it was the strange quality of the day, the translucent light which made everything so dreamlike, so ethereal, as though reality itself was nothing more than a play of colors. When she placed her hands on the windowsill, the better to lean out and see the boats, she half-expected her fingers to touch nothing, to pass through what was merely an illusion of wood. Down in the canal, the boats appeared to float a foot above the water, stirring a wash of varying hues of blue in their passage. It was a morning of intense fragility and quite by accident, though it may have been preordained, Mayang lifted a hand off the sill and caressed herself, her fingers sliding down between her breasts, to her belly, to her navel, to stop at the spot where her womb hid itself beneath skin and muscle. Instantly, she knew: she was pregnant, it was a boy, and his name was Luis Carlos.
5
Hans convinced Mayang that the better part of valor was to let Carlos Lucas believe the child his. It was a simple matter to arrange. One evening, Mayang let the enigmatic smile slip across her lips and heard the hiss of her husband’s breath. “Next!” Carlos Lucas yelled, shocking the maids who had to scurry to and fro, removing the half-eaten fish, the meat broth, the vegetables, while the Don muttered “next, next, next . . No meal, it seemed, was finished as quickly. When he made the signal after dessert, touching Mayang’s right wrist with the tip of his forefinger, her discreet nod was enough to cause his soul to sprout wings. He heard the windows of the house singing and thought he was walking in his wife’s footsteps on a journey to the world’s edge. He never discovered he owed his adopted German brother two joys: his wife’s favors which, though grudgingly and sparsely given, sufficed to ease his love-besotted spirit; and his son, Luis Carlos, who entered the world too early and in silence.
The pregnancy dulled neither Hans’s nor Mayang’s appetites, though the latter grew shyer as her belly advanced. But Hans proved to be capable of such gentleness, such concern for her condition, that Mayang’s tears often spilled in the middle of their embrace, wetting the hand with which he stroked her shoulder and held her steady as she sat on his lap in the rocking chair. In the last months of her pregnancy, her belly was of such size, the skin stretched so tight, that her navel pouted. Hans thought she was carrying twins. He laid his ear against her hugeness and tried to catch the beating of the theoretical fetal hearts. Instead, to his consternation, he felt the child pummel the inner walls of his home, fighting the pressure of Hans’s head. He was so frightened that for a while, he wondered whether a gnome, not a child, inhabited Mayang’s womb.
As the weeks passed and Mayang’s confinement drew closer, hysteria assailed the two. It was, Hans thought, to be the moment of truth, the instant of the child’s birth; it would appear with hair the color of autumn, with eyes the color of a rain-washed sky, and with the stamp of a German scholar upon its brow. He hoped it was a girl, the better to conceal its heritage, but Mayang was adamant, saying the child was a boy and his name was Luis Carlos. She could not know that this threw Hans into a panic, for he had studied Mendel’s experiments and was convinced that a boy would be absolutely in his image.
“I’ll have to leave,” he said, already going through the motions of packing in his head. “Sail for China!” He imagined Carlos Lucas at the dinner table, screaming at his appearance: “Thief! Cerman ladron! You’re no better than an Italian. Return my money; return my wife; give me back my son!” He saw Carlos Lucas dismembering him with the aid of his distillery workers who would all gently say, Beg pardon, Senor Doctor Doctor, while they cut out his heart, his liver, his testicles, and threw them one by one into the distillery vats.
Mayang dropped to her knees, her belly spilling to her thighs. Weeping extravagantly, she kissed Hans’s feet and begged him to stay, even if only as a friend, not as her lover, perhaps as his own son’s godfather. She panted out the words between great sobs, all the while just as feverishly praying he would refuse. She knew love’s course had been run and to go further would be certain death for all three— Hans, her son, and herself.
Hans, being a gentleman, did refuse. “I must sail for China,” he said, gently. His heart shriveled; an unbearable chill hooked into his flesh. He sat in the rocking chair and stared at Mayang’s lowered head, for she was still on her knees on the floor, amidst a scatter of mats, blankets, cushions, and clothes. He understood that this was a moment of finality, that he was dying, was dead indeed, and in the sudden welling of bitterness within him he swore that if there were any chance at all, any opportunity, for him or fo
r his descendants to do something for Mayang and her family, it would be done at whatever cost.
“Come, my heart,” he said to her, his vow making him feel better. “We have always known it was to come to an end.”
Mayang, child that she was, lifted eyes almost blind with love. “He is older,” she said. “He will die before you and me. Will you wait? Will you write to me from wherever you are so I can tell you when he dies? Will you?”
The German lied. “Yes,” he said. “I will wait. I will wait and watch over you. No matter how many years—centuries even.” He pulled her to his lap and held her, his fingers caressing the tender skin of her nape. “You’ll always have me with you in our child.”
“Poor Hans. Poor me. Poor child.”
“I wish there was something I could do for Carlos Lucas.” His eyes misted at the name. “Then, my debt would be paid and I can be at peace.”
Nestling against him, curving herself to fit against his body, Mayang asked what he needed so he could settle his obligations.
Stammering, choosing his words, Hans moved on the path to betrayal. “I’d like to—to—I don’t know—perhaps, do a history of the house which would—would—make Carlos Lucas proud—but . .
“Surely, you know enough about it.”
“Ach, dear child, dear, dear child.” He was quiet for a moment, gauging his own corruption. “Not enough. As you know, he won’t let me examine the—the —the notebooks of his early experiments. The ones in your bedroom. In the wardrobe. And without those, there’s simply no way I could—could . . .”
“Don’t worry. You’ll have them.”
“My dear child, my heart, my love . . .
Mayang found the notebooks, wrapped in tissue paper, under Carlos Lucas’s folded undershirts. She removed them, trusting in her husband’s absentmindedness, not even preparing a tale with which to deceive him. To his questions, if ever they came, she would simply look innocent and shrug, for Carlos Lucas knew she never opened the carved mahogany wardrobe which held his property. It was her mother’s task to do so, to put away the clean and pressed clothes handed to her by the laundry woman.
A thin scream echoed from the house’s interior when daylight struck the three notebooks. Hurriedly, Mayang tucked them into her woven reed bag, covering them with her crocheting, before she ran out of the room, her hands to her belly’s sides. In the living room, she met her mother, the Chinese-Malay maid, hobbling toward the bathroom. She had dropped a pot of boiling water on her feet and was hurrying to douse them with cold water. Mayang helped, scooping frigid water from the cistern, pouring this into a basin, and letting her mother lave her feet.
“It doesn’t look bad,” she said vaguely, her mind already on the pendulum clock in the living room.
“No,” agreed her mother. “Don’t stoop so. You might harm the child.”
Mayang laughed, as befitted her new self with the American dress and hairdo. “Nothing will harm the child.”
“Nothing?”
She laughed again. “Not even a war.”
Her mother was pleased. She felt Mayang’s soft hair. “We have done well, haven’t we?”
“Yes, Nay.”
The use of the old honorific pleased the maid’s heart. “I hope it will be a boy. The sefiora will be pleased. You have a name ready?”
For it wouldn’t do, should anything happen, for a child to die unnamed.
“Luis Carlos.”
“Carlos—it’s not too bad. But why Luis?”
“I don’t know. He chose it so he’ll have to explain it himself.” Her mother thought she was referring to Carlos Lucas, not the child, and so let the matter rest.
“It’s nearly time for your devotion,” she reminded Mayang. “It won’t do for you to be late.”
Mayang hesitated. She looked at her mother. “Are you really all right? You don’t need me?” A twinge of anxiety made her search her mother’s face.
“It’s nothing. The skin will be red for a while. That’s all.”
Still reluctant, Mayang left the bathroom. She dressed quickly, in the tent-shaped maternity smock her mother had sewn. She put on lipstick, ran a brush through her hair, examined her eyes, wondering if her sins were visible. An inordinate fatigue settled on her bones; she thought briefly of not going to the warehouse, of staying at home, of sleeping, but Hans was waiting, would wait until the first star shone true and clear.
She picked up the reed bag, counted out change for the trolley car. Then, slowly, with many sidelong looks at the house that seemed to breathe, she crossed the living room with its wide windows, its funereal Castilian furniture, its Italian crystal, and the flurry of saints, candles, and flowers on the small altar set against one wall. Everything was quiet, all noise coming from the outside, but the air was so musty, the voices, the distillery’s humming, even the laughter of children seemed to come from a great distance. She entered the foyer, with its porthole windows, its carved reddish-brown bench, its copper umbrella stand, and the hanging fern pots which on her first visit had made her think of lopped-off heads. She touched the inner knob of the front doors. Something crashed and broke in the house, startling her into twisting the iron knob. One door panel sprang open and the afternoon sun showed her the steps—the great stone steps—scrubbed white and impeccable. She took a step, then another, hearing the door swing shut behind her, feeling her dress cling to the sudden perspiration that drenched her chest and back. She half-expected a voice to cry out, for voices to shout stop, thief! but nothing happened. It was a most ordinary day.
She walked to Binondo’s main street; she had refused, early on in her fight with Carlos Lucas over her churchgoing, the use of the automobile, saying the walk to and fro was good for her. Standing at the trolley stop, she had the disquieting conviction that the house was vanishing, had vanished even as she waited there, and when she returned it would be to a strange neighborhood where no one would know or even remember her. She could see herself beside the estero, which had inexplicably turned into a canal of thick-crusted mud. She was surrounded by children, none of whom knew where the Four Roses distillery was, nor even what it was, and deemed her half-mad. Her heart creaked with desolation at this image of herself lost forever, unable to return home, but at that moment from the distance rose the clang, clang of the trolley and she forgot the mirage. Hans was in her mind now, nude Hans doing his brittle alien dance.
It was unseasonably warm for February; by the time she reached the warehouse, her smock stuck to her skin, hampering her knees. She unlocked the door, stepped into the cool dimness that held Hans’s odor, and saw him rise from behind his work counter, his eyes glinting like ice. She was too big now for the dash across the room and too tired today to do more than lean against the door. She held out the reed bag and said, take them, take them. Hans hurried forward.
“But what is the matter?”
He felt her forehead with his palm, exclaimed at the warmth. “You’re feverish, child.”
She gave a short laugh and sagged against him. He picked her up, taking her weight easily, and settled her on the rocking chair. Then, he rushed back to the bag she had let drop to the floor; he thrust his hand into it, ferreting, Mayang thought, like an animal intent on prey. For the first time, her eyes took in the warehouse, pathetic scene of her passion—the chipped gray paint, the old, piled-up sacks of failure, weathered barrels and rusting hoops, the disorder of the work counter, the lamps, the cracked test tubes, the mat on the floor with its desultory pillow, the unwashed blanket. . . She felt the shame of her betrayal. Hans was turning the notebooks in his hands, eyeing them with lust. What have I done? Mayang thought.
“Hans!” she called out.
He was beside her instantly. “You’re ill,” he said.
She nodded. “I must go home.”
There was a moment of silence. Hans debated the wisdom of letting her go alone; on the other hand, if he took her home . . . The explanations! The suspicion! He paced back and forth, not looking at her
. She moaned; his heart stopped. He realized what was happening.
“Holy mother of God, not now, not now,” he muttered, gathering her things. “Child, get up. Get up. You must go home. Hurry. Hurry.”
Listless, Mayang allowed him to pull her to her feet. Hans almost dragged her to the door.
“I’ll walk you to the stop. But be quiet. Be very quiet.”
Mayang nodded. She squinted at the daylight. “I’m going to be sick,” she said.
“No, child, you’re not,” Hans corrected her firmly. “You will get on the trolley, you will pay your fare, and you will reach the house safely. Believe me.”
“I believe you,” Mayang said. “I’ll always believe you.” She began to weep. Hans handed her his linen handkerchief and hurried her on.
“I’ll put you on the trolley,” he said. “Go home and go to bed. You’re ill, child.” He dug into his pocket and gave her some coins. “That should pay for your fare. Listen, love, we’ll see each other next week. But right now—right now...”
State of War Page 21