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In 1846, when Adolphe Sax finished putting together the instrument, he had no presentiment at all of that moment when, in a monstrous country of seven thousand one hundred islands—a conception certainly beyond even his restless imagination—a seventeen-year-old youth would fall thoroughly and irrevocably under its fascination. From first sight of the thing, that ugly hybrid woodwind with its bell-maw sprouting from an obscene snake curve, Luis Carlos couldn’t think of anything else. The noise in the bar receded, the faces of his friends who had dragged him from school to the American hangout disappeared. His flute struck him as inordinately delicate, a child’s toy, feminine beside the intrusive ugliness of this gold instrument, with its infinity of stops, its very massiveness. And when the young black musician, holding center stage, blew into the thing, the hoarse note, powerful as an organ’s, ran up Luis Carlos’s spine, tickling his vertebrae. At once, he was convinced that no other sound, no other voice, could carry the song of his house as well as this one filled with pain, with complaint, with graveyard echoes and wails of the sea, with the coolness of rain and the crackle of sun rays falling on galvanized iron roofs. He heard Carlos Lucas’s bellows, Mayang’s morning harangues, the maids flittering through rooms and corridors, plants thrusting roots through packed soil, the gate creaking open, trucks roaring as they dumped landfill into the canal, the house beams’ groans at the blows of the seasons—in short, all the sounds he’d lived with and by, in his seventeen years, including, oh but miracle of miracles, the bells—belfry bells, altar bells, school bells, ice cream bells, trolley bells—which rang out in mad cadence with the instrument’s cavort. Absentmindedly, he lifted the glass before him, took a gulp of brandy, and nearly asphyxiated to death. But he couldn’t spare the time and went on watching with streaming eyes, as the jazz band went through its paces, piling melody upon melody, until he was sure the top of his skull had unhinged. Near midnight, when his friends tired of the amusement, he was drunk to the gills and in love.
He lost appetite, dropped eight pounds, and looked even more of a stripling; he could not summon any enthusiasm for school where hitherto he had been considered somewhat of a scholar, a little too Germanic perhaps in his earnestness, but a scholar nevertheless who excelled in chemistry. He could not even be happy for the aging Superior whose pet he was and who was pleased as a puppy over the modest success of the Capuchins’ new product, a “mild” gin called the Archangel since it brought comfort to the afflicted, peace to the distraught, and generally slayed the demons of sorrow—or so the ads said. Luis Carlos went about in a haze of melancholia, confusing his Pythagorean theorem with Aquinas, perking up only with the last school bell at which the gates were opened and he could dash out, catch the bus, run into the house to dump his books on his bed, change clothes, and dash out again to meet the neighborhood’s young men, all sassy in plaids and bell-bottom pants, so together they could make their way toward Ermita’s cluster of American bars. Escape was no problem, what with Mayang and the cook lost in the theater and Clarissa locked in her bedroom, composing bad poems for who knew what actor. The house paled away, retreated to an insignificant corner of his mind whenever he sat at one of the tables or the counter stools, waiting for the band or, more important, the saxophonist.
By this time, he had read everything on the saxophone he could lay his hands on and, theoretically at least, knew enough to play it. But astute musician that he was, he also knew that unless he could lay his hands on the instrument, unless he could own one to tinker with, there was no way to tell whether he was the man for the instrument. Unfortunately, though he always had odds and ends of money, given by Mayang or slipped into his pockets by the maids, he did not have enough. Since he was a responsible child, he could not bring himself to demand that Mayang buy him a saxophone, knowing as he did the precarious state of the household’s finances. Thus, like the eternal lover yearning, he stood at the sidelines with his friends and watched his beloved.
It was a fortuitous evening when Jake—as Jacobo Montreal, his eighteen-year-old friend, was now called—came up with a new way to torture dear, delicate Louie. Whispering to a waiter, he convinced the older man that Luis Carlos was a famous musician, the lead in a band playing at a ritzy club outside Clark Air Force Base. He was in the city to pick up new tunes and would be pleased to play something for the bar customers. Thus, during the intermission, Luis Carlos heard the manager announce the presence of a world-renowned musician, whose flute was truer than Arthur’s sword—or something to that effect. A terrible suspicion dawned on him when he caught sight of Jake’s grin, a suspicion confirmed by the thunder of his name over the speakers: Louie “the Hun” Villaverde.
“The Hun? The Hun?” he muttered, aghast, as his friends pushed him to his feet and thrust his flute into his hands.
“Well, you had to have a name!” Jake replied, giggling and clapping his hands, drumming on the table along with the rest.
“Mama, help!” Luis Carlos said as someone led him to the stage. The band was out of the lounge room now and clustered about the stage. The bass guitarist came up, offered his hand. Luis Carlos, nearly dead from stagefright, shook it. “I’ll tag along with you, son,” the black man said. “What’re you playing?”
In his confusion, he could only remember the song of boats in the sky. “S-s-s-skyboats,” he stuttered, giving the tune the title by which it would be known forevermore.
“Well, start and I’ll move in as soon as I get the rhythm. Okay?” He nodded miserably, raised his flute, cocked his head for the tiny bell that always rang in his ear to give him the key, heard it, and felt a wave of calmness drench him. He lunged into the melody and unwittingly gave the first public performance of the song of his father and mother, seeing in the sky beyond the bar’s roof, that sky that was blue now, the boats sailing on waves of laughter, following a blue-and-gold skiff that bore the woman who said no, thanks but no, she’d rather not . . . Dimly, he heard the bass guitar enter the song and, after a while, the drums and, later, the piano. Much, much later, the wail of the saxophone that gave full body to the fragile, chortling tune. His debut lasted twenty minutes.
When he returned to his seat, he was a professional. His friends clapped him on the shoulders; Jake was nonplussed; a hovering waiter whispered that drinks were on the house. Then, to Luis Carlos’s awe, the saxophonist came and asked about the tune.
“It’s a great one,” he said. “I’ve never heard it before.”
“Just composed,” Jake snapped, “special for my friend here.” “How long are you gonna be in the city?”
“Uh—a week or so. Uh.”
“Maybe longer. He’s looking for gigs up here. Bored with Angeles City. Too small-time.” It was Jake who answered.
The man was impressed. “You think you can have sheets made for me? I like that tune.”
Luis Carlos couldn’t believe his luck. “Certainly, sir. Most certainly. I’ll write it out, sir. Most happy.” He shook the man’s hand with great enthusiasm, thinking of how he would bring the music sheets, would maneuver the talk to musical instruments, would confess his admiration for the saxophone and finally get his hands— hallelujah!—on the instrument.
“Well,” Jake said, when the furor had died down, "a toast to the world-renowned musician.”
They all drank, Luis Carlos as usual choking on the brandy.
He woke up late, a sledgehammer in his head, and, moaning and groaning, submitted to Mayang’s ministrations. “You’re not man enough yet to drink,” Mayang shouted, slapping a wet towel on his forehead. At noon though, he revived enough to work on the tune, note by note, amplifying and correcting. For years afterward, until the bombs of a new war destroyed all memory, Manila’s evening crowd would jitterbug, Charleston, foxtrot, and even waltz to the tune in its many variations, all under the title “Skyboats”—a tune truly modern for its non sequiturs and craziness, for its utter lack of meaning that rendered it so, as one Manila debutante said, “full of it”—while Ma
yang tried to close her ears to the anthem of her married life which, unlike Carlos Lucas, showed no signs of fading into oblivion.
That evening, at the same bar, Jake told him to forget the music sheets. He had found a job for Luis Carlos, playing at a competing nightclub.
“I used the same trick. World renowned.” He laughed. “Said I was your manager. I get free drinks, at least.”
Six months later, Luis Carlos bought a saxophone, secondhand, true, but serviceable, and commenced his study of the instrument. Which was to his good fortune, for having missed so many classes and exams he flunked out of school to Mayang’s and the Superior’s hysterics. But despite tears and threats of eternal damnation, Luis Carlos refused to promise to do better. He had decided. He could work now, he’d found his calling, and he could ease Mayang’s financial burdens. “What dreadful stubbornness,” the Superior said, “but there’s no helping it though his father would be most distressed. He had such a good head for chemistry.” At this, Mayang eyed the Superior with suspicion, not sure whether he meant Luis Carlos or— perhaps the friar, now tottering to the end of his life, knew more than he’d ever let on.
Luis Carlos’s decision left a new wake of grief in the household. Even the maids, whenever they brought him his newly pressed clothes, turned up their noses at the plaid jackets, the wide pants, the purple and red silk shirts he now wore. He suffered the opprobrium in silence, waiting for the ill wind to blow over. He would not even remonstrate with Mayang who, to show her displeasure, left whatever money he brought home lying on the altar in the living room.
One morning, Mayang found herself having breakfast alone. Irked by this show of sloth, she had the maid knock on Clarissa’s door. Five minutes, ten. Mayang pushed back her chair in irritation and rose. The maid was still standing before the closed door and rapping steadily on the wood with her knuckles.
“She won’t get up, senora,” the maid said, abashed.
Mayang let fly a kick; the door sprang open. The fresh wind that played about Mayang’s face told her, even before she walked in, that the room was empty, the bed not slept in. The dresser drawers were all half open, as was the closet door. Clarissa’s clothes were gone.
“Holy Lord,” Mayang muttered, hearing the sky crash. “She’s gone and done it.”
Clarissa left a note, handwritten on perfumed stationery, sealed and addressed to Mayang. I have gone with the only man I’ve ever loved and will ever love. Don’t try to stop us. I can’t live without him anyway and he can’t without me. Your most loving daughter. Mayang had to rinse her mouth after reading it. “Such terrible prose,” she spat and went to Luis Carlos’s room.
“Wake up!” She shook his shoulder, noting grimly how firm his muscles were. “You have to fight a duel.”
“A what?” Luis Carlos bolted upright.
“Your sister's ruined. You have to right that. You have to kill the man.”
“Is she in trouble?” Luis Carlos blinked and shook his head.
“She’s eloped, idiot. Go kill the man and bring her back.” The finales of several operettas ran through her mind. Luis Carlos would run him through with a sword. Easily.
“Uh, I have to find them first.” With great reluctance, he dragged his body out of bed. “Who in God’s name bothered? You know anything? How about the maids? Go ask them. One of them, for sure, knows something. How’d she get out of the house, who packed her clothes? And so on and so forth”
“All right. Be sure to challenge him first. Jacobo can be your second.”
“Holy bananas,” Luis Carlos said as he headed for the bathroom. “Kill a man? Blast him to the death with my sax, maybe.”
“With a sword! With a sword!” Mayang shouted. “Nothing as uncouth as a gun. A sword.”
“I don’t even own one,” Luis Carlos muttered as he closed the bathroom door.
But because he was a magician, the man made Clarissa and himself vanish into thin air. They couldn’t be found, despite Mayang’s relentless interrogation of the maids, her astute assembling of bits and pieces of information until she had the man’s name (Pedro), his bloodlines (sturdy Malay), his work (sleight-of-hand), his habits. He was wont to hang out, said the maids, by the canal, amusing the construction workers and earning a few pesos from their sympathies. He was an itinerant, with no known address, though surely he must have had a place to lay his head and to keep his paraphernalia, which included paper flowers, a rabbit, two doves, an umbrella, scarves and hats, rings, odds and ends, and a folding table.
At first sight of Clarissa, one dusty afternoon when she and the laundry maid had wandered over to the canal, he’d said clearly, even as the king, queen, jack of hearts flew out of nowhere and fluttered about Clarissa’s hair, that there, God willing, was the woman for him. Clarissa had turned red to her hair roots while the maid, askance, had snapped “Tse! Barbarian!” and would have added a few choice words had not Clarissa begun preening. At which, encouraged, the man had gone on, calling her the plump gooseling of his eyes, well cushioned, full of soup—here he’d licked his chops, while Clarissa’s eyes moistened and she flushed once more.
“Holy mother,” Mayang said, crossing herself. “He knew what to say.”
Since then, for six weeks running, while Mayang and the cook basked in chandelier fantasies at the teatro, Clarissa had ambled over to the canal, first with the maid, later by herself. She had taken to saying that, compared to the magician, the actor had no salt in his blood, was indeed a sap lacking in that strange virility which only lower-class men seemed to possess.
“Holy mother,” Mayang interrupted the narrative.
“I told her she was stupid,” the maid said. “And since he was such a poor prospect—I mean, we wouldn’t even consider him, penniless as he was—I didn’t think, didn’t think . . . . “ And here the maid, being in the solemn years of her maidenhood, began to cry.
Mayang could only shake her head. Luis Carlos, treated to this narrative again and again, marveled at the wiliness of a man who could find metaphors for his sister’s many shortcomings. “It must’ve been love,” he told his mother and was rewarded with a filthy look.
Once more the house nosedived into grief, for not a trace of the two could be found. Luis Carlos escaped from the melancholy by sleeping most of the day, getting up in midafternoon to open the garage where he and his band now practiced. He equipped the place with chairs, music stands, a sofa to rest his friends’ backs, and an icebox for beer, though he himself was content with kalamansi juice, the sharp citrus tang of the tiny green fruit easing his throat which was often sore from the bar’s cigarette smoke. He had his flute, his saxophone, and his clarinet, though he played more often now with the second. But it was on the clarinet that he composed the music of “Chattering Flowers,” in memory of Clara. He played the piece for Mayang, listening with delight to the roses as they resolved to undress, letting go of their petals one by one in homage to the innocence of a dead girl. Mayang remained dry-eyed to the last note, and then, without comment, vanished into her room. Hours later, she reappeared and handed Luis Carlos a scribbling of lyrics in English for the tune. It became a favorite of the bar’s regulars, especially when sung by the Eurasian chanteuse who came to the club now and then—“only as a diversion.”
She was the mistress of the American military governor, it was said, and as a consequence was well financed. She sang infrequently, more to exercise her vocal chords and to freshen memories of her sultry, passionate contralto, which suited her slim, high-breasted, lithe body, her blue-black hair piled high on her head, crowning an oval face of incredibly delicate beauty. She was exquisite, there was no other word for her. And she was also, at the hour she sang with Luis Carlos’s band, afire with lust for his own brand of beauty.
Jake was the first to discover her secret and, being the shrewd manager that he was, arranged for them to be alone in the bar’s dressing room. The following day, though, he was summoned to her house by a chauffeur in a white Bentley and here, in a voic
e hoarse with weeping, the Eurasian told him that nothing, but nothing, had transpired.
“I was a band member to him,” she said angrily, her fingers flicking outward so that she seemed to be unsheathing claws.
“Did you tell him?” Jake asked.
In so many words. She’d talked of romance, of youth, of bloodheat; he’d countered with woodwinds; she’d regretted the passing of time and told him how, in old age, love memories could be great comfort; he’d detailed for her the intricacies of a new song; she’d mentioned flowers; he had anecdotes of his flute.
“I’m not used to such treatment,” she said, inhaling deeply while Jake’s eyes nearly popped from watching how her breasts, bare certainly under the silk, further strained her cheongsam’s bodice.
“You’ll have to be more direct than that,” he said, licking his underlip. “He’s never had a woman.”
She lost her breath. “Never?”
“Virgin,” Jake confirmed, grinning.
“Holy mother of God!” She had to sip water to stop hyperventilating.
A week later, Jake asked Luis Carlos to meet him on Sunday night at the Eurasian’s house. “She has a job to discuss with thee and me.”
“Hey, that’s your role, panero.”
“Uh-uh. She wants to commission new songs. I know nothing about that part of the show.”
Luis Carlos shrugged. “Sunday’s the only night I have dinner at home. Mama will kill me.”
“After dinner. See you there.”
State of War Page 27