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TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract Souls ('a novelette') Archipelagic Short Stories Would Lead Us Nowhere Eating Eagles And Monkey, We Fly Across And Pleasure, Film, What, Has Bus 2 (unavailable)
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Pleasure,Film,What,Has
Epilogue I watch the road from this side of the carinderia that faces it, the wall with its posters behind me. Sometimes when the lower edges of the nearby posters touch my elbows I could feel their gloss coating smooth against my elbows' slightly rough flesh, while as I eat I would picture the shine over the mestiza girls in them, in Hongkong-made striped shirts, smiling and holding softdrinks. Then sometimes I glance to my right at the poster girl in red stripes when there is nothing else in the carinderia bothering me. Other times I look toward the wall-hole-to-the-kitchen at my left when rice or a dish is passed through it. The smoke from the hot rice or dish (the overcooked vegetarian-type chop suey would be selling some days) would there reach me, and I would be within kissing distance also of the life-sized woman's head in the poster just over my left shoulder. Outside, the jeepneys, cars and tricycles continue to pass the open side of the carinderia, coming in different colors though they all look drab now under the heat of this December's upside-down hotplate of a sky, all the colors just becoming too repetitious to ever look many, especially in the dusty and fuming air. The gray of the tires and of the asphalt is therefore a light gray, dusty, dry-looking as the dry dustsoil on the roadsides where the asphalt ends, although we know some of the asphalt is melting slightly. Almost noon now, we have already finished eating and are simply watching the city, the steady sky's faded-blue sometimes optically trembling, drowsy as the dustsoil of the town between street asphalt and sidewalk. The clouds are grayish-white, a contrast to the brownish-white concrete roof of the supermarket, the roof that is there barely emerging from the right edge of the carinderia's wide doorway. Meanwhile, across the road to the left is the fence of and the gate to the trucking company's garage; it is through this garage that we pass piles of tires with holes on some, going on our way back to the film distribution office-cum-studio on the other side of the block. From the garage we then pass through a narrow alley between high concrete anti-fire walls guarding the walls of the buildings; a water-supply pipe attached to the right wall stretches along the length of our walk back to the office through the narrow path. Tucked between the water pipe and the wall it is attached to are chewing gum wrappers, mint candy wrappers, a few bus tickets, whatever else. Oftentimes, though, we would pass the other way, along the sidewalk with the vendors under the acacias. This is to the left of the block, where we go around the block on our way to the office building everytime the garage gate is closed (which is often). We seldom pass the supermarket way not only because it is a longer walk but because all we would see there would be fashion shops, children's toy shops, the supermarket's window displays of large toilet paper rolls, cardboard catsup bottles, etc. Also, along the avenue, jeepneys, buses, and cars do not go under the shadow of even a single leaf. There is only the brown grass on the island in the middle of the avenue. So when the garage gate is chained we go around the block to walk along those rows of tables and boxes vending cigarettes, candies, newspapers and magazines, and guavas, apples, and other fruits according to their season, or import season---we go around that way to walk along the vendors' stalls under the acacias, and to take a look at the magazines. Now, though, moments after lunch, we do not feel like hurrying back to the office. Our supervisors and equipment personnel left as early as 10 o'clock for the head department in Makati, and only our slightly fat, friendly finance officer can be found at her typewriter in the office over her take-out lunch, along with the dark-skinned small janitor playing chess with the head accountant of the adjoining office of a small ship company. The janitor, Botong the Blind, takes his lunch with either the security guard, Tigor, or the shipping company's accountant. If there is any sudden call from Mrs. Trinidad, our department manager, Botong the Blind would come to the carinderia---not quickly---to tell us there was a call. Then he would proceed to buy a couple of cigarettes from the store across the street, and always, would go over to Mang Sam, the peanut vendor frying peanuts outside to the left of the carinderia doorway. With his own match Botong would light his cigarette and then talk with Mang Sam about the economy and the political heat, oh with most dependable erudition. But today, though, he hasn't come around, and we think the supervisors will probably drop by the storage house and be back at around 3 o'clock, the reason why we're taking a long time to eat lunch. But, like I said, we have already finished lunch and only feel lazy about getting up, myself playing with my fork with the patch of catsup on my plate, Tony the print supervisor savoring his smoke and telling us something funny about the woman's-head poster to my left, Mang Andy the driver picking his teeth with toothpicks he plucked from the toothpick bottle on a near table. Now, when we leave the carinderia Mang Andy would leave also three or more toothpicks on the blue plastic cover of our table for the maids to dispose of, and then on the sidewalk he would bite on a new toothpick again. Not that it means anything important, except that some people simply love to chew wood, make a mess, or spit phlegm on the sidewalk. Vanessa, now the former maid, hates that kind of behavior---one of the reasons she wishes she were rich. She did complain to me one night the old man would always ruin her noon's mood with the toothpicks he leaves on the table after the plates have all been taken out. I could only caress her hair then and give her a smile, but then she there caressed me back and said, as though it was an unforgivable item, very significant social manifestation, "I would always remind him of it and he would always promise not again, but would always forget. But never mind Mang Andy, my love, it's not a new story . . ." And on rainy days, the concrete just outside the wide doorway of the carinderia and before the sidewalk, the concrete that only reaches as far as the small ditch still inside the lot, would be dirty with wet shoemarks. Flies would get out of the rain too and play there. However, today is not just hot as being in a windowless office during a blackout, but hot as the metal on a car parked under a summer's glaring sky, and also greasy as the oily plastic cover of a carinderia table.
Almost 2 o'clock now, and we decide to leave the now-serene eatery---yes, serene, against a bored siesta air---and not wait for Botong the Blind to fetch us. The table has been cleared and so has the carinderia, and Tony and I just finished our fourth beers. Mang Andy said a couple of hours ago, through his toothpick, he doesn't want any beer not because it is hot today but because you wouldn't want Mrs. Trinidad smelling you. Which means he thinks Tony and I are quasi-rebels--- On our way back to the office walking along the vendors' stalls we see five girls and three boys come out from the Isla Jicara pastry shop on their way back to the nearby high school, and a few bigger boys from the cigarette boxes. One of the girls is Chona, still fingering a Christmas chocolate from the shop and nibbling on it once in a while. Four months ago we were hoping it is Belinda, the smaller girl, who would get the soap-for-teenagers ad contract, because she had a lovely big sister. Mang Andy thought Chona's chaperone wasn't bad either. Tony laughed at Mang Andy's notion because Chona's sister was finally the loveliest of them all, and no one would judge otherwise. But it was only on the shooting day that Chona brought her chaperone who was not her mother, but who she said was her sister. At the signing of the contract, the parents told us Chona had no sister when we said we were thinking of a sister in the script---so we didn't know who to believe. The truth was that the sister, a half-sister, only got back home then to reconcile with Chona's parents and to heal all wounds, when the project began. Now today, this day, this afternoon, looking lovely as ever, Chona there greets Tony and Mang Andy, while I wave from the magazine stand, moving away from the sidewalk on my way to the concrete fence back of the stalls to urinate behind an acacia. Peeing, I hear the 2 o'clock high school bell suddenly ring from afar, and then suddenly there is a little street commotion about how a motorcycle almost hit a jeepney. And then, suddenly also, we see Botong the Blind turning the corner, walking slowly from there, not interested in the commotion, taking almost a minute before he can confront us. "There was a call from Makati---not Mrs. Trinidad, it's Jinggoy himself, Mr. Producer himself," Botong says. His Tagalog is not authentic. He comes from that central part of the Philippines where the islands are scattered like crumbs as from a semi-crumbled soda cracker, and where the Tagalogs from the capital are either stared at in awe as though they were American Peace Corps Volunteers in the `70s, or scorned, as though they were the nation's sole tax-spenders. "He wants to talk to you, David, and to you, Tony. Then, Mang Andy, Ma'am will give you instructions." And suddenly he's off to a magazine stall, to pick up a comics magazine. Now, I do not know how I can still possibly finish the posters for the exhibition of my own paintings at the new Silver Gallery this February, my first exhibit (by the way) since after my graduation from U.P. Fine Arts. Much less find time to try to finish a rough draft of a movie script Mrs. Trinidad asked me to try with Jinggoy. Assignments have been dumped on me and I have only a few materials left to even finish two handpainted posters today---handpainted posters being Mrs. Trinidad's boast towards her recurrent exclusive market---and I don't have time to go shopping. It seems private film screenings for new documentary films on, say, the Communists' progress or retrogress, are being sponsored by one institution after another now, while Mrs. Trinidad would always be at the ready to haul in our small film foundation just to be in cooperation. There is hardly any time for my pleasure! "What has a film distribution company anyway to do with all this art-film movements and documentary film developments?" I ask myself. Well . . . entrepreneurs have eccentricities of their own, and besides, corporations too put up foundations and extend their concentration. So what if Nestle is to buy Philippine Airlines? Such buyouts happen everyday. Or so what if we are to hear stories like, the Socialist Party bought stocks from PLDT? Such extensions are simply necessary. Now, . . . we are also now accepting cinema ad shots, five months in the business. Do we have a license? But is it needed? In due time Mrs. Trinidad would most probably dump me a new design order for invitations to a cocktail-with-ambassadors on a night of discussion over, who can tell, maybe a UNICEF education program in Mindanao. And then our service staff might again sign another underground, rightist propaganda (is it? should I know these things?) ad-at-a-cheaper-price "contract," and I'd be automatically hauled in again as art director. But what if they do not allow these "underground" tapes to be aired on TV, branded perhaps by KBP authorities after several examinations as a little subversive, would I be automatically taken in as party to the crime? Of course. But the foundation is getting a name, so people must trust it. It has maybe pull from the military, I don't know. Whichever or whatever it is, we would only waste our time if we discuss political repercussions in these "artistic" projects. We would always do well to start on a project as soon as possible, such that I would always soon be found the last man in the office, rather there still to stay till even midnight. Of course on the shooting day I'd be the least busy man and would be the first to sip a pina colada behind the cameras with the company or institution in contract; and, of course, even when I'm working at night one or two of my officemates would drop by with siopaos and fruit juice for my supper. And the pay dividends are fair between us all, at least mostly. But then, listen here, there are pleasures besides the pleasure of business! There is also the human pressure to create, for example, or towards achievement; or the urge to get to possess a role of . . . virtue, instead of one with a usual mechanical function, . . . before one like me could be terribly consumed. . . . Now, is that why I want to write this movie?
1 This one here's the spot for the coffeepot, this one for the saucer with the biscuits, then there the flowers; and over there shall be placed the product's can itself. So the lights can now be put up accordingly, please? That is how we proceed with the ad shots. Take tonight. But, on a night like this one, tonight, I couldn't take the shot yet. Because I do not know anything about lights and cameras. I am only here to do the conceptualization. And the photographer doesn't do overtime work. Funny. So what I do now is I just continue with the invitations to a poetry reading and film showing; venue: the Center for Alternative Cinema (building partly finished), as per instructions from Mrs. Trinidad. Halfway through the detailing on a popular lead actress illustrating the poster for this obscure German-American movie, I hear knocking on the door. I hope it is not a mistake again, as by someone asking whether this is the office adjoining the (secret) office of Mr. Amorsolo, the doctor. (Why does Tigor fail to give people the right directions inside the building? Of course it's recklessness on his part but, is it also because of maltraining? I rather suspect the credentials of this goon. And why can't people read? And they dare make babies! These people rather make me nervous sometimes). I am surprised to see it is Vanessa---Vanessa and Tigor, the permanent security guard of the building, are cousins, so Vanessa once told me, and I believe her even though Tigor lives two jeepney rides away from the building, because cousins don't have to be neighbors. . . . This is Tigor's portrait I promised him, it's almost done, I show Vanessa. It was like showing a caged monkey to a fine visitor. It was like showing her how the monkey needs to be pleased. "Can I have mine too?" she asks then. Okay, for a fee. "Haha," she says, ". . . anyway, I came because Aling Flora asked me to collect your debts, she needs the money. And Tigor passed by the store, and we got to discuss about the state of the economy too, haha! And then he said, 'why don't you go to David at the film distribution office, he's staying for the night'." I tell her, Sit down. It's an advertising office now, Vanessa, that's why I'm staying for the night. It's an ad agency tonight. We're selling things. She says, "Well, anyway, yeah, Tigor told me about the portrait too, and not just tonight, Jesus, how smiling almost broke his jaw modeling for an hour, and then how terribly good your coffee supply here is. . . ." . . . The following night I am not surprised Vanessa comes back bringing her own sheets of charcoal paper and pastel board (she got the purchase right, that's what surprised me). Later, too, on this night, I say to her, why don't we make another one with you in the nude? I have several drawings here of nude girls, nothing malicious. "Oh, nono," she says, "you're a fast one, aren't you?" Oh c'mon, Van, I say, it's lines and shadows I'm after, not a hole. It's not even warmth, okay? Without the air conditioner it's hot enough already. So---, I don't need to nibble on meat, see? Anyway, would you like some coffee? Would you want me to color this? "Oh let me," she says, "but mind the way you talk, please?" Nono, you could ruin it, and hey, it's your own face. "I mean teach me, then." Oh, okay. . . . But, say, Van (choosing the right pastels) . . . are you and Tigor really cousins? You don't resemble each other a bit. Well, of course cousins don't have to resemble each other. "We don't?" No, I say. "Well . . . mmm . . . no. We're not. . . . Actually, if you really want to know, Mr. Artist who's so nosy, whom I can maybe trust because I like you, . . . I'm really also a prostitute. . . . Haha, why the silence now, Mr. Know-A-Lot? Didn't you know? Well, at least high-pay prostitute, don't you believe me? But I don't do it often. I hated my job at the videoke bar. . . ." (Having collected the right colors) I see. "David, is that all a woman is to you when you're not painting her? You know, a hole, a heater, as you said, a feeding bottle? Not that I'd hate you if you say that's so." C'mon, Van, language simplifies our feelings too much, I'm sorry, I . . . I didn't mean it that way. "Do you think I'm pretty, then?" Only commercials care for prettiness. All things become pretty when you color them with your heart, I guess. "Haha. You're funny. Really, an artist . . . a poet . . . a sex maniac . . . I really love you, you know. How do you mean language . . . what?" Ohhh, life is a mystery, Van---my voice continues to hide my shock at her news. I like women more than I can say it. Because . . . maybe because I know 'there's more to the picture than meets the eye'. Stuff like that. Here, my disbelief at her recent announcement begins to show, so I turn to philosophy. There's more to sex than getting it over with, see? There's fear of death, that's important. So everyone's in a hurry to copulate as many times as they can. Before they're consumed. So, here, I could actually pretend to be pleased with your company. But I don't do that, pretend. Why? Because I know there's more to you than what I know so far. And to explain how much I like you? That would be beyond me as an incompetent poet. "I see." I mean I just like you, Vanessa, that's all. I like women. I paint them nude because they're a fine subject. I mean my intentions are not . . . vulgar. "I see."
Botong the Blind is called that because he can beat you at checkers blindfolded. You would only have to tell this small dark-brown janitor of ours what your move is, and then he would instruct the arbiter to move this to this and that to that, and later warn you of losing. Mrs. Trinidad joked once it's no wonder Botong cannot have much respect for the cameras sometimes left on the table, he has this photographic memory that would not see any need for film! But he's my friend. He once came across several of my nude drawings and asked, could he keep one? I said they're too expensive---he can't afford them. What about for friendship's sake, he said, in English. I said the materials weren't bought "in memory of a friend." He laughed, knowing I meant "with a friend in memory while buying," or something like that. He said, how about he keeps it "in memory of you?" I said I'm not dead yet. He grinned like a carabao. . . . Y'see, Botong the Blind is one of my low-comedy partners in the office, along with Tony. So I was surprised to have him in this English grammar kind of comedy. Certain animals can be educated after all. And isn't Botong already an unofficial checkers genius? Tony's comedy, meanwhile, is a little more sophisticated, middle class, but he can laugh at rougher jokes even though he can't deliver many. Botong, though, is sometimes ill at ease with Tony, so much so that he doesn't crack his kind of jokes with me when Tony's around. And Tony always puts Botong down, or so Botong thinks. Anyway, the morning of October 3, it is Botong who's thinking something must have happened in the office the night previous. He finds traces of lovemaking among the art materials on my desk, smells talcum powder or cheap cologne, sees traces of possible semen on my floor---though that could be coffee, he whispers to himself---, pubic hair on my chair. Finally, that last item confirming his suspicion on the spot and dismissing the thought that I may have merely been masturbating in the office---was that "Till we meet again," signed "Vanessa," scrawled on the dust on the glasspane of the toilet window--- I am the first to arrive. Botong tells me I shouldn't mess around with Vanessa. She may be looking for a goat who might want to marry her. That is dangerous, he says.
2 More than two months later (see epilogue time), Mang Andy drives the supervisors and the equipment trio over to the head department, and then comes back to the office without them. Tony the print supervisor opted to stay in the office, which was expected. Tony's usual line is that he'd rather be left with us, he's too busy with rolls of these films to be attending 'cocktails', as he likes to call the President's periodic meetings with the supervisors. He'll have lunch with the boys at the carinderia, he said. Actually he's trying also to splice some of these Super 8mm.'s from his own rolls, his film---but he doesn't tell Mrs. Trinidad that. It is his own secret art. He said, just let Mang Andy bring more of the rolls I ordered when he comes back, if that's all right? And besides---he said this only to us---that new, Ilocano head-department president cum producer gets to me with all his historical allusions getting always overdone. What's he trying to prove, that he's got a bigger soul and can see the world like a book? That he's divine providence, ultimate reincarnation---formerly the national hero? Just because he's the president doesn't give him the right to lecture us on history. . . . This is Tony's bad part, I always think, history cannot be denied, one can always learn from that former history professor now film distributor. That's how Tony's short films suffer, he forgets history in his eagerness for an impending morality.
Tony's a Waray and I am Bisaya. Mrs. Trinidad, our lovely, very considerate boss, is Tagalog. I hear these tribes each has its own separate subconscious utopia. Vanessa, somewhere in October sitting on this office chair I am now sitting on (I sit here today to type this version of my and Vanessa's story for the literature industry, after the movie version, to be edited later by a friend of mine we need not mention the name of), said her father was from Dapitan in Mindanao and was a devout Christian. Her mother was Ilocano, married an Isneg before marrying Vanessa's father. She was very good to her, Vanessa told me then, very good to Vanessa's high school suitors too, very nice to their maids who were all Isnegs like her mother's first husband. Then, they---the mother and the Dapitan father---orphans Vanessa later. Together, just like that. They die in a bus collission, Vans said. (I couldn't believe her story, being not much of a realist. I wasn't trained to be one, while learning how to paint. I wasn't much of an idealist, either, to be making ideas out of events. Besides, I didn't have to believe in anything . . . yet. For me then, life was simply being either sleepy or violent. I only realized later how I wasn't any bit of a fantasist, either, and had to make a choice). . . . Aling Flora has also been very good to her, in fact would not at all consider Vanessa her maid---only Vanessa calls herself that to be modest (with a hint of protest, I suspected)---but like a daughter just helping around the house. I thought then she was just bragging when she said, "Aling Flora thinks I'm too beautiful to be treating myself like a slave. David, Aling Flora is a lady I owe much of my life to. She and my mother were the best of friends, you know." (Did I have to listen to her? Why apologize with causes of effects? Is life supposed to be one hell of a law case, always?) "Mother used to tell me when I was yet nine, it was Aling Flora I got my tanned complexion from." And so on, and so forth. I also learned her mother and Aling Flora were both daughters of comfortable small-business town personalities in their Ilocos town, but as daughters also who craved for some independence, some freedom from the usual culture, had to become poor. In marriage, in fortune. "I'll pay her back, David. I'll pay Aling Flora back. I'm going to get rich someday, you just watch me. I can't even marry you, you see. Ah, I'm talking stupid now, huh, why would you want to marry me." I said: does she know you're hanging out with some odd college girls in an odd ad agency? "No. But she believes I can do anything. Now, she's not so protective anymore. I can be a commercial model, or a ramp model---I don't have to have a car to do that---even with my height they'd accept me," she had been assured by Aling Flora, "they'd consider." And Tigor? What about Tigor, does he want to become an actor? Silence. Then, "Why don't you ask him?" Shall I?---I said. "Okay," she said, "okay. . . . He had been with a security agency before he found himself here." Found himself here. Uhuh, I said, what does that tell? "Well . . . he knows some bank managers, top engineers, lawyers, very powerful people." The people you sleep with? Like the owner of this building, maybe? Forgive me, but how did Aling Flora get to squat on that lot for her store? This building's owner owns that strip. And Tigor allows you, your cousin? "Hey, what's with you, fake attorney David? Look here, stupid, because I consider you a brother to me." Hohoho, suddenly that! ". . . Now, listen here. Can't you treat rich people the same way you treat your people? They're just making use of their time too, you know. . . . C'mon, David; so, okay, they try to bang it always---the,pleasures,out,of,their,bodies,OK! But that's only before they are . . . what? consumed. We'll all die, anyway. Right? Right, David? Become skulls inside coffins, that's right. So what about you, David, what about you! Jesus. . . . "And, please, stop that crap about Tigor's my cousin, Tigor's my cousin. It's almost like an insult. How can a beast be my cousin?" Has Tigor fucked you? "NO! It's not part of the deal!"
"C'mon, David, look at you! It's not so bad. Look at your T-shirt, dummy, not at my eyes." This was just a week after our first painting session. "It's great, huh. Do you think I'm progressing?" Yes, I say; why don't you try to get rich by painting? "Oh," she says, "well, that'll come later." Much later, I whisper. "What about you, you aren't rich, you haven't given me a single centavo. If it weren't for your charcoals I wouldn't be making love with you, you know." Okay, okay, that's a remarkable remark, can I put it in my diary? . . . And so what is it you want with your life, Vanessa? Oh, yes, I know . . . you want a home, a family, a car, a small business . . . yes? Or a condo unit? A townhouse? And a vacation every once in a while, maybe. "Well, yes," she says, "but, I don't know. I mean of course everybody wants that. Don't you? You sound like a journalist, you should know what you want. But I really want to pai-i-int, David," she says, giggling toward me. "And, mmm, garden, cook, play tennis, I just want to do things---see things---what about you?" Like America, huh. "Aw sh---, David, do you always have to politicize things?" Vanessa says. And true, as she stopped short of saying it, 'shit', an English word which is probably American (I don't know), I was almost encouraged to remind her of its origin. And she's right. To want to 'just do things, see things' should likewise be a valid utopia.
Now, two weeks before this maid came in to collect my debts, Tony (Botong told me later) is sitting with two bottles of beer at the carinderia with Botong himself. They are relaxing, after office hours-fashion, talking about anything that would come to mind---they are the only customers. Then suddenly the conversation settles on me as a subject. Like a bird had found a head to drop shit on. Botong is saying, "I don't know, but what I cannot figure out is how a guy like David can be exhibiting a collection of paintings next year, poor as he is. Someone's got to be sponsoring him. Could it be Mrs. Trinidad, she collects paintings, doesn't she?" "You talk too much, Botong," Tony says. "You talk slow, but you talk too goddam much. I bet you're the only kid in the office who talks in questions and then in instructions. Either you are a stupid gossip or you are a know-all. What do you talk too much for? Here. Have another beer before you go crazy, relax." "I've always wanted to draw, myself," says Vanessa, "is he really exhibiting? I've always wanted to be famous." "Painters don't become famous in the Philippines, Vans, not in the way you mean by 'famous'," Tony says. "Painting's only for thinking people, they see poetry in wall views. Otherwise it's for rich people who want to buy music without sound, stuff like that. You'd better try soft-porn, you're sure to become rich." "Well . . . it's not really the fame. It's the circle, see. You could learn so much. Intellectuals with big brains would surround you with wonderful ideas, non-practical ideas, I learned that in fourth year high school, that would be terrific, wouldn't it?" "You're insane," Botong says, the know-all. "You are like David, full of crazy notions about life, taking the fine points of everything. Didn't change even when he started attending those Socialist Party forums. Of course, he's an artist, he cannot do anything but defend his profession of being too particular, expound on it. . . ." (It was his turn to expound then, the pygmy, haha). "Well. You are a comedian, Botong," Tony says to him. "You cannot do anything but laugh at other people. I think Vanessa's truly crazy but I think you are blind. Just because a man is not a poet you laugh at him for what he says, which is different from what he might mean. Hm? Look, we all here grope for what it is we really want. And when somebody starts talking, you laugh like a monkey. Curse you, then. . . . We are not all historians, but at least we all have sentiments, pretty serious stuff. Hm? Curse you." Botong laughs and cringes at this sermon, Vanessa laughs towards Aling Flora, who laughs along. (Of course all this Botong himself relayed to me later while we were discussing a tabloid columnist's write-up. The pygmy. Hahaha).
3 Aling Flora was hit by the passenger's sidecab of a tricycle, and the neighbors in the shacks along the carinderia's strip who saw it all happen lifted her to another tricycle cab. This is how I saw things happen: It is a rainy night on All Souls' Day and I am doing overtime. Tigor winks at me when I enter the building soaking wet. I know what he means by it. He lets me take a bite at a piece of the camote-cue in his hand, oh he and I are comrades. I bite from the clean side, though. He says it's okay, the other guard for the night has gone off for a sandwich. Is he the new man? Yeah, is what he replies. Then I ask, just to make a little more conversation, why is there no one on the second floor anymore? Well, he says, since it's only two floors we can take care of it. Anyway, this way a lot of money is saved, he adds. Yeah, I say, but it could at least provide work. Ah, he says, thieves will probably climb to the second floor without our knowing it, find one little thing or two to steal, that will also help them eat, right? Yes, but you will be out of work---you'll be the one to go hungry then, you'll be the thief then. Haha, he says, you think too fast, my favorite artist. Haha, you only think too much about thinking, pare, I say, walking to the corridor, content with my giving the Tigor a final profundity to ponder on (if he would give a shit). I turn left and open our office door, embrace a mysterious-seeming light from inside, and "discover," after opening the door, Vanessa again already in the office, working on a canvas. And with all these I find myself excited, though also specially worried this Novemeber night. I was thinking, what if Mr. Amorsolo, the abortionist, often doing research at night in his own library in that office at the end of the corridor---what if he sees the guard opening the office with my key? Hardly the person to be wary about, this abortionist, but these times even the Catholic Christian's devil would want to pretend to be the saint. But, just in case you want me to spell it out, here's the idea. He decides to find favor with the building manager, I'd have to blackmail him with his own thing. That, then. Not unlike two righteous presidential candidates who might love to destroy each other with truths. So. There she is now, my Vanessa. Here, as I expect her almost every night to be. And this time, she's painting carabaos over a general's head. Very naive-like drawings, yes---and she's not, I decide. Well, I go to her, place her left palm over each of the hot siopaos I brought with me, and she smiles at that, so I fondle her breasts. Later, the siopaos' underpaper are lying on the table along with the empty softdrink bottles. The still-wet acrylic paint reflects Vanessa's breasts as she kneels close towards the expensive canvas. Some of the paint stain the breasts a little as she struggles near-sightedly with very fine lines. I am now struggling with my broken zipper. Then now I am thinking about the possibility of buying new slacks, or new Levi's jeans if I can afford it, and suddenly there is this knocking on the door. Quickly Vanessa picks up her clothes, runs to the ladies' room. She forgets her cheap espadrilles. It is Tigor at the door. Aling Flora, he says, had been hit by a tricycle. Tell Vans she's at the---. . . . It is now I realize certain pimps too can be human, and how my hatred for the criminal poor was really a hatred for such a facet in my own position. It almost seems we all could be winning the Nobel Peace Prize if given the proper education. My distance from Tigor, then, the distance a trainor has with his lion, whom he understands. Didn't I tell Vanessa I never pretend? Well, my social-climbing self does not see pretense in my attachment to these people, though I hate their ways, but identity. Tigor, Botong, Tony, Mang Andy, these are victims of a culture, as I am of my own. If only we can identify which are the things we, as a whole, ought to be without! . . . The trucking company's garage is of course closed at night so we run around the block in the rain, along the empty stalls (the stallholders have transferred to the cemetery for the fiesta) and then along the shacks towards the carinderia. Upstairs, Vanessa is changing and getting some money to bring along. I wait for her downstairs. She comes down and tells me to stay watch the house for her; she'll go alone. The rain has gone strong (to Americans, heavy). On the concrete flooring outside by the slightly opened doorway, flies could still be seen playing over the wet footmarks of people. There we wait for a tricycle, her voice a bit weary as we call some of the cabs with passengers on them, our feet without socks being tickled every so often by a fly or more. At the far corner by the supermarket she'd still have to call a taxi. I, for my part, call the gods. Philippine gods, who probably don't exist. Somebody already called the police, who've already been here at the scene, the tricycle driver handed over by the barangay government to them. At midnight I begin to close the carinderia myself. Anyway, at this hour it is not a carinderia anymore, with nothing in it, not even some posters Aling Flora didn't care about. It is already morning. Vanessa arrives and tells me, "Aling Flora died of hemorrhage-something. You have heard of this before, it's not a new story, could you make me breakfast?" The barangay asked for donations for Aling Flora's wake and burial with all the ceremonies, asking these from among the barangay people, rich and poor. The high school, whose teachers ordered food to be delivered to them from Aling Flora, donated a few hundreds. From Mrs. Trinidad we were able to collect another few hundreds. And that was how we got to arrange all the things for Aling Flora. Mang Andy, at the vigil, helped Vanessa boil the coffee and wash the kitchen wares. They had good conversations in the kitchen too, Vanessa telling him her thoughts about his toothpicks, which he would later again forget. I sat around the kitchen drawing still lifes, lazy me. But only Tony and I got to attend the funeral. After we buried Aling Flora I was at the carinderia telling Vanessa: why don't you fix the carinderia, Vans, put up some posters over there, . . . I know some people I can ask some from, and we have a few at the office you can use. And then you can hire a cook, a couple of maids, fix the place! We'll be your stockholders. (She tried to fight back tears). I continued: soon it's going to be Christmas, and then it will stop raining and be like summer in December, and that'll be magic enough. (Her tears began a river). We'll have a hot December, a summer hot-plate in the heavens, maybe that is the star of Bethlehem in these parts. C'mon, I said, we'll help you clean it today. We're on leave, Tony and I. . . . "You'll be my what?" she asked, wiping her tears, embarrassed. --------------------------------------- Is that it? the producer asked me. All in all it's a potential, he said. Tony said, just fuck the historical allusions, nobody cares for the history, even most recent history. Hey hey, watch your mouth, Tony, Mrs. Trinidad said. The producer said, you seem to know how to tell it well; I like the way you handle the tenses, and the time swings will be good; Mrs. Trinidad knows her people, hm? Where'd you learn how to write, self-study? Well, anyway, look here, he continued. This is as you can see going to be different. This is a movie, see, can you write it? And can this Vanessa, . . . how do we put it, act?
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