Dogeaters (29 page)

(A knocking sound at the door. There is tension in the music, percussion and a taut plucking of strings.)

MAGDALENA:  
(alarmed) Who could that be at this time of night?

(More knocking sounds, this time more urgent.)

ROSALINDA:     
I’ll go see

MAGDALENA:
No! Don’t!

PONCIANO:         
I’ll go

MAGDALENA:    
No! Shhh! (pause) Who’s there?

MUFFLED VOICE:
Real. I’m here to see Ponciano Agupan.

PONCIANO:         
Let him in, Rosalinda.

MAGDALENA:    
(frantic) Who is Real? Wait! Rosalinda—

(Sound of door creaking open, and footsteps. Magdalena gasps. The music builds to a moderate peak.)

(Colonel Jesus de Jesus asks to be first. He assaults her for so long and with such force, Daisy prays silently to pass out. Her prayers go unanswered. The other men crack jokes, awaiting their turn. “Lover boy
talaga
,” one of the officers grunts in admiration. When he is finished, the baby-faced Colonel licks Daisy’s neck and face. “My woman,” he announces, heaving himself off her. The room starts to stink of sperm and sweat. The President’s aide is next. Only Pepe Carreon and the General refuse to participate, preferring to stand in one corner and watch. While the burly man thrusts into her, the General leans over to whisper in Daisy’s ear. He describes the special equipment set up in another room, a smaller room where the General plans to take her after his men are through. “We can finally be alone,” the General says. He calls her
hija
once again, exclaims at her extraordinary beauty. He promises to make her dance.)

M
ADAME REVEALS
: HER UNABASHED
belief in astrology, the powers of psychic healing, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the loyalty of her homosexual constituents.

Her faith in a nuclear freeze.

Her respect for Oscar de la Renta.

To make a point, Madame removes one shoe. She holds it up for the foreign journalist’s benefit. “Local made! You see, Steve—they say I only buy imported products. But look,
di ba
, my shoe has a label that clearly says: Marikina Shoes, Made in the PI! You know our famous expression,
imported
? It’s always been synonymous with ‘the best,’ in my country—” She pauses to glance around the room at her hovering female attendants, all dressed in blue. Madame turns her attention back to him. “They accuse me of being extravagant, but I’ve owned these shoes for at least five years! Look at the worn heel…And this beautiful dress I’m wearing is also local-made, out of pineapple fiber, which we also export. I use top Filipino designers exclusively for my clothes and my shoes…Valera, Espiritu, Ben Farrales…And Chiquiting Moreno is the only one allowed to
touch
my hair! I am a nationalist when it comes to fashion,” she smiles. She has been lying to him cheerfully all morning, and they both know it. He smiles back.

She shows him the mother-of-pearl heel of her custom-made peau-de-soie pumps. “I have big feet for a Filipina,” she sighs, “all my shoes have to be special ordered.” Pale blue, sky blue, virgin blue, happy blue, mother-of-pearl blue shoes. Her own designs, she tells him proudly. Her favorite color, blue. A color which for her signifies harmony, peace, her serene oneness with the universe.

Queen of beauty queens, Miss Universal Universe, Miss
Bituin,
Madame Galactica, Madame International,
Maganda,
Pearl of the Orient, Pacific Rim Regina, Mother of Asia, Land of the Morning, Miss
Bahay Kubo,
Miss Manila, Lunaretta, Moonlight Sonata,
Bini-bining Pilipinas,
Jet-Set Ambassadress of
Adobo
and Goodwill, whose unwrinkled face reflects the shining love, the truth burning in her heart…Mother of Smooth Alabaster Complexions, Hairdo of Eternity, Calculating Mother of Noncommital Mouth and Eyes…O Perennial Indifference! O Lizard-Pouch Chin! Defiantly held up for the cameras, every photo opportunity seized…

Madame uses her favorite American expression as many times and as randomly as possible throughout her interview. “Okay! Okay! Okay
lang,
so they don’t like my face. They’re all jealous, okay? My beauty has been used against me…I’ve been made to suffer—I can’t help it, okay! I was born this way. I never asked God—” she sighs again. “Can you beat that,
puwede ba
? I am cursed by my own beauty.” She pauses. “Do you like my face?”

The reporter tries not to look astonished. His tape recorder running, he also scribbles down everything she says in his notebook. She appraises and dismisses him swiftly, noting his hairy arms, cheap tie, limp white shirt, and dreary wing tips.

He avoids answering her sudden question, affecting a light attitude which rings false. “You’re turning this around, Madame—don’t forget, I’m interviewing you,” he grins, but she does not smile back. He hopes he only imagines that her eyes harden. “Don’t worry, Steve, I never forget.” She looks back at her blue women and smirks. The reporter keeps his voice steady. “What about the young man arrested by Ledesma’s men earlier this week?” He glances down at his notes. “I believe his name was Orlando Rosales. Are any formal charges being made?”

Madame shakes her head slowly. She affects a look of sadness, which she does well. “You should interview General Ledesma and Lieutenant Carreon about that. These are terrible times for my country, Steve. Do you mind if I call you Steve? Good.” She pauses. “
Ay
! So much tragedy in such a short time! It’s unfortunate, all this violence. Thanks be to God for our Special Squadron, a brutal assassin has been apprehended…”

“Orlando Rosales was shot down in the middle of a busy intersection, in broad daylight. He was taken immediately to Camp Dilidili, and no one was allowed to see him. His fiancée claimed he was an innocent man, on his way to see her for their regular lunch date. He had no known political affiliation, and since giving her testimony, his fiancée has disappeared,” the reporter says, in a neutral voice.

Madame looks surprised. “Is that so? No one’s told me anything about it.” She decides he reminds her of some sort of insect, with his long legs and arms and bulging brown eyes enlarged by thick, wire-rimmed glasses. Is he Jewish? She sniffs in distaste. Her face remains a cordial mask. “You know, Steve—Orlando Rosales had a gun. How do you foreigners explain that? The same gun that shot Senator Avila! He was also shooting back at the police.”

“He was a waiter, wasn’t he?”

“That was his job, yes. His assumed identity. Oh, he was brilliant, Steve. Quite a brilliant, sophisticated young man. What we call here a genuine ‘intelektwal,’” she smiles. “This had been planned for some time, planned very carefully. Even this whole business with that poor fiancée of his—she was his unwitting accomplice. How do you say it? His ‘foil,’
di ba
?” She looks pleased with herself. “General Ledesma was aware of a plot, but no one was sure when the assassin would strike. We tried to warn Senator Avila, but—” Madame sighs deeply this time. “Orlando Rosales had everyone fooled, including his own mother.” She describes an investigation after the assassin’s arrest, linking him to a known group of subversives based in the Cordilleras. She laughs. “Steve—you know the latest joke? NPA—for nice people around.”

“What about Daisy Avila? Rumor has it she’s been captured and detained.”

There is a brief, tense moment of silence. “I am unable to discuss Daisy Avila,” Madame finally answers. “It is a matter that pertains to our national security. But I will tell you this, okay Steve? As far as I know, Daisy Avila is still in the mountains. Another poor girl, led astray by that evil man! You should really interview General Ledesma about all this. Okay, Steve?” She brings up her favorite movie in English,
The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
“I feel like the poor hunchback. Here was this ugly man, okay? But such a beautiful spirit! I know Anthony Quinn quite well, Steve. Do you know Anthony Quinn?”

“No, but I saw him in
Zorba the Greek
on Broadway.” He does not know why he responds, and feels foolish.

“
Ay
,
talaga
! You’re from New York?” She visibly warms to him, and becomes more animated as she talks. “I should’ve guessed—you look like a New York
intelektwal
!” she giggles. “Didn’t you think Anthony was better in the movie version? Tony was much younger then,
di ba
?”

Madame confesses:
How privileged she feels, as the wife of the leader of an emerging and prosperous nation and as the mother of such intelligent, unspoiled children. “My daughter is at Princeton,” she reminds the journalist. Her laugh is bitter. “People talk about corruption. That is what you’re implying, isn’t it, Steve? Okay, you say. We are a corrupt regime—
a dictatorship. Dios ko
! We’ve been accused of throwing our bananas in the garbage to purposely rot while children starve. We make deals with the Japs. Our sugar rots in warehouses,
daw
. Meanwhile, everybody’s starving. We take your precious dollars and run—but where will we run, Steve? You can run but you can’t hide,
di ba
?
Naku
! I wouldn’t look like this if I were corrupt, would I? Some ugliness would settle down on my system. You know the common expression—‘ugly as sin’? And I don’t mean the Cardinal—” Madame giggles girlishly again. One of her blue ladies pours her more tea and refills the journalist’s coffee cup. “There’s truth in common sayings,
di ba
? If I were corrupt, I would look like that other movie,
Dorian Gray
.
Di ba
, he got uglier and uglier because of all the ugliness in his life?”

He decides he will leave her sentences unedited when the interview is over. Her convoluted thinking intrigues him, her appropriations of American English. She is fond of words like “coterminous,” which he will later have to look up in an unabridged dictionary. But he is aware that her romance with Western culture is not what is at stake. He fights the cynicism that threatens to engulf him whenever she speaks. He knows he must see the interview through to the end.

Coiffed and complacent, Madame sits on her exquisite armchair inlaid with intricate mother-of-pearl designs. “Handcarved by Muslim craftsmen,” she informs him proudly. “Have you been to our Mindanao region, Steve?” She offers him the use of a government plane. With one shoe off, her stockinged foot is visible to him. She rubs it against her other ankle. He notices her toenails are manicured a glossy peach color, with white half-moons in the center. He averts his eyes from her foot, aware she is toying with him. “
Ay
, I’m so tired,” she murmurs. She signals one of her attendants. “Would you like a snack?” He politely refuses, and feels more foolish than ever.

She slips off her other shoe, squirming to rearrange herself in the elegant chair. Crossing her legs, she smoothes her
pinafiber
skirt demurely over plump knees. “I’ll tell you something, okay Steve? There are no real issues. Issues are conflicts made up by the opposition to further tear my country apart. The opposition is envious and greedy and impatient. The opposition is ugly, Steve. They want to take things away from me and my husband—there’s nothing brave or noble about the opposition! That’s something you foreigners stir up, to cause trouble. To create news. Sensationalism,
di ba
? The noble opposition is a bad dream. God save us from the day when my husband steps down as the leader of this glorious country! Then you’ll witness real bloodshed—unless we make adequate preparations to protect ourselves from being overrun by wild dogs fighting among themselves for a chance at power. The fighting will go on for years—” She takes a deep breath. “Don’t you think we know there is hunger and poverty still rampant, in spite of all our efforts? We never denied it, okay? People look at me. Because I happen to look great—they assume—they put two and two together—they accuse me of stealing food from children’s mouths. Absurd,
di ba
? No way! Okay—these people have nothing to begin with. Who am I to steal from those who have nothing? Why should I? Nothing can be gained from nothing,
di ba
? Common sense, Steve—the opposition lacks common sense.”

He is exhausted by her tirade, too drained and exhausted to argue with her. It is not his place to argue. He is conducting an interview, after all. He will let her go on and on. He will construct from this an intimate profile of Madame, startling and amusing. Even so, a whirl of images nags at him. Bananas and mounds of coconuts, fields of sugar cane, grainy black and white footage of sobbing women, women kneeling over open graves, graves piled with the corpses of mutilated men and children. The chubby-faced waiter Orlando Rosales with his pathetic Elvis pompadour—out-of-sync and dated, but certainly innocent.

“Do you have anything more to say about the late Senator Avila?” He asks her a predictable question and expects a predictable answer. He must wind up the interview in some coherent fashion, turn off the tape recorder. He must pack up his briefcase, thank her profusely, and leave as soon as possible. The air-conditioned conference room is chilly; his underarms are damp with nervous sweat. “A terrible thing,” Madame replies. “We warned Senator Avila to stop consorting with the left. He was always trying to make deals with the NPA. My husband told him, many times—‘Domingo, there are no deals to be made.’ Domingo was a stubborn man. Just as we predicted, they double-crossed him. Set him up and executed him to exploit the situation. Of course, they knew we would be blamed. We’re convenient targets,
di ba
? Domingo Avila was expendable to those bloodthirsty goons—what a waste of a fine man! You tell me about sympathy, Steve. Now that is an issue, okay? Sympathy versus empathy—I know the difference, for I am blessed with the capacity for both. My critics accuse me of being too emotional,” she adds, wryly. “Perhaps I am actually cursed.”

“What do you mean?”

She sends one of the women out of the room to fetch her gold pen and some paper. “It’s very clear, what I mean.” Her voice is impatient. “I will draw you a picture, Steve. If you like, for your benefit, so you can better understand. Okay? For the benefit of the grieving widow Avila and her family, all those who accuse me of being heartless and lacking in human emotion. Don’t you think I’ve been a victim too?”