Ilustrado (36 page)

I go quietly into the main performance hall. In the darkness, the doorways to the lobby are like obelisks of light. Their reach is just enough to frost the proscenium arch with gray. My cell phone, no brighter than a candle, gives the room a sanctified atmosphere more befitting a memorial. A set of footprints in the dust leads to the front of the room. I follow them and stand before the famous arch, the inspiration for Crispin’s Palanca Award–winning short story, “One-Act Play.” Taking off from the work of Alain Robbe-Grillet, the piece is about a murder committed on this stage and the innumerable possibilities of how the scene could have played out. Framing the drama is Crispin’s description of the setting. I’ve always remembered: “1001 scenes by 1001 woodcarvers, each instructed to succumb to his imagination and recall the stories of his youth. The result is a soaring frieze filled with unobtainable young women, every variety of native fruit, nationalistic flags, a stallion pulling an ornate kalesa, the epic battle in which Lapu Lapu slew Magellan, the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, the flora and fauna of the islands, upheld fists, churches, Intramuros, chubby-bubby sons and roly-poly daughters, Andres Bonifacio leading a revolutionary charge, a roast suckling pig with an apple in its mouth, Jesus on the cross, a woman planting rice in a polished paddy, a crescent moon embracing a single star, a giant spoon and fork, so many other et ceteras and et ceteras.”

Fiction, however, sometimes ensures disappointment with reality. The arch only sports carvings of the four Muses—Poetry, Music, Tragedy, Comedy—nothing more. The sobriety of fact. Here, too, was where Crispin had his short run for his disco opera,
All Around the World.
I’ve seen photos of opening night—the set a stylized deck of Magellan’s frigate, the
Victoria
; singing conquistadors in tight polyester pants dangling from the rigging; a disco ball representing the moon in the sky behind the mizzenmast.

I get onto the stage and wait for Avellaneda. The doorways dim. Something rustles among the debris. I call out his name. Dr. Avellaneda! My voice echoes into voices. Like someone’s watching. I call his name again.

What was that?

The four faces stare at me. Tragedy and Comedy in equal measure, while Poetry and Music seem indifferent, caught up in themselves.

I don’t think Avellaneda’s coming.

Nothing—not the years, not Salvador’s death—ever seems to satiate the anger. I wait longer than I should. He said he was going to show me what Crispin did. When the darkness is complete, I go my own way.

There are only three truths. That which can be known. That which can never be known. The third, which concerns the writer alone, truly is neither of these.

—from the 1987 essay “Crucifictions,” by Crispin Salvador

*

Boy Bastos is four years old and quite the talker. Because of his parents’ broken marriage, he’s a constant source of aggravation to his mother, though she’s pleased he’s finally taken to calling her lover, the congressman, “Papa.” One day Boy sees his mother dressing.

“Mama, what are those things on your chest?”

“Those are my life preservers for swimming.”

“Great! Since I can’t swim, can I have them for the pool?”

“No, Boy. I need them.”

Then, referring to his pretty nanny, Boy asks: “Then can I use my yaya’s?”

His mother replies scornfully: “No, son, hers have no air in them.”

“But how can that be?” says Boy. “Last night while you were at mahjong I saw Papa blowing them up!”

*

I have dinner near the theater at a canteen called Beery Good. Rice cakes, a bowl of blood stew, and a can of Sarsi from a dour lady who stands fanning a charcoal grill. You can smell the skewers of assorted
things slowly roasting. I’m trying to reach Avellaneda on my cell phone but he’s not picking up. The TV in the corner is too loud anyway.

The only patrons are me and a pair of cops. A variety show is on, hosted by a gorgeous Filipina-American actress with a whining Californian accent. She tries speaking Taglish but it’s really much less Tagalog than it is English. She mixes up her verb tenses.

Four members of the studio audience are competing to see who can drink the most shot glasses of Datu Puti vinegar. Their faces are contorted and the crowd is laughing. Finally, all but one gives up and she—Queenie, a middle-aged canteen cook from Barangay Quijote, Quezon City—is given the choice between a cash prize of up to ten thousand pesos (three months’ salary) or the mystery reward inside the bayong, a woven bag for market produce or the transport of fighting cocks.

The dour lady comes and stands beside me to watch. She clasps her hands and shakes them like she’s about to throw dice. I’m worried she’ll grab my arm. Queenie chooses the bayong. Camera zooms onto her lips. She’s praying. She opens the bag. Pulls out a lollipop. The crowd squeals in delight. Queenie, holding back tears, smiles gamely.

The dour lady wails. “Jesusmariajosep!” She storms into the kitchen. Plates are banged. Her outburst has twisted the cops around. They look at me. One has a hungry face and squints while finishing his Red Horse beer. Bottles litter their table like spent shell casings or illegitimate children. The other cop, dark and movie-star handsome, is contorting his mouth, trying to free with his tongue bits of food from between his gums and cheek.

Cold sweat trickles down my sides.

The gaunt one stands. Stretches. Adjusts his gun belt. He approaches. His smile is strange, as if designed to show off his gold tooth. He stands above me as I look at my food. “Sir,” he says, “do you mind?” He speaks with a fake American accent. “Can we change the channel?” He points with his lips at the television. I nod and smile. He smiles back. “You should be getting home,” he says. “Something bad is going to happen tonight.” He adjusts his gun belt and looks out at the sky.

The channel is switched to a popular news show. A talking head
complains: “It’s environmental terrorism. Green imperialism.” He is a bald man with huge eyeglasses. “How are they so concerned with the habitats of fish, when people—people!—in this country can’t afford regular meals? Imagine how poor this nation would be without the leadership of the PhilFirst Corporation! These foreigners should be tried under the laws of
our
country. Instead, they are confined to their ship. Drinking wine and playing games! Is that justice?”

A woman with frizzy hair replies: “What about extradition treaties?”

The man shakes his head. “Inapplicable! In fact, my client is launching an investigation for the public’s interest and safety, and will prosecute these so-called World Wardens to the furthest extent possible. That is what laws are for.”

*

It had been a long time since she’d done it. Dulcé wondered if she believed enough anymore. All those times before, she was younger. Now, she even
felt
older. The difference between eleven and fifteen is huge, nearly a third of her life! It seemed that with every year the colors of the world faded little by little. Besides, Kap wouldn’t be there to catch her.

Dulcé did remember the laws of magic, but she’d also been taught the laws of physics in school. Those were immutable laws. Gravity would always be gravity. But maybe, if one believed enough, one could slow it. Control her fall. Because falling, if you live in the moment, is really just flying, at least until you reach the ground. That’s what Kap always said. So what was Dulcé so afraid of? It was just an act of will. Like getting up to go to school when you’re too sleepy.

As she’d done so many times with Kap, Dulcé stepped off the branch. She believed she hadn’t outgrown the things that mattered. She believed she could be lighter than air again. She believed she wouldn’t fall. She believed.

Dulcé fell. She slowed. She sank, gently, like a feather, downward. She reached the ground. The soles of her feet on the soil finally took all of her weight, yet Dulcé felt strangely lighter than she’d ever been. She looked at her shoes. Yes, they were firmly planted on the ground. But she felt likse a brand-new person.

The stars above shone as if they were applauding.

—from
Ay Naku!
, Book Three of Crispin Salvador’s
Kaputol
trilogy

*

On the way back to the hotel, my taxi is stopped at a roadblock. The elderly driver, shaking visibly, rolls down his window. He tugs and twirls the long hairs growing from a mole on his cheek. A soldier, water pouring off his shiny green raincoat, bends to shine a flash-light in our faces. He’s wearing a painter’s mask over his mouth and nose. “License please.” He and the driver exchange quiet words. The soldier goes to the back, knocks on the trunk. It clicks open. The driver turns to smile at me. “It’s nothing,” he says. “They search taxis tonight. One exploded today near Malacañang Palace.” The soldier bangs the trunk shut. Returns.

“Your spare tire is bald,” he says. He bends to look at us, his face lacquered with rain.

“If I needed it, it would work,” says the driver. “I can’t afford a new one.”

“I’ll have to issue you a ticket and confiscate your license.”

“Can I pay the penalty now?”

“You can instead.”

“How much?”

“One hundred pesos.”

I pipe up from the backseat: “Are you authorized to be giving traffic tickets?”

“Two hundred pesos,” the soldier says, not looking at me.

I roll down my own window. “What division do you belong to? I’m going to report you to—”

“Four hundred pesos.” The soldier stares at me.

“Okay, okay!” the driver says, pushing four bills into the soldier’s hand.

The soldier returns the license and motions us through with a swing of his flashlight beam. The driver sighs, his wipers squeaking in reply. He glares at me through the rearview mirror and he resumes stroking the hairs on his mole. I tell him I’ll pay. He nods. Tries to smile. “It used to be bribes were fixed,” he says. “Fifty pesos, enough for dinner. Very reasonable. Now, it’s different.”

I turn around to see the glow of the roadblock receding. The taxi has a sticker on its back window. The lights behind us
outline black letters on a white field. From inside, it reads
.

*

A sensational trial found three impoverished farmers guilty of Petra’s murder and sentenced them to death. Salvador, convinced the accused were scapegoats, took to the hills. By all accounts, his state of mind at the time was unstable, though his autobiography says he moved with clarity of purpose.

On the evening of December 7, 1967, Salvador packed a rucksack and traveled by jeepney, two buses, tricycle, and finally by foot to a small town at the foot of Mount Banahaw, the mystical volcano renowned for its pilgrimage sites. There, Salvador met Ka Arsenio, the man his comrade in the city said would lead him to the NPA encampments in the mountains beyond. Ka Arsenio barely spoke to Salvador as they hiked. According to Salvador’s recollection, “My strange guide could have slit my throat as I slept, or disappeared before I awakened, that is how much he seemed to despise me. And yet, the following morning, there he’d be, boiling water over the camp-fire for our coffee. During our wordless three-day journey, I never thought he would eventually become my mentor and best friend.”

—from the biography in progress,
Crispin Salvador:
Eight Lives Lived
, by Miguel Syjuco

*

Consider the rebel I once knew who threw down his arms and took up residence in a remote cave. His thoughts, chromed with the ugliness he’d seen in life, lead his slow evolution into a Bodhisattva. Word gets around of his wisdom. His family, his childhood chums, his former comrades-in-arms, all make a pilgrimage to seek his advice. They are shocked by the things he says. They leave, neglecting his nuggets of wisdom, because they consider his hair shirt, his ascetic mien, his aphorisms, pretentious.

—from the 1988 essay
Tao
(
People
), by Crispin Salvador

*

December 7, 2002. Saturday night. I’ve spent a week in planes, in taxis, in strange dreams and conversations. Tonight’s the first night
I actually feel good. Awesome even. As I was finishing my blood stew, Sadie texted to apologize for leaving me in the rain. She promised to make it up to me. I took a nap in the hotel and arrived at the club fresh—showered, nose powdered, and grooving with the certainty of the next step: I know where Dulcinea is.

Tonight, though, I’m free of all that. Tonight, in my pocket, is a throbbing virgin gram. Tonight, even the music is perfect. It’s Oknard5 on the deck, in town from NYC for the holidays. He’s sampling from electro classics, weaving a tapestry all his own. The crowd is loving it.

And there she is. Sexy Sadie, through the smoke of the dance floor, revealed by the parting crowd. She’s leaning up against the bar across the way, elbows propped behind her lackadaisically. She looks at me looking at her. She is hidden by dancing bodies and disco lights flashing red, then blue, then darkness, then green, then orange. The revelers shift and she’s revealed again, her gaze unbroken. Sadie smiles.

Her luminescent shoulders are fragile in her black spaghetti straps. Long hair parted in the middle just covers the twin points of her chest, sharp and ostentatious beneath her thin satin top. She reminds me of one of the nymphs in the Pre-Raphaelite painting: heroic Hylas at the water’s edge being lured for a swim. Sadie looks down her pert nose at me, her large dark eyes looking up and beckoning. I swear, Waterhouse must have secretly loved a Filipina mestiza. I can imagine Sadie naked in the water, lily pads brushing the undersides of her upturned breasts, a yellow flower in her hair, delicate arms reaching as I bring my amphora to slake my thirst.