Playing with Water (15 page)

By now the reader will have the impression that life here is indeed rather chappish, unrelievedly masculine. But there is little alternative for the unattached male who does not wish to do anything as blunt as importing a girl from another region as if she were one more of the essential stores for island-dwelling. In this respect the Philippine provinces are not at all what a foreigner familiar only with Manila might imagine, being in general passionate but proper. All sorts of wild flirtations abound but they are taken account of down to the last detail. Pious Catholic parents and inlaws still value virginity on the wedding-day but they value honour and financial understandings more. I have twice attended weddings nominated as
ninong
to the child the bride was visibly carrying. There was never the least hint that things were less than ideal: everyone was far too pleased the right thing had been done, that a romance had been blessed in the sight of heaven and the offspring would be legitimate. Many foreigners who stray into the provinces with ideas of dalliance discover quite soon that all but the most innocent of flirtations are taken quite seriously, not
least because on various counts foreigners tend to be valued (not to say costed) as potential husbands. Girls after the age of puberty are usually chaperoned by their friends on any occasion which involves calling on a single male. Even Marisil Malabayabas, whom I have known since she was ten or so, has only very rarely brought me something at my hut in Kansulay unaccompanied by a little sister or two, although this may quite possibly be due to no more than the Filipino dislike of doing anything on one’s own.

In consequence, needing to stay unencumbered by such things I elect when I am here to live a life which is the butt of fairly gentle jokes and gossip: I am
monastic
, I am
virtuous
, I am a
gentleman
, I am
self-controlled
, I am
cold and sexless,
I am
baklâ
: one takes one’s pick. Of course the more knowing people are, the less they like enigmas. Where sexuality is concerned the Filipinos are very knowing indeed and from the earliest age. Thus my friends are irritated and intrigued that in my case they seem unable to settle the matter and I have heard that many a discussion on this inconsequential topic has raged around the drinks-table. Apparently
kapitan
Sanso’s old father once snorted and said ‘Why does he have to
be
anything? Why mightn’t he just be
sensible
?’ For that I salute him, or rather his memory since he died not long ago.

Meanwhile on Tiwarik I go on living a life whose company – when there is any – is necessarily male, except when wives and sisters come over for visits or I go to their houses on the mainland. Many days go by when I see no-one of either sex. I might be dreaming on the uplands or fishing when somebody lands on the beach for an hour or two. I arrive back to find only a keel-mark and footprints, a cigarette end by my hut or the gift of a plastic pitcher of
tuba
left inside. However insecure my position in the marriage-market of Sabay I cannot doubt that I do occupy a place of my own in the economy of its affection. Reciprocated fondness does not, after all, seem such bad terms on which to live a life even if everybody is left faintly puzzled.

On other days Intoy might well come across in the early morning with my water. Since I have now acquired four jerrycans this no longer need be a daily routine. He really
has rather taken me up and if I did not discourage him gently from time to time I think he would come and live on Tiwarik. This despite my having made it clear that I am not about to pay him extra for further duties simply because there is nothing more I need beyond his bringing water and running the odd errand to the village shop. But I do not think it is purely a matter of money for him. Maybe it is status or just pleasure at the oddness of observing a foreigner at close range. Whatever the reason his permanent presence would not suit me. Apart from anything else he ought to be at school most days, for his schooling has been of the skimpiest. Now and again when his parents could spare him and could afford to buy the odd pencil and exercise book he has attended the village school in Sabay. Over the years he has picked up smatterings of this and that but where schoolwork is concerned he has never learned how to learn.

Surprisingly, nearly two hundred children of primary school age to twelve or thirteen attend this school, many walking several kilometres each day in all weathers along the paths leading from outlying hamlets hidden among the groves and forests on the lower slopes of the cordillera. It is at this level of village life that one encounters a deep yearning for administrative stability, for official encouragement, for progress. There is a profound respect for the idea of education; there seems not to be the least degree of cynicism about it to the extent that questioning the existence of God would hardly be thought more subversive than questioning the value of education.

The school at Sabay is a long bungalow with a verandah running its length whose roof is patched with
cogon
where the corrugated iron has rusted or blown away. Around it runs a border where flowers have been planted by the pupils: some are in bloom, others have been rooted up by the pigs and chickens and goats which scavenge the village between school and seashore. There is a flagpole in front of the bungalow with a few whitewashed stones around its base. Inside the school it is cool and dusty with bright shafts piercing from structural chinks. The classrooms are bare: there are not enough desks or chairs or tables, there is
never enough chalk, the text books are few, tattered, out of date or just plain bad, as in the case of several books about Philippine history and culture which are thinly disguised hagiographies of the Marcoses. For some reason these rooms remind me of Clock House in my second school: perhaps they are the same size as the converted coach-houses. Certainly the contrast could hardly be greater. The classrooms in Clock House were efficiently-appointed little educational factories for producing the quality product parents were buying: entrance to public school, to university, to the gravy train of life. Here in Sabay, though, nobody would ever mistake these classrooms for factories. Rather, they are outposts of literate civilisation with their children’s paintings around the walls done with the beautiful pale colours leached from the hearts of expired felt-tip pens on the insides of multi-pack cigarette cartons. There are also exemplars of handwriting and sums as well as some charts left over from the last BHWs’ (
barangay
health workers’) meeting listing the incidence of TB, worms and gastroenteritis in nearby barrios.

It is here, as in thousands of provincial schools like it throughout the Philippines, that monstrously underpaid men and women teach. Many of them are, as they themselves sadly recognise, barely educated. Trying to extract supplies, pay rises, even recognition from the bureaucracy in distant Manila is like beseeching the moon. Often they are forced to buy the chalk they need out of their own pockets. But they carry on, year in and year out, and a steady stream of children leaves their hands able at least to read and do sums. That is a triumph; the very existence of such people in the villages is a solid thing to set against the barbarianism which so often seems likely to engulf the country. It is at this level, of
barangay
officials, priests, teachers and BHWs, one can most often see the legacy of the more radical and enlightened of the Spaniards and Americans who colonised this land.

From time to time Intoy has attended this school in Sabay but at thirteen or fourteen (nobody seems sure which) he cannot read or write at all well. Too often his father has needed him to help with fishing or planting rice,
just as seventy years ago in England children were kept away from Dame school to help on the land or merely throw stones at crows. I want so much to help him, but offering to pay for him to go to the High School in Malubog would be pointless since he couldn’t keep up even if they could be persuaded to admit him. In any case he has nearly reached that stage of being a professional drop-out. Being educated is a habit and it is one Intoy has never acquired. Instead he is
bulakbol
. He lounges, he looks at comics, he climbs sixty-foot palm trees with laughter in high winds, he has all sorts of rural competences; he fishes with divine address. He will probably soon become a precocious drinker and smoker and maybe by the time he is eighteen he will have to marry. He often has fantasies of going to Manila, one more of the country migrants hoping for – what? Money, jobs, pleasures; whatever.

Sometimes, thinking about it all and about Intoy in particular, I become depressed. It is so predictable, so intransigent. But there again I wonder if this is not yet another form of sentimentality, worrying overmuch about how other people live their lives. Meanwhile Intoy glitters in the sun like Ariel. He gives no hint that he may, like Howard all those years ago, have had a sudden black insight, a vision of his own future. He runs and laughs and dives. He lies on his back in the hut and makes dozens of
nito
rings of varying sizes, plaited with amazing dexterity. He tells awful jokes. One day he turns up with a bomb-making kit for land rather than sea. His idea is to go after the large crabs which tuck themselves into the crevices of rocks just above the water line and he has brought several small bottles and some fertiliser. Do I have any sugar? String?

In my bomb-making days I never tried using brown sugar but Intoy assures me it works. Simple fuses made of string soaked in kerosene complete a couple of these devices and we go off to dispose them experimentally in holes. The first makes a soft bang and a cloud of white smoke but evidently lacks blasting power: the rocks remain intact. The second does little better, leaving merely an enlarged crack smelling of burnt jam. We return to the hut to blend the sugar and fertiliser in different proportions. After an hour or so we
have achieved a mix which produces a most satisfying blast but I am far from convinced Intoy is going to get many crabs with it. This particular morning I have been marinading last night’s catch; I now begin to lay the fish out on the drier while Intoy runs off with his bombs to try his luck.

After a couple of bangs when he has not re-appeared I go to see what has happened, dreading to find his mutilated remains. Eventually – heart-stopping moment – I see him sprawled face downwards on the rocks above the water line, one brown foot washed by the wavelets. But he is only trying to spot crabs in their holes. A match flares, a thin smoke curls, fragments of rock leap in the air and spatter the sea. Intoy jumps out of cover and goes to peer into the crater. He reaches in and comes up with a huge fighting claw; the rest of the crab has been atomised or else has dropped beyond reach. But he is well pleased with his morning and, having roasted the claw, presents it to me with a proud and graceful gesture.

One afternoon Totoy Matias paddles over in a small
bangka
to fish. Arman has gone to Malubog to buy supplies, Danding is taking the
Jhon-Jhon
’s carburettor down, so today it is up to Totoy Matias to get his family’s meals solo. He always strikes me as a gloomy young man: he has a heavy presence as if life had done him a personal injury and he were still awaiting compensation. But as well as his nets he brings a copy of
Magix Komix
which he and Intoy read together on the floor of the hut with exclamations of surprise and pleasure, fingers poking at details in the pictures. Getting food can wait.

Totoy Matias’s life and reputation were transformed the day the morning jeep bumped into Sabay with a packet for him containing the new issue of
Magix Komix
, but they had to wait for their transformation until he had read through the story which took up the first half of the comic. This concerned a girl who had thirteen fingers, each with its own identity. At moments of crisis (i.e. every issue) her fingertips blossomed with monstrous heads, some multi-eyed,
some snouted, some blank but for a single tuft of hair and a mouth. In this particular issue the girl was raped by an ill-advised fellow who discovered too late that what he thought were her defenceless hands clutching at his back were really transfigured digits grinning at each other in glee before their fangs ripped and tore the living meat from his rib-cage. On page four he expired messily and Totoy turned to the heading ‘I Love You Corner’. The first letter he read ran thus:

The second was electrifying:

The first time one sees one’s name in print it produces a glow unlike any other. The indifferent and illimitable world has suddenly given back one’s image. Totoy was overwhelmed with pride and pleasure and carried the issue of
Magix Komix
around with him for days, showing it to everyone he met which in turn created pleasure for since the previous issue people were longing to know what new adventures would befall the girl with the thirteen fingers. It was impossible not to feel pleased for him, even for Vangie since seeing her printed name had reified her existence for
Totoy in a way which no mere posted letter from her could have done. I was disinclined to question him but not two days beforehand I had overheard him being chaffed by his friends about a girl in Malubog, the next sizeable town up the coast. It was a smart move of Vangie’s to have immortalised herself and Totoy; it left the competition in Malubog with a lot of catching up to do.