by Glenn Diaz
“Hi,” I said, extending my hand. “Reynaldo?”
“Yes, Ma’am Carolina?”
“OK, I need you to promise me one thing,” I told him; he looked stricken. “That’s the last time you would call me ‘Ma’am,’ OK?”
“OK, Carolina,” he said. He looked at the tiny Samsonite behind me. “Is this all?”
“It’s only two weeks, not two years, right?” I asked. We laughed.
Oh, how we laughed.
He was twenty-three, he said, with a degree in secondary education (“Communication Arts-English”) from a university in Ilocos Norte, a province north of Manila. On a whim, he had taken the entrance examinations to the military academy. His parents, who fished and raised a couple of hogs in their backyard, cried when they found out he passed. There was a congratulatory banner in front of the municipal hall.
“Sounds impressive,” I told him.
He smiled. “Thank you.”
More pleasantries, then we were off.
From the elevated expressway, Manila looked different from how I remembered it. The city had grown taller, glossier, more muscular, but there was still something childish and juvenile about its skyline, the sense that it was trying to punch above its weight. When our van rejoined its streets, what I saw was a city confused, a city old and exhausted but pressured to show off its newer trimmings, a youth it couldn’t remember. Was it Oscar Wilde who said America transitioned from barbarism to decadence without passing by civilization? This thought crossed my mind as we navigated Manila’s streets, the names of which, like everywhere else in the world, offered quick lessons in history. Legazpi, Magallanes, España, Taft, MacArthur, Lawton, Rizal, Marcos, Aquino.
Outside our van, kids in rags carried even younger kids in their arms, selling daisy garlands to idle cars in intersections. Men peddled strange stuff, from feather dusters to fishing rods, through open windows (“The more of those you see,” Rey said, pointing to the men with armfuls of knickknacks, “the worse the traffic.” Then about a dozen more appeared from in between vehicles). The jeeps had gotten cruder, unbearably noisier, belonging to a bygone era.
“What’s that?” I asked Reynaldo, pointing to the booklet he was holding.
“It’s a Spanish phrasebook,” he said. “They told us, any additional skill you can get, take it. They want us to be well-rounded. So if it’s OK—”
“Te ayudo, si quieres,” I told him. As soon as I spoke the words, I was hit by how foreign they sounded, as if they had been uttered by someone else who sounded like me. “I mean, I can help you, if you want.”
“Tita Yusing told me,” he said. “But I can’t pay you. Pobre, mi. Muy pobre.”
“Soy pobre,” I said.
“Soy pobre, yes,” he repeated, overly enunciating each word.
The AC worked full blast inside the van, to little avail. I nudged Reynaldo, careful not to scorn the weather or anything in his country, “Global warming, huh?” I wiped my hanky across my forehead. “I mean, we get forties in Sydney but it’s never as humid as this.”
“In the Philippines,” he said, “two seasons: hot and hotter. Maybe it will rain later.”
“In summer?”
He nodded. His eyes were brown, his eyebrows, thick and bushy.
“Wow,” I said, fanning myself with my hand. “You know what’s even more amazing. How all the women here can keep their hair so long and nice and thick—”
The van made an abrupt stop, and we both lunged forward. The driver bore down on the horn and didn’t let go until Rey chided him.
I started to unbutton my cardigan. He looked the other way, still smiling, acting cool. Bad for him, the tint of the van reflected his un-cool curiosity: his eyes seeking to take a peek at the drenched skin where my collar bones protruded.
My first five days went by in a daze, packed with meetings and endless longing for the return to my hotel room, for me to take off my shoes and have a glass of wine. Reynaldo was extremely able—and entertaining—company, a joy to work with. He copied files, recorded interviews, and jotted down notes. He talked to guards and receptionists and secretaries in Tagalog and, at the health minister’s office, Ilocano. When we passed by the Philippine Navy Headquarters on a wide boulevard by Manila Bay, he said he was just there a few weeks ago, and there were drills and exercises aboard a real-life Philippine Navy ship before they docked at a nearby province. I did my part and imagined him in a white sailor’s uniform.
In the end, there was nothing left to do except make sense of all the data, all so terribly voluminous and dreadful that I wept at the mere thought of writing the final report. At the celebratory dinner for two, we were talking about something—his favourite action flicks? Damian’s job at a local college?—when Reynaldo floated the idea of a side trip to Pagudpud, his province’s answer to insanely commercialised Boracay.
“I will be there until Easter and you said you wanted to go to the beach,” he said, his eyes like those of a child, which he was.
“I have a week to spare,” I told him.
The next day at dusk, we boarded a pink north-bound bus, bracing ourselves for a thirteen-hour wringer.
“We should have taken a plane,” he said while we settled in our surprisingly plush seats. “Pa-gud-pud is an hour away by air. Well, Laoag is. Then it’s another hour to Pagudpud. But all flights are booked. Everyone leaves the city during Holy Week.”
“You don’t say?” I asked, trying to picture Manila as a ghost town.
Around five hours into the trip, our bus slowed down and stopped on a wide, rock-strewn lot beside a roadside cafeteria. By then I knew that Reynaldo’s ambidextrous because of a first grade English teacher; that he loved MacGyver as a kid; and that when he smiled, his already tiny eyes disappeared from his face, while a dimple emerged, like a comma, on his right cheek.
We got off, and I smoked my first stick in hours.
Across the street was another empty lot, a grassy field fronted by a rundown concrete shed, with crumbling cement walls filled with graffiti and faded election posters.
The sunlight tickled my skin, still pasty and cold from the AC. I couldn’t believe it—it was a Monday and I was here, a country three thousand miles away.
I checked my watch. By now (Sydney time), Drake and Briana Whitewood from next door and their two boys would be getting on their car. She’d wave her usual “Morning, Carolina!” and I’d wave back, rushing to work, wondering again if things would have been different—better, more bearable—if Damian and I had reproduced, little tots who would probably have abhorred us for bringing them into this mad world.
“Beef, chicken, or seafood?” Reynaldo asked.
“Beef please,” I said, “I think.” I puffed smoke upward. I had no idea that the sun felt this good in the morning, that the sky was a pompous blue. Five days a week, I’d drive thirty-seven kilometres, then brisk-walk to the Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick, where the medicines research unit was based. The sky didn’t figure anywhere. It didn’t pleasantly assail.
A few minutes later, Reynaldo and I were sitting on a wooden bench. I was sipping instant noodle soup. “Yum,” I thought. “MSG.” His breakfast was a strange-looking plate of steamed rice, fried fish, and a few slices of tomatoes and salted eggs. Mindy would be bringing my latte right about now. She’d recite my schedule and check the incoming pile for anything that needed to be prioritised. A token how-do-you-do if she was having a good morning. A leave-me-alone pout otherwise. “Is there anything else, Carolina?” she’d ask sweetly, before retreating to her desk to hide for the rest of the day.
“We’re about halfway there,” Reynaldo said, after wolfing down his food. “One-third, maybe. Two-fifths? I don’t know. I almost failed differential calculus last year and nearly got turned back a year.”
I laughed. “No, no it’s OK,” I told him. On his plate, the skeletal remains of fish, a meticulous mound, like an art installation (Seascape on Plate III). “You eat so quickly!”
“You�
�ll understand if you know how we used to eat at the mess hall.”
“I can imagine,” I said. “But no, it’s OK. I like long car rides. This is lovely. And it beats being stuck in a hotel. Or going back to Australia.” I laughed. “I’m just joking. But I really do appreciate this. Gracias, Reynaldo.”
“De na-da, Ma’am Carol—”
“Oh uh,” I cut him off, wagging a finger, like a surly primary school teacher. “What did we talk about?”
“Carolina, Carolina,” he corrected himself. For twenty years, I had heard my name so mangled that it was such a joy to hear it this way, how it was said in my youth, by family and friends, teachers and neighbours and classmates, the guys before Damian.
Ca-ro-lee -na.
Spain and its sixteenth-century imperial aspirations, it wasn’t so bad.
“De na-da, Carolina.”
“So,” I began again, stirring my noodles, “are you married?”
“Oh, no, no.” He shook his head, grinning.
“OK—”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Marriage is scary. Like you go to an island through a bridge, then once you’re there, the bridge explodes, then nothing. How do you go back?”
“You know, that’s absolutely spot on.”
He smiled. “Is there anything we need to buy before we go to the beach?”
“I think I’m all set up. Just one tiny thing.”
He looked scared.
“I happen to know you guys have amazing beer,” I said.
“San Miguel,” he said. “Yes. A few bottles and you forget everything. No more worries.” His eyes disappeared in promised delight.
“Thank you for the pills,” I told him during lunch later that Barbra Streisand day.
I wanted to add: things had been so much better when we didn’t think about them, weren’t they? When things stayed in the present, when they were just things , bereft of consequence. The morning stroll by the beach was restorative. Breakfast went well with San Miguel. The wake-up sex awakened.
He looked at me as if I had said these things out loud. Or did I?
“Never mind,” I said.
“So you’re talking to me again?” he asked.
“I didn’t get mad at you, yeah? Just a bit upset.”
“Because I want you to stay here? You’re funny.”
“You know it’s not as simple as that, lovey,” I said, desperate to leave it at that.
But I knew he wouldn’t let it rest. He was hurt, and he wanted to return the favour.
I knew men.
“It can be,” he said. “You said this is paradise.”
“OK, Rey.” I smiled.
“It can be,” he repeated. “My cousin’s wife’s family, they’re selling their land in Saud. Beachfront. And when I graduate I automatically go to a commissioned officer rank. I’ll get a lump sum for the four years that I was a cadet. It’s not a lot but it’s enough to start—”
I reached out to touch his cheeks.
“And besides, you always complain how your life in Australia is so—”
I took my hand back. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“No,” I said. “What, Rey? Finish your sentence.”
I wanted to think that it was the language barrier. He stood up and grabbed the plates and utensils. He went inside the house. Afternoons here were so quiet that the sound of running water was as distinct, as loud, as the revving engine of a passing car.
I followed him. “Mucho miedo tengo a la vez. No puede durar esto.”
He turned off the tap. The water stopped. The usual silence in the air.
17
M y life had been populated by men and their vaguely threatening silences.
The house, too big for two, was silent when Damian came home that morning. It was a Saturday. He had not come home for a week and there had been signs, so I was prepared, in the way that we assumed the worst of things. Over coffee and leftover scones, he told me he loved me, but maybe that was not enough. Maybe? I thought. His tone was assured, decorous; I could almost see him standing in front of admiring undergraduates, talking about Shakespeare or Dante or something. I might have said “OK” or “Just go” although this might also be a self-preserving reconfiguration of the scene in my memory.
Maybe.
“We’re in different places now,” he said. “I’m sure you know what I mean.”
I looked at him.
“But I really appreciate everything. We had a good run.”
Coming soon in cinemas.
Anjelica Huston, Robert Duvall, in—
A Good Run.
I began to laugh, which of course he read as roundabout grief. “Come here,” he said. We hugged, which was to say he wrapped his arms around me and exerted a modicum of pressure. I expected his farewell to at least be eloquent and nuanced, like the books he constantly talked about, and my disappointment at the banality of it all only amplified my laughter. I buried my face in the crook of his neck.
The neighbours, including the Whitewoods I was sure, must have seen the stacks of boxes up front later that day. The scene unfolded with aching efficiency. The movers pulling up on the driveway. The men in blue overalls emerging from the van. I suspected they had been trained to be nice in situations like these. They were considerate, mercifully withholding the small talk and just proceeding to carry Damian’s share of the years’ accumulation, from his Victorian-era desk lamp to Franz, our retriever. Then it was over. It was over.
My first night alone, I spent sitting lotus-style on the floor of the kitchen. I clutched an empty mug and contemplated its odd shape. I thought about the house. The many ways it could kill you. Slip on a patch of floor where olive oil had spilled and hit your head on the counter. The gas tank could leak during the night, you flick a lighter and get blown up to smithereens. To be extra pathetic, you could drink the cleaning solution for your wedding ring. Four parts warm water, one part ammonia. Vodka also worked, so I went ahead and had that.
The following morning, it started and ended and continued, all at once.
I found doe-eyed boy smoking by himself in the veranda later that day. Five empty beer bottles beside him in a neat row; I’d had four myself. We hadn’t exchanged a word, but I felt like we had known each other for a long time. Perks of cabin fever.
I sat on my white plastic chair. “Hi, how are you?”
“Hello,” he said.
“May I?” I said, pointing to a spot closer to him.
He shrugged and straightened in his seat. I lifted my chair and moved closer to him. The retreating sun cast shadows in his face that revealed an inner torment invisible in the height of noon, the company of friends.
I was projecting myself onto others again.
“Listen,” I said, “just out of curiosity. I overheard you and your friends trying to guess the kind of relationship I have with—” I pointed to our room.
“We weren’t,” he said, looking terrified.
I waved away his discomfort. “I just want to know what the verdict was.”
He laughed. “Are you sure?”
“I’m an old lady. I can take it.”
“OK, actually—”
“On second thought, never mind.”
Smiling, he puffed, inhaled, and blew smoke to his right. “There is that laptop, so it’s possibly work-related.”
“I said never mind—”
“And he is constantly working on something while you drink like this,” he pointed to my bottle. “No offence.”
“No, no, none taken,” I said. “I think.”
I put a cigarette in my mouth.
A lighter was in front of my face right away.
“Well, I’m here on business. Officially. But you know how things get in the way.”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Shy laughter gave way to awkward silence. From time to time, an occasional vehicle—SU
V, tricycle, jeep—would invade our view of our raised feet. Someone’s terrible videoke singing from the beach registered as a faint murmur.
“Who is he?” he suddenly asked. “Now I’m curious. I know he’s from here. I heard him talking in Ilocano. He’s nice to look at, ’no? Good job.”
“Eh?” I pretended not to hear, and we laughed again.
My brain fluttered lightly as a feather.
“Let’s just say he’s a distraction.”
“Business, things, distraction,” he hummed, guzzling down more beer.
“I have a question,” I said. “How does a guy like you know ‘Send in the Clowns’?”
He looked intrigued. “What do you mean ‘a guy like me’?”
“I mean, you know—” I tried to think through what I meant, how to phrase it, but every manner that presented itself was offensive. “Sorry, never mind.”
It was his turn to wave away my discomfort.
“I like Sondheim,” I told him. “He gets it.”
He nodded.
The sun comes up, I think about you.
“So is this just one of those hot romance in the tropics?” he asked after a while.
The sound of a passing jeepney drowned my reply, and he only saw the accompanying smile. He looked like he wanted to ask me to repeat, but he took a swig of his beer, the moment now gone.
His companions emerged from their room. They smiled at me and talked to the boy. Something about a quick trip to the market for their food the next day, he explained, because the girl was getting tired of fucking tilapia. I voiced my carnivorous agreement; they offered to buy me some meat, to which I said yes, right away imagining a nice, marbled Wagyu but in my heart of hearts ready even for a store-bought T-bone. I’d pay them when they got back, I said. When they left, I raised my feet once again to get that laid-back feeling of a few moments ago, but it was not the same.
You know what would be hilarious? If Reynaldo also knew Sondheim. He was named Reynaldo after all, though something told me his folks weren’t thinking of the composer.
