The Quiet Ones

by Glenn Diaz

  Just a hunch.

  Mes vers fuiraient, doux et frêles / Vers votre jardin si beau—

  It was starting to get dark, and I closed my eyes for a final puff.

  18

  I f I were to retrace my steps, this thing with Reynaldo started in a province with perhaps the corniest, most contrived name—La Union. The bus ride from Manila had stretched deep into the night then, and we were both up, amid the dim lights, the murmur of the air-conditioning, and the occasional snoring of some passengers.

  Outside, it was dark, one sleepy town after another.

  “Filipinos, you know, they go crazy when they see foreigners,” Reynaldo said when I put my paperback down. “You become an automatic celebrity.”

  I nodded, remembering the ruckus at the bus station in Manila when I had made the dumb tourist mistake of handing a hundred-peso bill—three whole Aussie dollars—to a street urchin who proceeded to make a raucous hyena celebration heard by every other street kid within a half-mile radius.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “Next time, ask me first—”

  I wanted to say something, but I swallowed whatever it was. “Yeah. I’m sorry, Rey.”

  “OK, I have a question,” he said, turning serious.

  “Sure.”

  He cleared his throat. “Ti-e-nes ham-bre?”

  “Hambre,” I said, not pronouncing the H. “Si, tengo mucho hambre. Gracias, Reynaldo. Me gustan algúnos dried mangoes.”

  “OK, I understood the last part,” he said. “Comprendo!” He stood up and fished a yellow bag from our stash in the overhead compartment.

  “What else can you say?” I asked as he settled back in his seat.

  He thought about it. “Hay una farmacia que cerca, no?”

  I wrinkled my forehead. “Creo que no hay a una farmacia o hospital cerca. Por que, Reynaldo? Está mal? No estás bien?”

  “Yo? Yo estoy bien!” he said, looking incredulous. “Yo soy,” he paused, “guapo y simpatico.”

  “Ah, guapo, eh?” I asked.

  “Si, si,” he said. “Muy guapo.”

  I made light clapping motions. He curtsied in his seat.

  The next two hours, we spent talking. The bag of dried mangoes was quickly emptied, and I realised, with a decent amount of First World shame, that I was having a coherent, occasionally interesting conversation with a man whom I had pictured in my mind as someone who would be mutely carrying my suitcases.

  I took his phrasebook and flipped through it. “So a would-be teacher who’s now in military training. Very interesting.”

  “I’m also a good swimmer. I mix drinks. I know Photoshop. Welding, automotive repair, change oil, ikebana.” He stopped when I smiled. “But enough about me.” He pointed at me. “You. I’m sure your life’s more interesting.”

  “I highly doubt that,” I said. “Well, my grandparents were both doctors, but I’m not smart enough so I didn’t continue on to medicine after taking public health. Then when I was twenty-five, I moved to Australia to pursue what sounded like a good opportunity.”

  “A big step,” he said.

  “A 26-hour step. In coach. With a long stopover in Frankfurt.”

  “You must have thought about it long and hard.”

  “Not really,” I said. “But it made sense during that time, you know? Going to the other side of the world. Starting fresh. Silly things like that. It felt exciting. It seemed like the right thing to do in your twenties. But one thing led to another and fifteen years later, I woke up one morning, looked at myself in the mirror, and I realised I hadn’t left Sydney in years.”

  “Can’t you go back to Spain?”

  “I don’t think it will be much different, Reynaldo, to be honest. Both parents dead. No siblings. No real close family over there. I never built a real life there. And it’s not one of those sad woe-is-me, woe-is-me affair, it is just what it is, you know?”

  He nodded and fixed his eyes at the void outside the window.

  I recognised the reaction right away. I had seen it on the face of people when they learned too much about my life, when I told them about my childhood, the lack of kids, Damian. I saw it on the face of our neighbors, of Damian’s brother Davey, Mindy and Jessica and all the others at work, our chiropractor, broker, our vet (one dog-less encounter at the grocery), even the maître d’ at our favorite Thai place. The first time I had gone there after the divorce, I told Lachlan (the maître d’), “Table for one, please,” and he chuckled before he realised I was serious and he gave me that look. He asked again and I had to say it again—” Yes, table for one, Lachlan”—as if saying it once wasn’t odd enough. The next few instances, I told them someone was coming and made frantic phone calls while I ate, until that habit got tiresome and the waiters started to give me strange looks.

  No one’s coming, Carolina, I remembered whispering to myself. No one was coming.

  It wasn’t as melodramatic as it might have sounded.

  “Oh, Lachlan, yeah,” Rey said. “At the Thai restaurant.”

  “What, you know him?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “It’s not so bad,” I told him. “I mean, Sydney’s nothing like Sevilla, of course, but it’s small and not so crazy. Which is good. Which I like. It’s like Los Angeles except more laid-back. Way more laid-back. Have you ever been to—” I thought: Los Angeles? Berlin? Marseille? Timbuktu? “Anyway, Sydney. Yeah, everything is less than thirty minutes away. Nice beaches, though of course nothing like Boracay or Palawan. A lot of nice parks and waterways. There’s Darling Harbour. The Opera House, of course. Many good restaurant not far from where I work. It’s a lovely city.”

  “Yeah,” Reynaldo said.

  “But I really look forward to Pu-gad-pad.” I said, recalling how Yusing would be in stitches whenever I bungled the pronunciation of the Filipino dishes she’d habitually cook, like sinigang soup or pancit.

  “Pagudpud, you mean?” he asked.

  “Pa-gud-pud, yes. Yo quiero la mar, Reynaldo. I love the sea. Who knows? Maybe I’ll say ‘Oh what the hell,’ email the report to my boss, and never leave.”

  “What about money?”

  “I have savings,” I said. “I can transfer my retirement fund to a local bank. If the rates stay as they are, it will last a good twelve, fifteen years. Once I run out, I can head to Manila for a couple of years, do some consultancy work for the country office, save up, then head back here.”

  “You have thought about this.”

  “Maybe,” I said. I took the last piece of dried mango and grazed Reynaldo’s left hand. “Or I can give massages by the beach. I do a mean Shiatsu.”

  “You’ll have some competition,” he said.

  “I’ll lower my price. And I kind of look like Vanessa Redgrave thirty years ago in Julia , admit it.”

  “I hadn’t been born then,” he said, and the bus hit a rough bump that jolted most passengers to wakefulness.

  When we got to Pagudpud, we booked one room at the homestay instead of two, an arrangement that in my mind we had mutually agreed to without the need for it to be said. In any case, there was no protest lodged. Inside the room, I made a casual comment about the bed being too small and he said he could move the two single beds together. “But where would you sleep?” I asked. He said his house was nearby, and it was only for a few days. “But I need you to stay here,” I said. He smiled. I was outside moments later when I heard that lovely, lovely sound—wood scraping on linoleum.

  A tiny yellow pill sat on the bedside table. The staring match seemed to amuse Reynaldo, who was fiddling with the laptop settings so we could connect to the internet. I wanted to listen to “Send in the Clowns.”

  “I went to La-wag for that,” he said, not looking at me. “It took me three hours.”

  “Oh now you want me to take it?” I asked. “Make up your mind, mister.”

  “Don’t you want kids, Carolina? The option will not always be there.”

  “Do you thin
k I don’t hear that clock ticking?”

  “Then why did you ask me for some morning-after—”

  “Because! Do you have any idea how it will look if I return to Sydney pregnant with a brown child?”

  He faced the laptop. “Just asking,” he said, smiling. “Anyway, it’s impossible to connect to the Internet at this time.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “No, it’s not your fault. Just too many people trying to connect at the same time.”

  That made me smile. I walked to his chair and was about to hug him from behind when I stopped and looked around; all of it—the coarse bed sheets, the unpainted walls, this man I barely knew tinkering with my company-issued laptop—suddenly seemed unreal, a scene plucked from someone’s life.

  We could hear the banter of the tourists outside.

  Reynaldo turned to look at me. I was always caught off guard by this transition from timid to overly familiar. He stood up and came close. He smelled of soap, of youth. We stumbled across the room and fell on the bed. I pushed his taut, firm body slightly so I could slide upward, and his body followed mine, eclipsing the yellow light.

  The owner of the house started calling us for dinner. “Ma’am Carolina?”

  I heard my new friend bellow in mock anger. “Carolina! Remember what I said about the thin wall?”

  I sniggered, but Reynaldo’s first thrust promptly reminded me of the business at hand. I heard myself gasp. He began to gain speed, and I wanted to play my part, so I grabbed on to his shoulders and wrapped my legs around his waist. I arched my back. His mouth, warm, went for my breasts, my neck. I tried to steady myself amid his thrusts. I reached for the pill and nearly toppled my beer. I popped the pill into my mouth, but it took a while to go down, small as it was, like a difficult decision. A bitter taste exploded in my tongue, and I swallowed the acrid fluid back. After a few moments I could feel his muscles tighten, and I heard a subdued moan. By then I knew that the fish I had for lunch was on the verge of resurfacing, and I tried to push him away, with more force this time. But he had me pinned on the bed, my lips locked with his, and it was painful, all these. “No,” I wanted to shout, “no, no.” For a split second, I remembered my bed at home. Home . Feeling escaped my legs. His tongue seemed to chase the pill down my throat. I lurched, feeling the burning fury of half-digested rice and fish shoot up my throat. I felt Reynaldo’s mouth disengage.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw food matter dribbling down his chin. He wiped it off, cursing, spitting. I wanted to shush him, but his hand lifted in mid-air, and I closed my eyes, turned my face away from the blow that did not come. He ran to the toilet. The sound of rushing water filled the humid room, the air rank with the scent of stale alcohol.

  “Everything all right over there?” someone called out from outside.

  A knock.

  “Ma’am?” went another.

  “We’re leaving tomorrow,” doe-eyed boy said, back in our seats later that night. “We want to avoid the rush to Manila on Easter.”

  “Oh no, that’s too bad!” I told him, opening a beer, my fourth or fifth.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He looked at me, sheepish grin beginning to form in his face. Could he tell? I felt the area around my mouth. “What?” I looked at him.

  We laughed.

  “We’re leaving in two days,” I told him. “Right behind you.”

  He sank deep into his chair, perched the bottle of beer on his tummy. “I wish I could stay here forever, you know?” he said. “Don’t you? This place.” He sighed.

  Without warning, that word—“forever”—exploded in the space between my eyes.

  It descended to the bridge of my nose, and my chest began to tighten.

  I started to see numbers flashing, floating in mid-air like opaque smoke.

  51, 52, 53, 54, 55.

  “Hey, are you OK?”

  I snatched a mug atop the table to distract myself.

  Inhale.

  The air molecules entered my nostrils, down my chest, into my lungs, my bloodstream, into the tiniest veins and arteries.

  Exhale.

  The air rushed out in one long, continuous release, then gathered in front of my face, floating briefly, before arranging into more numbers.

  56, 57, 58, 59, 60.

  “Carolina?”

  A pair of hands squeezed my shoulders.

  I forced my eyes shut, mentally warding off the phantom figures. My right foot started scraping the cement floor.

  “Carolina—”

  A hand ran down my back.

  “Don’t,” I pleaded, aware of how loud my voice was but unable to lower it. “I’m sorry, but don’t.” The hand vanished.

  During panic attacks, my therapist said, I should close my eyes, take long breaths, and go to my happy place. Distract yourself. Find yourself. Do something. What would you do when you were already in your happy place, with a very viable choice, in fact, to live there, and the emptiness still hovered then choked your throat every now and then? My heart, it felt, had grown hands, now bludgeoning my ribcage.

  Do something, Carolina.

  I calmed down after a few minutes; by then my cheeks were drenched; my eyes stung.

  The boy was looking at me, petrified and embarrassed. Pity had to me always felt like an unbearable, unreachable itch. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

  “I’m turning fifty in two years,” I told him.

  “OK—”

  I tried to let the words out. “You know when they say, ‘Plant yourself a garden—’” I looked at him. “You know I never asked you your name. Was that rude of me? I’m so sorry. Sometimes our bloody business gets the better of us.”

  “Alvin,” he said.

  “Beautiful name. Lovely. Listen. Because you’ve been such a dear tonight, I promise you it’s what I would name my son, if ever I, well—”

  He let out a nervous laugh.

  “Don’t hold your breath, though—”

  “You know we never saw you at the beach,” he said.

  I told him I didn’t like crowds.

  He gave me a look, which he shook off shortly. “I know!” he cried. “How about some nice calming music?” He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and gave me a reassuring smile. I looked at him, and at that point he was the kindest, most beautiful creature on this wide, terrible earth. Our agreement to the proposition we sealed by bumping our bottles with such force that they nearly broke, a near-accident that only widened his nervous grin.

  And it started to play, a familiar tune, the inimitable first four notes.

  “Isn’t it rich?” we looked at each other, smiling like crazy people. “Are we a pair? Me here at last on the ground, you in mid-air.”

  I joined him. “Send in the clowns.”

  His companions came out of the room. They eyed me suspiciously—“Hello,” I said—and said something about a late swim and a few beers by the beach.

  “Isn’t it bliss?”

  “You want to go with us?”

  “Isn’t it queer? Losing my timing this late in my career.”

  “OK, this one has lost it,” Alvin said. “Maybe we should call that guy.”

  “Send in the clowns. Where are the clowns?”

  “Will you be OK?” he asked.

  I smiled, waving him away. Go, leave.

  They left with my song, and I reached for my pocket for my pack of cigarettes. Nothing. Instead, grains of sand.

  “Don’t bother, they’re here.”

  Sullen and suddenly sober, I returned to our room, and Reynaldo’s smile was sweet.

  19

  F or weeks after the divorce, I pretended that every knock at the door was a Mormon missionary. I was hardly dressed for salvation by Elder Cunningham at nine o’clock, so I would cover my head with a pillow until whoever it was gave up.

  One morning the knocking was more vigorous than usual. Outside, I saw a woodpecker perched by t
he tiny vent opening near the attic window. I tried bargaining with it, in English and Español and pidgin chirping, but it wouldn’t stop, so I set out for the attic for a little one-on-one. There, in one corner, behind all the accumulated rubbish that once had value beyond sentiment, I saw a box I didn’t recognise. It looked relatively new. Here it was, I thought, the Pandora’s Box of secrets and lies—the bird stopped pecking, sensing the gravity of the moment—the dreaded confirmation of all my marital worries and fears and sleep-stealing consternations.

  It was only pornography. The usual vintage soft core on top—respectably bushy Victoria Tennant on the cover of Penthouse —and, deeper into the pile, weird but perfectly normal stuff, like BDSM and Asian women inserting various cutlery and vegetation into each other’s orifices. There was no alternate last will. No framed photo of a girl in a pink tutu with Damian’s nose and haughty airs. No damning sex tape with his chiropractor Eddie. If the box revealed anything, it was something I had known all along: I married a heinously boring man.

  Fine: I became semi-OK after that. I even sent Damian an email (“Found your porn. May I dispose?”). I thought about returning to work. Or washing the dishes. I began to answer the door again. It turned out it was nothing terrible most of the time: misdirected mail, chicken and leek pie from a new neighbour, apologies for the hydrangeas in the lawn shaken by a dog’s midnight trawl.

  It was Easter morning in Pagudpud when a knock rehearsed in me all that post-Damian dread. Then I realised where I was (or where I wasn’t). A sigh of relief. You’re OK, Carolina, I told myself, you’re OK. Exhale.

  Whoever it was knocked again.

  I slinked away from under Reynaldo’s heavy arm, sat up, and wrapped a filmy blanket, hopefully clean enough and long enough, around my body. He groaned, not quite his polite self yet, rolling to his side of the bed. I liked him best in this state, cataleptic but still assertive, not to say anything about those skimpy, skimpy grundies. I had told him in jest that I expected someone in military training to have a better sleeping behaviour. He said it was the first time in three years that he’d had more than three hours of sleep, with no early bugle call interrupting it.