Fish-Hair Woman

by Merlinda Bobis

  Allow me to write this slogan for you. No, it does not have any official badge. But I shall write it on this page anyhow, weave it with strands of hair to leave you with something that will not stop growing from both sides of the heart. I should know. Its left and right ventricles are one in this cause, even when it is breaking.

  Chapter 59

  About floating hills, the naked nine-year-old knows plenty by now, so he does not run away. But he climbs a dita tree just to make sure. It’s caught among the taro, close to the other bank of the river where wild bananas grow. A stomach, he can’t be wrong, a very fat hill of a stomach. He crosses himself and scrambles down, sure now where the smell comes from. He feels proud. He is not trembling or wetting his pants. He does not even cover his nose anymore. This is his third body.

  In his haste Miguelito nearly forgets the sweet potatoes. ‘Harvest a sack and leave them at the governor’s, will you?’ his sick uncle said this morning. ‘He eats sweet potatoes too?’ ‘No, just for his pigs,’ his uncle laughed. The boy remembers laughing with him as they both turned away from each other’s thoughts. They are new in Iraya and these are strange times.

  Three months ago when they arrived in Iraya, Governor Kiko kindly hired his uncle to work in his sweet potato farm, so they must not ask questions. Questions get you into trouble. These are strange times. The boy steals another look at the body — must see the gravedigger first — then quickens his pace, crossing himself again before he breaks into a run.

  A snail, a gecko, and a boy. And dead maggots floating in kerosene. So few guests, so small a wake. But the gecko makes up for the silence. This ancient resident of the house is confident in its incantation.

  The body is finally dressed and laid on the dining table, on a white blanket with a blue crocheted border. And a garden snail that is slowly inching towards the foot of the deceased. No shoes! Miguelito is holding his breath, watching the progress of the snail with fascination and dread. His own feet tickle.

  ‘Mamay Dulce … ’ he whispers to the woman by the window. She is clasping her scapular with both hands. She has not moved for nearly half an hour after cleaning the body. So strange without its clothes, the boy thought, small but fat, especially the stomach which was swollen and greenish. A floating hill in the water just hours ago, but now more like an overstuffed, mildewed sack. ‘You drank up the river, Bolodoy, that’s why,’ the woman murmured when she first saw the body, then did not say a word again.

  The back of the head was blown off. What was left of it had begun to come apart. The woman tried to put it back together, picking the maggots that had gathered at the base of the skull, dropping them into the kerosene; they died instantly. She was very thorough and efficient. She washed even the insides of what remained of its ears and between the blackened toes with boiled lime and tamarind leaves, strewn with fresh jasmine and ylangylang. But the perfumed water only sharpened the smell, as if death were offended that anyone should deny it. The smell stuck to the living.

  Not once did her hands slip, the boy noted. He saw how slippery it was when the gravedigger hauled it out of the water. He was weeping. The boy looked away. Gravediggers are not supposed to weep.

  She didn’t. Her eyes were surprisingly dry. She just ripped the hem off her housedress and bound the head with it to keep the flaying bits in place. This was the first thing she did when the body arrived. Then she tried to unclench the extraordinarily large hands. The boy did not look away, not once.

  ‘Mamay Dulce,’ he starts again, intent on this thing that bothers him most.

  ‘What’s your name, boy?’

  ‘Miguelito — and — and — he has no shoes … ’ he whispers.

  The snail is only a handspan away from the heel! His own heels tickle.

  ‘He never liked shoes.’ Her voice rises and falls so clearly. ‘Not shoes, only army boots … ’ She rubs her scapular.

  The boy can’t contain his dread any longer. He runs to the woman and grabs her hand, saying, ‘There’s a snail at his feet, so, so close now … ’ His voice is barely audible as if he does not want to alarm the dead man.

  ‘Is that bad?’

  He is confused by the question. He shakes his head, but does not let go of her hand.

  Again the gecko remembers its incantation.

  ‘I-I don’t know … but, but — ’

  ‘See that tree out there?’ she asks, drawing him against her immense thigh. ‘They wanted to cut it down. It’s a foul one … ay, so foul … ’

  Fart-fart tree: name mercilessly apt.

  Miguelito’s peripheral vision is fixed on the snail, even as he looks out.

  A snail, a gecko, maggots, and a boy. And fireflies now, the first of the evening, lighting up the tree.

  ‘Maybe you should give him shoes.’

  ‘I should have … ’

  The boy feels the thigh tremble against his arm.

  The snail knows about feet. Its life is at feet level, intimate with the whole world’s earthly preoccupations. It knows this one is flat-footed, toes honestly splayed. No airs about them. The nails are purplish-black, broken, some long dead before he died and rimmed with earth, packed in for almost twenty-six years. A man who went barefoot all his life, until recently. The calluses attest to this. Yes, army boots.

  ‘He was so peaceful … once,’ she murmurs, sitting the boy down, the snail between them. Again she rubs the scapular on her chest, thoughtfully, then picks up the snail.

  What a strange woman, the boy thinks, talking as if she were singing and fondling the snail, crooning to it. He heard warning tales about her, especially about her children, so he kept away from this house, until now. Dulsora Capas, a.k.a. Mamay Dulce the village midwife, and mother of the famous amazona and the equally renowned vigilante from Governor Estradero’s private army. Ay, blood running towards opposite rivers and between them, the sister with strange hair. He has never seen any of them, until now, well, one of them anyway.

  ‘Whatever they say,’ she says, teasing the snail’s antenna with a little finger, ‘my Bolodoy was a good boy.’

  Miguelito searches for the right response, but finds none. He counts the slats of the bamboo table.

  ‘But who can resist army boots?’

  The village whispers are right, the boy thinks. She has gone too far away for anyone to reach.

  ‘You’re not afraid.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I’ve found three … like him,’ he puckers his lips towards the dead man.

  ‘It’s not a him … aki ko ’yan — that’s my son.’

  It could have been a reprimand, except it cradled the tenderest lilt. Ko — ‘my’ had become two notes, as if the blood-bond were coo-ed. Ko-o. Rise then fall of the breast, as if it would not stop falling. The boy heard this when he walked into the room with Pay Inyo, the gravedigger, and the body of Bolodoy da Teribol. A quaint musical phrase: ko-o. It made him forget the governor’s sweet potatoes. It made him stay.

  Chapter 60

  Da Teribol. The Terrible. Because Rizalino ‘Bolodoy’ Capas could never be ‘The Sweet Potato King’.

  Rizalino it was, but only on his birth certificate. Named after the national hero, Jose Rizal, who wrote political novels that inspired the revolution against Spain. Rizalino indeed but a name hardly known, forgotten by the village long ago after his classmates had baptised him the perfect endearment: Bolodoy. With all the cruel insinuations that attend a name. Bolodoy: because his tummy was like a bolod, a hill that outgrew his perpetually skinny frame. Bolodoy: because he was bolod-bolodon, a hill-hillbilly. Or because he was borod-borodon, a dumb-dumbbell?

  ‘An uncouth, ignorant, atrocious hick, de primera clase,’ one of his teachers confided to a colleague during his third grade, after he came to class with a bag of shrimps. The story goes that he sweated over the alphabets beside that poor teacher who, while agonising over his total inability to recognise the strange markings on paper, also suffered a jumping thing inside her blouse. Which he quickly retrieved w
ith his hand in a flash. B is for buyod — shrimp! Between the teacher’s bosom!

  ‘Sorry, Ma’am, sorry, they’re very fresh that’s why, just caught them in the river this morning, ay, so very sorry, Ma’am.’

  Thus he was expelled during his third grade; he was twelve.

  ‘You better go home and plant kamote!’ the teacher screamed.

  ‘I’m already planting them, Ma’am. But in my family, we call them duma, more proper that way.’

  You better go home and plant sweet potatoes. The worst insult anyone can receive at school. It meant your intellect was as lowly as the humble tuber, which does not need any particular mental acumen to grow. It just grew after you stuck a bit of cutting into the ground. Understandably planting it was your only possible occupation in this lifetime. You were not meant for the more complex human concerns, you were desperately slow. A snail at the level of feet. The insult was only a running joke in Iraya Elementary School, never verbally directed at any student even if it was thought of him or her. Until the Grade Three teacher lost her temper, of course.

  ‘But he had very intelligent hands,’ the woman says, stroking the snail again as she leans to stare at the boy. He’s convinced that she has a way of looking into your soul. The bamboo table is shrinking between them. He can smell the dead on her, stronger this time. But he can’t turn away, so he watches the snail instead. An antenna pushes out. He holds back a shudder.

  ‘What’s your name, boy?’

  You’ve asked me already, the boy wants to retort, but she’s looking into his soul. ‘Miguelito — Miguelito Morada.’

  ‘Miguelito, Miguelito-tito-tito,’ she whispers in singsong, then giggles. ‘Ay, tiny-tiny Miguel.’

  You’re crazy.

  ‘Don’t you ever grow big, Miguelito — my son — he grew up, that’s why — ’ something catches in her throat.

  Something catches in the boy’s throat too, he doesn’t like the feeling.

  She leans closer, her face almost touching his. ‘Open your hands, let me see them,’ she says, thrusting the snail towards him playfully.

  Her stare has pinned him down, the boy is helpless. He obliges but with much hesitation, never taking his eyes off the snail.

  ‘Ay, such tiny, tiny fingers,’ she tut-tuts.

  ‘You can’t scold me for them.’

  She giggles softly. ‘You have spirit, that’s good, but make sure it’s always in the right place … unlike some people … ’

  Silence. Too long. Miguelito wishes the gecko would come to the rescue.

  Outside the fireflies are turning off their lights.

  ‘He had hands that could accommodate all the occupations of the world … he grew the sweetest duma, did you know that?’

  ‘Ay, I forgot, I forgot!’ The boy is suddenly beside himself. The governor’s sweet potatoes, how could he leave them at the gravedigger’s! ‘I really must go, I forgot — ’

  ‘Past curfew now so you can’t, you’ll sleep on his mat, he’ll like that.’

  ‘But, Mamay Dulce — ’ the boy starts but the woman hushes him. Both listen for the gecko.

  ‘Here, it will amuse you through the night.’ She grabs his hand and lays the snail on it. ‘Go on, make friends.’

  He screams and hurls it away, running to the door. ‘I’m going home!’

  She laughs softly, a crazy singsong laugh. ‘You’re not a village boy … not really.’ Even her tut-tutting is rhythmic though slightly off-key.

  Village boys are brave and strong. With intelligent hands. And I have the brightest pair in this class! After Bolodoy was baptised ‘a dumb-dumbell’ by the boys at school, he swore he would prove them wrong. He became ‘extraordinarily industrious’, a teacher would write on his report card. He called his mother’s attention to the comment when she complained that the card bloomed with red marks, all failures in Reading, Writing, Arithmetic — ‘You’re the oldest boy in the class too. Hesusmaryahosep, this is the second time you’re doing the first grade, you must not fail it again!’ ‘But, Mamay,’ he remonstrated, ‘I got a 90% grade for Work Education. Because I grew the best garden at school, harvested the fattest radishes and tomatoes. Aren’t you pleased with that?’

  In a futile exercise to earn his mother’s approval, Bolodoy took to his chores with more ardour. His sweet potatoes grew sweeter and the family kitchen was regularly blessed with the largest of fishes, even eels, which he caught barehanded. It was no myth. In the early hours before school, he would fish in the river, diving for the sly water creature that escaped the traps which he had set the night before. The proverbial fat eel, king of the river.

  You could tell if he was lucky, because he went to school exhausted, hands and arms cut or marked with lashes and lips bleeding. He had grappled with an eel, but even his immense hands could not hold it down. It was too slippery, so he had to bite the insolent creature for a firmer hold before he shook it around till it gave itself over to the promise of Mamay Dulce’s dinner pot. It was no myth. It was more real than Arithmetic! And during the class exercises, through which he dawdled till the sun set on his undecipherable numbers and alphabets, he fancied himself as the smartest boy in class.

  Bolodoy da Teribol. I am teribol with eels, teribol with all fishes, teribol with anything that keeps both earth and water from yielding to these O most teribol hands!

  The same terrible hands that shot a seventeen-year-old cadre, summary execution style.

  Chapter 61

  It was the year of transitions. Bolodoy was recently recruited into the Anghel de la Guardia, a group of armed civilians who vowed to protect the village from the rumoured abuses of the New People’s Army, the communist guerrillas. But the ‘angels’ were in truth employed as a private army by Governor Francisco Estradero to guard his vast estate. Bolodoy could not believe his luck when he was promoted from tenant farmer to angel. Gov Kiko provided a fat paycheck, very fine guns and regular trips to the city ‘for some nightlife for my local boys’. In the dimly lit dancehalls, the beer overflowed with the music in heady syncopation with the laughter of the girls who took his large, sweaty hands in their own as if they’d always belonged there. Here I will meet her, he thought to himself. And cupped between these lover’s hands, her face will believe my fingers are a fruit ripening or a flower just about to bloom.

  Gov Kiko was a generous father. He had excellent taste, no fakes for him. Bolodoy was soon sporting a ten-carat gold lighter, brand new, and smoking ‘States-side’ Marlboros — from America, imagine that, just like the corned beef and sardines that he sometimes tasted at the politico’s summer chalet. Bolodoy felt as privileged as Gov’s right-hand man. Ex-Major Ernesto de Villa, my best friend, no my ‘brod’ actually, ay, he’s so good to me.

  ‘You’re my little brother now, my own Bolodoy da Teribol,’ Major Ernie had declared on their first trip to the city. ‘I’ll train you how to crush “the red ants”.’ The New People’s Army, the NPA.

  Gov Kiko was well connected with some military officers who had facilitated the past election, which he won with an astounding majority. After the victory, the officers’ wives were seen driving the latest Lancer; the Mercedes was for the husbands. The governor chose his gifts well, they dazzled without fail. Once one of the new cars strayed from Rodriguez to Iraya and all the village children swooned over its burnished glory. It was a clear day, perfect for generosity, and the ‘son of heaven’ behind the wheel offered them a ride, but the tight-lipped mothers spanked their children back into the huts. Trust no one, these are strange times. Bad wind drifts in and out of Iraya. Be careful, or you’ll catch cold or death.

  The strangeness never lifted but played its multiple versions, even when the wind began to change. Years later it blew whispers of apprehension from all directions, constantly debating over the rooftops and the farms. The NPA are growing adelantado — arrogant and demanding — the north wind reported. Ay, they’re only doing their job, the south gale protested, but they have to eat, of course. And the east wind ag
reed — of course, they must survive — but with a shudder of doubt. It shut the doors that were once opened to each beloved revolutionary.

  If the revolution is to succeed, should every village not support the people’s army without question? Blow a share of each farmer’s harvest towards the people’s cause; none must be spared from participating in nation-building. And add ten per cent from the salary of each of the teachers of Iraya Elementary School. Never mind if they can hardly feed their children. Blow them all into the coffers of the left! Soon their rumoured tax collector, Manay Sabel, built a variety store and became quite prosperous. Comrade Sabel even procured the largest icebox ever seen in Iraya. It never ran out of Coke and San Miguel beer.

  ‘Coke adds life.’ The famous ad was a regular joke in the village. There was a time when the soldiers of the people were certain to have a meal, complete with the life-extending drink, whenever they strayed to any home. They must have the best, ay, imagine how dangerous their life is in the hills. It could be snuffed out any time for us. Extend it then, extend it! So never mind if it’s the last pot of rice in the house, the good cadre must have it. And roast the chicken, which was to be sold in town, for the noble Kumander. And if the NPA is company size, pool the resources of the whole village.

  Their path was a wound! Where the rebels passed, they dug deep, consuming the meagre food supply of the community. It hurt, as all wounds do, but this was acceptable, because the cause was for us. For us, for us!

  ‘You’re mean to me, because your boy died,’ Miguelito accuses the woman before him.

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  The snail is dead and they’re having supper. Mamay Dulce is contrite. Whatever got into her? She had wanted to scare him with all the slimy creepers in the world, to whip him even, ay, break his every bone so he won’t grow up, so he’d never leave home again. So he would be safe. The boy must not leave tonight. He must be quiet and peaceful. Even the fireflies are playing dead in the fart-fart tree. And the gecko is suddenly dumb.