Fish-Hair Woman

by Merlinda Bobis

  ‘Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.’

  Syringe in his pudgy fingers, her father quoted ‘a certain progressive man’ of the 1680s. Then he married her to the god of sleep and much later took her away to dream in paradise.

  Mamay Dulce said she was only returning me to my father. Leave us, she said, all of us who have fallen. Then she chopped the fart-fart tree, chopped the history of our fall from grace. She severed me from the truth about my father’s crimes, so I could return as an innocent under his wing. Then she went to the hills, bearing the basket of guavas like an offering for redemption.

  Stella drops on the chair behind the desk, facing the lovers. Here she sat, asking the boy about his father. Like her, Luke was inspired to find the truth, after being tricked by Kiko and his faked letters from a dead man — to bring the dead’s son to the Philippines, in a plot to sanitise history and facilitate his return to politics. Between lies and truth, and the wish to believe, she asked the boy with spite, perhaps with hope.

  She sinks deeper into the chair. The god of forgetting has stolen the purple ball in her head, the pain is easing, her lids are heavy and the room is a river. The flowers are swimming with his corpse around the shelves of old books, gold and red staining each other and the lovers on the couch. Luke feels it rocking in the middle of the ocean, he’s in a boat, he’s gone sailing and a question is flying with its light, in and out of his ear. Where is your father?

  The god of forgetting is playing with the purple ball, rolling it in his kingdom of sleep. He has traded her ball with his gale. It is in her lungs, she can hardly breathe. ‘Don’t just … sit there … Adora … ’ Her hand creeps up to her nape, her head, but it’s no longer there. The god of sleep has severed it. ‘We must … clean up … ’ But Adora is done with cleaning up, of making it right for the Alvarados. Warming his bed, warming her heart. She leaves with Luke. She does not see her mistress surrender to sleep. On the morning of the 28th of September 1997, duty is finally done.

  Descansar: rest.

  When the police arrive, they will find her asleep with her dead. She will be questioned. She will tell stories about the Fish-Hair Woman and the river. They will shake their heads and think, poor woman, she has gone mad with grief. They will allow her to take her father back to Iraya for the funeral. Shortly after they will reconsider her ‘madness’, her innocence.

  Here is the last page of the transcript of her testimony:

  When asked about her relationship with her father, the suspect answered: ‘Ask her hair, ask the fireflies, ask the ghosts of Iraya, ask them to tell stories about the nights with no moon. And when the storytelling begins, listen like when you listened as a child. The stories will flow into each other. The stories will become one drone. So listen more than you have listened as a child, as if it were your last chance to listen. Listen to the drone, so you can tell it back as if it were your own.’

  RIVER

  Chapter 80

  Once upon a time, there was a mag-ilusyon.

  Mag-ilusyon: lovers. Root word: illusion. Literally, ‘to have an illusion’.

  Pay Inyo is not a man particular with definitions and certainly not with etymologies, but he gets the word right the first time the lovers appear at his door: ‘Ay, ang mag-ilusyon!’ He is barely awake. It is four in the morning, still dark. The stars have not yet left the sky.

  The old man lights a candle — they’re back! The girl is holding the boy’s hand as if she would never let go, as if no one could part them — ‘Why have you come, my dear girl — why can’t you rest, Mister Tony?’

  The girl makes constricted noises in her throat, the boy steps back. The question was not asked in English but he is shaken by the address. ‘Sir, I’m not Tony … ’

  The candle drops to the floor. Pay Inyo fumbles to restore the light. Nothing in his ninety-three years can help him ward off this apparition, ay, ay, they’re still standing there, against the banana trees felled by the recent storm, their bodies darker than the dark, emerging from devastation. Should they not vanish after they have tricked the eyes?

  The girl extends her free hand, pulling the boy forward with the other. The old man smells the long journey in their bodies. Ay, they must return to wherever they came from. He whispers an incantation for safe passage, but the lovers enter. ‘My dear girl, there are no more battles to fight in Iraya.’ But they keep advancing. He falls behind the sacks of rice, chanting for a return to rest. Ay, maybe they’ll slip away if he keeps his eyes shut, but they close the door instead to lock him in illusion. Incantations tumble from his lips, jostling each other, but the lovers only move closer. ‘Go away,’ he says in English, searching his memory for more of the alien tongue. ‘No come here no more, please, I pray good for you, truly-truly, they not like you here, but I pray good for you.’

  The lovers kneel before him. Ay, the dead cannot understand his English.

  ‘Ooooo … ooooo … ’ the old man begins to ululate. He feels the heat of their bodies, their anxious breath on his face. ‘Why you come, I pray good for you, I not tell them all … ooooo … ooooo … jus’ some I tell … he love, she love once upon a time.’ But none of the visitors move. Ay, I’m out of practice with the dead.

  The girl takes his wringing hand and touches it to her brow in the old gesture of respect. Then she touches it to her scars. The old man’s agitation ebbs. His gnarled fingers run through the little dips in the flesh, the raised skin around the edges: on her temple, cheek, neck.

  If only she could say, Pay Inyo, this is the son of your favourite white man.

  Chapter 81

  ‘Me no English many-many years. So me no English good now, sorry, sorry … ’

  The silences stretch, make their small talk even smaller. They look at each other then look away, staring about the house as if the right words could be retrieved from the hinge of the door, the exposed rafters, the rotting edges of the damp floor.

  ‘I know about you.’ Read, not know, Luke wants to correct himself. ‘Tony … my father … he likes you a lot.’ In trying to be civil, he just owned up to a kinship that he’d rather deny. It felt like pushing lead from the tongue.

  ‘Ay, Mister Tony, Mister Tony … ’ Pay Inyo wipes his face with a green towel, muttering the name over and over again.

  It is hard to make conversation. They circle around their hopes, breasts tight with endless questions. How to begin.

  ‘You look him, same-same.’ He remembers the tall nose that he envied long ago. ‘Mister Tony, I calculate how tall your nose, you want?’ The Australian laughed when he named a measurement. Pay Inyo liked it when he laughed at his jokes.

  ‘Ay, Mister Tony … ’ The old man keeps wiping his face with the towel, wiping all over as one would wipe off sweat. Less obvious this way. He does not want to embarrass the stranger with tears. ‘Mister Tony, very nice.’

  The stranger is more than embarrassed with the address that he feels is directed towards him. I am not Mr Tony, I am not my father’s son — Adora hears what is not said. She hovers around Luke protectively.

  The storekeeper pumps a Coleman lamp for more light. ‘Sorry, no electric. Typhoon bad, so no electric.’ He wonders if the lovers, shifting from one foot to another, are losing patience over the smell of old wet in the store, of things taking a long time to dry. Too much to apologise for. Where to begin. He explains the blackout to her in more detail, but she has shut her ears.

  The store is smaller than what she remembers. Or perhaps the lamp allows only a frugal sphere of light, mindful not to expose too much too soon in this homecoming. The counter is still lined with the stately jars, but the contents seem undisturbed for years. The herbs need afflictions to salve, the sweets await a little more desire and the mildewed sacks of rice lean against each other in smug pretence, at least, we’re not bereft of touch.

  The old man notices Adora shaking her head sadly. He tries to ex
plain, to sound hopeful. ‘Iraya has a proper grocery now and a health centre. Progress.’

  And the table? Ay, there it is, pushed to the shadows, but the light of memory is built in and far reaching. Now stacked with week-old vegetables, the table still looks the same. So small. Adora wonders how it accommodated the dead and the near dead, a baby boy and his sister in the hands of a doctor digging for bullets, while the gravedigger recited incantations under the light of an incongruous camera and the unforgiving eye of a village. Did they scrub it after? Did the blood come off?

  Pay Inyo notes her hand on her scars. He comes to the rescue. ‘You are better now. Progress.’ In the dialect the old man has addressed not the girl, not her safe, lit corner, but the expansive shadows, afraid they might contest him. ‘You are better now,’ he says again, louder this time, militant, demanding betterness from the jars of sweets, the herbs, the vegetables, especially the table that holds them, even the floor, the walls, the ceiling, his heart. All those that never left.

  Tsokolateng mapoloton. Very thick chocolate. Hershey’s with plenty of Nido powdered milk served in mugs with a Winnie-the-Pooh design.

  ‘Very good for beautiful children,’ he says, proud of his offering and the quote, a remnant of some milk ad that he saw on a neighbour’s television. ‘Soda cracker I make with sardine, you want? And peanut butter, okay?’ He takes out his ancient stocks from a locked shelf in the counter. He still reserves the best for his ‘special-est guests’.

  The chocolate goes down with murmurs of thanks. They don’t mind the funny aftertaste that comes with sealed age. They are better now, almost over the first shock of the meeting.

  ‘Good together, truly-truly,’ the old man nods at the lovers who are holding their empty mugs, wondering how to begin. The smell of spicy fishiness teases their hunger, keeps them from asking the first question, from telling the first story.

  The gravedigger putters about, opening jars, cans, seeking other treasures to offer. ‘Very good for beautiful children,’ he says again, remembering other children raiding his jars of sweets in a time when desire was easy to inspire, and to appease or to shatter. He wipes his face in the shadows.

  As the meal progresses, all circle around hope. Breasts brim with queries, could explode. This is not illusion. Is Estrella better too, Adora? Is Tony alive, sir? Does she remember us? Does he remember me?

  ‘Your father good guy. They tell me no, me wrong. I tell, you not know nothing. He love, she love, they good together … truly-truly … ’ Pay Inyo feels he must speak about what this boy is after. Surely he comes for the same thing as the others. He must speak before he asks. It’s not polite to demand a story from a guest before you have offered your own, and surely this is what the boy seeks. Pay Inyo knows the look, eyes beseeching yet defiant because afraid to get caught out, and mouth half opened, ready to feed on or regurgitate a need. Ay, the girl will be good for the boy.

  In the dialect he says to Adora, ‘You’re good for each other. Don’t ever believe anyone who says otherwise.’ Then he turns to Luke, grips his shoulder, apprehending the bone underneath. Not entirely brittle. ‘They say your father bad, the Kumander good. But I say, white, brown, same-same. Loving, hating, dying, same-same.’

  They listen intently, not daring to chew, ready to hear some revelation over their stale crackers and sardines. The lovers get lost in the old man’s stories. They do not know yet about the other visitors in Iraya, all those who got here before them, demanding to be told about what really happened ten years ago or last month, in the river.

  Chapter 82

  How many days should we grieve for the dead? A week, perhaps two. But each week is an incomplete octave, only seven notes instead of the needed eight. Even if we add another week then another, the grieving cannot stop, not with incomplete octaves. The grieving only picks up pace, some resoluteness to get to the end of the song.

  So how many days for a wake?

  Pay Inyo mulls over his assigned task, its peripherals and the attendant musings that come with them. He is pursuing an old argument: weeping is like singing. He extrapolates on it today, confusing rhythm with notation. Peripherals. Ay, get back to the task. First he must organise a coffin. Dita. Estrella, no it’s Stella now, asks for unadorned, unshaven dita wood from the river. She wants the whole village to come to the wake. She wants history to come full circle — but how? Aysus, the present cannot be knotted in place with the past, because they’re jealous of each other, they fight for prominence in the heart.

  His rambling thoughts allow him to stall for time. He changes his slippers to shoes. He chooses a fresh shirt, the least crumpled one. He combs his hair, slicks it back with Three Flowers pomade. It is still miraculously thick, crowning an ancient face. He takes one last look in the mirror, hopes he’s close to decent. He sighs, slumps on a sack of rice, fiddling with his collar.

  Three days then: short, precise grieving. First day for the dead, second day for the living, third for those between living and dying, the uncertain ones. He’ll ask the mayor for at least three days use of the old house. It’s an emergency, and it’s the dead man’s house after all. Ay, why was he asked to do the asking?

  Father is dead. I’m coming home with him. Get things ready in the old house for the wake. How simply put in the dialect, how certain in its simplicity, expecting the gravedigger to come to the rescue. It’s his job to be faithful, truly-truly. He straightens his collar, tucks back his heart into its old place.

  The lovers fell asleep after breakfast, but only after they answered the old man’s query. ‘Is she better too, Adora?’ The answer was Notes from Stella Alvarado, the heading of a list of instructions. So she is back from paradise as Stella, the American. No longer his Eya, the most beloved of his beloved Mamay Dulce. If she were alive … but why wish for ties that were severed long ago? I’ll address her as Mistress Alvarado then, to be more faithful to history. Let heritage come full circle, if that’s what she wishes, Pay Inyo sighed after the lengthy instructions.

  He must tell Mayor Reyes, the one who’s sort of renting the ancestral house of the Alvarados or the Estraderos, whichever Estrella or Stella wishes to use, that the other mayor is coming home, no, the ex-governor actually. Ay, so awkward for all. How to explain. Mayor Reyes is not quite a tenant. He arranged the transfer of domicile with Iraya’s local government six years ago. After he was sworn in on his first term, he argued that the mayor must be stationed in the most presentable house in the village, for the time being, of course. Until he has arranged for a residence that is worthy of the position: something with a decent representacion to the public.

  The local government weighed the merit of the petition. Like the vast estate in Iraya, the summerhouse had been with the Estraderos, Doc Kiko’s maternal Spanish family, for decades. Always called the Casa Estradero, even if the master is now an Alvarado. But of course, this heir had betrayed Iraya, before he scuttled out of the country like a dirty rat. And what about our new mayor? Ah, this revolutionary once fought with the people’s army in the hills. In a time of great struggle, his heart was in the right place, always with the people. Now he asks for a meagre recompense, so give it to him. Take from the villain, give to the hero.

  But who is the hero in this story? Pay Inyo is not sure anymore, nor is he sure about what the story is in the first place. There are too many stories weaving into each other, only to unweave themselves at each telling, so each story can claim prominence. Stories are such jealous things. The past and the present, ay, what wayward strands.

  He looks in on the sleeping lovers before he leaves. On his bamboo bed, the lovers are not hiding this time, not running from the military or from the people’s army. ‘Both sides are out for blood,’ Kumander Pilar despaired ten years ago. ‘We’ll stay the night, Pay Inyo, but we must keep moving,’ she said, while Tony joked that they’ve actually eloped. Both were near collapse, like ghosts that have not yet left their bodies. The Kumander was limping from a bullet wound. Tony had bruises on his arms
and face. They kissed a lot, hands full of each other, holding onto the body a little longer. Pay Inyo heard the endless creaking of his bamboo bed, their love cries through the night.

  These lovers are no illusion now. They are here, here again on his bed. The blonde head is snuggled on her shoulder and one hand clutches her breast like a child after feeding. Her face rests on his head, in a perpetual kiss. Her scars are like insects sewn into the skin. The old man whispers an incantation for healing.

  Earlier the boy did not want to hear the stories about his father, but Pay Inyo had to tell them. ‘Mister Tony, he good, he okay.’ Luke cut him short, ‘Thanks for breakfast, sir,’ even as he wore that beseeching look of children at bedtime. Tell me more, tell me more.

  If he had enough English, he could tell more. He was good, Mister Luke. Those newspaper people, those activists from Manila, they can say what they like, but he was good, truly-truly. And Iraya is good again, so why don’t they leave us alone? The river is tasteless now. It can never be as sweet as the hills again, because sweetness comes only once, because the hills lost their sweetness first. But the river is drinkable now, truly-truly. So why must they sour it with their stories? Why must they dig up the dead? It is our dead after all. Have we no right to forget, so we can drink like we used to?

  Chapter 83

  His feet sink into the mud. He sighs. He should not have worn shoes. Or he should have carried them instead and worn them after he had washed his feet at the public pump, at least before he concludes this journey.

  He skips, he sinks, he detours, he sinks again. The road is a grim collage: trees, bananas mostly, an electric post, its cable loose and looking dangerous, straggly branches piled on leaves not their own, even a whole roof turned upside down and now like a trough of water, a stray slipper and someone’s sooty pot, plastic bags in pools of water winking like black mirrors, and mud sucking the feet in. It flooded here last week. This road never flooded before, even with the nearby creek that leads to the river. The river used to behave in the worst storms, because then the banks had trees.