Fish-Hair Woman

by Merlinda Bobis

  The young card players get bold. A scrawny youth initiates the storytelling. ‘Once upon a time a governor had a gourd plantation, which caused him much heartache, because his vines never bore fruit. They flowered, the flowers died and none matured into fruit. So what did he do?

  ‘He plucked a strand of pubic hair from a woman.’

  The one who replied, a boy with a mole on his lip, pauses to accommodate the sniggers. Then, ‘It is said that if you thread this wondrous hair into the vine, the flowers will not fall, till they become fruit.’

  ‘But alas, his gourd plantation had millions of vines,’ someone else picks up the tale, winking. ‘So he had to gather an immense collection of pubic hair for each flowering season.’

  ‘So he had to beg the indulgence of many, many women,’ the boy with the mole concludes the tale. ‘Get me?’ He winks too, twice.

  All laugh, including the bodyguards.

  ‘Ay, he was truly oragon!’

  ‘He could not get enough.’

  ‘Lust thick on his chest.’

  ‘He had hairy chest!’

  ‘Look into the coffin.’

  ‘Have you looked into the coffin?’

  The bodyguards fondle the guns at their hips. They are no longer sure about this story or the laughter, and the winking.

  ‘Ay, joke only, sirs,’ the card players chorus.

  The bodyguards go out for a piss. The card players breathe a sigh of relief. The stories grow more pointed. Names of women float around. The governor loved maids. He hired them young, very young: Trinidad, Consuelo, Marites, Jenny, Corazon, Salve, Asuncion, and there was Carmen who fell pregnant and died … she bore his only child, right? Finally a little gourd.

  The youths giggle.

  ‘Hoy, see that red woman sleeping in the corner? They say she came with the dead … Maybe his latest whore, what do you think? Ay, what an oragon, so deadly with maids — you think she’s the maid?’

  ‘But how can you wear red at a wake!’

  No one recognises Estrella Capili, now Stella Alvarado, and she is too drugged to hear the speculations. She hears only the desperate flutter of wings. A soul cannot depart, because it has been shamed in its own house. What feeble attempt to fly. ‘Onra — honour is something to die for … I’ll get it back. From God and country. At whatever cost.’ Oh yes, Father, I will make sure that all of Iraya strips you of honour, even your corpse.

  From the corner of her eye, Adora catches the red doll bound by its limbs, head dangling to its chest. Dispensar, descansar? The likes of her mistress will not dispense forgiveness, will not allow the dead to rest. Adora hardens her heart. She will not pick her up like before, clean her, comb her hair for hours to ease the pain in her scalp, prop her pillows, watch over her till she sleeps … not any more. But oddly enough, she wants to say, he is still your father, whether or not you have severed the kinship in your heart. Listen to them! In loathing him, the village remembers its other loathing. Against your mother whom he bedded years ago. Against the bastard daughter who escaped with him to America and abandoned the family that succoured her. Can’t you hear them? Can’t you see?

  In Iraya blood is so thick, one cannot see through it the colour of the individual heart.

  Chapter 86

  ‘How many times did you walk to that river?’

  ‘How many times did I drink, bathe, catch fish, do my laundry — don’t ask stupid questions.’

  ‘When I was a boy, it had the best black snails … ay, so delicious with fern shoots and coconut milk!’

  ‘And all those fishes the size of my arm! Best for cosido, ah, glorious sour soup, especially the heads — ay, we lost them all, the loggers have scared them away.’

  ‘What about the giant eel, with oh-so tender flesh?’

  ‘Ah, the eel-catcher … Bolodoy da teribol … ’

  Hidden under their wide hats, the three fishermen lose the surge of pleasure in their mouths. They remember the best eel catcher in the village, found with only half his head crawling with maggots. Then the fishes grew too fat. The men shut their mouths. They are raring to spit again.

  ‘Foolish boy, took the wrong turn — ’

  ‘Poor mother — she went crazy, didn’t she?’

  ‘Who wouldn’t, with your children swimming to different waters. The left, the right, America — ’

  ‘Don’t count her who left for America, she’s not of their blood.’

  ‘That ingrate, abandoning those who raised her like their own.’

  ‘To go with her own blood — ’

  ‘Blood that will rot in hell!’

  They spit.

  ‘Her sister should have disowned her.’

  ‘Ay, our sad, sad Kumander Pilar … ’

  The men are silent for a while, allowing a spirit to pass.

  ‘Ay, one mistake and she fell.’

  ‘All for a white man — what was his name?’

  The need to spit overwhelms their mouths again.

  ‘White men are arrogant, they talk big.’

  ‘He was the friendliest white man I’ve met, though.’

  ‘He was the only white man that you met.’

  ‘He gave me and my brothers chocolates and milk.’

  ‘He smelled like old milk.’

  ‘He had such a tall nose.’

  ‘It got in the way when he drank coconut from the shell!’

  Under their hats, strained laughter.

  There is no laughter among the oldest guests at the wake, perhaps because they remember most. They flash censuring eyes at the fishermen and the young card players.

  ‘You think you can drink the river again after this?’

  The question drags them away from the dead to the cares of the living.

  ‘Sweet and clean … remember?’

  ‘Can it be sweet again? Can it ever be cleaned?’

  ‘You can’t wash water … ’

  ‘Save the water, save us!’

  ‘Buhok pangsalbar-pangsira

  kang samong mga padaba

  hale sa salog …’

  The old ditty sneaks back to their mouths: Hair to save-fish / all our beloved / from the river. So as night falls, tongues grow moist again but for talk this time. The memories are fluid, the names fall into place like invocations.

  ‘Did you ever find out about your Anita?’

  ‘I wish I’d dream of her … a face in a dream will make it easier.’

  ‘You know, my Ben was going to get married in the hills … ’

  ‘Before my mother died, she’d talk about Maria’s feet. How they felt like dead fishes in her hands … ’

  ‘Some days I wish we never found him … then I could pretend that Berto just ran away, eloped, anything … ’

  ‘Hard in the farm without my Molong … I still can’t get used to it.’

  ‘Widows don’t get used to these things.’

  ‘Our ten fingers are not enough to count them.’

  ‘I can’t count when I’m not sure if they’re never coming back.’

  They can’t bear to look at the dead again. Earlier they walked in with purpose. They indulged the rush of spit in their mouths. But now that the sun has set, they refuse to think that the coffin is still open, that it is naked, that it smells of anguish, that it is the saddest thing. And that they haven’t even asked who shot him, how, why? He was shot. This is all that matters.

  ‘I never stopped drinking it … I drink and not think.’

  ‘It still tastes … but not like before.’

  They wonder if it’s really not like the taste before, and when was before, and what was that taste, was it real, or was it just in the tongue after all, like when you’re sick and can’t tell the difference?

  ‘It tastes funny, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I drink and not think.’

  Chapter 87

  It begins to rain when Pay Inyo arrives, a sudden opening of the sky. Was it not sunny the whole day? And they thought they were over the storm. This i
s what spills into the final day of the wake. Rain that does not let up, like the question that sneaks into the house and looks people in the eye. Are we over the storm? On the third day the villagers rise from the stories of the dead and the living, to move into an uncertain plane.

  ‘That Pay Inyo brought it on,’ they whisper to each other. ‘It’s his fault.’ None can leave now because of the rain. All are trapped.

  The gravedigger ignores the crowd. He will not stay away! He walks to the coffin with his book of incantations. He stops in his tracks, stunned.

  The village watches.

  He shuts the coffin, gently.

  The village is hushed.

  ‘Shame on us!’ the gravedigger whispers.

  The village is stung.

  ‘And I thought we’re better than this.’

  The protests are unrelenting. ‘You’re supposed to be on our side, old man, with our own dead! Have you forgotten all the graves you dug — and all the graves that you only imagined for the bodies that never came home? Ay, how dare you belittle our right to this meagre redress? What the system has not done for us, we’ve taken in our hands. How dare you insult our losses? But we knew your true colour all along. Of course, you protected that white man. You took him into your house, gave him refuge after he connived with this worm who stole our land, our dignity, our sons, our daughters, who wrenched our hearts from our chests!’

  ‘Dakulaon ang satong kamunduan,’ the old man sighs, taking in with regret each accusing face. His eyes search for Stella and the lovers by the door, then he translates for the boy. ‘Our sadness very big … ’

  See? He even speaks in that white man’s tongue, traitor!

  Luke feels as if Pay Inyo has summed up his life. There is a rush of heat behind his eyes, his heart opens its little shutters. He imagines he is admitted to this collective grieving, for the first time.

  Adora does not know how long she can stay her heart. Stella is asleep. Meanwhile the bodyguards of the dead are not sure whether they should draw their guns against this abuse. They are pushed away by the villagers, now set only on chastising the old man by the coffin.

  It occurs to Pay Inyo that he has better luck with spirits who listen to his incantations, sometimes. He opens his little book. He begins to chant:

  ‘Magdara ki balde sa danaw nin sakit

  Siguraduhang ruloho ini

  Magdara ki balde sa hararumon na danaw

  Iwalat mo duman ini.’

  Take a pail to the pool of grief

  Make sure it has holes

  Take a pail to the deepest pool

  And leave it there.

  This is the wake of the world: each of us standing around a pool that we have collected for centuries. We are looking in with our little pails. We try to fathom the depth of the pool until our eyes are sore. We try to find only what is ours. We wring our hands. Ay, how to go home with only my own undiluted pail of grief? To wash my rice with or my babies, to drink? But the water is my dead kin, an enemy, a beloved, a stranger, a friend, someone who loved me or broke my heart. How to tell them apart? How to cleave water from water?

  Don’t query the water. Leave your pail and go home. The rice will still boil, the baby will crawl and walk, and you will drink your thirst dry, but without the burden of history.

  When he has thrown in the last shovel of earth at each funeral, the gravedigger begins his feeble attempt to tell the story of the pail and the pool. But the kin of the dead are not yet ready to hear, so he bites his tongue. He cannot be disrespectful or presumptuous. But today the story must be told. The book of incantations feels light in his palms. The villagers outdo his chant with their protests. Outside the rain does not let up. It is drowning all their voices.

  Chapter 88

  Luke is staring into the pool with his own little pail. He is contemplating its depth and searching for that part of the water that is his. Adora senses the agitation in her lover. She wishes they had not come. They must create their own story outside of that poor man’s coffin. He is a real poor man now, bereft of everything, even a kin. His daughter Stella has fallen off her chair and the drunken youths are around her, cracking lewd jokes about the dead man’s new maid, prodding the woman in red. Did she finish all the beer? Maybe it was the gin. Stella is half awake, protesting feebly.

  Adora comes to the rescue. No, her own story can never be outside that coffin or this woman’s despair.

  ‘I want to be out there with everyone,’ Stella protests. Adora, Luke and Pay Inyo have brought her into the next room.

  The two maids with the mops hover around with their own protest. ‘Señor Mayor and Missis Reyes said you’re supposed to use just one room, you hear?’

  ‘This is the dead’s house, and this is the daughter of the dead, so please show some respect,’ Pay Inyo censures the two women who step back, awed.

  So that’s her? The one from America? Ay, what happened to all that hair? They can’t quite say it. They crane their necks to catch a glimpse of the cropped mane on the sofa tucked in a corner with the other furniture from the lounge. They are in the main dining hall.

  ‘Ay, my Eya, why have you come to this?’ the gravedigger whispers.

  The shorn head whispers back, pleading. ‘Why does anything … come to anything, Pay Inyo?’

  The old man begins to weep. Adora leads him away from this despair, but Luke remains standing before the woman of pauses. Roles are reversed. She is the one supine and he is asking the questions.

  ‘Why are you doing this? He’s still your father.’

  ‘Because he was my father, I’m doing this. Because he had me. Because he stole my mother’s childhood. Because he always stole … lives, loves … over and over again … ’

  There’s a twinge in his chest. He understands this too well.

  ‘You know all my stories now, Luke. ’

  Finally she calls him by his name.

  ‘Are they … true?’

  ‘True, half-true, untrue … maybe they’re fictions. I’m a writer, am I not?’

  ‘Estrella the Fish-Hair Woman?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘It’s all up to you.’

  ‘But it’s true — that you loved Tony.’

  ‘Because he loved my sister … because he broke bread with my village, the life I abandoned … no, you won’t understand … when he came to Hawai’i … I thought … I wanted to believe his body held some remnant of my history … of my heart … ’

  ‘Then he left you too. It’s what he does so well.’ Luke cannot leave his own little pail by the pool.

  ‘He was going to find my sister … he promised … then he’d come back for me.’

  ‘And he didn’t so you kept waiting, searching for him all these years. With those letters, those stories.’

  ‘Stories bring them back, Luke … we all have our ways of retrieval … You came to this country … for him … after he abandoned you for thirteen years … only six years old … Do you remember him? … How could you remember … such a long time ago.’

  Because I want to remember.

  ‘Could you — could we — really?’

  He hesitates, then hands her the photo: Tony and little Luke.

  She does not take it, but whispers, ‘Our fathers … who art in heaven.’

  ‘He’s dead too, isn’t he?’ He regrets asking.

  ‘Finish it, Luke … Finish your story … I know how mine ends.’

  Oh her pauses, those silences. Those gaps made for remembering.

  On the last day of a wake, smell is often the most palpable sensation. The inevitable dead smell neutralised by candles, flowers in various stages of wilting, beer and the perpetual instant coffee or clothes that have been slept in, and bodies grieved out or reined in. There is always the humid scent of agitation, like armpit sweat, and then finality. These and the smell of spit on a body turning to earth, to dirt, are impossible to erase in the room. Here is stench so pure, undenia
bly human and overwhelming, it cannot be disguised by beer or cigarettes. Nor can it be neutralised by candles or flowers, or the saltiness of tears, because none of the guests brought any. Months later this stench will drive Mayor Reyes and his family from the house. His wife will have nightmares over it. She will wake up choked by it. She will dream of cells without windows. She will hear someone loading a gun in the next cell. Who knows what the couple lived through in the hills and during their incarceration for five years?

  It is only on the third day when the smell ripens, coming to full articulation like late condolences. The fishermen take off their hats to smell where their heads have been, the card players sniff at each card, a woman chewing betel nut blows on both palms and smells them, a young girl leans over a boy’s nape, another waves the end of her braids before her face, a father discreetly moves his nose towards his armpit and all amble around the now closed coffin, their noses twitching … is it it, is it them, is it us?

  More than the storm or the gravedigger’s story and incantations, perhaps it is this smell, bearing down on all, that inspires the will to rise above the dead and the living. By midnight the stories have become otherwordly, uncertain of their source and destination, merely floating in the ether.

  ‘Loose on a typhoon day, the mass of midnight strands is a whirlpool hiding her face. Tied, it is a horse’s mane. Braided, one thinks of thick ropes used by boats to anchor.’

  ‘It is a bridge between the banks of the river.’

  ‘It is a mat.’

  ‘A net.’

  ‘A fishing line.’

  ‘And she comes with fireflies to light the water.’

  ‘So we can all see and see clearly.’

  Chapter 89

  This is what Luke and Adora see from behind a stone angel.

  ‘I am Pay Inyo, the village gravedigger. I am ninety-three years old.

  I am still strong, I can still make a good coffin.’

  The camera zooms in on the twisted mouth, the blinking eyes, the knotted brow, then steps back to frame the overall look of distress, as if to say, this is unusual for a man who has been on the job for more than sixty years. Then it pans the coffin suspended over the grave, lingering on the securely nailed lid, the roughly joined corners, the uneven frame, the ropes holding it before the final descent.