Fish-Hair Woman

by Merlinda Bobis

  ‘I didn’t make this one, no more dita trees in the river, they’ve cut them all. But I still bury the dead, no matter who he is or what killed him.’

  The camera returns to the talking head and stays there.

  The host of the TV show Politics in the Barrio is very pleased with the gravedigger’s last remark. Benilda Gutierrez knows when she has the perfect lead. ‘So what do you think killed him, Pay Inyo?’ she asks, thrusting the microphone towards the old man.

  He shrinks from it, nodding then shaking his head. Like a live creature, the tube follows wherever he turns his mouth.

  ‘Yes, Pay Inyo?’ The woman insists on an answer.

  He blinks at the camera. So bright, like God’s eye exacting the truth. Nervously he smoothes his pomaded hair. The camera follows the gesture. He arranges his hands on the shovel. The camera rearranges its sight, as if a shovel’s handle could provide epiphany. He stares at his shoes. The camera discovers truth in them. Before it rests again on the coffin.

  ‘He was shot,’ he whispers.

  ‘Murdered, you mean. And who do you think murdered him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I only bury.’

  ‘Could you tell us again about the dead, please?’

  ‘Don Francisco Estradero Alvarado, a doctor. Once mayor, then governor.’

  ‘And — ?’

  ‘Please, I only bury.’ He waves the camera away.

  ‘You know his daughter, don’t you?’

  ‘Please — ’ He steps back from the glare, but it follows him.

  ‘She could be implicated in the shooting. What do you think of that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He crouches before the coffin, adjusting the ropes. Please leave her alone! Let’s not implicate the living and let the dead go with a little tenderness to take to the other side. In its wishing to set things right, the pacifist heart is perhaps amoral. But is morality realised in the heart, bleeding or raging in its own good time?

  ‘How would you describe her relationship with the dead?’

  ‘I said I don’t know, truly-truly.’

  The woman half kneels at the other side of the hole, organising her maroon skirt demurely, discreetly under the eye of the camera. The microphone is still extended, the cable dangling on the coffin lid. ‘Why is this securely nailed? Do you think she’s hiding something? Did she pay to skip a thorough autopsy? Did she arrange this funeral? Why isn’t she here to offer her last respects to her father?’

  The old man averts his face from the glare. Ay, surely God’s eye is not this harsh.

  ‘But she’s here in Iraya, she brought the body herself, am I right?’

  ‘A going-away tenderness, if you please,’ he pleads to the glare, to the made-up face lost in its own final reckoning.

  ‘What would you say to a daughter who does not come to her father’s funeral? Would you say she’s capable of shooting her own father?’

  ‘A going-away tenderness, please, miss — ’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Leave him alone!’

  It’s Luke rushing from behind the stone angel and Adora running close behind, urging him to come back. They have been watching the scene from the crypts further back. Pay Inyo shakes his head at the lovers. I told you not to come, I warned you!

  ‘Leave him alone!’ Luke says, pushing the cameraman, who only sidesteps and focuses on the irate white boy. On perfect cue, Benilda Gutierrez swings her microphone towards him, making sure she catches the swearing.

  ‘Put that fucking thing away! Leave the dead alone! Leave us alone!’ Luke crouches before the coffin and begins to loosen the ropes, nodding at Pay Inyo. Let’s get this done!

  God’s eye stares at the final descent. The anchorwoman stares at the boy. He looks familiar, she’s seen him somewhere. Of course, the Australian son in the papers some days ago! Now, this is getting even better. She quickly stands behind the crouching men, smooths out her skirt and signals to the camera, microphone now firmly set before her mouth.

  ‘We are here at the Iraya public cemetery, witnessing the burial of Doctor Francisco Estradero Alvarado, once mayor of Iraya and later governor of San Isidro Province. During the Marcos regime and later the Total War, Doctor Alvarado’s private militia, the notorious Anghel de la Guardia, was incriminated in various disappearances.’

  Pay Inyo and Luke begin to shovel. The earth is too wet from last night’s rain, almost like mud. The old man shakes his head at Luke. Don’t say anything, don’t look at her, just shovel!

  ‘He left for Hawai’i in 1978, then returned after the People Power in 1986. It was recently alleged by some sources that he and his military cronies were involved in last month’s disappearance of Federico Carillo and Paz Calor. Other allegations link the ex-governor to the disappearance of NPA Kumander Pilar Capas who became involved with the Australian writer Tony McIntyre, who also disappeared in the same year.’

  The old man begins to chant, drowning out all the ‘involvements’ invoked by the anchorwoman. No priest, Stella made him promise, no final rites. At least a going-away incantation then, Pay Inyo insisted. Ay, child, why have you grown so cruel?

  ‘We have the son of Mr McIntyre with us today. This is history coming full circle in Politics in the Barrio, the son burying his father’s dead — Luke McIntyre, am I right? Recently you were in the papers with Doctor Alvarado. Your father was a close friend of the dead, was he not? How does it feel to bury the friend of your father?’

  ‘Get off my face, you bitch!’

  The woman is stunned. God’s eye does not waver. The close up is unforgiving.

  ‘Did — did you hear that?’ Voice unsteady with rage, Benilda Gutierrez addresses the rest of the crowd: her TV crew, two men from the national dailies, another from the local paper and three police officers who are now closing in on the half-buried dead. Except for her crew, the rest kept their distance earlier, taking notes, hoping for some interesting development, some late mourner who would provide another angle to this story. The police especially have been biding their time. They are confident in their own version. They know the daughter is here in Iraya. They have even allowed her to lay her dead, to get on with the public ritual. They’re only mildly surprised that she’s not present this time. Not a cause for worry, though. They are here to close the case, so they can wait. But the press is not happy about the waiting. The villagers have decided to stay away this afternoon; they were done with their own reckoning at the wake. On its second day, ‘the nosy newspaper people’ attempted some interviews but very few talked. The same questions were asked about the dead and his connection with the disappearances ten years ago, then predictably about the Australian and the Kumander, what really happened to them, what was their relationship, were they really lovers, and what about Federico Carillo and Paz Calor. Who found their bodies in the river? Who could have stolen them to destroy evidence? They disappeared then disappeared again? The village could not believe that only these victims were remembered, as if all their disappeared could be reduced to four names.

  ‘You are on national television, don’t you know that, Mr McIntyre?’ Benilda Gutierrez is barely managing to contain her rage. ‘You’re here to bury your father’s dead, am I right?’ She thrusts the microphone at the foulmouthed alien. ‘Your father was a sort-of beneficiary of the dead, wasn’t he? Didn’t he ‘research’ information on the NPA for Doctor Alvarado — which he passed on to the military?’

  Luke keeps shovelling, each spadeful of earth for this man who had lied to him with postcards, photographs, the letters about his father being on his deathbed and needing to make peace, each spadeful for this man who brought him here, who had called him hijo, son — each spadeful for all the fathers who betrayed.

  ‘So, why are you here, Mr McIntyre?’ the TV presenter persisted.

  He is in too deep now, incriminated in all their stories. On the last day of the wake, when all were storied out and had to return to the smell of the living, a man approached him but did not say
a word. He simply leant on the wall, smelling his hat, until all had rushed home to wash themselves scrupulously. Luke thought, there is a friendliness about a man standing close as if for comfort and silently smelling his hat. He made up for the rest of the guests, for how they looked at him and Adora.

  ‘Amerkano?’ the man asked, smelling his hat again.

  ‘No, Australian.’

  ‘Ah … same-same.’

  Luke did not know what to say to this.

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘Please.’

  The man walked off and returned with a bottle of San Miguel. ‘You look him … same-same,’ he said, handing him the beer. Luke flinched. The man smiled kindly then began to stare, taking him in beyond his glasses, as if making sense of his eyes. Then he opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and smelled his hat again. After a while he mumbled conspiratorially, ‘Walk to river … jus’ walking-walking … ’ then shrugged, palms raised in the air — what is the English word for ‘vanish’? Suddenly the face lit up, the palms waved their emptiness. ‘No come home … ’

  ‘Tony McIntyre?’ Luke asked.

  The man smiled, nodding vigorously, saying, ‘Yes, yes,’ then became serious again. ‘Jus’ walking-walking to river … no come home,’ he repeated then left, thinking, surely chocolates and milk were a sign of goodwill. The white man was kind to me and my brothers.

  But there is no room for kindness now. The anchorwoman is hell-bent on extracting answers. ‘What do you think of Doctor Alvarado, Mr McIntyre? Do you think he was capable of murder? Do you think he was murdered?’

  Luke does not look up from his task. The string of queries punctuates the scraping of the shovel, the thud of earth. Were these the same sounds around the grave of his mother? His grandparents took him away before the first shovelful was thrown. He had peed in his pants.

  ‘What do you think of the dead, Mr McIntyre? You met him, did you not? You stayed at his house, am I right? What was your father’s relationship with the dead? Did he have any other interests in this country, aside from researching our war? A business investment, perhaps? What do you think of cronyism? Was your father a crony?’

  For Adora this is the simplest thing to do: grab the microphone, prise it from her hand, then encircle her waist to walk the anchorwoman away from the dead, gently and efficiently. No one expected her to come from behind so suddenly like that.

  Chapter 90

  The stone angel is a fading white. Its wings are spread open, its eyes raised heavenward. Heaven is a deep peach now. The few clouds are pink and mauve. It is dusk and the funeral is over. Earlier Benilda Gutierrez left in a huff with her crew. The rest of the press returned to their cars, but the police still hover.

  Luke takes another look at the stone angel. From afar it seems out of place as if unwilling to guard the crypt where it stands. It wants to take off to heaven. It does not belong here. ‘Remember, Luke, wherever you are, your guardian angel is Dad with wings.’ He hears it again as a boy, when he stood at the door to wave him goodbye. Another trip, another induction of faith. ‘You believe me, don’t you, Luke?’

  The police are looking at him, Adora is looking at him, Pay Inyo is looking at Adora. What’s on your mind, what’s your story? From a distance, this tableau of looking is observed by those who could have made the police look at another angle of the case. There is a man under the acacia trees at the south end of the cemetery. There are two women in different cars parked outside, where canna lilies wave like brightly coloured rags. The police saw the new arrivals but decided to look away. They had been advised by their superiors not to look too hard, to keep the case ‘within the family’, to close it as quickly as possible, lest the gaze of the prosecution suddenly turn heavenward, towards the powerful friends of the dead. Somewhere in a military camp in Manila, a general and a colonel are in their offices, though it’s a Sunday, golf day, because they are without doubt committed to the service. They are working overtime, destroying incriminating files, and making anxious phone calls to other friends who will ‘take care of the matter’. Dig a grave, not history. We are not his friends.

  Perhaps the angel has never been white. It does not belong here. It has always been in mid-flight. It has long abdicated its duty.

  The police will refuse to acknowledge the three late mourners: Miguelito Morada and his itching feet, Inez Carillo in her husband’s Minica, Nenita Jimenez with all the ambivalence of a reluctant widow. They are looking into the pool with their own little pails, not quite certain if they can find only their own reason to mourn. Their eyes well with tears that will collect into the pool, that will blend with the anonymity of grief. They think it strange that the white boy should bury the dead. Even more strange that they should be here at all, with this abhorrent ache pacing up and down between the gut and the heart. But back in Manila, outside a hut of corrugated iron, there is no pacing for Minyong. He is smoking a cigarette bummed from one of the corner boys. He heard about the politician’s murder only yesterday. He exhales with relief, but a jeepney ride away, Brother Nestor seeks more than relief. He prays for the salvation of all souls. Meanwhile at the embassy, ‘salvage’ not salvation dominates the argument between Matt Baker and the Australian Ambassador who is finally listening.

  Back in Pay Inyo’s hut, Stella is listening to other voices.

  I’m afraid, when I die, I can’t stay dead. Each time your heart breaks, as now I know it does, I’ll hear it in my breast.

  Tony’s handwritten annotation on Rainer Maria Rilke’s book of poems. Scrawled beside ‘Requiem for a Friend’ in black ink, almost flowing from the poem’s first line: I have my dead and I have let them go.

  Stella adds the much dog-eared Rilke to the manuscript in Luke’s backpack. Yet unfinished because the living can’t let go and nor can the dead. She adds a note: Finish it. Tell the world. She looks at her watch. The funeral is over. Her side of the story is ending.

  She walks out of the bedroom, to the old store. She scans the counter, its jars of biscuits and sweets. ‘You want my ears, little Eya?’ ‘Ay, what goes on under that little head, that very tricky hair, very tricky heart?’ She hears them again, all her beloved. She opens a jar and takes out a sugarcoated dilimon. Same old sweet, nothing has changed.

  The sky is turning red. Against it the stone angel is a black outline. The police have left to close the case. The gravedigger gathers the shovels. The dead has been laid to rest, but not in his ancestral mausoleum in the estate. His daughter ordered that he be buried in the public cemetery, where he will hear the village noises forever. Where he will turn and turn in his grave.

  The red sky is quickly streaked with indigo. The shadows lengthen. Miguelito, Inez, and Nenita slip away. These late mourners leave with their little pails. Looking into the pool is futile. There will be no moon tonight.

  Chapter 91

  It is like a short variety of kogon grass. It thrusts upward into stiff, thin and wiry blades that bend or fold as they grow taller, incapable of sustaining the initial rigid outburst. It is self-sufficient and incorrigible. One bulb shoots up, multiplies and overruns a whole garden and beyond, if allowed. It aspires to flavour all of the earth. A ‘fresh lemony tang’ is the most pedestrian way to describe its abilities. To do it justice, one must cite the alchemy it inspires.

  It tricks the fatty aftertaste off pork-knuckle sour soup.

  It inspires the chicken feet to rise above their station in a pot of green papayas and coconut milk.

  It beatifies the putrid aroma of fish sauce.

  It connives with taro leaves and shrimp paste in indulging the tongue so shamelessly, its owner might even forget her name.

  It overruns the scent of death.

  So Mamay Dulce planted a garden of lemon grass here, where the fartfart tree once stood. Now Pay Inyo can start by enumerating to Luke the intricacies of smell and taste of hope, but perhaps first one must not get too involved. Do not look too closely yet. Look away for distance, for the absurd but possible minuteness o
r invisibility of things that we hold close to our hearts. So first how to look, then later how to ingest what is seen. Much later, how to expel and leave behind.

  The old man decides to take this little side trip before life turns upside down. He feels this eventual complication in his bones, so they must visit the garden of lemon grass before they return to his store. He wants to explain the art of making better before it gets completely dark.

  They are a party of three. If we did not know their history, we might think this is an early evening promenade in what seems to be a neglected orchard, still wet from last night’s downpour. The guavas are flaunting the first sign of ripening, a flash of yellow-green here and there. A lone jackfruit is raring to perfume the air and the cacaos will soon exhibit their purplish streaks. But none of their burgeoning efforts are gratified. The passing eyes only see the tall kogon grass and thick balangubang vines, and there is never a wish to look closer. The village believes the orchard is haunted, like the river. How many hauntings can a village endure?

  This is where the old house of his beloved Dulce stood. This is where she stood contemplating the foulness of the great tree, which blocked the view to the hills.

  ‘What you see?’ the old gravedigger asks Luke.

  ‘Grass, sir.’

  He leads the boy to the lemon grass. ‘Stand.’ He points to the west. ‘Look, up, up. What you see?’

  ‘Three hills.’

  ‘See woman there?’

  ‘A woman?’

  ‘See woman with gun?’

  ‘What woman, sir?’

  Pay Inyo scours his brain and tongue for more foreign words, but they are slow to come or perhaps his heart has overtaken them. He turns to Adora. His thin arms flail from hills to garden and back, his arguments spill in the dialect.

  ‘What if I say there’s a woman there with a gun and she’s weeping, but you can’t see the weeping and you can’t see the gun or the woman, not at all. You feel bad, you feel tricked, because everything is too far away, and you want so much to see. But Adora, come over here, stand among the lemon grass. Now let’s leave Adora and go to the hills. If we stand up there and look down, we won’t see this garden of lemon grass. We won’t see Adora among the lemon grass. We won’t see Adora’s face. Or her scars. So we won’t feel bad, truly-truly, because everything is too far away. Do you understand?’