The Caprices

by Sabina Murray

“They’re going to search our things, the maid heard the boss’s wife saying . . .”

  “When?”

  “After lunch.”

  Salas packed his things. There was nothing to directly incriminate him. There was the good-luck scarf written over with Japanese characters, a gift from a well-meaning village, but he could easily argue that this had been lifted off a dead Japanese officer. He could conceal the information to the security box, where he had placed the maps for safekeeping, but the idea of having his belongings rifled through bothered him deeply. Any scrutiny did. Besides, he was now old. He had already wasted much of his life as a servant. This was a sign to move on. He passed Estanislaw—who was bandaged like a mummy, glumly being questioned by the boss’s eldest son—and caught a jeepney downtown.

  Salas found work at a multinational corporation that made shampoo, soap, and toothpaste. He spoke Japanese and was, therefore, useful.

  Salas awoke early on Saturday morning, the day after he had seen Balmaceda. Salas sent his servant, Fernando, a handsome boy with feet like a duck, to buy the paper and some pan de sal. Other than Salas’s eagerness for the paper, this was all routine. As Fernando descended the steps, he no doubt thought that Salas had started on his careful straight-edged shaving. After that, Salas would choose a short-sleeved shirt, find weekend socks to match, finish off with light trousers, then head in slippers for his small balcony to tend his small orchid garden. Fernando did not expect to be accosted on the steps when he returned. Standing in the dim light of the stairwell was a tall, dark-skinned man who, despite the heat and the shadowed light, was wearing sunglasses and a long-sleeved jacket and tie, American style.

  “You work for Mr. Salas?” asked the man.

  “Who wants to know?” asked Fernando.

  “Just give him this. He will understand.”

  Fernando accepted the envelope.

  Salas had heard voices on the stairs. He was nervous and when he poked his head out of the doorway, he caught Fernando shaking the envelope, checking the seal.

  “Who gave you that?” asked Salas. Fernando looked down the stairs in response. When Salas peered over the edge of the railing, the stairwell was empty. He heard the door clicking shut as someone left the building.

  Salas ate his roll. The envelope was on the table; he regarded it as he chewed. He did not open it, nor did he unfold the paper. Fernando peeked around from the kitchen. Today Salas would send Fernando to the movies with five pesos in his pocket, for supposedly good behavior. And after that, Salas would tear open the envelope and find sixty thousand pesos in new bills.

  There was no explanation for the gift. Salas could only guess. Clearly Balmaceda had recognized him and maybe Salas had been followed home. Who knew what group Balmaceda was running with? Probably someone wealthy and powerful. This gift said a number of things. It said, “We know who you are and that you have the other maps.” It said, “We have the resources to excavate the gold.” It said, “We will make you rich if you cooperate.”

  Who were these benefactors? According to the papers of the previous week, Rogelio Roxas’s gold Buddha had been confiscated by members of the president’s family. The president. That would make sense. Salas thumbed the stack of money and its exquisite flutter made him giddy.

  Salas headed straight for the tailor up the street who offered same-day service. It was still early. Who could blame him for wanting some new clothes? He ordered a suit, buff-colored linen, double breasted and fully lined, which was ready at six that evening. Salas dressed at the tailor’s and took his old clothes folded in a brown paper package tied with twine.

  Salas’s shoes were brand-new but he decided to have them polished, just for the pleasure of it. The shoestand rose regally off the street, with metal platforms on which to set one’s shoes. He took the leftmost of the three seats, which were worked by three kneeling boys. Salas drummed his fingertips on the worn wood of the chair’s arm; this lightness was strange to him. He owed his joy to some whim of fate, which left him feeling both lucky and nervous. Beside him, a man ruffled the pages of a newspaper, reminding Salas he’d ignored the paper this morning, its offerings overshadowed by more immediate good news. The man snapped the paper down and looked at the boy who was coating his shoes with polish.

  “Cordovan is not brown, you idiot,” he said. The boy quickly raised the polish tin, which clearly stated Cordovan on its lid. The boy returned to his work. Salas looked away before the man could see he had witnessed the mistake. The man harrumphed over his mustache (he was part Spanish, no doubt, to grow facial hair like that) and trained his eyes on Salas. “What do you make of it?”

  Salas raised his eyebrows. Surely he could not be referring to the shoe polish.

  “The Buddha, the gold Buddha,” he said.

  Salas shrugged. “Is there something new about it in the paper?” he inquired casually.

  “Fascinating,” the man said, “If you find such stuff fascinating, treasure hunting, gold and the like. Anyway this Mr. Roxas insists that the Buddha he dug up in Baguio is gold. Doesn’t know where this brass statue came from at all. Roxas claims that the president’s thugs stole the gold Buddha out of his house. That, of course, is not in the paper. I heard it, well, somewhere.” Here, the man stopped to consider his audience.

  Salas was delighted that the man, obviously wealthy, was speaking with him. He attributed this to his new shoes and suit. “I feel certain the Buddha was gold,” Salas said. “You know, I’m sure, all about General Yamashita’s retreat.”

  “Yes. Backwards out of Manila, and MacArthur advancing all the time. Yamashita finally stopped up around Baguio. He was executed, wasn’t he?”

  Salas nodded. “Hanged. For war crimes.” And then he smiled. This was uncontrollable.

  “There’s no doubt that he buried some gold up there,” continued his companion, “but how much? And why hasn’t it all been retrieved?”

  “One hears rumors . . .” Salas checked his audience. The man was deeply interested. “They say that all the locations are booby-trapped. Bombs will detonate if the precise directions for retrieval are not followed.”

  “Well then, how do you get the gold?”

  “There are maps—specific engineering instructions for the retrieval. These maps are still in the possession of the Japanese.”

  “You don’t say.”

  Salas nodded. “The maps are in an ancient Japanese dialect that has not been spoken for over a thousand years.”

  “You don’t say.” The man smoothed his mustache. “Who did the work?”

  “Work?”

  “The digging.”

  “Oh.” Salas grimaced, but quickly corrected his features. “POWs, I should think.”

  “Wouldn’t they have spoken out?”

  “Well yes, if they were alive. I’ve heard . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, nothing at all on that matter. Maybe they’re all dead.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes.” Suddenly Salas felt weary. “But these are just rumors, of course. We know the Japanese looted all the way from Manchuria to Manila. No one will admit to having the money. Stories are created.”

  “The money’s probably all back in Tokyo.”

  “Or Switzerland. Who’s to say there’s any Yamashita’s Gold at all?”

  “But if there was . . ., ho ho ho,” said the man. He flipped the paper so that Salas could see the front page. There was a picture of an innocuous, bespectacled man.

  “Who is that?” Salas asked.

  “That is Roxas. He’s speaking at Plaza Miranda on Saturday, at the Liberal Proclamation Rally, along with everyone else who has a problem with the president.”

  “He should keep quiet,” Salas said.

  “You’re right. He won’t live long with an attitude like that, not under this administration. What good is gold when you’re dead?”

  Salas took a taxi, smiling to himself as he passed the crowded jeepney stop. What he needed was a new nightc
lub to match his new affluence, not this dive that he had been frequenting for the past ten years. No doubt, when he actually brought forth the maps, he would be a rich man. Sixty thousand pesos was fine as a gesture of goodwill, but a small amount nonetheless. He would worry about lifestyle changes later. The old nightclub had a measure of comfort that he appreciated in his own way, and besides, who better to appreciate the new wealth than someone who had seen the old poverty? He would ask for Lina, who was near forty and practically in retirement, but she had known him longest and she would be the most impressed. In fact, it was his desire to impress Lina that caused him to abandon the taxi and proceed on foot up the alley that led to the rear entrance to the club. He would tap on Lina’s window. She would be confused at first, but then she would see—new suit, new shoes . . .

  Sneaking up on anyone is something that one should carefully consider. Sneaking up on a prostitute, even one near forty who is practically in retirement, is never a good idea, but Salas felt light and was therefore lightheaded. He walked up the side of the alley, with the tapping step of new soles. The shoulders of his suit were padded to make him look broad and strong, less stooped. How effective this actually was is not of importance, because Salas believed in his shoulders just as he believed in the faithfulness of the long-buried treasure. The gold was his, after all, had been his for twenty-eight years.

  At first, Salas didn’t hear the other’s footfalls. The alley was deserted. His sobering thought was that his newfound prosperity had impressed someone else, someone who had followed him into the alley, which usually had a few inhabitants—tired women wringing out nylon hose, or their unwanted children busy in a coin-tossing game. Salas stopped behind a parked car, and as he’d predicted, the steps too stopped. In the reflection offered by the rear window of the car, he saw the outline of a man—tall and thin, and that was all because the light was poor and the window dirty. Slowly, he turned around.

  Salas did not recognize the man because he did not want to. He registered that the man was unarmed and that he did not have a threatening demeanor. He wore loose trousers that had holes in the knees and were shredded at the cuffs. His shirt was filthy and the sleeves had been pulled from it. His eyes were quiet and questioning. He wore no shoes. At first Salas refused to recognize the man, but then he found his presence undeniable. This man was Dr. Santos, a civilian imprisoned in Fort Santiago whom Salas had known during the war.

  Salas began to sweat, even though he felt suddenly cold. He forgot his errand, where he was. His mind folded in upon itself, and next thing he knew, he was stumbling into the chill of an expensive restaurant, having left the alley and run across a busy street. He was not damaged physically, although he had been narrowly missed by a number of cars and jeepneys. The waiter touched Salas’s elbow in a warm, yet polite way. He guided Salas to a chair.

  “What has happened, sir?” asked the waiter.

  Salas shook, unable to answer.

  “Are you hurt?” The waiter gazed into Salas’s face. “Were you attacked?”

  Salas nodded, although he knew this to be a lie. This was the closest he could come to describing the feeling he had, the terror that he had taken with him from the alley and into the restaurant.

  “Shall I call the police?” The waiter knelt at Salas’s side and fanned him with a menu. Salas shook his head. How could he tell this man—or anyone—that he had seen a certain Dr. Santos, a man he had once met and seen one time afterward, whom he knew nothing of except that he was a skilled surgeon and that he was dead.

  The waiter placed a drink in Salas’s shaking hands. He sipped it—a good scotch—and thanked the waiter for his solicitude.

  “A gift, sir,” the waiter replied, “from Señor Ocampo. He would like for you to join him.”

  Salas looked across the room. Señor Ocampo was the Spanish mestizo with whom he had chatted while having his shoes shined. The rest of the scotch was in a bottle on the table.

  “I hear you were mugged,” said Ocampo. “It’s terrible, it is, but you know, this city, this country, has always been like this. It hasn’t gotten worse. A cesspool.”

  “Then what they say about you mestizos is right,” replied Salas.

  “And what is that?”

  “Enough distance to see the problems in the Philippines and too much love for the country to ever leave.”

  Ocampo laughed heartily. “My father was pure Spanish blood, third generation. His mother cried for a month when he said he was marrying a Filipina.” More hearty laughter followed. Ocampo poured Salas a generous glass. “I’m buying you dinner,” he said. “The thing to order here is lengua.”

  Salas did not want to be alone and this Señor Ocampo was certainly good company. A few glasses of scotch had soothed Salas’s fear, although he still felt a nagging generalized wariness. Ocampo was in the sugar business. His wife and children lived on the island of Negros, in Bacolod, and while on business in Manila, Ocampo considered himself a bachelor.

  “So what’s your story, Salas,” he said. “Who are your people?”

  Salas laced his fingers together. He knew his history well.

  “Mine is not a happy story,” he started. “I was born in Baguio in 1915. My father was a carpenter.”

  “Same profession as Our Lord’s.”

  Salas smiled. “Yes. There were eight of us children at one point. We had little money. There were only four of us still living at the start of the war.”

  “How sad.”

  “The Japanese finished us off.”

  “Except for you, of course.”

  Salas almost laughed. This was not the first time he’d forgotten to include himself among the number. “My mother died in childbirth. There was”—here Salas looked thoughtfully at his entwined hands—“a good deal of blood.” He looked up at Ocampo. “I found her. The baby miraculously survived. He was covered in hair. The local mystic said this was a good omen.”

  “Ah, but the mystic was wrong,” said Ocampo with deep-felt sympathy.

  “Wrong?”

  “Well, yes. The child died in the war.”

  “That’s right,” said Salas. “I mean, right in God’s eyes. We must accept his decisions.”

  “You are a man of faith!” declared Ocampo.

  “Well, I was raised by nuns—a Belgian order in Baguio. They taught me English, introduced me to books. She was a good woman.”

  “She?”

  “Sister, Sister Mary. She was a good nun although she had a drinking problem and . . . and a mustache. She also had a wimple.” Salas traced the wimple with his fingers extending out from his head.

  In response, Ocampo stroked his mustache. “And where is she now?”

  “The Japanese . . . Unspeakable, you know. Even though she was a nun . . .”

  “And even though she had a mustache!” added Ocampo. Here they fell into awkward laughter, much controlled, yet impossible to completely suppress. “I’m sorry. I’m an insensitive drunken boor!” said Ocampo.

  “No, no,” said Salas, patting the man on his arm. “She would have wanted it this way.”

  “Ah.” Ocampo filled the glasses and raised his to clink with Salas’s. “To Sister Mary.”

  The following morning, Salas was awakened by the ringing of the phone, but he did not answer. He was exhausted from the previous night. He had been tortured by bad dreams, nightmares brought on by scotch, and some mild form of hysteria activated by a change in life, or so Salas argued. A prisoner had come at him in his very bed, this bed, with the rumpled sheets. This skin-and-bones apparition had no head. He also had no shirt, and his bare chest revealed each rib in clear detail, a delicate vault of bones that arched above his flat belly. The navel was stretched open—then blinked: an eye in this unlikely location. He held a sword high above his shoulders. His belly-eye was trained on Salas. Salas counted his final seconds, and then he was back in Fort Santiago in the caves with Balmaceda. All kinds of prisoners were digging, Filipinos and Americans mostly. Balmaceda was makin
g his way through the deep tunnel with a little silver mallet. The prisoners shifted soil to the scrape and scrape of shovels.

  Balmaceda, on impulse, took the mallet and cracked it across a man’s skull. Instantly the man collapsed. None of the other prisoners seemed to notice. Salas went over. The man’s skull had split cleanly in two. Balmaceda separated the halves, like two hemispheres of a cracked almond. Balmaceda plunged his hand deep into the brain meat. When his hand came out, bloodied and trailing stringy gore, he held a stone. It was a ruby, uncut and blood red. Then Salas realized that the scar on his stomach had started dripping blood, then trickling. He covered the wound with his hands.

  Salas dressed quickly. He had slept until noon. He looked at the table. The pan de sal and coffee were cold. Fernando was sulking by the kitchen door with a black eye.

  “Why didn’t you answer the phone?”

  “I just missed it. I’m sorry, sir,” said Fernando, whose sweat was still thick with coconut liquor.

  Salas took a jeepney to Quiapo. He had the jeepney let him off around the corner from the restaurant where he had seen Balmaceda. He straightened his shirt and combed his hair in the reflection of a parlor window. On the front page of the paper was something about the Liberal Proclamation Rally at Plaza Miranda the following week, but this was dwarfed by a headline describing a restoration project in Intramuros that the first lady had decided to oversee. The engineering firm that had won the contract bid was Japanese.

  “Sir, fifty centavos,” said the paper boy.

  Salas gave him a five-peso bill.

  The restaurant was busy on Sunday. Salas took the same seat by the window, wondering if Balmaceda would turn up, even though he usually only came during the week. No matter. Salas felt a solidarity sharing this seat. Hundreds of sparrows shot through the air. Salas had always hated the sparrows. They symbolized Manila to him—Manila, whose calcified lungs coughed up the little birds much as a consumptive coughed up blood. A waiter came to take his order.

  “Where is the owner?” asked Salas.

  “On Sunday, he is with his family,” said the waiter.