The Philippine Army recruits were paid one and a half pesos a month, and they were issued U.S. Army uniforms of World War vintage with breeches and wrap leggings. One payday while I was in the Iron Star, drinking a beer and eating pansit with Corporal Ratilinsky, a Filipino soldier came in from the camp outside Angeles. He was an M.P., assigned to keep his eye on things in Angeles. He had a holstered .45 semiautomatic pistol on his webbed
belt.
"Do you know how to take that pistol apart?" Ratilinsky asked him.
"No, sir."
"Let me have it. I'll show you."
Trustingly, the soldier handed Corporal Ratilinsky the weapon, something no soldier should ever do. Ratilinsky detail-stripped the pistol on the table, scattering the parts on the greasy, pansit-smeared surface. After it was down to the last part (and Ratilinsky even unscrewed the wooden handles with his pocketknife), he told the M.P. that was as far down as he could get it.
The kid was nervous by this time, and he asked Corporal Ratilinsky to please put it back together again.
"No." Ratilinsky shook his head. "If I put it back together, you won't learn anything."
Unhappily, the M.P. took off his campaign hat, scraped all of the parts into it, and left. Although Ratilinsky was drunk, I couldn't see any excuse for doing that to the young M.P. He would get into a lot of trouble when he got back to camp, and the chances were that his superior, or platoon sergeant, wouldn't know how to reassemble the weapon either.
"That was a lousy thing to do," I said.
"Not at all. The first thing a soldier should learn is never to surrender his weapon. You know that, Willeford, and now that young M.P. knows it too. In my small way, I just made me a contribution to the new Philippine Army." He then laughed that raucous laugh of his and lit a cigarette to control the coughing tit his laughter engendered.
Later on, when another P.I. soldier edged shyly into the Iron Star, I tried to become friendly with him, just because of Ratilinsky's behavior.
"First time in town?"
"Yes, sir."
"I suppose you're going to get a piece of ass?"
"No, sir," he said, shaking his head. "Even when I am paid, sir, I cannot get a piece of ass."
This was true. He was only being paid one-fifty a month, and he needed two pesos for a single short time with one of the Bullpen whores! His face was so woebegone when he said this, however, I had to laugh. But because I had laughed I bought the kid a twenty-centavo gin-and-lemonada highball, even though I was almost broke myself.
Some fucking army they're going to have, I thought, but then I realized that ours wasn't much better. We still had the P—12's at that time, but they weren't available for fighting because we didn't have an armorer who knew how to synchronize the machine guns so that they could fire through the propellers.
But I didn't worry about that. My main concern was to get enough money saved so I could take a three-day pass to Manila. And to that end I decided to cultivate Padre Hershey, the day-room orderly.
ELEVEN
PRIVATE PADRE HERSHEY WAS ABOUT FIFTY POUNDS overweight most of the time, but periodically he would go on a fast and lose twenty pounds or so. He liked to eat, however, so he would soon regain the weight he lost.
"Food," he said often, "is my weakness, not women, and I also like to drink. So if I eat while I drink I don't get too drunk, and then I can eat more. When a man isn't interested in women, looks don't matter."
This much, I think, was true about Hershey. Padre wasn't remotely interested in women, nor was he a homosexual. The five years he had spent in the monastery, practicing celibacy, had weaned him off women, I supposed, but his years there gave him an intense desire for steaks and chops, or for food with more spices than the plain fare he had eaten in the monastery. Padre was no longer a religious man. He had lost his faith altogether, and he didn't attend Mass or go to confession, but because of his tonsured baldness he still looked like a fat monk wearing an army uniform—that is, once you knew he had been a monk.
Padre's duties as a day-room orderly were so light one could say they were hardly duties at all. A Filipino house-boy swept, mopped, and dusted the day-room every day. All Padre had to do was to check the boy's work. That done, he got the new magazines from the charge of quarters when the mail came in, and stamped each magazine with the stamp:
day-room a
3rd Pur. Sqdn
Clark Field, P.I.
He put the new magazines into their brown leather covers, after removing the previous issues, and he was through for the day. Except for weekly magazines like Time and Life, most of the magazines were monthlies, so he didn't have much to do on a daily basis. He also got to read all the new magazines first. He read them all, too; he had nothing better to do. I got to know Padre fairly well when I was in the fire department; I also hung around the day-room reading the new magazines on the mornings I was off duty.
Padre didn't have a blackjack game, and I volunteered to run one for him on paydays. The idea wasn't original with me. There had been a payday blackjack game at March Field, and I proposed running one for Padre along the same lines. No house bank, but a passing deal. Whoever got the blackjack got the deal, and if he didn't want to deal he could sell it to someone else in the game who wanted to be the banker-dealer. But every man who got a blackjack, even if there were two or more in the same round, which was paid double by the dealer, had to give fifty centavos to the man running the game. In return the gamblers got free cards, a table on the porch, and a free pansit dinner at midnight, just like the poker-players and the crap-shooters.
At first Padre didn't want to start a blackjack game, thinking that it would cause him to lose crap-shooters and poker—players, but I finally persuaded him that it would undoubtedly attract other gamblers who didn't like craps or those who couldn't afford to get into his ten-peso take-out game of poker. And I was right. The blackjack game became quite popular because the players could bet as little as fifty centavos per hand. The upper limit depended upon the bank established by the dealer, and a man, once he got the deal, could hardly lose, not when there were from eight to ten players.
I split the take with Padre and paid for the cards and for my half of the pansit dinners at midnight. I still cleared from twenty-five to thirty pesos by the time the game ended, sometime after midnight. On payday the eleven o'clock closing of the day-room was extended to the end of the gambling, and sometimes we didn't quit until dawn. Padre's income increased, too. The big winners could now afford to get into his poker game, where Padre, in turn, would win most of their blackjack winnings. Padre played in the poker game as well as cutting it, and he was a masterful player. Three days after payday, when our squadron gambling was all over with for the month, he would take a three-day pass to Manila and sit in on the P.I. poker game, where all of the 3ISt Infantry money wound up, in a supply room basement at the Estado Mayor. This game, with the big winners sitting in from Nichols Field, Corregidor, and Port Area, Manila, had a five-himdred-peso takeout. Padre always held his own in this company, frequently winning large sums. After the game in Manila ended, Padre feasted on down—home southern cooking at Tom's Dixie Kitchen in the Plaza Goiti in downtown Manila and then drove back to Clark Field in his yellow Ford phaeton 1936 convertible.
I took the twenty-five pesos I cleared the first payday to Canavin and told him to hold it for me. I knew that if I kept it I would spend it.
"No matter what I say," I told Canavin, "don't give me any of that money back till It take my three-day pass."
Two days later I was after Canavin to give me just five pesos of it, but he told me to go fuck myself. He was unbudging, as I had suspected he would be, so I gave him another thirty pesos to hold for me the following payday. The next month I added my new winnings to all of my money held by Canavin and, wearing a new blue linen suit, took a three-day pass to Manila, riding down with Padre in his Ford phaeton. In my starched tailor-made suit, wearing a white-on-white shirt and a navy blue silk tie with yello
w polka dots and highly polished black wingtip shoes, I felt like a millionaire.
Padre dropped me off in the Plaza Goiti and left to go to the Estado Mayor poker game. His plans for returning to Clark Field were indefinite, but I told him I would take the train back to Angeles. I checked into the New Washington Hotel, paying for two nights in advance. Then I walked to the Silver Dollar Bar.
The bar-with the words 'SILVER DOLLAR' spelled out with silver dollars in the long mahogany bar top—was famous all over the Far East for its Singapore gin slings. These drinks were served in tall frosted glasses, and they were so strong that if you drank three of them, the house paid for the fourth. Padre had advised me not to drink more than two, and to take a long time between drinks. After all, each drink contained four and a half ounces of booze. I could feel the effects of the first one before I sipped even half of it, but I doubt if there is a better-tasting drink made anywhere else in the world.
In addition to the long polished mahogany bar with its brass rail, there were eight or ten white rattan tables with three or four peacock chairs to each table. There were slow-moving overhead fans, and the dark cool bar was an oasis after coming in from the steamy streets.
The first thing I saw when I pushed through the swinging doors from the street was a Filipino woman sitting on a table with her legs spread wide. Her pudenda were exposed to my startled view like a third unblinking eye. Three privates from Charlie Company, 31st Infantry, were down on their knees with their eyes at table level. They were staring and frowning at this woman's vagina with intense concentration. A Navy chief petty officer, in dress whites, was leaning back against the bar as he disinterestedly watched the scene, and he held a wad of pesos in his left hand. Two sailors were also in the bar, one sitting in a peacock chair and the other one down on his knees with the soldiers.
One of the sailors had claimed that any woman who wasn't a virgin would have at least one full inch of the bottom of her vagina overlap the flat surface of a table if she sat on it and spread her legs. The sailor had gotten an argument from the three soldiers, and bets had been made.
The old chief, aloof from the argument, agreed to hold the money. One of the soldiers had gone out into the plaza and brought back a whore, paying her five pesos for her part in the experiment.
I was too late to get in on the bet because the woman was already in place on the table when I pushed through the swinging doors. But they let me take a look. Sure enough, the lips of that woman's vagina (or poakie, as the Filipinos call it) overlapped at least two inches on the table surface. If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it, and I was certainly glad that I got there too late to place a bet. The other sailor and the three soldiers had bet against the sailor who had made the claim, and the chief had to hand him the money. The soldier who had paid the whore five pesos had lost another fifteen to the sailor, and now he was dead broke for the month. He wasn't a good loser, either.
After the sailor got his money from the chief, he bought a round of Singapore slings for everyone, so I got my first sling free. There was some discussion then, and we asked the sailor how he knew about the twat overlap. He said the rule applied to white women as well as Filipino women, and he had learned about it when he had pumped gas in a station in Toledo, Ohio, long before he joined the Navy.
There was a little hole in the wall between the men's room and the ladies' room, and when a woman went in to use the bathroom he would go into the men's room and take a look. He was just a kid then, he said, and merely curious, but this low, upward view had provided him with a wealth of knowledge about vaginas. He had already won bets on the overlap in Honolulu and San Diego.
"But," he reminded us, "it won't work with a virgin. Only mature non-virgins have the one inch overlap."
The whore, hoping to get a little action, tried to sit at the table with us, but the gray-haired Chinese bartender ran her out. The Silver Dollar, he told her, was a decent place, frequented by important businessmen, and no soliciting was allowed.
I laughed when he said that, but I was the only one who did. The C.P.O. gave me a funny look and told me to take it easy on the slings. I nodded and said I would. I didn't know any of these guys, and I kept quiet as they talked. My sense of humor had gotten me into trouble before. A few minutes later, the soldier who had paid the whore five pesos began to argue with the sailor who had won the money. He felt now that he had been tricked into a sucker bet, and he was getting ugly. I finished my second sling and sidled out as the voices began to get louder..I wasn't about to get mixed up in a fight during my first hour in town.
It was one P.M. , and the sun blazed fiercely. I was feeling my drinks and perspiring through my jacket, not being used to wearing a jacket in hundred-degree heat. But I would have been just as euphoric if I hadn't had two Singapore slings.
I was in a city again, and a head taller than most of the natives. The streets teemed with people, and it was exciting just to be there, walking around and taking everything in. Here were department stores, music stores, bookstores (in the window of a bookstore there was a huge pyramid of Carl Crow's 400 Million Customers), and the Ideal Theater (pronounced Id-de-all) was playing a new Laurel and Hardy movie. The Ideal Theater was air-conditioned, too, one of the few air-conditioned buildings in the city. As I passed by I felt the cold blast of air from the lobby, and I bought a white paper bag of sally goupons from a vendor in front
of the theater.
There were more white businessmen downtown than I had expected to see, but the majority of the people were, of course, Filipinos. There were a good many beggars in rags, and those who weren't beggars didn't dress much better, but there were quite a few well-dressed Filipino men and women as well.
I ate lunch in Tom's Dixie Kitchen, up on the second floor of the building across the plaza, and a twelve-piece dance orchestra played dance music during lunch. I ordered a cold pork chop sandwich and a salad of wilted lettuce dotted with crisp pieces of bacon, and finished with a dish of mango ice cream. Tom's Dixie Kitchen stayed open twenty-four hours a day, as did most of Manila's restaurants and cabarets, because Manila was indeed the Pearl of the Orient, with ships putting into port from every nation in the world. Ten German sailors were sitting at a big round table in Tom's, drinking draft beer and singing.
I caught a carrimetta after lunch and rode through town and across the Pasig River at Jones Bridge. The garishly painted currimetta was pulled by a tiny horse, and the fares were only twenty centavos, much cheaper than the Willys-Knight taxicabs. The cab companies had apparently made a good deal with Willys, because, except for limousines, which were mostly Lincolns, the majority of the cabs were Willys. After we crossed Jones Bridge I climbed down and walked to the Y.M.,C.A., hoping to run into someone I knew. The Y was not far from the cathedral entrance to the old walled city, and if I didn't run into anyone I knew at the Y I planned on going into the walled city to get a piece of ass.
Except for a few soldiers playing Ping-Pong, the Y was deserted in the early afternoon. I can't think of a place more depressing than that Y.M.C.A. Before I left, however, I checked to see if there were any free tickets at the desk and picked up a city map. There were no tickets available, but the odd—looking white man at the desk said that there was a sing-along planned for that evening at the Y, and that the famous Filipino pianist Mario R. Cabingis. would play a concert before the sing-along.
Along the dry moat on the outer side of the walled city the Army had built a golf course. Clubs and golf balls were available in the Port Area recreation room. Port Area was where all of the heavy maintenance was accomplished on military vehicles, and where the soldiers attached to Headquarters, Philippine Department, were quartered. There were warehouses and quartermaster troops in this post beside the Pasig River as well. The Pasig River, as I had been told, ran one way one week and the other way the next. This phenomenon was caused by tides. I looked at the Pasig River, and the wide sluggish river was indeed running upstream. Sometimes in the villages way up the riv
er dead bodies were thrown into the water, and occasionally they had to float in and out of the city for two weeks before making it all of the way out to sea. I saw a dead dog floating in the river, but I didn't see any dead humans.
When I entered the walled city I knew to stay in the middle of the narrow streets and to look up every once in a while. Some balconies overlapped the narrow cobblestoned streets, and residents emptied pisspots and garbage or dumped a pail of dirty water into the street. This was an unsanitary area, all right, and there was an overpowering stench of urine, feces, and garbage in the moist air.
One battalion of the 31st Infantry was stationed in the walled city, and the rest of the regiment was quartered at the Estado Mayor, where Hershey was playing poker. Stemberg General Hospital was over near the Estado Mayor as well, but I thought I might have a better chance of seeing someone I knew in the walled city.
A woman was selling bamboo gin for two centavos a glass from a cart in the street. I bought a glass from her, but I couldn't drink all of it. Bamboo gin was homemade and bottled in miscellaneous bottles. It tasted worse than the bamboo gin I had tried in Sloppy Bottom, but my edge from the Singapore slings had wom off, and I was trying to get it back. The alcoholic content of bamboo gin varied, naturally, but a man could get very drunk on three drinks if he could hold it down. And a six-centavo drunk is about as cheap as they come. But it was foolish to drink bamboo gin when you could buy San Miguel A1—1A for $1.60 a grande. A1—1A San Miguel gin is unquestionably the best gin in the entire world. No other gin even comes close to it in taste, quality, and herbal aroma. But vested interests, Canavinp told me, have managed to keep it out of the United States.
Something About a Soldier - Charles Willeford Page 10
