Still, I was more than surprised. “Looking at you, and being with you like this—it is difficult to believe,” I said.
I knew so little of her past and every bit about it that she revealed had an aura of fiction. Could this be one of them? I did not know where she was born, or anything about her education, but because she spoke French and Spanish, I was sure she was not educated in some diploma mill or cheap public school. If her father was a Japanese soldier, how come then that her family was Rojo, not Yamamoto or some such? However, I had no choice but to believe her for I was certain she was not lying or making up a story.
On our way out, we passed couples necking in the dark, behind abutments in the old wall, on the grass, almost everywhere and she said it was the first time she had seen such sights.
“They have no money,” I said. “Perhaps, they are students or office workers. If they had money, they would go to the motels.”
“Would you like to take me to one?” she asked, holding on to my arm.
“Of course,” I said. “But I cannot afford you. Only my clients can and they can write it off their income tax as entertainment. I am heavily in debt.”
“Coward,” she whispered as she pulled me to an empty bench near the fountain. And it was then that she asked, “Roly, do I look like a prostitute?”
It was a question I least expected from her, this girl who was brash, who was rich now and who made playthings of men. She had always dressed with simplicity, she was bright, she talked intelligently. It was an instant wherein her life, the sorrow she had to bear, suddenly became luminous and clear. I wanted to embrace her, protect her; it was a feeling completely shorn of desire. It was truly, sincerely love.
“No, Ermi,” I said. “You don’t look like a whore. You will make a man very happy one day …”
“I want to get out,” she said. “Start a new life. I know how to cook a bit, and bake. One day, you should taste my chocolate cake. It is my favorite. I will open a small restaurant, I don’t know where. I will make a different kind of living.”
Her dream gladdened me. She had a future mapped out and it would not be in Ermita. She had started there, she would not end there. I had talked with bar girls, sauna parlor attendants along M.H. del Pilar Street and all of them went into prostitution with the same squalid story, of having been left by their husbands or boyfriends to care for their babies, of having to support brothers and sisters or parents who were no longer capable of earning a living. There was no one I met who went into the trade out of a strong psychological need or for the love of sensuality itself.
I returned to Padre Faura and bought a dozen cookbooks, the best recipes as concocted by the outstanding chefs of Europe. I also got books on how to make canapés, desserts, salads. Now, all she needed for her restaurant was the staff. I was sure that she already had the money to start a modest one. I drove over to Cubao with the bundle and knocked on the iron gate. Her maid recognized me and opened it. I did not linger as if waiting for an invitation to come in.
That night, while I was working on my notes on sexuality in our folk songs, the phone rang.
“Thank you for the books,” Ermi said gaily. “When I start that restaurant, you will be my official taster.”
“Thanks for the job,” I said. “I wish you would assign me something less meaningful. After all, I cannot be your sugar daddy …”
Before Christmas that year, there was another influx of inquiries from American financing institutions and one of my visitors included Andrew Meadows from Atlanta, a clean-cut type with teeth good enough for a toothpaste ad, and reddish hair. He was in his late forties. One evening, while we were having dinner at Bon Vivant in Ermita, he was musing aloud about how he was put off by one of the girls he had brought to his room at the Hilton. That same evening, I sent him to Camarin. It was obvious that he was extremely pleased after the Camarin introductions for he never bothered me again about his asinine evenings.
We did talk, however, about how different Filipino hookers were compared to those in the United States. “There is always something very feminine about them,” he said. “Most of those in America are just plain hustlers. They never give men a chance at either illusion or romance …”
He was also amused by the government campaign against “indecent” publications, pornographic movies which were really tame compared to what was shown in New York. And it struck him as outrageously foolish—having to blot out the shapes of guns, knives and other weapons in movie ads when these were recognizable anyway. I told him such campaigns were often a camouflage for the insincerity and insecurity of our highest officials. We have always been earthy like all people in feudal, agrarian societies. We who are close to the land regard sex and procreation as natural as eating. Take any village boy; he will recite limericks that are obscene by middle-class standards. All the folk songs I learned when I was young were obscene but no one objected to them, least of all government officials.
In prewar Manila, the highest officials lived graciously, visiting houses of pleasure that offered them relaxation otherwise not available in their own bedrooms.
There is something revolting about photographs of people doing what they should in the privacy of their bedrooms. What is objectionable is not a matter of morality but of taste and, in this sense, the public display of private parts and functions. Magazines like Playboy are sold openly in Manila’s plush hotels, in Angeles. Porno shops in Tokyo, London, in Scandinavia and, of course, New York’s Forty-second Street operate for adults. They are seen not as evil but as aesthetic nuisances which, in truth, they are.
The obscenities in this country are not girls like Ermi, either. It is the poverty which is obscene, and the criminal irresponsibility of the leaders who made this poverty a deadening reality. The obscenities in this country are the palaces of the rich, the new hotels made at the expense of the people, the hospitals where the poor die when they get sick because they don’t have the money either for medicines or services. It is only in this light that the real definition of obscenity should be made. There is so much dishonesty today, not just in government but in business. Perhaps, sex is the only honest thing left.
I believed in these conclusions but, looking back, I realized that I had not really done anything to buttress my thinking with action. I served the Establishment, the multinationals—promoted their welfare, and they held no responsibilities at all towards the banishment of our poverty. They were here to make money and nothing else. It was to their advantage that we remained poor, but since I was working for them, I had become comfortable.
In any case, I finally had three thousand pesos. I missed a few luncheon dates, scrimped on supplies, cut corners. I had a meeting in Baguio and I asked Ermi to go with me. “It will cost you a little bit,” she said, half mockingly.
I seldom drove to Baguio by then not only because the price of gasoline had soared but because I no longer trusted the old Mercedes to go that far without breaking down. She had told me that she would be at the bus station at seven-thirty and it was the longest thirty minutes of my life, waiting in that narrow room. She did not arrive and ruefully I went up the bus alone. When I arrived at the Pines that afternoon, the first thing I did was to place a call to her house—something I never did before because she told me never to call the number which I had inveigled from Didi.
“I overslept, Roly,” she said apologetically.
“Can you catch the three o’clock bus this afternoon?” I asked. “I will be at the station to meet you.”
“I will be there.”
It was only seven but I was already at the station, braced by the coolness of the mountains. What had attracted me to Ermi? I had asked this of myself every so often. Perhaps, it was her eyes—vibrant and clear and yet holding so much melancholy. I prided myself in the magnitude of my experience. I had told her that it was just as well that I was emotionally and intellectually mature so I could accept the reality of what she was. But if I had been twenty or so, without the understanding
which only age and experience can create, I would probably have gone mad just thinking about the men she had. Or, being unable to accept this, I would probably commit suicide.
It began to drizzle; waiting for her in the rain-washed station, these thoughts rankled again. Then it was eight and still no bus. I began to wonder, a clamminess in my hands even as I crossed my fingers. Had the bus fallen off one of those ravines? Had she taken it at all? Other buses arrived, their headlights bright on the pavement, disgorging their passengers into the night. One finally drew in. I saw her as she came down, trim in her blue jeans and white silk blouse, her plastic high-heeled shoes gleaming momentarily in the glare of headlights. She held on to me with the cozy familiarity of a wife and we walked to the Pines close by. She just had an overnight bag which contained an extra pair of jeans, a couple of T-shirts and over her shoulder, a brown leatherette jacket.
I was going to take her first to the coffee shop so she could have something warm in her stomach but she said she was full, she had eaten a sandwich in Tarlac and wanted to go to bed immediately because she was tired.
The room had twin beds. I was not too sure that she would want to share a wider bed because I snored, but she would have none of that so I pushed the two beds together. Then she said: “Don’t leave me alone. I am afraid.”
I thought she was just making a professional gesture, a commercial caress, but she added quickly that she could get into a panic in this strange room if left alone. Even as she spoke, she started to breathe heavily. I wondered if she was doing this to turn me into manageable putty in her hands, if there was some reason in her clever mind that I did not know or could not know. I was quite alarmed when she said that if she fainted or went into hysteria, I should give her a glass of water immediately. I held her close, felt her body tremble.
It was sometime before she really calmed down. But by then, she had become sullen. She went to the bathroom and then came out in her pajamas, her breasts showing through the transparent blouse. She sat on the edge of the bed, and did not move. I went to her and explained that I just did not know how to react to her. She just sat there, motionless, a block of wood. Then she turned, a smile breaking on her face, and kissed me.
It was our first and I let it pass like a whiff of wind upon a desert.
“Roly, please don’t think I am trying to be difficult,” she said after a while. “But I am like this—when I am angry, or very sad, or very frightened. I remember, when I was a child, I’d just keep silent when I was angry—and then, everything would turn black. Even now, at home, my family pampers me and everyone tries to protect me. Still, it sometimes happens—and then when I become conscious again, I realize that someone has bitten my thumb to revive me. My thumb would hurt after that. But what can I do? Will you remember that?”
“The world is too much with you,” I said. “I will keep problems away from you … if I can. But remember this: We cannot run away. We have to face them sometime. To live with ourselves …”
She lay beside me, her breathing now quiet and slow, and as she kissed me again on the cheek, somehow, I could not quite forget that I was just another hunk of flesh, no different from all the others who had loved her. I was determined to hold back, not because I did not want to spend the three thousand pesos—she had consented to come and that in itself was a binding contract. But by not possessing her, this was the only way I would be different; I was going to transcend the act which had, to her, become a common-place thing. It was difficult, of course. I desired her, this union, this fullest expression of affection. But what would it do for me?
I recalled a massage parlor attendant I had interviewed much earlier; she was building a house somewhere in Pasay and the house was not yet finished. Looking at the windows that lacked shutters, at the kitchen that still had to be tiled, she had told me that she wondered aloud how many more men she would serve before her house would be finished. I was not going to be either a tile or a shutter in her restaurant. I wanted Ermi to remember me as a man who loved her not with his money, of which I had little, but with his heart.
Perhaps it was masochism as well. I asked her to tell me about the lovers she remembered best and she started talking breezily about them. There was one customer she pitied afterwards for he had spent a sizable sum on her. His wife had hired a detective to trail him and succeeded in producing some photographs of Ermi getting into his car. The wife knew where they usually met and she went there ahead of her husband and talked with her, begged her rather to set him free. “Which I did,” Ermi said proudly, “but only because his wife was so nice and decent about it all …”
By midnight, we had not yet made love. Her head nestled in the crook of my arm and the warmth of her nearness drugged me into blissful silence. Then she said it, without warning, without the pretense that must have always accompanied her behavior with men. “I am so unhappy, Roly. Sometimes, I just sit by myself, wondering how I got into this …”
I gazed at the lustrous eyes, the finely molded face, the lips slightly parted. I never knew her as she was now, the belligerence drained from her, the mask finally torn away. At last she was herself, insecure and, I think, wracked by feelings of guilt. She was being honest with me the way I was always honest with her. I had told her of my unhappy childhood, which I never told anyone, the detestable things I had to do to make a comfortable living. I had also told her that if she could not love me, she could, at least, trust me. Did she trust me now? And why should she when I was a man of words? When I had used words as a veneer—shiny and brimming with guile—while underneath them was the dark intent?
I wanted to comfort her, to let her know that if all others would condemn her, I would not.
I had never expected a moment like this when it would come easily to me, the capacity to give shape to this seeking. I uttered the words hoarsely, surprised that I said them at all, that I meant them, that this woman whose body belonged to everyone who could afford it would now be the object of my faith.
“Ermi, I love you.”
I was sincere and knowing this sent a cold chill to my marrow. What has happened to me? Had I, in this one moment, forgotten what she was?
She did not stir; she seemed lost in some limbo.
“Ermi, I love you.”
She sighed. She had heard the words all too often and they must have lost their meaning. Turning, she kissed me on the chin. The gloom in her face vanished and in its place, this glow of contentment. Somehow, I had succeeded.
“Bola,” she said, smiling.
“With your experience, you know it is not bull.”
She did not speak for some time. “I have never loved anyone,” she said finally.
“I don’t expect anything from you,” I said. It would be that way. “I am not young anymore. I am not rich, I cannot give you anything. I am not handsome …”
“I was never impressed by handsome men,” she said pinching my shoulder. It had become a habit with her and though it hurt a bit, I let her.
“All that I am, all that I can give—it’s like rain fallen on stone.”
She did not understand, she asked me to explain.
“Rain which falls on the ground, on the parched earth, brings life. The seeds grow into plants, into harvests. But not rain which falls on stone. Nothing grows on it.”
She kissed me again, a wet kiss and I wondered about all the men to whom she had given that token of affection.
“You are my precious piece of rock,” I said. “But have you heard of the Chinese water torture?”
She was now an avid listener. “No, tell me.”
“Well, water has power, too. The Grand Canyon—you must have also seen those seashores with the stone cut and polished by the constant battering of waves. Erosion. Right on Kennon Road—those big rocks cut by water …”
“The Chinese water torture, does it operate on the same principle?”
“They strap a man to a seat and directly above him there is this pail of water with a tiny hole. Water drips s
lowly, drop by drop, on the man’s head, on the same spot …”
“It would take ages for that kind of water to break his skull,” she said.
“It is not that way,” I explained. “The drops come slowly, they make a sound inside the man’s brain. He waits for them. Waiting is agony, and when the next drop comes, it is an explosion which gets louder, louder, louder. He is driven insane …”
“Is that what you will do to me?”
“This does not work on stone,” I said.
She was surprised, of course, when I really refused to touch her.
For a moment, perhaps she suspected that I was impotent had she not felt a stirring in my loins when her hand had wandered there. I assured her I would not cheat her of her money and she laughed at this. Then turning on her side, she was soon breathing deeply, and then she snored, too, lightly.
THREE
The mountain cold seeped through the shuttered windows and she snuggled closer. Through stretches of wakefulness, I watched her face in repose; looking at her quiet in sleep, I felt all desire ebb away and in its place this ineffable tenderness. I wanted to enfold her, to shield her from the ignominy that we both knew. I had never experienced this feeling before; it warmed me, filled me with wonder, a strength to do anything to give her joy, to protect her—yes, except how could I protect her from herself?
Once during the night, she roused me with her mumbling. She was moaning softly. I woke her up. “Ermi, is something the matter?”
Her eyes opened and they were frightened. Her arms shot up as if to defend herself and she said aloud, “Don’t—don’t!” then she realized that it was me.
“I was having a bad dream,” she said, her arms now tight around me. “I feel so weak …” For some time, she just lay beside me breathing softly, her eyelids fluttering. I held her hand and found her pulse beating very fast. “I am all right,” she assured me. “I was being pushed off a cliff—and I was fighting back.”
Three Filipino Women Page 10
