Sometime back, Tan, my Cantonese driver, had taken Corito, Angela and myself around the New Territories; he had explained the sights, the places we went to, but nothing of that short excursion was retained in my mind, nothing but the rice fields glazed with water, the walled-in villages, the small towns of brick and tile and the lotus ponds.
“After lunch,” Ann Lee suggested, “since we are already here, let us go for a drive so you can see what this part of Hong Kong looks like.”
The Bentley took the well-kept roads with agility and solid firmness. My Cantonese driver was also very pleased to be speeding out in the open. We drove close to the border, to Lok Ma Chau, where we could look across the fields to the main-land, to the guards in their towers in the distant hamlet keeping watch, herding China’s millions home, at a time when so many had dared flee to Hong Kong, slipping through the barbed-wire borders, or swimming in the murky and open sea.
The drive also gave me an opportunity to tell Ann what I wanted to do, to have a Hong Kong base where I could have easy access to foreign and stable currencies. I asked her to be on the lookout for good property on the Peak; I wanted to build a condominium there, knowing that investments in the area would rise.
She came to Manila with her father in December with the plans for the Kowloon building, and they were my house-guests. Her father came, I think, to get a good look as well at the man with whom his daughter was getting financially involved. He did not have to come to Manila to check on me, he could very well have done that right in Hong Kong, but I am glad he did, for it was a real experience to know the man—urbane, educated in an American university, competent with his Mandarin and his English. He collected ancient Chinese porcelain, scrolls and other artifacts of traditional Chinese culture.
He looked over the collection of my parents and spotted two Sung fakes that, he said, would be very difficult to recognize unless one had developed a trained eye, and he showed me those telltale marks in the glaze that showed they were of recent manufacture. I went into the provenance of the items, and asked the Manila dealer to explain the forgery. Poor man, he had bought them in Hong Kong, from a Wanchai shop; he had kept the receipts.
When next I visited Hong Kong, George Lee took me to a bodega in Happy Valley—he owned a building there, several rooms filled with old china that could fetch several million dollars; then he showed me another room, also filled with china, but these, he said, were all fakes. He had been fooled not just once but many times, and he continued to be fooled, for it is difficult indeed to distinguish the fakes from the real stuff. His experience dampened my interest—I had thought that I already had a good eye, but after that day with George Lee, I knew I still had much to learn.
But back to Ann and her plans for the Kowloon property. At the time, I was also planning to do my Makati building.
“I met Naboku Tanga,” she said, “when I was in college. He was teaching at Stanford and had already started building an international reputation. It would be great if you can have him design your building and whatever project you have in Hong Kong. I will speak with him.”
I had reservations about working with architects who are more interested in their ego trips than in doing what is right for their customers; I had a dim view of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. I did not want the same experience dumped on me.
Ann understood me perfectly. “We will not permit that,” she said with a grin. “We will redo the interiors according to our lights. We will just use his facade and, of course, his by-line.”
We went to Los Angeles, where Tanga had his main office. He was a small man with bushy eyebrows, and I could see that he coveted Ann. His lecherous eyes never left her all the while they talked and, on occasion, he would stroke her side, her arm.
Ann let him. It was easy for her to convince him to visit Hong Kong and Manila. He stayed for some time in the country, enjoying the Palawan beaches with Ann and dinners in Hong Kong with George Lee and myself. He was not going to charge me as heftily as he did the others because Ann was my partner, and he would do anything for her. I wondered if they had gone to bed together, but Ann had insinuated that Naboku Tanga was not her type at all, yet it was fun to flirt with him. He could be Japan’s best contribution to the world of architecture, he could be one of the world’s most famous builders, but he was a malleable ignoramus when it came to women.
I named the thirty-story condo on the Peak Angela Court, after my precious daughter. Thinking about it afterward, I think the name really fit in the sense that it is structurally fragile, like Angela, but this, only I, Ann and my structural engineer know.
The plans called for the laying of piles of the foundation at such and such a depth, deep into the rock, but I asked my structural engineer when a third of that foundation was already wedged into the ground if we shouldn’t stop. Let me say that this was done at a time when computers were already widely in use. By his calculation we did not have to go so deep, as the minimum requirement had already been reached. The decision to go no deeper had saved us several million dollars. We really made a neat profit with Angela Court—even before the work had really started, just on the basis of plans, on Tanga’s and Ann Lee’s and my reputation; in the first six months that we were promoting it, all the units were sold. As usual, I reserved two units, one of them—the penthouse—for myself.
Thus stands proudly Angela Court, its steel beams crisscrossing, the hallmark of Tanga construction. From across the harbor, on the ferries, it dominates that portion of the peak—tall, preeminent, topped by the graceful sweep of a jukebox. And on those days when Hong Kong is festive, the Christmas season, the Chinese New Year, the building is lighted up in greens and reds, proclaiming itself with elegance and sheer sturdiness as it challenges the sky.
During the rainy season, however, I never stayed at Angela Court—it was always in Kowloon Tong. The reason is simple. A heavy rain could easily weaken the foundation of any of the buildings on the Peak and bring them crashing down. This had happened once or twice.
My Makati building, however, does not have this problem, for I had used structural steel as its skeleton; it is more expensive that way, but seeing those steel girders go up have put people’s trust into the building itself—with Cobello y Cia, they cannot go wrong.
So there we were, Ann Lee and I working together, seeing each other every time I went to Hong Kong and being introduced as often as I saw her father to the finest concoctions of the Chinese kitchen. I had, in a sense, almost become a member of the Lee family.
Perhaps you will wonder why, from the very start, I was not attracted to Ann Lee. But of course I was, although not with singular passion, for while she was a beauty, she was also very businesslike. There were few occasions that her personal life intruded into our conversations. I did get hints, however, of a love affair in San Francisco during her college days that her father had not approved of. More than once, her father had obliquely mentioned that if Ann would get married at all, it must be to a Chinese who could contribute to the family’s prestige—and, thus, I ruled myself out.
But it happened anyway, in the third year of our knowing each other and working together. Angela Court was all but finished and some of the units were already occupied. The penthouse was being furnished and the last carpentry touches were being done.
I remember it well—it was late Sunday afternoon, dusk, I should say, in April that we went up to the penthouse, she to look at what the decorators had done, and I to give a nod to whatever she wanted, for she had such good taste.
Some of the appliances had arrived, the big Hoover washing machine, the gas stove and refrigerator. No air-conditioning unit because the whole building was centrally air-conditioned. April in Hong Kong is balmy and that afternoon the temperature was just perfect. The sun was out washing the peak with silver and, across the harbor, the mountains of Kowloon were cobalt blue.
We had idled to the balcony, which was protected by a waist-high ledge; three stories below it, another patio
surrounded the building, similarly protected by a ledge.
I looked down, and though we were high up, I said it was impossible to commit suicide from the penthouse—that patio three floors down would stop the fall and would result perhaps in a broken leg at the most.
“Do not talk like that,” Ann Lee shouted—a shriek almost. It surprised me. She was never given to such sudden and emotional outbursts.
I reached for her hand, which she drew away. Her face was grim, distraught, so I told her, “I won’t do it, Ann. I was just making an observation. Jumping off any ledge is the farthest thing from my mind. I love life so much I would rather die of overeating …”
But the grimness in her face did not disappear. She went to the living room and sat on one of the chairs for the rosewood dining table that had come in. I sat beside her. “Now,” I said softly, soothingly, “what did I say that angered you so?”
She turned to me after a while, her eyes downcast. “I will tell you a story—my story,” she said. “Will you promise to listen?”
I took her hand again. This time she let me. Dusk was coming stealthily, and from where we were, we had a sweeping view of the harbor, the many ships that were now lit up and, across the water, the apartment blocks on Kowloon garlanded with light.
“You know,” she began, “my father has this apartment building in San Francisco, at the other end of Chinatown, twelve floors, four apartments to each floor. One of the top-floor apartments was mine—I was living by myself, and it had three bedrooms. I drove to Stanford every morning. It was there that I met Glenn—he was taking up creative writing and was on a fellowship. He lived in a tiny room off-campus and did all sorts of things, clerking in the university bookshop, waiting tables at a Palo Alto restaurant. It was at the bookshop that I met him; we became friends. At first, I thought he was gay. He was slim, and there was also something effeminate in his movements. It was only later that I realized he was not gay at all, that if he kept away from dates and other forms of attachment with people, particularly girls, it was because he had very little money and whatever extra he earned he sent to support a sister at some institution for retarded people.
“I suppose, in the beginning, it was pity more than anything. But later on, I knew it was love. Mind you, we did it only once. Only once! And he lived with me for almost a year. I asked him to move into the apartment—there were two extra rooms and he could take either of them. He was hesitant. I drive to Palo Alto every day, I could leave earlier so he did not have to waste money on bus fare. And, afterward, he agreed. He did not have a lot—one suitcase, two boxes of books and a small radio. They all fit in the car.
“One night, he came home very late, long past midnight. I was awake and I could hear him in his room, moving about, so I stood up and went to his room. He couldn’t sleep, he had received word from the institution where his sister was—she had died and they had cremated her body—they had asked him where the ashes were to be sent.
“I told him in China we keep the ashes in the family shrine.
“ ‘I would take it,’ he said, ‘and sprinkle it in that field in Nebraska where we used to play when we were children. I would have to make a special trip,’ he said, and then he started to shudder and cry. I had to comfort him. I dragged him to my room, and that was when we did it. Just that once, but it was so memorable because he was so gentle.
“Then, Father arrived unannounced on one of his sudden trips to the States. He never stayed in the apartment, always at the St. Francis, which is his favorite. It was Sunday and I was at home, cleaning. He had a key, and there he was in the living room, his face contorted with anger, for he had seen the men’s shoes there, and he started wandering around, opening cabinets, and was really very mad, particularly when he came across Glenn’s clothes and things in the other room.
“I explained to him who Glenn was, and he said I was not going to live with an American writer who couldn’t even afford an apartment of his own. He was leaving that afternoon, and he said I would have to return to Hong Kong with him.
“I am Chinese, a dutiful child. I hardly had enough time to write a good-bye letter.
“I tried to call Glenn from Hong Kong, but the telephone in the apartment just kept ringing. I looked at my old address book. I called up the university bookshop. And that was when I learned that Glenn had jumped the day I left. But he didn’t die, he was maimed, paralyzed from the waist down, and no one knew where he had gone.
“He knew my address in Hong Kong. I waited for a letter, any news from him. But all this time I have heard nothing. Nothing. And I remember all those times we had together, the tenderness—and then, I learned that he had died, that perhaps he had succeeded after all in ending his life.”
She breathed deeply, then began to cry. Perhaps it was her story itself, her first time with Glenn, that was foremost in my mind. She sobbed aloud, the grief wrenched out of her soul with so much anguish, and I sat beside her, holding her shoulder, embracing her, but she didn’t stop. Then I kissed her, her nape, her tear-washed cheeks. I undressed her slowly, first her blouse, then her skirt, and she did not object. Her sobbing diminished with the rising passion with which I caressed her. She was still sobbing faintly when we lay down.
The floor was dirty with plaster, with the leavings of carpenters. I had a copy of the Hong Kong Tiger Standard. I took off my blue cashmere blazer and laid it atop the newspaper. It was not all that comfortable. Years afterward, I used to remind her of this union, and she would look at me, laughter in her eyes, and say casually, in that pragmatic manner of the Chinese, that it had been good for the spine.
The Indios, nurtured by habits of docility and languor, cannot understand those among us who, burdened with eternal discontent, strive on, hacking away at our demons and, in the process, accumulating more wealth, more power. But even if these were attained, the discontent would continue to fester, to push and move us on. They think it is miserly greed that consumes our lives, and maybe it is, but it is also more than greed. It is achievement, to do battle not just with our peers but with our selves, to do much more than what was done yesterday. Remember the biblical story of the Tower of Babel? Behind much of human endeavor is an ideal, the writing of a book, the building of an empire, a reach for the stars, for God, whatever, there is an ideal, a goal, a purpose—maybe to give life meaning.
And the Indios are not handsome—a negative statement that avoids the direct and condescending view that they are ugly. I sit by the window of the Makati Cafe and watch the parade shortly after five, not the lower classes who seldom venture out of the alleys of Tondo and the slimy confines of the squatter ghettoes but the well-heeled middle class, the career girls, the junior executives with their silk neckties. I see them in their office finery as they go to the coffee shops and restaurants, to Rustan’s to shop—the men in their gauzy barong Tagalogs, the traditional loose dress shirt, their paunches already prominent. In whatever dress, silks, linens or printed cottons, the women are often stubby and graceless, their faces like pancakes; as they themselves would say, a steam roller had lumbered over them. What do Indio faces remind me of? Pigs, monkeys, horses—animal faces with expressionless eyes. I walk out of the cafe when it is already quite dark; under the glow of neon and floodlight, their faces are now pale, funereal.
And what about myself? Certainly, in spite of my appetites, my idiosyncrasies, I would like to think this worthless hunk of flesh has given value to many things, to business, to progress, to the betterment of so many lives in my gainful employ. I have done well by my fellowmen. Just thinking about this gives me a sense of achievement.
If there is anything Indios cannot accept, it is the searing truth about themselves, their perfidious character, their ostentation and boastfulness. Who will believe their pronouncements, when everything is hot air, when no sooner have they proclaimed their virtue then they turn around and do the opposite? These Indios—they are stupid, and their country—thank God for exceptions like myself—is silly.
&nbs
p; So here I am, high up on this pinnacle to which my wealth, my brains, my connections have catapulted me. High up, I can survey with disdain the old landscape around me, and way, way below, the masses—ah, the masses! They smell, you know, all this is exuded from their pores and it is loathsome as all bodily odor is. Qué barbaridad.
As I said, Corito and Angela had their blood examined three times. Angela wanted to know what was happening—I could not tell her the truth. I had told the gynecologist not to tell her. I said something about her continued weak condition perhaps being due to blood deficiency, and she believed it. She did not ask me again. We spent the New Year in Hong Kong—noisy with firecrackers hung from the buildings, but not as noisy as in Manila. After the New Year, we left Angela alone in the house and Corito and I registered in one of the new hotels on the island. Never again able to bear a child, she abandoned herself completely to passion and pleasure. I think that in the one day when we were by ourselves, I satisfied her.
I sometimes wonder why I never married. Was it because early in my life women had lost their mystique? Or was it because I knew I could never sire a child? Was my remaining a bachelor a token of my fidelity to Corito? But she knew I fornicated a lot, which, of course, she objected to. First, there were my beautiful nieces who vied with one another in seducing me, knowing that if they succeeded in dragging me to the altar, a great fortune awaited them. I was very kind to all of them. I would select from among them a companion when I went to the United States or Europe; their parents—my cousins—knew what was in store for them, but they did not seem to care. After all, when their daughters returned to Manila, although all of them had some measure of wealth, the girls were showered with expensive clothes and jewelry. I slaved at my business. Who would inherit my wealth? There was just too much for Corito and Angela. Why did I not share a little of it with them? Haven’t they been very good to me?
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