The Navidad Incident

by Natsuki Ikezawa

“Hey, I got the right of way!” shouted the first driver, fighting an urge to ram the upstart off the road. But no, instead, he just waited for it to go by. He wished he could give chase, but that again was not the way of a scheduled route bus driver. Banishing such thoughts, he pulled out across the intersection and looked to the right, but the phantom bus had vanished in a cloud of dust. There was nothing but mangrove swamps to the right, so where—the driver wondered as he headed off—could it have been going in such a confounded hurry?

  06

  The next few days pass without incident. The mysterious handbills have leveled off, and there’s no other torii gate left to topple. The bus and veterans group are still missing, but no bodies or debris have been found. Not too bad, Matías has to think, for a state of emergency. The capital, Baltasár, is calm. No scoundrels have come out of the woodwork with long-range laser beams to burn the Navidad flag in front of the Presidential Villa. Suzuki has returned to Japan with the go-ahead for the Brun Reef oil depot, while the legislators sans legislature remain nice and quiet. Bonhomme Tamang’s grave is never without flowers, but then Cornelius’s always has three times as many, long after his death.

  Navidadians customarily show their reverence with flowers and think nothing of grabbing blossoms from their garden or hedge, woods or roadside to pay their respects (who would ever think of buying flowers?). Matías has Tamang’s and Cornelius’s graves kept under secret surveillance, and every other week Island Security delivers a list of flower-givers. Of course the “secret” part is just wishful thinking; the people all know they’re being watched, and in fact there hasn’t been a new name reported in three months. No, the Matías Guili regime is on track. All’s right with the world.

  The President’s daily routine sees no real changes: pre-dawn meditation, tuna sashimi breakfast, morning paperwork, afternoon meetings and functions, evening parties and get-togethers, followed by intimate nightcaps at Angelina’s. The only new variants are the young woman who sits in the corner unannounced whenever Matías meets with anyone and his distracted air on visits to Angelina, which have dropped off overall. Yet his nights away merely find him alone in his private quarters, writing copious notes in his ledger, or nursing a long drink and thinking of days gone by. He’s not playing games, even Angelina has to admit that. Should she ask what’s up, he’ll offer some reasonable response; he avoids neither her eyes nor her hash-perfumed pleasures. And to be perfectly honest, there’s no arguing about him “getting old” whenever things don’t go quite right during these tête-à-têtes (until now Angelina had never realized how liberating the excuse of aging might be for a man). Still, something’s not right. He might not even realize it himself, but he’s not all here. So where is he then?

  “How she doing?” Angelina asks him.

  “Who?”

  “María. The Melchor maid from here.”

  “María … oh, you mean Améliana. She’s proving useful.”

  “Was that her name? News to me.”

  “It’s a better name, she says. Strange girl.”

  “So what she doing, this strange girl?” asks Angelina, stroking his shriveled cock. Both a caress and a threat, it occurs to Matías.

  “I have her look at people with those all-seeing eyes of hers. She’s pretty much on the money,” he answers, again without dissimulating. His edginess prior to summoning the girl to the villa, hesitations about what it might mean to Angelina, fractious questions he deliberated to distraction and even referred to Lee Bo—all that is completely forgotten.

  One morning, Matías is in his office plowing through a pile of pending decisions, when Améliana sidles into the room. Usually at this hour she would be helping Itsuko with the housework or out walking around town. Odd, thinks Matías, though of course she has his permission to come in whenever the “feeling” strikes.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  “Not at all,” says Matías, setting down his papers and reading glasses. “What’s up?”

  “I’d like some time off.”

  He has to think. He summoned her here from Angelina’s with no employment contract to speak of. How many days has it been? They never even discussed salary. Her position is nonexistent at the Presidential Villa, though presumably he can put in a word with the executive secretary to get her the going rate. She even seems to spend her Sundays here with no days off. All right, she’s no ordinary employee, and he never really saw her as villa staff; he just wanted to have her on hand. Maybe he ought to pay her privately himself. But for now, time off seems to be the issue.

  “How long?” he asks.

  “Five days.”

  Why not a week? He has no important visitors scheduled for the present. A calm and uneventful hiatus—dull even. Might as well not even be here himself this coming week.

  “Okay,” he says, then pauses to think—why these five days? “Maybe it’s none of my business, but what’s the hurry?”

  “On Melchor, it’s Yuuka Yuumai time.”

  That much he knows. It’s printed on every calendar in the country. The festival, held once every eight years, is even on the presidential agenda. He’s supposed to fly over to catch the final day. Symbolic participation as head of state in a popular traditional celebration. But what’s that got to do with Améliana? Sure, she’s from Melchor, but why go back for it?

  “And you just want to visit?” he asks, assuming she merely fancies taking in the festivities. But wait, wasn’t she driven out of her village because of her “disruptive” powers of prediction?

  “I have to. I’m the seventh Yuuka.”

  It takes a moment for what she’s saying to sink in. The Yuuka Yuumai ceremonies are performed by eight high priestesses called Yuuka, who wield such absolute control over the spiritual life of Melchor that no secular power can override them. Their authority comes straight from beyond, and this young woman before him is seventh in line.

  “Yes, you go, certainly, if that’s what you’ve got to do,” he hears himself saying.

  Melchor’s spiritual dominion is a constant that holds Navidad society together, the exalted status of its Elders prevailing not on any formalized legal basis but simply as an article of faith. And yet, even higher in status are the eight Yuuka who meet only once every eight years to propitiate the spirits at eight sacred locations around the island.

  “The boat is overnight. I get there and the ceremonies last for three days. Then another night on the return. So that gets me back here on the fifth day,” she sums up matter-of-factly, as if unaware of the weighty role that is hers to play.

  “Are you really the seventh Yuuka?” he dares to ask.

  “So I’ve been told. It’s my first time. The last Yuuka Yuumai, I was still a virgin. The Yoi’i Yuuka decides everything.”

  “So I’ve heard. Or no, the part about being a virgin eight years ago, I didn’t know.” In his confusion, that’s all he can say. Melchor society is essentially matrilineal, with the Great Mother Yoi’i Yuuka from the previous ceremonial cycle on top. For eight years, she searches all the households on the island for new links in the chain of honor. Long ago, Matías vaguely remembers when, as a problem child entrusted to relations, he saw an old woman once come to the door and everyone in the family fall to their knees, bowing and mumbling invocations before leading her to a back room where she was promptly seated on the only chair in the house and offered a cup of precious imported English tea heaped with spoonfuls of sugar. A startling display of piety, even if he hadn’t a clue what it was all about. According to Melchor custom, girls who show spiritual powers while still virgins may be given a chance to help out at the ceremonies, but only when the Yoi’i Yuuka judges her worthy is one of them formally accepted as a Yuuka. Judging from Améliana’s age, she must have proven herself in only one ceremonial cycle—wasn’t that highly irregular?

  “When are you going, then?”
/>   “I catch the boat tomorrow. As soon as I arrive, there are purification rituals.”

  “Okay, I can see it’s very important you be there. Just promise me you’ll come back here afterwards.”

  “I promise.”

  “And be sure to give my regards to the Yoi’i Yuuka.”

  “I will.”

  At that, Améliana leaves the President’s office. Matías takes a long, deep breath. He tries to picture her in white ceremonial robes, then recalls the intensity of the festivities, the solemnity and frenzy. He’s only really experienced a Yuuka Yuumai decades ago in childhood; never once during his years running the M. Guili Trading Co., and later only in an official capacity. It’s the single most important event in Navidad cosmology, yet the President has no real role to play in it. As if there were another separate system of rule here, thinks Matías, before returning to his paperwork.

  The following morning, Améliana stops in again at the President’s office, this time wearing a white cotton dress with red buttons.

  “My ship leaves at noon.”

  “Will that put you there in time?”

  “It gets into Melchor at five tomorrow morning. That’s plenty of time.”

  “And the ceremonies?”

  “The Udagan purification is in the morning. The rites begin at two in the afternoon.”

  “Well, have a safe trip.”

  She acknowledges this with a slight bow of the head, then moves to leave.

  “Shall I have Heinrich give you a ride to the port?” he asks.

  “No, I’ll walk.”

  Améliana disappears, trailing a cloud of phantom butterflies, leaving him alone with his papers.

  At noon, Matías lunches at the Navidad Teikoku Hotel with a visiting rep from a Japanese company hoping to set up a local franchise, but the whole time his mind is on the ship that’s soon to sail. A scrap heap of a freighter, probably built in Sasebo or Nagasaki just after the war to run cargo between Kyushu and the northern Ryukyus for the next thirty years before being decommissioned and sold down to Navidad some fifteen years ago. No amount of touch-ups can stop thick scabs of rust from welling up through the white paint. A good, swift kick would put a hole in the hull—or so passengers joke. He can picture them boarding with armloads of belongings, spreading mats out on the deck, unpacking bags of home-cooked food. He knows they’ll cast fishing lines off the stern, though for fifteen hours at twenty knots maximum the brightly colored lures will never catch anything. And now Améliana is walking up the gangplank. Today’s weather is calm, so it won’t be rocking much. He pretends to listen to the Japanese rep’s business projections, but all he sees is the ship.

  Visions of Melchor and the eighth-year festival haunt him for the rest of the day. The rituals at eight different holy sites, the presiding Yuuka and the attendant crowds, the unremitting recitations in the hot sun by day and the bonfires all through the night, the physical elation of the pilgrims who give themselves over for three days and two nights without sleep, the progress of the sacred barge from one site to the next by sea, followed overland by the priestesses and multitudes. Matías saw the Yuuka Yuumai as a child the year before the Japanese pulled out in defeat. Forty years later—during the previous cycle—he went as a functionary to observe the ecstatic peak of the celebrations for exactly thirty minutes. He offered formulaic respects from afar, then was whisked back to Baltasár City by plane.

  The truth is, that’s no place for a president; the politician who presents too visible a profile there will be accused of canvassing and see his populist ploy backfire. Sacred powers and secular authority should keep a respectful distance from one another.

  That last time—he tries to remember—had Améliana been among the girl celebrants at the tail end of the procession, her face hidden by one of those kava leaf crowns? Had they, in fact, already met? Suddenly all the sights and sounds come back to him. He hasn’t thought of the Yuuka Yuumai in years and now he’s almost feeling nostalgic for the festivities. He has a sudden urge to go and see the whole thing.

  As president, he’ll have a front-row seat for the last climactic ritual, but that hardly seems enough. He won’t experience a thing, won’t know what it feels like to participate as one of the faithful. He wants to shed the name Matías Guili and lose himself, just one more face in the crowd. But no, it’s impossible, he tells himself, you’re the president.

  Or is it so impossible? He takes a look at his weekly agenda. Aside from the visit to Melchor, there don’t seem to be any engagements of consequence these next few days. Discussions with a couple of visitors, two minor meetings, a ground-breaking ceremony for a new middle school. Nothing that can’t take care of itself—but that’s not the real issue here, is it? The first duty of a politician is to be where he’s supposed to be, to show himself to be on the ball, to inspire people’s confidence. Actual policy making and judgments are secondary. It’s like being a fireman: if you’re not there in the right place at the right time, you blow it, the whole shebang goes up in smoke. That’s the very first thing Ryuzoji taught him when he entered the political arena in Navidad. No matter how feeble or out of sorts, even if he has to put on makeup, the politician shows his face in front of his people. There’s no such thing as down time; he always has to be ready and on the scene. He participates in events, he gets up in plain view and waves. Not to reassure himself of his popularity among the citizens gathered below, but to generate that popularity.

  Then, of course, many a politician has stepped out for a moment and found himself ousted in a coup. That’s not to say they can’t grab power anyway while you’re around, but if you’re not, what can you do about it? The smart man doesn’t go leaving his trusted second-in-command to hold the fort; often enough that deputy will slit his throat on his return. Depart with airport fanfare and you may not deplane to a state welcome. A politician never leaves his seat vacant, not even for a moment. That’s an ironclad rule.

  The following morning at nine o’clock he sends for Jim Jameson.

  “I’m going to be away from the office.”

  “S-sir … ?” stammers the executive secretary.

  “Just a three-day break. Look after things while I’m away, will you?”

  “But your scheduled commitments …”

  “Like I said, look after things.”

  “And the ceremonies on Melchor?”

  “I won’t be taking part. No particular problems in that department, are there? I’m not needed there in a big way, after all. And there shouldn’t be any other urgent business, correct? A little three-day absence, you’ll do fine. Only, don’t say it’s for ‘reasons of health.’ And no words like ‘urgent’ or ‘emergency’ either. Just leave it at ‘personal business’; that ought to go down well enough.”

  “ ‘Personal business,’ sir?” repeats Jameson, still incredulous. The President has never talked like this before.

  “That’s right, something came up I personally have to take care of myself. I’m placing full confidence in you. Just make sure that idiot Katsumata doesn’t try anything smart,” he says with a laugh.

  Jameson gives a strained smile. “How widely do you want this known?”

  “Hmm, there is the option of not even announcing that I’m away. Have you field everything for the next four days, a week at the outside, and just say I’m inconvenienced at any given time.”

  “And Katsumata?”

  “Guess we really can’t not tell him. Can’t have him think you had me assassinated.”

  “That’s not very funny, sir,” he says, looking as deferential as he can.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll tell him myself. And anyone else in our immediate staff who absolutely needs to know, fine. Only tell them it mustn’t get out. In-house rumors won’t do any harm. When I’m back in a few days, it’ll all be forgotten.”

  “V
ery good, sir. What about urgent messages?”

  “Out of the question.”

  “You’ll be impossible to reach?”

  “Right. I’m going to disappear with no point of contact. During which time, I’m vesting all authority in you. Even if the Philippines declares war and attacks, I want you to handle it as best you can. I won’t hold you responsible for any decisions you make in my absence. And it won’t be such a bad thing for you to get the view from the top for once.”

  What is the man talking about? Jameson looks at the President with sheer incomprehension. “I understand, sir. I’ll do my best for three days, but please return on the fourth day. Without fail, sir.”

  “You can count on me. Could you call in to get the airplane ready? I’ll be leaving within the hour.”

  “Where to, sir?”

  “To Melchor. To the festival.”

  Katsumata is not at Island Security Headquarters, nor to be found anywhere else until Matías is already en route to the airport. Finally, he gets through on his mobile phone and tells him to come to the VIP room at the terminal, there are matters to discuss. Why must he always meet this buffoon at the airport, Matías wonders as he stares at the road over Heinrich’s shoulder.

  “You going somewhere?” asks Katsumata as soon as he sets foot in the room.

  “Just for a short while. So you keep in contact with Jim while I’m away.”

  “Are you leaving right now? There’s no time for me to arrange for bodyguards.”

  “And none are needed.”

  That shuts Katsumata up. This has never happened before. Where’s the executive secretary? Should he let the President wander off on his own like this? It’s unthinkable.

  “The domestic front is quiet for the moment.” Except for the handbills and torii gate and missing bus, thinks Matías to himself. “Thanks to your efforts.”

  “Nah, really, I …” mumbles Katsumata, also overlooking the obvious security issues—he’s such an easy man to manipulate.