The Solemn Lantern Maker

by Merlinda Bobis

  “No!” Elvis protests. “I told you, never touch me there—I’m no dog.” He puts on his cap, turning it around so the large visor flaps like a wing from his temple. “There, how do I look? Like someone from New York, I bet—ha-ha-ha!” In between bites of the burger, he surveys the sleeping woman. “Not bad, she’s quite a looker.”

  She’s very beautiful, Noland protests in his head.

  “But too pale, too thin, don’t you think? And small—” He sniggers, cupping his chest with a hand.

  Noland slaps the vulgar hand but Elvis just chuckles. He’s used to his friend’s prudishness—my God, he’s a saint!

  “And what’s the Amerkana’s name?”

  Noland shakes his head, gesturing that she has been sleeping the whole time.

  “Ah, then we should wake her, ask what’s her name and how much she’ll pay us—”

  Noland pushes him away, making snarling noises in his throat.

  “We deserve some reward—we saved her life!”

  Noland points to the door, driving his friend out. How could you, how could you?

  “Great to get a rise out of you sometimes. At least I know you’re real, not that saintly poker face that drives me nuts, drives our customers away. You gotta have spirit, attitude, man, just watch me and learn. Hoy, Santo Santito!”—“Saint Little Saint,” how Elvis mocks him sometimes. “You gotta be real, I mean flesh and blood, man, even if you can’t speak—see, face speaks, face laughs, face frowns—” and he carries on, making faces at his friend, who has burrowed himself into his lantern making. Elvis takes the hint. The one-way conversation is over, so he turns on the television before Noland can stop him. “I hope you paid Mang Pedring, or else there’ll be no—” But, yes, there is power and on screen is a news update about last night’s shooting of Germinio de Vera, a journalist famous for his daring exposés on corruption and extra-judicial killings. The road reporter, Eugene Costa, details the scene at the intersection. The camera pans across the blinking lanterns, the dead man’s car and several others in a collision after the panic. Police and medics are still rushing around. This was an hour after the shooting. The reporter confirms that there was no other fatality.

  Eugene is a rookie journalist, very young and earnest. He wears a wide-eyed look, as if he’s forever startled by life. “There’s speculation that this is a payback shooting—but from a Pizza Hut man?”

  The boys hold their breaths.

  The reporter raves about the mystery of the Pizza Hut man, his intense look giving the story more weight, more urgency.

  Elvis edges close to the television as if he’s suddenly grown nearsighted, but Noland retreats, still clutching the red Japanese paper. It bleeds in his wet hands.

  11

  There are stray dogs everywhere. One sniffs Elvis’s half-eaten burger. He swears at the diseased mongrel, but it only wags its tail more heartily. It’s so mangy, its real color is barely recognizable.

  “Putang ’na, get off me!” Elvis kicks the dog.

  “It’s only a dog, kid, a hungry dog,” Mario of the video hut calls out from across the tracks.

  “I’m hungry too,” the boy retorts.

  “What has it ever done to you?”

  “Ruining my breakfast, can’t you see?”

  “You’re not from here, I can tell.” The man comes between the boy and the dog and gives him a little shove, but Elvis holds his ground.

  “Hoy, it’s too early to fight over a dog.” It’s Mario’s wife, Helen. “Get back here and sort these videos.”

  Mario dutifully heeds the call after shaking a fist at the boy and lighting his first cigarette of the day.

  Elvis makes faces. “Under the saya—under the skirt,” he mouths at this man who won’t say “no” to his wife but takes on a kid. Then he yells, “I’m not from here but I work around here and I have every right to eat my breakfast in peace!”

  Helen comes out, looking bored and tired. “Aw, go home, kid,” she says, balancing a huge basin of laundry on her head and picking up another pailful. “Go home and take that attitude with you. We’re busy.”

  Elvis is going anyway, to wherever is chosen as “home” by his self-appointed uncle, Bobby Cool. Somewhere classy, unlike this lot, hah! He snorts at the cheek-by-jowl homes in various stages of poverty—the shacks without walls, the patched-up huts, the few houses with the luxury of some concrete, all decked with cheap tinsel or lanterns and all waking up to work. Helen walks on, careful not to step on the dog nibbling at its sores. Lisa, last night’s karaoke queen, follows close behind, struggling with a mountain of laundry. Manang Betya accosts them. She has switched her rosary for a notebook to collect punters for jueteng, an illegal gambling racket. Helen “rumbles” numbers to bet on—she saw them flash on TV in her dream last night, believe me. Dreamt numbers are lucky, but to rumble or to bet on them in a new combination nails the luck. Lisa advises caution against “the bloody numbers” possibly inspired by that shooting, oh-oh! The women are hushed for a while. Manang Betya crosses herself as they walk to the water pump, passing by the hut of the parol kambal, the lantern twins shaping shells into star after star while arguing about what they saw last night, what really happened. Farther on Mang Pedring, the wire-man, is also arguing with Mang Gusting and his serious hangover from last night’s party with the karaoke women. “Your store will lose power if you don’t pay up, now!” Mang Pedring waves his pliers with a threatening flourish. The store owner begs for a reprieve till after Christmas because he’s so broke, because this whole track buys on credit and never pays, because his wife in Hong Kong hasn’t sent any money yet, not even a Christmas card, so please, some understanding. His daughter Mikmik yells her support, cursing the wire-man. Nearby the sweet-soy vendor adjudicates: “Ay, Dios ko, he’s got no Christmas spirit, none at all!”

  “Christmas spirit?” someone retorts from a window. It’s a mother suckling her baby, who’s whining because the milk won’t flow—got scared too by last night’s goings on. “What Christmas spirit? After that shooting at our doorstep?”

  The men sober up and negotiate. It’s almost peaceful again, until something explodes and everyone jumps.

  Mikmik giggles, waving the smoking remains of a firecracker.

  12

  A terrified Nena won’t listen to the talk about the shooting. The other washerwomen and those waiting to fetch water or do their morning ablutions can’t talk about anything else.

  “You know, the police asked me questions last night, with the other lantern vendors—what do we have to do with it anyway?”

  “I hope you didn’t say anything stupid.”

  “Heaven forbid—we don’t want any trouble.”

  “It was so bloody, my neighbor said.”

  “A Pizza Hut motorcycle, they said—just zipped past and bang-bang!”

  “Dios ko, Dios ko, what will happen to us now?”

  Nena shuts out the conversation with the squeaky pump, pushing the heavy wooden handle down to the hilt so the noise is louder, more abrasive. Some protest—they can’t hear themselves because of this woman who’s half crouching and half riding the pump when she’s not crawling around. Her housedress lifts as she pumps, revealing what look like smashed knees and ugly scars up to her thighs. She’s as soaked as her laundry, which she’s trying to rush. She keeps scanning the crowd for a sign of her son and his cart; she wants to go home.

  More news fires her distress when Lisa and Helen arrive. Lisa is attempting to explain in her usual flustered manner that Mrs. Sy has just hired her to do the laundry next week. “Oh-oh sorry, Nena, but that’s life, she asked me—but she said you can still do the blankets tomorrow.”

  “What, you hijacked my customer?” Nena screams, pumping the water with greater ferocity. They’ve never seen her like this before. Helen tries to calm her but Nena’s nerves are completely undone. She’s hurling insults at Lisa and her string of “oh-ohs.”

  “Don’t pretend you’re sorry, you hypocrite!”

&nb
sp; The water pumps on. It overflows from Nena’s basin, splashes around, getting everyone wet. Some of the women edge away—ay, what rage. The line for water is in united uproar: “Get off that pump, it’s our turn!” Ever the peacemaker, Helen blabbers that she’s cooking chicken soup for lunch because her husband won a cockfight and brought home the enemy rooster, plus a new cell phone which was thrown in by the loser as, well, part of the bet—would Nena like some soup? Nena answers with a curt “No, thank you,” wondering how Helen kept the sly maneuvering from her, but just like Lisa to hatch something like this.

  Helen is deeply offended. She huffs and puffs through her laundry, beating-wringing the clothes with a passion to match Nena’s. It takes a while for gossip to resume, with some nervous giggles at first but soon the storytelling aplomb absorbs even the dog now curled within eavesdropping distance. Invention grows bizarrely delightful, this weaving of tale after tall tale around the Pizza Hut man who must have been cheated by his customer, meaning the victim of course, who probably failed to pay for a pizza delivery not once but several times, you never know what people are capable of, but what if the Pizza Hut man was aiming for the lantern sellers or the blinking lanterns themselves, the lights make you dizzy-crazy sometimes, the shooting happened around the stalls remember, or what if he was after one of our men who crossed him in a drinking spree, maybe over some girl who mocked his pizzas, you never know, but who could he be, who could do such a thing so close to Christmas, ay JesusMaryandJoseph, preserve us all!

  There is something comforting about gossip. It’s loose, glib, and companionably intimate. It out-absurds life, rendering it less menacing. It makes us almost brave, daring to imagine the worst and our capacity to outdo it. It is our collective punt against misfortune. How comforting for tongues to wag as one.

  Not if one knows the real story, though. Cut off from the herd that doesn’t know any better, one is hopelessly unanchored while chained to the truth. Nena rinses the clothes from Mrs. Sy. She will come to this water pump tomorrow for the last time, and from then on a regular income lost. They’ll have to scrimp some more, dump the TV. Mang Pedring can disconnect it, for all she cares. But first that woman has to go. She has brought this bad luck and it’s growing worse—now where’s that Noland? Her stomach tightens as she thinks of her son’s awed ministrations over the unwanted guest. She empties the water from the final rinse. It floods everyone’s feet and splashes the dog, who chases the flow and laps at a puddle before rolling in it for a morning bath.

  13

  Look, lady, look. Noland passes a plate of bread over the sleeping woman’s head, then the McDonald’s bun under her nose, but she’s still, so still. He pulled the mat slightly after Elvis left; he couldn’t help himself. Her face must catch the glow seeping through the cherub on the roof. Now he can make out the curve of her brow, her hair. He lifts a lock, she shifts. He drops the hair and holds his breath, but she grows still again. He comes closer.

  Her lids flutter. She knows it’s him.

  She tilts her chin. Toward him. See, she knows. Angels know like that.

  Her nose delights him, its bridge so high. He touches his own.

  Her breath quickens on his cheek. He draws back.

  But you can’t sleep and sleep. It’s morning.

  He looks up. Maybe the shaft of light from the cherub will hit her eyes, angel to angel. Then she’ll wake up and morning will break in the whole hut. Light to light.

  She senses not light but warmth on her cheek: someone’s breath, the cadence of a silent tale.

  Maybe he wanted to shoot you too. He shot the nice man. Germinio de Vera, his name. He was eating a pork bun. Behind your taxi. Slumped on his wheel. I saw. You saw. The boy rehearses the story he’d tell her, if he could speak. He rehearses the kinship. We saw. Together. You afraid? I was.

  She groans. The breath is so close, like a kiss, like something she’s been searching for all her waking life. But awake, will she truly see, or hear, or feel the awaited kiss? Isn’t it sweeter now, in sleep when she can trust even the strange, when surrender is as inevitable as helplessness?

  The woman breathes back at the face of the boy. She’s no longer afraid. The boy breathes in return. Neither does he fear, kneeling like this, his face almost touching hers. Up in the roof, the cherub smiles at the two heads caught by a little pool of light.

  14

  Lights are useless in the day, a trying-too-hard magic that makes the stars look garish, so the lantern twins turn off the power in the stall. This means less hassle from the wire-man, who will come walking past anytime now to check whether they owe him more. Vic and Vim are particular about their business, so they’re back at work even if Vim is scared—too many questions from the police. The twins have made lanterns all their lives, and their father before them and his own father too. They’re proud of their trade. They polish each little shell before making a star.

  One hundred and seventy-six little pieces make up a small star. Like life, the twins’ father used to say when he was alive. You polish each part, you put it together, you light the whole thing. You have a right to shine like everyone else and make the world a little brighter, even here.

  Here is the slums where three generations of their family have lived. Every now and then the government threatens eviction, relocation they call it, too risky here, they say. Every now and then a child dies under the train, on the tracks, their playground. But relocation where? Some village too poor to buy lanterns. And relocation for whose benefit? For the eyes of city folk and tourists, their relief from the pests who clog traffic and make Manila dirty. No, not everyone can be polished to a clean shine. Certainly not the diseased mongrel that’s sniffing at the shoppers and flicking its wet tail, much to their horror. The stall owners yell at the dog to get lost.

  The intersection is back to normal again and more real in the day. Up and down the track, the wretchedness; parallel to it, the stars. And passing by, the procession of Mercedes and Pajeros sometimes stopping to relocate these shining things to where they rightfully belong, in heaven, perhaps to hang at its security window or in a fortified garden to complete the season’s look.

  Star and money change hands. How amazing this intersection, this quick meeting of star-maker and heaven-keeper. Sometimes someone gets a tip and maybe the angels up there blow their trumpets, indeed goodwill among men, but nothing can be louder than the irate tooting of horns to push traffic along.

  It is the morning rush (but slowest) hour. Follow it, get on the highway, shut the ears to the carols and the eyes to the vendors and street kids, or the jeepneys missing each other by a hair’s breadth, or just count each star lantern at each lamppost to ease the slow, slow crawl. Find some rest, maybe even the ocean breeze.

  Finally the Baywalk along Roxas Boulevard. Elvis’s short-time home, and Bobby Cool’s. Both are smoking on a park bench close to the Manila Yacht Club. A herd of health buffs jog past and, still unsteady on his feet, a tourist ambles with a local date after a party that lasted till the morning, while the metro aides pace about their business of keeping the city clean. Their bright shirts are emblazoned with the name of the country’s president, perhaps to proclaim how the highest official of the land keeps it clean by proxy. Or perhaps this is an insistence of mandate, constantly displayed like a T-shirt’s brand name. The road is even more crammed with unmoving cars. The only semblance of peace is inside a hotel suite across the road where a traveling executive is just waking up for a breakfast meeting, or in a penthouse pool where a congressman is doing laps with his young starlet, or inside a four-wheel drive where the tinted windows hide a lawyer snoozing while his chauffeur navigates. How peaceful to be cut off from the frantic pace, and how cool. Heaven must be air-conditioned and God must not sweat. Nor must His angels be too ruffled, shuttling between solemnity and bliss only when the season calls for it.

  On the bench, Bobby is breathing in Manila Bay and listening to his Walkman. He’s freshly showered, his shirt still looking crisp despi
te the stains in the armpits. Elvis is similarly groomed, with a bunch of Noland’s lanterns in his hand. A metro aide watches them, as absorbed as Bobby, who’s shaking his body to the rhythm.

  “Is it good?” the aide calls out.

  Bobby nods, exaggerating his body movements: he’s almost dancing, his gold crucifix swinging with the effort. The smiling aide copies him, body and broom in joyful unison. Elvis looks on, an outsider to the music. Bobby slaps him on the shoulder, relax Elvis, and beckons to the aide. “Have a listen,” he says, sharing the earphones with the street sweeper, whose face breaks into an even bigger smile. The earphones get passed back and forth and both shake to the disco carol. Elvis looks away, rearranges the stars in his hand.

  The phone rings. Bobby waves the aide away and takes the call. He slaps Elvis on the shoulder again. “C’mon, star delivery coming up.” They cross the street, running around the cars that have revved back into action, rushing to some appointment they can’t miss. The boy is clutching the stars to add to the client’s five-star suite. Stars to convince the reception desk of a legitimate delivery.

  A few minutes later, Bobby Cool steps out of the hotel. He’s looking more crisp, more cool, the carols set in his Walkman, the dollars secure in his pocket.

  15

  It’s midday and still she sleeps. Noland frets about her stillness. He can’t see the massive swelling hidden by her blond hair but the purplish bruise on the left temple is obvious now, and the tinge of purple too on the cheek. So still, so still. He keeps fretting. The peaceful exchange of breath earlier was only a brief lull. Again he passes his hand close to her nostrils and mouth to check the flow of air, as if the rise and fall of the chest can’t assure him enough.

  Her cheeks twitch, perhaps sensing the almost laying on of hands. He reads her every movement, and imagines it when there’s none. She lets out a groan or maybe it’s a word, an English word of course, incomprehensible but meant for him, the boy believes. But she’s quickly still again. He closes his eyes, his whole body listening. He’ll eavesdrop on her dreams, they’ll have a conversation there, she’ll talk to him, he’ll respond. He will speak.