The Solemn Lantern Maker

by Merlinda Bobis

  “Sorry, sir, but I told you they’re not here and the chief went home, it’s Christmas Eve, you know.”

  The guard’s tone is softly humoring, as if talking to a child. Or maybe he has read the memories in the American’s face. David turns away. Across the road, a small crowd has gathered. One man is holding up a placard: “Free Noland and Nena!” He returns to his car. Around the compound the star lanterns light up, and the Christmas tree.

  100

  “When do we go, sir?”

  “Soon, Nena, soon—but tell me, how long have you lived in Manila?”

  “A long time, sir.”

  “Just with your son?”

  The mother nods. “My son’s a good boy. He makes good lanterns.”

  Noland is crouched behind her. He can’t return to her lap, because the man will look him in the eye. His arms are around her waist, his face in the hollow of her back. She smells as she did on a hot day working on the farm, and something else, like his own smell when he wets his pants. It makes him feel ashamed for her, before this man who’s sitting so close.

  “So we’ll go very soon, sir?”

  The chief touches her arm sympathetically. “I know it’s hard to raise a boy on your own. You must miss his father.”

  The mother wrings her hands—“No, no, sir”—clasps them, pleading, “I mean, don’t say—”

  “He was a farmer, right?”

  “Please, please don’t say any more, sir.” She rubs the boy’s back, hushing him before it starts. For years, she has told stories about the hill, the stars there, the angels, but never uttering the name that long ago drove the boy whimpering to the wall for days. Her stories have remained suspended in the night sky, never descending onto that hill.

  “You must miss him too, Noland.”

  “No, please—”

  “I mean, your friend—what’s his name? He sold lanterns with you, didn’t he?”

  “Elvis, he’s called Elvis, and he’s not his friend,” Nena is quick to reply, ready to talk about the other boy now. What can she say, what does she know? “He’s bad, a devil boy, he—he—” But she knows nothing more. “Are we going now, sir?”

  She feels the head thumping her back.

  “Is that true, Noland, your friend’s a devil?”

  The hand is clawing her waist.

  “And he was with you when the Pizza Hut man came?”

  “He has nothing to do with that—that—”

  “And he hurt your friend, didn’t he? The Amerkana. But you saved her. You took her to your hut and took care of her. That was very brave, Noland.”

  The angel, the angel, he hears himself say, but no one hears.

  101

  There is no angel. The field is white. The sweat trickles on the back of his knees as he sits at the door. The white rises up to a hill. He hears his mother muttering, “It’s so hot, it’s so hot,” then more words, like she’s praying.

  “It’s so hot, Noland, but we’re not staying. You heard what the man said? We’ll be somewhere safe and secret soon, and you’ve been very brave.”

  The mother and son are alone again in the waiting room, but Noland is elsewhere now. He’s back in the hut, waiting at the door, and his mother is waiting too with her dense murmurings that make him afraid. No matter. He will sit at the door, even if there’s no angel yet.

  “It’s going to be all right, we’ll be out of here before Christmas. But we have to tell the man where that monster is. So where does Elvis hang out? Hoy, are you listening?”

  The rice is a shimmering white field at noon. When the sun sets it will turn to gold. The mother clutches her four-year-old to her breast; the urgency makes him more afraid. He escapes her arms, returns to the door to wait.

  “Are you listening, Noland? That Elvis is no friend of yours, and we’ll stick to that story whoever asks. Remember that, whoever asks. He’s a street kid making trouble, making bad-bad trouble, you understand?”

  102

  Ah, these stick figures sprouting wings. Roberto Espinosa is sidetracked again. His hands shake as he scans the notebook. It’s lack of sleep since the shooting—when was that? Five, six days ago, but it seems years away. He’s feeling his age, afraid the case will wreck his retirement. He orders a car to take all the captives to a safe house, that is, when we find the other boy—no, we haven’t found him yet, Senator. The man was swearing when he put the phone down. His sixth call of the day.

  He returns to the mandala. He studies each photo at each point of the star. The father and mother are young smiling photos. The mute boy between them is sad and serious, eyes veered to the right as if trailing some profound thought. The picture of the other boy is from a photo booth. The cap angled to the side shadows a pugnacious look. He dares the chief to drop his eyes first.

  This photo was published in the afternoon papers. The police are out in full force now, scouring the usual places: the shady hotels, the karaoke bars, the malls, the shadowy parks. The mother didn’t say it, nor did she give a name, but Roberto understood the story of the devil boy.

  Who knows? Maybe it was a botched hold-up, a con job that grew into a hostage situation. Instigated by this. He thumps the photo of the other boy with his finger. Looks like he’s capable of anything. Seduced the American with the lanterns and implicated the mute boy, and it was all going well until they thought she was shot, so they spirited her home. Was it panicked conscience—do children have that?—or a crazy adventure, even a dare?

  He goes back to the tabloid clipping. The family was evicted from the hacienda that was to be subdivided, to prevent them from making their land claim. They’d farmed that land for generations, but only as “squatting” tenants, and then suddenly the landlord made other plans. So the father flipped. It happens, it happened. All for land, violent land. But where did the story begin, the bloodletting?

  The media will feast on the boy’s history when it gets out, so let’s deal with the present. Humor the senator, hide the witnesses against his hired hit man or turn them into culprits—of course, everyone is innocent unless proven guilty. Ah, there’s blood on all our hands. He studies the photos of the boys again, trapped in a star. Yes, save the senator and save himself, his job, save everyone. A safe house then, safe from the news cannibals until the New Year, and maybe, just maybe—he mulls over possibilities, over the faces on the star. It must be the angels, for where else can this inspiration spring from? He wants to save one boy, at least the one he knows, but the older one makes him drop his eyes. He turns the air conditioning to high. It’s grown too warm in here. He peers through the blue blinds. Across the road is a pathetic crowd of protesters. Thank God, it’s Christmas.

  Somewhere in the city, Bobby thinks this too as he combs the streets on foot. Surely the police can’t be bothered with a boy on Christmas Eve, because they already have one in custody. But he’s wrong. Plainclothes police are on an exhaustive city tour. They need results so they can go home tomorrow at the latest.

  On his own tour of the usual places, the other boy gets lucky with a backpacker. He looks like a boy himself with his fresh face and blond curls. In the park they play cowboys with Elvis’s toy gun, then move on. They have a game of pool in a joint that plays disco carols. Elvis feels his ears might burst with the thumping bass. They barely hear each other. He motions to the man that he wants to sleep, so maybe they can go somewhere else? He’s blond, he speaks English—surely he has a hotel room.

  The man orders soft drinks for both of them and chooses a corner table, the farthest corner. Elvis’s heart sinks.

  Under the table he guides the boy’s hand. Occasionally he applauds a good shot, smiling at the pool players. He finishes before the game. He tucks a hundred pesos into the boy’s pocket and leaves.

  Cheap! In the toilet Elvis curses the hundred-peso bill. What an insult. When he sees that man again, he’ll—He splashes his face, picks at the remains of soap on the sink and tries to make some lather. He doesn’t look good. The bruises are still
there and his clothes are a shame. That’s why the blond man thought he was cheap. He turns his cap around, flap to the other side to change his luck.

  103

  There is no angel, but stars abound, almost stars. Fairy lights form a canopy over the street. It seems as if the giant banyans on each side have spread out for this purpose, extending their leafy arms toward each other, so the street can boast of a Milky Way as exclusive as the hospital. Here, the suites match those at five-star hotels, and everyone smiles at the American visitor—except in the private lounge where the two agents nod at him with a weary look.

  David is briefed about the woman in the other room. The account sounds like a bored aside: last night she tried to leave the hospital, she was delusional, screaming, she had to be contained—and they had to take the TV out, the phone too. She’s sleeping now. Will the colonel be staying long? One of the men starts to dial his phone. David puts up his hand and whispers, “No need. The embassy knows I’m here.”

  He waits, thinks of the right words, phrases them into an easier story in his head. The sleeping woman mumbles and swings out one arm, then the other, fending off something. Her mumbling grows more agitated, the syllables harsh, like little explosions in his ears.

  “Cate … Cate,” David whispers. “It’s all right, Cate.”

  “All right?” she whispers back, tears in the corners of her eyes.

  David holds the hand that has closed into a fist. “It’s David from the embassy. It’s all right, it’s safe.”

  “Oh David…”

  “Yes. It’s all right.”

  The tears well up as she whispers, “Did you ask for me?”

  “Cate … your friends … they’re in police custody, but I’ll see what—”

  She turns to the wall. “No one sees.”

  He wishes he hadn’t come.

  “Are you American?” she asks, sounding confused.

  “Yes, of course,” he assures her.

  After a while, she murmurs, “What does it mean … what is it to be American?” The question stuns him. That he doesn’t know how to answer stuns him more. Or maybe he doesn’t know the answer. Maybe certainty is impossible. We’re only as real as what we do and what is done to us in the moment; knowing comes much later, if it comes at all. We’re jostled by too many acts that we choose to forget.

  The woman turns to him again, pulling him to her. Into his ear she whispers, “What is it to be you … or me?” The questions are slowly strung together, as if some other thought keeps getting in the way.

  “… Or a child?”

  “I—I don’t know.” It’s the most honest thing he has said in a long time.

  104

  The chief is taking his last chance. The notebook is still open at the clipping from six years ago. Maybe if he plays this wild card, the mother and son will cough up something new. Maybe he can get results before the day is over, and painlessly, he hopes.

  The mute boy comes out of hiding. He traces the photo with a finger. The mother is almost in tears, mouthing, “No, no, please sir, no—not this.” The pain in her legs is excruciating, ay, the little gnawing mice.

  Two years ago, Noland found the photo under his mother’s clothes. He thought it was a pretty picture of his mother and a little boy, and he wanted to paste it into his notebook. Nena remembers trying to grab it back before realizing that it was only the picture that made sense to him. Of course, her son can’t read. She rode on his delight at the find, telling him this was little Noland long ago on the farm where the hill had stars that were angels who watched over them. He slept soundly that night, his head full of angels, but not one strayed into his mother’s dream. She was on a desolate hill, keeping watch over the hut below, which was empty, and she kept wondering when everyone would come home.

  “That’s you, Noland, right?” The chief’s voice is soft, kind.

  Nena and little Noland. The boy looks and looks, then closes his eyes, draws the picture in his head, searching for the next scene, trying to return to his “secret” craft. Finally the faint scribbles, then the lines shaping up. Field. Hill. Sky. It’s a strange comic strip trailing the tabloid box, and he’s perplexed. He looks up at his mother, sees her distress, then studies the picture again.

  “You remember that time, Noland?” The chief imagines history passing through the boy’s face, those solemn eyes.

  The mother turns her son around, her distress brusque, bruising. His arms hurt.

  “Noland, we must tell this man where Elvis is, so we can go home.” But he only stares. She shakes him. “He’s not your friend, don’t you understand? Why don’t you ever listen to me? Why do you always get us into trouble?” But he keeps staring, trying to see the hill in her eyes. What was it like?

  “You remember the farm, Noland?” the chief asks.

  It was hot and the rice was white.

  “My son and I, we didn’t do anything, sir, and that was long ago—”

  “You remember going up that hill, Noland?”

  “Stop it—stop it, please—he didn’t mean it, he didn’t mean it.” She begins to sob.

  The chief takes the notebook from the boy, who doesn’t protest. In his head he sees that the hill has a little rise and sometimes the clouds hide it. But he saw it clearly from the door of the hut, like a little hill on a hill.

  “How could you do this to us?” she screams. “We’re innocent!”

  “So your husband did not mean to hack your landlord to death?”

  For a minute she freezes, as if the blade were falling on her, through her. Then she thrusts her face at him; he feels her spittle. “We worked on that farm all our lives and they were going to throw us out like animals, because they wanted to build big houses, big gardens.”

  “You remember your father, Noland?”

  She goes for his face, her fingers stretched like claws.

  105

  The sun is high and the field is white. It’s close to noon. A man is pacing around the hut, his wife pleading with him. Earlier he was in the field, fixing a water pipe; a paddy fish was caught in it. The landlord’s foreman came, a surprise visit—he usually comes only during the harvest. He was friendly, even got down on his knees to help him rescue the fish. They had a laugh, then a smoke. Then slowly the news about the planned subdivision, because the landlord must diversify. The voice was apologetic, saying nothing will happen until after the next harvest and his family can stay for as long as he likes even after that, until the construction begins, of course.

  The rescued fish stopped struggling in his grip. His fingers burrowed into the gills; a bone stuck into his palm. The sun disappeared in the sky, even as it burned his face.

  “No, you’re not going there, not like this,” says his wife, but even his ears have died. Only his skin feels real, stinging in every pore as he walks out, walks to the big house, just as the landlord is getting into his Mercedes for a lunch in town without his usual bodyguards.

  His ears have died like his eyes, all silent and dark, but his arms, his chest, all his flesh feels the warm spurt as he hacks and hacks. This is for my son, my father, my father’s father—all of us that you’ve erased from this land.

  106

  From the door of the hut, the boy is watching. In the bedroom his mother prays, rocking herself before the pictures of her ancestors. The boy spots the little hill on a hill. He keeps watching, even when the sun hurts his eyes.

  Uniforms suddenly block his view, asking questions, but the words are stuck in his throat and he keeps watching through the space between their shoulders, so they barge in. The butt of a rifle grazes his head. His mother drags him from the door, squeezing the breath out of him. The uniforms shout their questions, their voices high and frenzied. One slaps her; she begins to cry. He doesn’t want her to cry so he points to the little hill on the hill, finding it hard to speak. One of the men pats him on the head, makes a phone call and sends the others away. His mother slaps him and cries, “What have you done?” and he wonde
rs if the men asked her to slap him too. Together they stare at the hill. Nothing. The uniforms take her into the bedroom.

  The boy covers his ears. His mother is crying louder, pleading, no, please, no, crying for his dead grandmother and the men cry out too, as if they’re in this big, loud prayer together, then the crashing and thumping and she’s shrieking, “My legs, my legs,” the pitch so sharp it cuts through his chest. Then silence. He squints. Is that a stick figure on the hill? It’s racing up, furiously. He keeps squinting. He’s afraid it’s climbing too early for the winged ones.

  107

  They fly low, or used to, and they’re not angels. “The doves who fly low.” This euphemism of decent folk, like “ladies of the evening,” is outdated. It has long flown away with the girlie bars that used to thrive in this part of the city.

  Again he tries the door of the moneychanger’s. It’s locked. Did he not turn his cap around for luck? He sighs, he misses the girls. They fed him, sometimes gave him a bed. He’d look up their short skirts and they’d spank him, fuss over him and call him “cute.” Things got better with Bobby, but he missed them, the softness of their skin when they crept into bed in the early morning. Now he can’t trust the few who hide behind a shop like this, respectably beckoning foreign cash. They call him “bad luck,” complaining he’ll bring the police on them too. He abandons the door. He was hoping to plead with the owner, Auntie Carmen, to let him use the shower. She’d have cursed him, chased him away. Don’t fly in my neighborhood.

  How low can anyone fly? The skyline cuts, the gravel bruises—as sharp and hard as “decent folk.”

  Under a flashing Coke ad, the boy waits for a jeepney. He’ll go back to the intersection. They can’t turn him away on Christmas Eve.