Ilustrado Page 19

  The soldiers stopped in their tracks when they saw my mother step outside with the best weapon she could find, my grandfather’s ancient Holland & Holland double-barrel .450-caliber elephant gun. She raised it and took aim. It jammed and the soldiers laughed. They approached her, one lowering his bayonet, another drawing his sword, the other unbuckling his belt. As Lena and Narcisito watched from the front door, I leaped forward to thrust myself, my nine-year-old body, between the Japs and my mother. I cried out, in Nippongo, words I didn’t know I knew: “Yagate shini / keshiki ha miezu / semi no koe!” Two of the men laughed. They moved closer. But the one with the sword, suddenly pensive, barked something to the others. They all turned and walked away, disappearing into the forest behind the house. Only years later did I remember the words as a haiku by Basho, taught to me in childhood by Yataro. “Nothing in the cry / of cicadas suggests they / are about to die.”

  —from Autoplagiarist (page 1063), by Crispin Salvador

  *

  Consider the epic singer. He alone knew the secret beginnings and endings of his tribe: when his children moved to the cities to become janitors and key grips and hotel crooners, he grew hoarse and eventually faded, silently, in his hut. When the singer died, one version of everything was lost.

  —from the 1988 essay Tao (People), by Crispin Salvador

  *

  Someone is singing badly from upstairs. “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” I join the people trickling in to the University of the Philippines’s Balay Kalinaw. The two-story multipurpose building, in a pseudo-traditional style, is abuzz with congratulations and congenial laughter. The rain is heavy and loud and everyone yells to compensate. At the top of the stairs, tables are piled with newly minted copies of And Then the Locusts Came: The Socio-political Relevance of Melodrama in Philippine Literature in English. The singer ends her song to sparse applause and breezy electronica music is played in the background. Knots of people stay close to the walls, scarfing down greasy pansit noodles. They joke, chat, squirrel away food in cheeks so as not to miss an opportunity for an interjection, opinion, or punch line. These are the literati of the Philippines: the merry, mellowed, stalwartly middle-class practitioners of the luxury of literature in the language of the privileged. Many are former Maoists. I’m hoping the critic Avellaneda will be here.

  By the dais set up in a corner, I spot a writer who had years ago, at my first workshop in college, dismissed my story as “bourgeois angst”; she is sipping a glass of the free sparkling wine donated by, a banner says, the Lupas Landcorp Book Fund. The florid old author of the volume being launched holds court by a big palm plant, young students listening and nodding as if his ideas were originally theirs. “Of course, we must be read by the world,” he declares. “If they think we’re exotic, give them exotic. But don’t forget the responsibility to portray the realities of our society . . .” He flicks absently at a palm frond that tickles his ear. “. . . and the brutal archetypes from life. For example, the richness of our poverty. Boy who loses girl because he cannot win bread for them. Beloved water buffalo dying of inexplicable disease or sometimes run down by the cars of the rich. Every year, floods destroy everything. And then . . .”—he raises his hands like a priest announcing transubstantiation—“and then, the locusts came.”

  I say hello to a group of writers who remember me. They are clustered in a corner of the room, like the last few Cheerios in a bowl of milk. It’s been a lifetime! one exclaims. How long are you here for? asks a second. I tell them a week. Only? says a third. What have you been up to all these years? asks a fourth. I tell them I’m writing a book. They raise their eyebrows and paste on smiles. What’s it about? a fifth one inquires. I tell them, to throw them off: “It’s a novel about a young writer’s death in a flood and how his teacher is moved to redeem the senseless loss by writing about the what-ifs.” Fascinating! a sixth one condescends. Where’s it set? I reply: “The Philippines.” A seventh one asks: How can you write about the Philippines?

  A pimply young woman saves me from the awkwardness by bounding onto the plywood dais. She barks, “Test, test,” into a microphone attached to one of those huge old portable karaoke machines, itself attached to a hand truck by red and green octopus straps. The woman looks like an ugly version of Alice B. Toklas. She wears a white shirt with a stylized Philippine flag and AFEMASIAN silkscreened on it. Shrugging off a backpack made of rattan, she takes out a notebook. She regales us with verse, every word spoken slowly and dragged out at the end, as if the incantation was truly alchemical. Some people listen, most only pretend to while scanning the room, a few groups impolitely continue conversations in politely hushed voices. I float toward the refreshments.

  In a corner near the drinks and the cubed cheese and folded ham on toothpicks, I talk with a pair of writers with whom I once had casual mentor-mentee relationships. Furio Almondo is a jack-of-all-trades scribbler with a perfectly burnished pate, an enduring ambition to be the country’s alpha male, and a proletarian pride in his pugnacious body odor; his fiction is consistently infused with Magical Realism and a seventies bravura of one who survived being imprisoned by Marcos. My favorite of his works is a recent prose poem, written as a news report, titled “Borges Disappointed by the Internet.” Beside Almondo, at an olfactory-safe distance, is Rita Rajah, the Muslim poetess from Mindanao; her eyebrows are as thin and carefully drawn as her verse, her makeup applied in the generous manner of one who was nearly a great beauty and still savors wistful memories of being so darned close. Her literary fame is based on five poems she wrote in 1972, ’73, and ’79.

  I question the two about Crispin.

  “Crispin who?” Furio says, giving me a bewildered look.

  “You’re so bad,” Rita says, laughing and slapping him on the shoulder.

  Furio chuckles. “Anyone in this room would have liked to have screwed a tap into his gut and turned it on,” he says. “As the saying goes.”

  “But who had the courage or the means?” Rita says. “Or inclination, really. Let me tell you,” she whispers conspiratorially, “most of these people here were just jealous of him.”

  “Not me,” says Furio. “What do I have to be jealous of?”

  Rita: “We just wanted the most visible Filipino writer in the world to be more authentically Filipino.”

  Furio: “Writing in Tagalog, or one of the dialects.”

  Me: “But Crispin wasn’t anything but Filipino.”

  Furio: “Well, you know . . .”

  Rita: “Things were never the same after his autobiography.”

  Me: “Was it jealousy that caused that scene in the CCP?”

  Rita: “No. If we’re honest with ourselves, complaining is our national sport. It was just Crispin’s turn to complain. We’re all crabs pulling each other back into the pot. But Crispy, he thought he was a lobster.”

  Me: “So you don’t think someone boiled him, so to speak?”

  Furio: “Not anyone here.” (He waggles his fingers in front of him.)

  Rita: “Don’t look at me.”

  Me: “Haha. Me neither. But maybe one of the subjects of that book . . .”

  Furio: “The mythical Bridges Ablaze! Don’t you get it, pare? Nobody cared about Crispin. He wasn’t fucking relevant.”

  Rita: “What my colleague is trying to gently convey is the sad fact this country doesn’t care much about writers.”

  Furio: “No. What I’m trying to say is nobody cared about that gilded asshole.”

  Rita: “Crispin and Avellaneda were maybe the only ones who believed that a writer could transform this country . . .”

  Furio: “Then a woman came between them. Typical.”

  Rita (glaring at Furio): “I hate to be the one to put it so bluntly, but those two were the last advocates. I shudder hearing myself say it. But sitting at home, writing stories . . .” (She raises her eyebrow.) “. . . that’s a luxury! And to write in English . . .” (She shakes her head dismissively.) “. . . that’s the height of luxuriating arroga
nce! But to sit at home in your Greenwich Village penthouse, living off the Salvador family inheritance, writing in English about the Philippines for the entertainment of foreigners . . .” (She rolls her eyes.) “. . . well, even the young writers here haven’t yet invented a slur for someone as heinous as that.”

  Furio: “It’s the height of heinousness.”

  Me: “But Crispin didn’t have an inheritance, and he didn’t live in a—”

  Furio: “Heinosity, even.”

  The poet on the stage ends her reading and everyone applauds. I clap, too. I’m glad she stopped. She leaves the dais and is replaced by a fat man wearing the exact same outfit as she. He clasps his hands to his chest and recites a prose poem in the same heightened enunciation as she did, like taffy being made. It’s about a welder in Abu Dhabi who sells his soul to a Yemenese fortune-teller in exchange for being able to sing beautifully. The welder sings for his comrades in the workers’ barracks and his songs are about the home they are all sick for. His lyrics are so heartbreaking that his comrades slit the singer’s throat. The poet bows his head like his throat’s been cut. A trio to the side, each wearing AFEMASIAN shirts, claps enthusiastically. In the back of the crowd, a cell phone goes chirp-chirp, signaling a text message. The poet looks at the ceiling and begins another poem, snapping his fingers in time to himself. It’s a jazzy piece about cruising for lovers.

  “There,” reads the poet. “In the Lupas Landcorp Mall . . .”

  Rita (voice hushed perfunctorily): “Listen, dear. Do you think a writer writing about corruption will stamp out corruption?”

  Poet: “ . . . by the men’s bathroom stall . . .”

  Furio: “A writer writing about sex won’t get anybody pregnant. Look, pare. It’s nothing to do with Crispin or his infamous Bridges. It may have been a brilliant exposé, though we already know our country’s a feudal kingdom.”

  Poet: “. . . by the mart for your shoes . . .”

  Rita: “I honestly think it was Crispy’s excuse to live abroad, to escape the realities of here and now.”

  Poet: “. . . by the bee that is jolly . . .”

  Furio: “The problem lies in, quote unquote, lit-ah-ra-choor. It just doesn’t work. We have to beat our pens into plowshares and our plowshares into swords.”

  Poet: “. . . by the fruit that is juicy . . .”

  Rita: “Hello! Earth to Furio: The revolution will now be streamed onto the Internet. The seventies are gone, comrade. God’s been resurrected by Reverend Martin. We threw out our Red Books decades ago, lest our kids read them . . .”

  Poet: “. . . by the frozen circle that’s for skating . . .”

  Rita (continuing): “We’ve got mortgages. And children’s tuition and ballet lessons. Estregan’s dictatorship won’t last. Marcos is frozen, waiting for a final brownout to melt him completely into our forgetting. Maybe the jellyfish . . .”

  Poet: “. . . I see how crooked is every straight guy . . .”

  Furio: “I don’t know! Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., and the rest of his brood are holding higher office. For Christ’s sake, Imelda was a congresswoman. We forget too easil—”

  Poet: “. . . encoffined in a closet . . .”

  Rita: “Who’s forgotten? But in today’s Gazette, Bansamoro said that the economic boom is around the corner.”

  Poet: “. . . of macho lonesomeness . . .”

  Furio: “Bansamoro’s only establishing his own dynasty. The boom’s artificial, just remittances from Overseas Foreign Workers. First World dollars fattening a Third World pig.”

  Poet: “. . . like a beer-battered butterfly . . .”

  Me: “I haven’t been back here in years, but it does seem like OFW earnings are fueling investment.”

  Poet: “. . . in a crystal chrysalis . . .”

  Rita: “Not if you’re Wigberto Lakandula.”

  Poet: “. . . on the plate placed before me . . .”

  Furio: “Poor bastard. A slave to some pharaoh’s pyramid scheme.”

  Poet: “. . . My mouth, my spoon. My cock, my tremulous fork.”

  Rita (raising her voice to drown out the poet): “Listen, dear. I’m no aging rebel like Furio here. The truth is, if you want to write something that will elicit change, you have to be a journalist. We haven’t had a pure champion of the truth since Mutya Dimatahimik was stabbed outside her newspaper office in 1981 . . .”

  Furio: “That was ’82. I’m still convinced it was Marcos’s bidding. Old Avellaneda was never the same after. If he didn’t have their child to look after, he’d have gone the way of Crispy. Batty.”

  Rita: “I used to think Mutya died in vain. Because there are still reporters being gunned. But that comes with a free press in a lawless country. Crispin, however . . . I mean, nobody’s going to the States to murder someone nobody remembers, who’s writing a book nobody has seen. As soon as the hit man got to the U.S. he’d be dazzled by the factory outlet sales and disappear.”

  Furio: “Spotted later managing a taqueria in West Hollywood. Green card in pocket.”

  Rita: “The only one who’d want to kill Crispin is Crispin.”

  Furio: “Well, everyone in this room would have, at some point. Honestly. He really gave it good in Autoplagiarist . . .”

  Rita: “The truth hurts.”

  Furio: “Only Crispin would have spite enough to kill someone. Himself included.”

  Rita: “Himself especially.”

  Furio: “One can only stomach so much failure.”

  Me: “You really think he was a failure? But he won awards. He brought the spotlight to our nation’s literatu—”

  Furio: “Awards are just luck in a literary lottery, pare. They didn’t make him the bus driver. And even if he was at the wheel for a spell, he didn’t have to be a hairy asshole about it.”

  A third poet takes the stage and begins to read poetry in Tagalog. He also wears an AFEMASIAN T-shirt, but has a woven tribal sash tied around his head. His poems are translations of Emily Dickinson’s. He raps each Tagalog word angrily, his right hand coming down like a lion’s claw to emphasize each rhyme.

  Me: “So you think maybe something other than literary failure was troubling him?”

  Rita: “You know who you have to talk to? Marcel Avellaneda. If anyone will know, it’s him.”

  Furio (snickering): “Yeah. Good luck getting him to talk. Or getting him beyond how much of a hack Crispy was.”

  Me: “Did any of you like anything Crispin wrote? What about his masterpiece, Because of—”

  Furio: “Dahil Sa’Yo? Not authentic enough. It didn’t capture the essence of the Filipino.”

  Rita: “The trouble with that book is that in its obsession with the new, it was really just being old.”

  Furio: “I preferred his work when he was merely trying for approval.”

  Me: “And The Europa Quartet?”

  Furio: “Elitism! To the max, man.”

  Me: “The Kaputol series was pretty g—”

  Rita: “Oh brother! Too Manila-centric.”

  Me: “Red Earth? After all, it was about Marxist farmers . . .”

  Furio: “Too provincial.”

  Rita: “And polemical.”

  Me: “The Enlightened?”

  Rita: “Ugh. Postcolonial machismo.”

  Me: “I suppose you didn’t like Autoplagiarist?”

  Furio: “That I liked.”

  Rita: “Only because it was so bad. Schadenfreude’s always delicious.”

  Furio: “No, sister. It didn’t pull its punches. But if you’re speaking truth to power, don’t bore them. At least try to make them laugh.”

  Rita: “Autoplagiarist’s problem was it was more about Filipinos than for Filipinos.”

  Furio: “It’s the sort of book Americans love and Filipinos hate. We have to write for our countrymen.”

  Rita: “Countrywomen.”

  Me: “Then why couldn’t he get it published abroad?”

  Furio: “The same reason the rest of us Filipinos have
a hard time.”

  Me: “Did Crispin have some sort of hidden regret or—”

  Rita: “As I said, ask Marcel. Crispin wasn’t the same after the breakup of the Cinco Bravos in the seventies. That’s why he left for the States.”

  Furio (looking at the poet onstage): “I always thought he was a closet gay. He and Avellaneda were lovers. That’s why they hated each other so much.”

  Rita: “Break out the homophobia! Always the Filipino way when they’re jealous.”

  Furio: “Come on, how stage-directed was Crispy’s demise? What a drama queen. Spread-eagled. Lacking only a cross.”

  Rita: “Or pentagram.”

  Furio (chuckling): “That would make a good book.”

  Rita: “Hasn’t it already been done? Pentagrams only appear in bestsellers.”

  Furio: “See the sinister connection? Wouldn’t you peddle your soul?”

  Rita: “What for?”

  “Enough money,” Furio says, “to buy an Italian villa. Ever seen Gore Vidal’s house?”

  “Aw,” Rita says, “you old sellout.” She slaps Furio on the shoulder.

  “If only I could!” Furio smiles.

  They look at each other contentedly.

  “Are you going to the dinner after this?” she asks him, as if I wasn’t there.

  “Nah,” he says. “I’ve a fete in Forbes Park for Arturo Lupas. I’m ghostwriting his book on the Lupas legacy. They’ll be serving canapés and Blue Label scotch.”

  I drain my champagne so that I can hold up my empty glass. Furio and Rita raise their eyebrows at me and rotate in opposite directions, like automatons, each looking for someone else to talk to.

  A fourth reader, gangly and tomboyish, takes the stage. I hurry to leave.

  In the bookshop downstairs, I search for books on or by Crispin. The aisles between the shelves are empty. They smell of glue and mosquito repellant. Books are well categorized, though the prelaunch crowd has haphazardly reshelved them, spines facing inward, the clear plastic packaging sloppily replaced. A frumpy shopgirl sits at the cash box, texting on her cell phone. She looks upset, as if blaming me for keeping her there. The poet’s verse arrives downstairs in a murmur. Her voice peters out into applause. The clapping blends with the rain. A man comes on, shouting: “Welcome to my launch! Thank you for braving the end of the world!” Laughter and cheers.