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  —from Manila Noir (page 53), by Crispin Salvador

  *

  E-mail from me to Crispin: Gee whiz, Mr. Wilson! I can’t help but think Madison could’ve paid me half what she paid her therapists to diagnose her borderline personality disorder. It kills me how these days everyone has clinical justification for their strangeness. My lolo was recently diagnosed with Freudian narcissism. He then had his secretary do research on the Net. Instead of finding all the bad in it, of course he saw only the good. “All great leaders are narcissists,” he exclaimed to my grandmother. So rather than buy all the books about how the disorder can be overcome, and how they hurt the people around them, he bought The Victorious Narcissist—a book about the triumphant qualities of Nero, Napoleon, Hitler, Saddam, etc. Hell, Grapes even bought a copy to give to President Estregan as a Christmas gift. LOL! Wonder how he’ll take it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not angry with my grandfather. To be angry implies you care. I just feel sorry for him. Anyway, I’ll be late for our bacon-cheeseburger date. You’ll have to tell me the gory details of your trip home and that speech at the CCP. I’m dying of curiosity.

  *

  “Fittingly, my father’s name was Narciso,” Salvador wrote in Autoplagiarist. “At one time, somewhere in the lineage before him, the name possessed the tragedy of the myth and the irony that such a name could be possessed by such a man so distinctly unnarcissistic. Upon my father, however, all such nuance had been lost: it was as if to him the name was bespoke, and the very act of christening him ‘Narciso’ authored a parody of a sacred sacrament, wherein one is named for his essence, for that worst characteristic by which he would be forever remembered. In fact, he is belittled further as ‘Junior,’ in that unabashed, and strangely Filipino, habit of giving ignominious nicknames. A self-fulfilling prophecy: try as he did, he was damned forever to be the tiny narcissus.”

  —from the biography in progress, Crispin Salvador:

  Eight Lives Lived, by Miguel Syjuco

  *

  “You’re the most handsome of all my grandchildren,” Grapes would often tell me. I never knew how to reply, so I smiled the smile of a shy child basking in attention. I of course didn’t believe him. I was afraid to.

  “You are the most handsome because you’re the one who looks most like me,” he’d say. Then: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “The sergeant of the army.”

  Grapes laughed, amused to no end. “Not the president of the Philippines?”

  “Whichever is higher.”

  “I’ll be president,” he’d say, “and you can be the sergeant of the army.”

  He would pick me up with an exaggerated grunt and carry me to my own bed. He smelled of Old Spice and pipe tobacco, which, I realize now, are more of those comforting clichés. But that’s really what he smelled like.

  “All right, Sarge,” he would say, tucking me in. It became his pet name for me. We all had them, his private names that made us each his unique grandchild. Jesu was “Groovy.” Claire was “Reina.” Mario was “Smiley.” Charlotte was “Princessa.” Jerald was “The Plum.” I was Sarge. Maybe it’s not “was” but “is.” I don’t know.

  A lifetime later, Madison would call me “Beauty.” She’d look at me in bed, touch my face with her fingertips, as if afraid of breaking it, and she’d tell me: “You are a beautiful man.” I of course believed her. I was afraid not to.

  Every night, under the covers, her foot would be pressed against mine. We always wanted to spoon but, because of my troublesome cervical curve and my orthopedic pillow, I had to lie on my back if I didn’t want neck pain the next day. We touched feet through the night, a gesture of reassurance that we’d stand together through the darkest.

  “I love you,” I’d say.

  “I love you, too.”

  “Do you love me more than I love you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good,” I’d say, sliding into the edge of sleep. “See you in a minute.”

  “G’night,” she’d say. “In our dreams then.”

  I never told her that I don’t have dreams or can’t remember whether I do.

  *

  From Marcel Avellaneda’s blog, “The Burley Raconteur,” February 14, 2002:

  Happy Valentine’s all! But let’s get to the point: The nerve of that Salvador, no?! The biggest sin a Pinoy can commit is arrogance. Yes, dear readers, you may have already heard the latest literary scuttlebutt about our former comrade and compatriot Crispin’s most recent visit to our shores. Last Friday’s awards ceremony at the Cultural Center of the Philippines was marred when his acceptance speech turned into a tirade against our literature and a threat to publish something that would “lop your heads off.” How we’d hoped he’d mellowed. How I’d hoped my old friend would return humbled by failures. Autoplagiarist? (He should have ripped off from someone else.) There is a time and place for everything, my dear old Crisp. Haven’t you learned that by now ? For those interested, literary blogger Plaridel3000 has posted a clip of Salvador’s speech on his weblog here.

  Some posts from the message boards below:

  —Wat a twatface that Salvador is! Lets c wat his so-called The Bridges Ablaze has 2 say. I herd it hits at the Lupases, Changcos, Arroyos, Syjucos, Estregans, among others. ([email protected])

  —It’s sooo sad a man like Salvador has lost himself to hubris. Shouldn’t literature do more than just criticize? Goes to show he doesn’t have the answers. ([email protected])

  —LOL! More power to you, Marcel! Lop the head off that commie. IMHO, he’s in with the Muslims for sure. ([email protected])

  —Hey, kts@ateneo, I think you are correct. But in fairness, do any of us have answers? ([email protected])

  —Love dat clip of his speech. Hilarious. Check out the yellow armpit stains in his barong! ([email protected])

  —How do you get rid of pit stains like that anyway? My bf has stains like that. ([email protected])

  —Dilute a T-spoon vinegar in cup of water, den apply carefuly w/ basting brush. Should work gr8. Ur wlcm! ([email protected])

  —Halabira, I hab d answr to r cuntry’s probs: just kill d rich & reboot d systm. ([email protected])

  —Gundamlover, that’s been tried before. See: en.wikipedia.org/Khmer_Rouge. ([email protected])

  *

  Out of the corner of my eye, I look at my seatmate again. His head is nodding, slumping away from me. My little bottle of alcogel peeks from his breast pocket. My hand hovers to fish it out. I decide against it. Instead, I try to sleep. I try not to think of Madison.

  In the month before Crispin died, it got to a point that being with Madison was like walking naked around a cactus with your eyes closed. She even began questioning my long hours spent at Crispin’s apartment. She liked to alternate her homoerotic suspicions with accusations of literary mercenariness. “Why don’t you like hanging out with people your age, Miguel?” she asked, in the implying, opinionated manner of beautiful women not blessed with big breasts. When I recounted to her my interest in his work, and, later, after he died, my eventual dream of writing his biography, she accused me of sounding like a young naive version of Bellow’s Charlie Citrine. That was one of the lovers’ things Madison and I did, our own affectation of Atlantic academia: we referenced fictional characters as if they were people to learn from. As if real-life people were too nebulous, too private and unreal for us to understand. We liked to believe there is an alternate world, a better world, populated entirely by characters created by the yearnings of humanity—governing and inspiring themselves with all the lucidity with which we rendered them. We posited such a world to be an afterlife for the monumentally great and flawed men and women of history, because Julius Caesar is as real to us as Holden Caulfield, Pol Pot is as alive as Judas Iscariot. Madison had just finished Humboldt’s Gift. Like Citrine, Madison said, I ceaselessly rationalized my relationship with my dead writer friend, before finally admitting that “the dea
d owe us a living.” I don’t remember what happened in Bellow’s book, but in Crispin’s case I believe it is the living who owe the dead. The debt inside ourselves, as we Filipinos say. My biography of Crispin will be an indictment of my country, of time, of our forgetful, self-centered humanity. I can hear Madison now: “Oh, how wonderfully romantic of you. Romantics are really only in love with themselves.”

  *

  Christened Crispin, after the patron saint of cobblers, the eight-pound two-ounce baby was brought from the hospital three days later to the family estate at Swanee, to much fanfare. Hand-painted canvas banners had been strung up at the gate. Dozens of farmworkers lined the gravel drive, straw hats pressed solemnly against their chests as they craned their necks to glimpse the child through the windows of the silver Packard. Some of them had undone their neckerchiefs and waved them like makeshift flags. As the vehicle passed, a whistle blew and on cue the workers tossed up cheers and hats that flew in the family’s wake. The car pulled up to the two-story manor, and the household staff in their cream uniforms, lined up in order of importance from the mayordoma down to the stable boy, erupted in applause. Leonora stepped out from the car, reached in to take Salvador from Ursie, and proudly showed him off. Pink cheeks were touched, the bridge of his nose pinched again and again, and his already thick head of fine blond hair caressed admiringly. They marveled at his hazel eyes. Until he reached the age of four, two years after his hair darkened to brown and into the first months of the war, Salvador’s nickname among the staff would still be “Golden.” When those who’d called him that had fled to their own families or had became casualties of the fighting, the name was forgotten and Salvador himself would not know of it until he was finally an adult.

  —from the biography in progress, Crispin Salvador:

  Eight Lives Lived, by Miguel Syjuco

  *

  Here’s a memento I took, out of the only frame on Crispin’s desk. An old four-by-five in sepia: in front of the Salvador ancestral home outside Bacolod. From left to right (all squinting in the sun): Ursie, short and stout; reedlike Lena in her school uniform; tousled Narcisito holding his toy glider; Crispin, almost too big for his perambulator; the punctiliously attired Mortimer J. Gladstone, their Bostonian tutor; in the background, walking beside the rosebushes, his face hidden in the shade of his straw hat, Yataro, the Japanese gardener.

  *

  “You sure you’ll remember everything we’ve said? Cristobal, are you listening?”

  He doesn’t reply. He picks up his watch from the desk and looks at it. “The train to Barcelona leaves in three-quarters of an hour,” he says. He winds his watch until it can’t wind anymore. He tries to attach the chain but has a hard time. After a few moments he gets it right and slips the watch into the pocket of his waistcoat.

  Yciar gets up from the bed. She picks up the silk robe off the floor and pulls it around her. Cristo watches her silhouetted against the thin, bright lines of sunlight coming through the shutters. They look like gashes on her, on everything.

  She walks barefoot across the room and stands on his feet. She holds him around his waist. They waltz a few steps.

  “I’m sure,” he says.

  “Think of me when you’re on the boat.”

  “I’ll have my letters sent here when we berth at Port Said. Then when I transfer at Hong Kong. And of course the minute I land at Manila.”

  “You belong here. Not there.”

  “I know,” he says.

  She studies his face and seems guilty. She looks down. When she looks up again she is smiling. She straightens his cravat. “No. I know. You must rush home, to that hospital to care for your mother and sister. It’s your duty now.” She stretches up to kiss the bottom of his chin. “You’ll arrive in time to usher in 1895. Promise not to forget me. Being remembered is all anyone can ask from a lost love. I’ll remember you, Don Cristobal Narciso Patricio Salvador.” She laughs at the length of his name. “Cristo,” she says. “You look nothing like a patriarch.” She pinches his nose. “Even a new one.”

  “I’ll come back,” he says.

  “Before you go,” she says, reaching up on tiptoes to whisper in his ear. Her voice is so gentle he can barely hear her. “Before you go, I have to tell you a secret.”

  —from The Enlightened (page 52), by Crispin Salvador

  *

  My seatmate finally asks to borrow my copy of The Philippine Gazette. He’d been eyeing it for hours. I take it from the seat pocket in front of me. He opens it and begins to leaf. Tsk-tsk, he says, shaking his head. He nudges my elbow off the armrest and points at a particular article. Two more suicide bombings, just this morning. This time down south, in Mindanao. Six dead, twelve injured by the first blast, at a Lotto outlet in front of the city hall in General Santos City. Most were municipal employees wagering just-cashed salaries. The second blast was at a children’s birthday party in a McDonald’s in the Lupas Landcorp’s Cotabato Plaza Mall, leaving nine primary-school students dead, six others wounded. No one has asserted responsibility. The Estregan administration suspects various groups: the Abu Sayyaf of Mindanao, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the Indonesia-based Jemma Islamiah, the Middle East’s Al Qaeda. The bombings are assumed to be retaliation for the coalition-led invasion of Afghanistan, of which President Fernando Valdez Estregan has made us a part. I look at my seatmate and shake my head at the article. Then I pretend to go to sleep.

  A minute later, I hear him chuckling. I peek with one eye. He’s reading the article about the “trial of the century.” I recall seeing that case online. Even I was shocked by the not-guilty verdict received by the Filipino-Chinese couple, who killed their maid by forcing her to drink Clorox Spring Flowers bleach. The maid was minding their son when he drowned in the bathtub. She had been busy text-messaging. It wasn’t the sensationalism of the trial that got my attention. I hate lowbrow tabloid junk. I only clicked on the link that once, because the family involved was named Changco. I thought they might have been related to Dingdong Changco, Jr., who was supposed to figure prominently in TBA. It turned out the family in the trial was of no relation. If they had been, they wouldn’t be in this mess.

  In fact, the trial of the century kept getting bigger until the media was calling it “the trial of the millennium.” In the weeks following, articles teased out the fact that the couple offered a large sum to the presiding judge. The couple claimed he took it; the judge denied acceptance. The Changcos threatened to sue. Investigators confirmed a withdrawal of two million pesos had been made by the couple, though not a centavo surfaced in the accounts of the judge. Blogs poked fun at how Mr. Changco said at a press-con: “Now we are out two million pesos.” The myopic-looking Mrs. Changco quickly followed with: “And our youngest son is dead.”

  But then the case turned into something almost mythical. Following the trial, the boyfriend of the murdered maid, a security guard named Wigberto Lakandula, also formerly employed by the family, vowed “violent vengeance.” A day later, Mr. and Mrs. Changco returned home to find their three prizewinning Chihuahuas beheaded in the living room of their gated home. In the past couple of weeks, the love-and-retribution story has turned Lakandula into an unwitting celebrity—as soon as the media learned that he had wooed his now dead beloved by writing songs for her and playing them on his guitar, he became a national heartthrob. Photographs of him were bought by tabloids and pop magazines at exorbitant prices. My seatmate is looking at a photo of Lakandula as a construction worker in Saudi Arabia, shirtless and muscled, leaning against a front-end loader. His smile is bright, his hard hat askew on his thick shock of black hair. Lakandula is, the caption says, currently in hiding, “a fugitive from the long arm of the law.”

  *

  Unable to sleep, I return to my notes. Among them are slips of paper filled with jokes, some in my handwriting. Crispin was obsessed with our oral traditions and doubly infatuated with translating Filipino humor into English. He called jokes “our true shared history,”


  “our sweetly bitter commentary.”

  “Jokes are the hardest things to translate,” he said. “There is a danger in not getting it right. For example, capturing how the deprecation is in actuality self-deprecation.”

  “You really think so?” I countered. “I think we’re just mean.”

  “No. It’s not divisive. The act of hearing a familiar punch line, the ensuing moan of corniness, that’s all unifying. Jokes are as palliative as a proverb,” he said. “Without them, we wouldn’t understand ourselves.”

  And so it became a habit for Crispin and me to trade these well-worn classics, particularly the ones about our distinguished alma mater, writing them on slips of paper to pass like shibboleths when next we’d meet.

  “Three male students loiter around Shoe Mart Megamall,” one note said. “One is from the exclusive Ateneo de Manila University. One from the rival De La Salle University. The third, named Erning Isip, is from the populist AMA Computer College. The three students spot a very pretty light-skinned girl. Each of the boys takes a turn at trying to woo her. The Atenenista says: ‘Why, hello there. Perhaps I should text my driver to bring my BMW around to chauffeur us to the Polo Club so we can get some gindara?’ The Lasallista says: ‘Wow, you’re so talagang pretty, as in totally ganda gorgeous. Are you hungry at all? Let’s ride my CRV and I’ll make libre fried chicken skin and Cuba libres at Dencio’s bar and grill.’ Erning Isip, the AMA Computer College student, timidly approaches the girl. Scratching the back of his head, he says: ‘Miss, please miss, give me autograph?’”

  *

  From the window you can now see Manila. Rain streaks sideways across the glass. Suddenly the plane dips. Our stomachs squeeze into our throats. Passengers squeal, straighten, clasp armrests tightly. Many double-check their seat belts, more than a few pull out rosaries and begin moving their fingers in time with their lips. Fuck. I hope it’s not a water landing. The pilot announces: “Cabin crew, take your seats.” The plane steadies. Its interior lights dim. Muzak standards are played from the PA system: a tinkling piano version of the theme from The Godfather. The only person unfazed is my seatmate, who pulls out my bottle of alcohol disinfectant, takes off his socks, and starts slathering his feet, holding the plastic bottle between his teeth as he gets between his toes with all the fingers of both hands. He slurps to keep his saliva in. So much for my bottle of alcogel. The plane shakes violently again.