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  To make Crispin aware of the boundaries of our friendship, I often spoke of Madison. About, for example, how upset she was that we weren’t leaving, about her behavior after she wrote her e-mails declining the African opportunities. The hour of our planned departure to the heart of darkness had come and gone. To make it up to her I’d cooked a romantic tofurkey dinner. We ate in silence. Then, after watching the season finale of Survivor, which I’d thoughtfully taped for her on our old VHS recorder, Madison blew up. Crispin listened kindly to such stories, though he declined to offer any advice.

  I eventually decided he was more avuncular than pederastic. At times he was even fatherly, which made me officially feel sorry for him. He would have been a good father. At least I think so. He seemed to understand my thirst for those obscure things that I didn’t yet possess as part of me. The things that mattered in the grand scheme. You see, Grapes had always been all about the details, results, recognition. I was surprised to discover that Crispin possessed a gentle tolerance, though only after he convinced himself of his faith in you. He was kind in the way only the ungenerous can be. As we became closer, my opinion, while not usually accepted as correct, was increasingly solicited. And dogsbodying for him wasn’t difficult, even if he often asked me to do tasks like shine his wingtips or trim his bonsai trees.

  *

  As the cane fields blur along the road to Swanee, my mind goes to my mother. She was born near here, and so was I. In a way, I’m like a salmon coming home to spawn, at a point of origin so alien it feels like my birth certificate was false. But with very little imagination, I can see the sort of life she had, for Bacolod is a place of constancies. That must be reassuring to those who live and die here.

  My life’s own only constant has been the secondhand memories of her and Dad, filed inside me like vintage postcards in a curio shop. Wish we were with you, the messages on the back would have said, scrawled in an obsolete style of longhand. What passes for my roots are old moments I did not witness, memorialized in mirrored frames on my grandmother’s baby grand piano. Mom in Venice, smoking a cigarette while leaning on the rail of a vaporetto; on that trip she’d spent too much on antique masks and she and Dad had fought—he knew he’d been vicious, and went secretly back to the shop to buy her the most expensive one. My father at a massive rally, standing on one of those dilapidated tractors donated by U.S. aid agencies, his head back and arms spread wide like the Oblation statue at the University of the Philippines—the eve of his first election victory, a young man at the cusp of his dreams. Both my parents dancing a waltz at a wedding in the garden of an ancestral home somewhere on this island, Dad whispering something in her ear, Mom pulling him close and laughing as the crowd behind them watched—this is how I best like to remember my parents.

  This place, too, is where two of Crispin’s lives began. The first, his birth. The second, his independence. It was 1975, a year made for those romantic tragedies distrusted by the moneyed, loved honestly by the poor, and watched guiltily by the middle class when seen in soap-opera melodramas: Bacolod families tottering on the brink, squabbling like dogs over a carcass, suddenly renewing their faith in God, waiting for the market to right as if they were dancers looking to the sky for rain.

  It’s an intriguing scene: Sugar, like mountains of gold dust, filling bathtubs, ballrooms, garages, pelota courts. Junior standing at the front door, screaming that any discussion of his marital indiscretions only hurts Leonora more. Crispin turning his back, hefting his suitcase onto his shoulder and setting out toward the dusty road away from Swanee, his father having refused to let anyone drive his son to town. The windowpanes trimmed with plastic holly, a painted plywood Santa and Rudolph on the roof. Narcisito and Lena peeking like children from an upstairs window, faces twisted and wetted by their impotence. Crispin’s receding figure wrinkling in the yellow heat, pausing to look one last time at his siblings, his childhood paradise, the swimming pool brimmed with sugar, the now empty doorway where nobody else had stood to see him off.

  That’s when the family started to fall to pieces.

  3

  From Marcel Avellaneda’s blog, “The Burley Raconteur,” December 2, 2002:

  And the latest scuttlebutt. The President’s speech yesterday to members of the Combined Military Forces at Fort Bonifacio was disrupted when twenty-six hecklers were arrested and charged with “scandal” and “alarm.” They were mauled by crowds as they were brought into the precinct office, though none suffered significant injuries. Read the full story in Ricardo Roxas IV’s blog, My Daily Vitamins, here.

  In other news, the President’s Unanimity walk was again nixed this morning due to the unseasonal typhoon conditions. Politicians and dignitaries waited for rain to subside while photographers snapped them yawning, texting, picking their teeth, and looking at the sky. This is the twelfth Unanimity procession canceled. It has tongues wagging that while the President’s national Unanimity party does include powerful lackeys and cronies, even God and Mother Nature have cast their lot with members of GLOO.

  Speaking of GLOO, there has been much comment from members of the GLorious OppOsition party, particularly from Senator Nuredin Bansamoro, admonishing the wagging tongues for hyping up threats of an imminent coup. Bansamoro, looking self-assured and presidentiable, said “a coup is only likely if launched by the government as a diversionary tactic.” He also said that “a house divided upon itself is like a mental patient” and “any armed conflict would further discourage Ikea from opening shop.” This from a man who is alleged to have made his fortune as the mastermind behind the kidnapping fad of the last decade. Read the full insider’s story in Cece Cebu’s Syutukil blog. Also catch the funny, unauthorized photographs of pols milling about looking at rain clouds in Bayani-ako’s Bayan Bayani.

  Some posts from the message boards below:

  —That’s 2 funny! ([email protected])

  —Buy cellphones at CellShocked.com.ph! All unlocked. Authentic Louis Vuitton reprod belt case free with every purchase. ([email protected])

  —I think Estregan’s smarter than he looks. ([email protected])

  —Does anyone know what the 26 hecklers said? Wld luv to hear it. ([email protected])

  —Nuredin Bansamoro scares me. Could his Muslim faith link him to the bombings in Mindanao? ([email protected])

  —Miracle, don’t you know that Bansamoro is famous for not allowing his faith to enter politics? As he’s famously said: “My religion and government are forever separate. Neither will they be in opposition nor in complicity.” And his track record has proven it so. ([email protected])

  —Who cares about all this shet anyway? You guys are wasting ur time posting on these blogs. ([email protected])

  —Buy cellphones at CellShocked.com.ph! All unlocked. Authentic Louis Vuitton reprod belt case free with every purchase. ([email protected])

  —Buy cellphones at CellShocked.com.ph! All unlocked. Authentic Louis Vuitton reprod belt case free with every purchase. ([email protected])

  —Hey, what’s going on with your blog, Marcel? Backchannel me and I’ll tell you how to fix the spammers. ([email protected])

  —Thanks Linuxlover. I’ve fixed it. It should be okay now. ([email protected])

  —OMG, dont by from CellShocked. Its a total rip! Da LV belt carrier s like plastic & it peels rly easy. Caveat emptor! Thats empty cave, 2 u idiots. ([email protected])

  —Has anyone heard about what that starlet Vita Nova is saying? I got a text message on my cell this a.m. about how she’s got dirt on Estregan. Something about a sex tape. ([email protected])

  —Buy cellphones at CellShocked.com.ph! All unlocked. Authentic Louis Vuitton reprod belt case free with every purchase. ([email protected])

  *

  Confidently ascertaining the facts of Salvador’s childhood is impossible. His own autobiography is famously at odds with his father’s much-read reminisc
ences, which were serialized in 1993 in The Philippine Gazette and later made into the PhilFirstTV Channel mini-series, Confessions of a Statesman: The True-to-Life Story of Narciso “Junior” Salvador.

  According to Autoplagiarist and other sources, Crispin Salvador’s childhood was almost entirely devoid of his father’s affection, yet absolutely filled with his father’s politics. He was, after all, the golden child of Junior Salvador, and before young Crispin could speak or toddle he was already branded “the future president for a future nation.” In the era between the Philippine-American War and the Second World War, such effusive patriotism was not uncommon; in addition to the timeless jockeying for position and influence, there abounded, in many circles, a persistent preoccupation with independence. In those years, the young Salvador children rarely saw their father, whose position in the Philippine Legislature required his presence in Manila; his burgeoning rivalry with the fiery nationalist Respeto Reyes took all his attention.

  For Junior, the life away from his family suited his wayward nature—Manila in the 1930s, after all, was a place of energy and intrigue, a spicy stew of global influences, in which those who lobbied for independence were considered by certain cognoscenti to be fighting the noble and ever loyal fight, even as they were engaged in necessary compromise.

  It was a fine time in one of the finest cities of the world. On the streets, enterprise and history vibrated together, and perspiring archetypes—businessmen, charlatans, refugees, fortune hunters—came from around the globe and thrived: Jews fleeing Europe, Germans operating a glassworks, Portuguese gamblers from Macau, Chinese coolies from Fujian province, Japanese laborers, Indian moneylenders, Moro imams with scraggly beards, Latin American industrialists in fine linen suits, Spanish insulares born on the islands and peninsulares born in the mother country, Dutch merchants, even the descendants of Sepoy mutineers from the two years Britain ruled our archipelago. Most brash among the immigrants were the Americans, some outrightly imperious, many well-meaning, all inspired by William McKinley’s “benevolent assimilation”—civil servants, missionaries, teachers, soldiers, entrepreneurs, wives. Imported from the far corners of the planet were the latest practices and fashions, each unerringly seized by the locals and turned into a virtual parody by overly vigorous execution. Junior, with his talent for languages, thrived in this city. He was often spotted at the Polo or the Army and Navy clubs sporting a new hat, or photographed hobnobbing with such imposing figures as General MacArthur, whom he visited often in the Manila Hotel, bearing gifts.

  But when she was pregnant with Crispin, Leonora gave Junior an ultimatum: Leave his Manila mistress, a beautiful minor actress in the fledgling Philippine film industry, and spend more time in Bacolod. Otherwise Leonora would leave with the children. Whether from the impetus of love or an aversion to scandal, Junior dedicated more attention to his family in the province, and Leonora, at the start of her third trimester, took to accompanying him on his trips to Manila. As a result, after Crispin was born, his position as a “re conciliation child” forced on him intermittent bouts of—when his parents were home—suffocating attention, overstarched hand-me-down sailor suits, mollycoddling, and—when his parents were absent—liberating stretches in which to play with his siblings and spend time with his tutor and beloved gardener. Even Junior’s distant attitude toward his children was influenced by Leonora, who made up for her general lack of maternal warmth by hogging the kids whenever her husband was present, doting on them so sporadically it left them bewildered and forever cynical of her intentions. Indeed, Crispin’s first memories were of being “a performing monkey.” In Autoplagiarist, he describes being made to “sit up as straight as a stone saint and recite the infernal ABC’s for my father, then the prayer to Saint Crispin for Mama. More often than not, errors resulted in their disappointment in me and, of course, scoldings for my tutor and nanny and siblings—for their supposed neglect of my education.”

  It was the first of many incidents, however, that cracked the struggling idyll. One dry-season evening during the hottest week in memory, as the Salvador children slept, Crispin’s sister, Lena, was awakened by the opening of their bedroom door. She saw the shape of her father’s form outlined against the light in the hallway, and, according to her brother’s account of the event, she “could hear the sobbing screams from our mother’s bedroom, her doorknob rattling desperately against its lock.” Lena, Salvador wrote, heard her father’s breathing—“an unforgettable, savage sound”—and smelled the gin. Salvador described her as watching in both fear and relief as their father bypassed her to stand over the sleeping Narcisito. Distant down the hall, their mother banged and screamed. Then Lena saw her father “brandishing his rattan riding crop, saw it held high above his head, heard it come down repeatedly until poor Narcisito cried out for mercy, witnessed it strike again and again until our brother fell into whimpering silence.”

  —from the biography in progress, Crispin Salvador:

  Eight Lives Lived, by Miguel Syjuco

  *

  After my parents died, we kids were flown from a Manila polluted by tragedy to the happy, fresh air of the Vancouver airport, the grandparents we hardly knew waiting for us in Arrivals. I remember, slightly, the terror we kids had faced getting on that airplane, our awareness of its heavy fallibility all too fresh in our minds. I recall, vaguely, the grief I held on to during that seventeen-hour flight—though sometimes I feel that, in honor of my parents, its memory should be sharper. Instead, it is the happiness that followed that fills my recollections: the glow of fresh paint in the brand-new house my grandparents bought to fit us all; the breakfasts in the kitchen by the big window from where we’d watch crows gather on the telephone lines; our first exuberant encounter with snow; Granma’s bedtime stories of Grapes’s vast political dreams, the excitement of the rallies, his long campaigns, the glory that would one day come again; Grapes sleeping the days away to spend wakeful nights that were days somewhere else—a parallel unseen dimension we were told was still our home, though we slowly disbelieved it.

  To catch up on having missed our childhoods, Grapes and Granma let us camp on the floor of their bedroom, let us skip more school than they should have. I knew my way through the darkness of their room, blacked out completely from the sun, guided by Grapes’s snores or the lingering scent Granma left in bed—Oil of Olay and cigarettes. When Grapes awoke, I’d climb into bed happily, to walk on his back, or hide with him beneath the covers—soldiers in a foxhole evading the Vietcong. At night, we made bullets in the garage: still with me is the tinkle of the machine that tumbled the copper casings, the smell of lead bars and the mystery of bullet molds, the satisfaction of pressing a lead slug in place. With Granma, I read aloud till it was she who fell asleep beside me. I broke her cigarettes so that she’d quit. I imagined throwing tantrums each time I heard her fighting with Grapes; my wails would have outdone her screams and accusations of broken promises, of contrary dreams fueled both by her hunger for peace and by his frustration that he would likely die, unfulfilled, in exile. But I never had the guts to create a diversion. I didn’t know yet the collateral damage of one vitality succumbing to another; even if I knew that nobody should see their grandmother cry.

  Then we kids were driven from our warm house to the sad, damp air of the Vancouver airport as our grandparents checked in their hoard of bags—enough to last them the months they’d be gone. Their subsequent trips were longer than the first: to see what it was like post-Marcos, to see if Grapes could return to politics, to see to the zipper business, to run in the gubernatorial election. It was always the same: from the huge, cold windows we’d wave at the airplane being towed slowly backward, wondering if Grapes and Granma could still see us from their seats. We’d wave until it took off, until it was a speck in the sky, and wave some more, just in case.

  We’d return to our house on The Square, the one tour buses stopped in front of; to the home filled with gold reclining Buddhas and dark wooden furniture that smelled of pol
ish, with a Xerox and a telex, with a room just for Grapes’s suits, with a treadmill and a massage chair and one of those contraptions that inverted Grapes for circulation and posture. His presence was more ubiquitous because of his absence. We were too busy missing him to miss our father.

  My older siblings became my parents.

  My eldest brother, Jesu, with his Inuit moccasins and electric guitars, taught by example the concept of cool. With him, I discovered the world beyond books. We camped in the backyard, hiked mountains, assembled a remote-control plane. It was he who held the back of my bike seat the afternoon my training wheels were removed, his arm holding me straight so that I could shoot off free for the first time.

  My eldest sister, Claire, the natural mother, was used to, and therefore intent on, being everyone’s favorite. I would sit with her at her dresser, watch her put on makeup, pleased when she made up my face with a fake shiner. When she giggled to her boyfriend quietly on the kitchen telephone, she made us younger ones look forward to finally being in love.

  My next older brother, Mario, who wrestled with me and Jerald, was never too grown up to make believe with us at being André the Giant and the Iron Sheik. He’d ring me from our second phone line, pretending to be Irene Cara, making me blush until I cried. Many a morning I’d tiptoe into his room, dodging socks and tissues and tennis balls, to wake him to bring me to school, knowing that later his fingers around the back of my neck would half guide me, half carry me to the bus.