Forgiving Imelda Marcos, page 10
“Did you have a good rest, ma’am?”
We were back on the local road, passing by the wet market, where a crowd had begun to buy vegetables for dinner.
“Very good,” she said.
I checked the rearview mirror and saw that Mrs. Aquino did indeed look better. There was some rosiness to her cheeks. And she had found a paisley scarf with which to wrap her hair, giving her even more color.
“It’s funny,” she said, “how firm the mattress is upstairs. And to think I used to sleep on it without complaining.”
“You made a lot of sacrifices, ma’am, in the past.”
“Oh, I wasn’t trying to be a martyr. I just didn’t realize how bad the bed was back then. If I’d been a princess in that old tale, I’d never have found the pea. You know that story, Lito?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “To be honest, I’m not a big fan of it. I never understood what kind of a queen would hide pieces of food to test somebody.”
“Well, I think the queen was trying to see if the princess was real.”
“And why is that needed, ma’am? Why did a princess have to marry her son? Isn’t a good heart enough? Besides, it’s a waste of food, if you ask me. And it probably attracted a lot of ants.”
Mrs. Aquino laughed. “I think the point might also be about honesty, Lito. Not claiming to be someone you’re not.”
Clearly our conversation had gotten off on the wrong track. And I had only myself to blame, being so opinionated at the wrong time.
“I guess so, ma’am.”
“You know who the queen in the story reminds me of?” she asked.
“Imelda Marcos,” I almost blurted, which just shows you how compromised my mind was that day. I said, “No, ma’am.”
“My mother-in-law,” she said, and it was my turn to chuckle.
“I know what you mean, ma’am. She was, well, shall we say, very particular about things.”
“That’s putting it mildly. If there was one reason why I tossed and turned in those days, it wouldn’t have been the mattress. It would’ve been wondering if I’d forgotten to unplug all the appliances or made sure all the windows were properly closed. But that’s also why the house was kept in such good condition.”
“Now that you mention it, ma’am, I remembered something else while I was at the house earlier,” I said. “Doña Aurora was the one who interviewed me for the job many years ago.”
“That’s right,” said Mrs. Aquino. “Before we took you to Manila.”
“And she did actually put me to a kind of test.”
“Really, now?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, I remember that day there was a plate of fried bananas on the table, which the maid had placed there when our interview started. Sometime in the middle of it, Doña Aurora suddenly stood up and said she had to use the bathroom. She told me that, while waiting for her, I shouldn’t be shy to eat the fried bananas on the table. You know I don’t refuse food when it’s offered to me. As soon as I picked up the fork, I noticed that lying next to the bananas was a mound of loose change. It was just scattered about every which way, such that I don’t think anybody would’ve noticed if a few coins were to go missing. Of course, I wasn’t familiar with Doña Aurora back then. Only afterward did I realize how excessively clean she was. She’d never have tolerated such a mess. I imagine that after the interview, ma’am, she counted every last centavo to make sure I hadn’t pinched one.”
“I’ve never heard that story,” Mrs. Aquino said. “But sounds like it’s worked to our advantage, Lito. We ended up hiring an honest man, didn’t we?”
“Thanks, ma’am. That means a lot.”
“We have Mama to thank for that,” Mrs. Aquino said. “I hope she rests in peace.”
Looking back, that compliment should’ve served as the perfect springboard to bring up any topic I desired. I could’ve asked, very casually, what Mrs. Aquino’s kids might make of our trip to see Imelda Marcos. I could have aired my concern about being caught in the middle of things. “Lito,” I’d imagine Mrs. Aquino saying. “Just leave it all to me. I’ll take care of you.”
But I hesitated. For I’ve never felt comfortable campaigning on my own behalf. That was true then and it still is.
And so the pause that followed, which started as only a fraction of a second, stretched out into a silence. Where it would normally have been awkward not to follow someone’s comment with a reply, the delay dragged on, such that puncturing the silence instead became the ultimate act of courage.
I adjusted my seat and allowed my mind to uncoil.
* * *
“What should we do with Lito?”
“I told him Mom’s been acting funny lately, but he still drove her to Baguio without telling us.”
“You can’t really fault him. He was probably just following orders.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“Anyway, she doesn’t really need her own driver. What are we keeping him for?”
“Kris, don’t say that. He’s worked for us as long as you’ve been alive. He’s family.”
“Sorry, but I’m just being practical. Maybe we can send him off to work for Pinky.”
“Pinky doesn’t need another driver.”
“Well, if he stays with Mom, it might happen again.”
“No, I’ll talk to him. I’ll make sure he understands.”
“We’ve tried that already.”
“Guys, what about the other issue? What do we do?”
“What issue?”
“The thing with Imelda.”
“I mean, obviously we need to keep it a secret. Nobody can find out. You’re running for office. What if Imelda uses it to her own advantage? What if she uses Mom for good publicity?”
“Maybe you’re overthinking this.”
“What I know is that it’s not right. They’ve been unrepentant all these years and have denied doing anything wrong. And now we’re supposed to be on good terms with them?”
* * *
“Lito? Did you hear me?”
“Sorry, ma’am.”
“I was saying it’s a little warm in here.”
“I’ll turn up the air conditioner right away, ma’am.”
We had just passed the town of Gerona and were approaching Moncada. I estimated we had about two more hours to go before Baguio. The land was flat here—mostly farms and sugarcane fields. There were only a few trees to serve as shelter from the sun’s glare.
“Is that better, ma’am?” I hesitated, then turned the air conditioner up one more notch.
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
But something occurred to me then: I hadn’t actually finished refilling the radiator at the gas station that morning. I checked the temperature of the car. The needle was right in the middle of HOT and COLD.
Now, if you own a car, you’ll know this doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Some cars like a tease, cranking the needle all the way up to the center before graciously staying there. Others, like Mrs. Aquino’s SUV, are more predictable, content to stay in the cooler zone. You just have to be very familiar with the particular behavior of your car.
Unfortunately, it had been so long since I’d driven the Crown that I couldn’t recall for the life of me how it usually behaved. The warning light hadn’t yet turned on. So I decided we’d take our chances, to make up for lost time. I pressed on the gas.
We traveled only for about two more kilometers before the needle peaked. The next thing I saw was smoke rising out of the hood.
7
“THE QUESTION BEFORE us, and for many generations before us, is the question of inequality,” Ka Noel said. “Why is it so persistent?”
It was dim inside his hut. The one source of light was Ka Noel, who stood in front of me, holding an antique brass lamp close, as if afraid I’d snatch it and discover what to do with the fire.
I said, “Because some people have more things and others less?”
“But why is that? What happened in the first place?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe you’re just born into it.”
“Or, to be more precise,” Ka Noel said, “you’re born into a certain kind of family. And we don’t get to choose what kind.” He picked up a book and, after leafing through its pages, started to read: “The history of all existing society is the history of class struggles…”
This was the start of what Ka Noel called my “education,” which I did not ask for and I considered, back then, a serious waste of time. I only followed him because he didn’t give me a choice. I answered when he asked me questions, because I didn’t want to offend him. But as he droned on, my eyes wandered off to explore the interior of his hut.
A tapestry hung on the wall, covering the window frames. Animals and flowers adorned the patterns; water buffaloes, simplified into outlines, grazed on needles of grass. The thickness of the fabric was what had made the hut so comfortable and fuzzy, I thought, but I wondered if Ka Noel took it down at the height of the dry season. I’d find out, later, that he did not.
“In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves. In the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs. In almost all of these classes, again, we have subordinate gradations…”
Wood carvings of a certain potbellied figure—I think it was a fertility god—were displayed on the shelves along with Ka Noel’s books. The largest of these, its chest jutting out, sat close to the floor on top of a black trunk, which looked rather simple in comparison to Ka Noel’s other belongings. A silver latch and a big padlock on the trunk glinted as the lamplight moved over them. I quickly returned my gaze to Ka Noel.
“Do you care to read some passages, Lito?” he said. I shook my head. He handed me the book anyway and pointed to a paragraph. He leaned over to share the light, hesitating for a moment before sitting next to me on the couch.
I read aloud, slowly, and with some help from him: “The bourgeoisie … wherever it has got the upper hand … has put an end to all feudal … patriarchal … idyllic relations … It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties”—he corrected my pronunciation of motley and I repeated after him—“that bound man to his … ‘natural superiors’ … and has left remaining no other nexus … between man and man than naked self-interest…” I smelled menthol, and could feel the warm air of his breath. “Should I go on?” I asked, and he nodded.
“It has drowned … the most heavenly ecstasies … of religious fervor … of philistine sentimentalism”—I slowed down on these last words so that he could accompany me—“in the icy water of … egotistical calculation.”
“Very good,” he said. “Now can you finish the rest all by yourself?”
I felt the side of his thigh slightly touching mine before it shifted. I continued to read, “In one word, for exploitation … veiled by religious and political illusions … it has substituted naked, shameless, direct … brutal exploitation.”
* * *
This was to become my new modus with Ka Noel.
Whenever I didn’t understand a word, a concept, or a theory, we’d stop, and he’d guide me toward the answer rather than telling me outright. He liked to ask: “What does that word sound like? Does it remind you of anything? If you have to guess, what do you think it means?” He was a very patient man, and gentle, too. He never became upset with me, or anyone, for that matter, as far as I ever saw.
Once, after lending me the Bible and The Communist Manifesto, he said, “These two books, Lito, are the only two books you’ll ever need in your life. Commit as much of them as you can to memory.”
I told him, “I don’t believe in memorizing. I heard Einstein never memorized anything he could just look up. A waste of effort, not to mention brain storage.”
“Well,” he said with a wink, “if you could prove to me that you’re using your brain as much as Einstein, I promise I’ll leave you alone.”
I sat down at my desk one evening with the books Ka Noel had lent me. I grudgingly tried to read and memorize passages, first from The Communist Manifesto and then from the Bible, as the former was several folds skinnier, though not much more entertaining, in my opinion.
As I pored over them, I remembered the day my father and I went to the café by the park, when he took me from the boarding school and first told me about Ka Noel. I remembered how my father had clutched the same two books, stopping every now and then as he read to mark some pages with a pen. I wondered what had been so interesting to him. Did he have to endure the same set of questions, and what were his answers? I started to feel a lump in my throat as I wondered about where my father was and how he was doing. I needed to be more like him, I thought, so cool and composed. I picked up the books again and continued reading. When he comes back, I vowed, I’ll have a real conversation with him. I’ll talk to him about the books we’ll read and I will make him proud.
* * *
I met with Ka Anna often in the mornings, at her garden, or by the creek if there was laundry to do. She’d ask me about the progress of my education, and I was never sure how interested she really was. There were times I even thought she might be mocking me with her replies.
I told her, for example, that I’d found The Communist Manifesto to be strangely similar to the Old Testament, because there was a lot more anger and spite, more resorting to violence, and a promise for a day of reckoning.
“Oh really?” she said.
Whereas the New Testament, I found, was mostly calmer, more graceful, as if all the rage had already been spent, and God had mellowed quite a bit in his old age.
“Oh really,” she said again.
“What do you think?” I finally asked her. We were beating jeans against a bed of rocks.
“About what?” she asked.
“Those ideas,” I said. “Or anything else.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” she said, “there are only two kinds of Communists. Thinkers and doers. The thinkers are the ones who come up with all sorts of theories and grand ideas. The doers, well, they do everything else. They grow the food and they clean the house and they even fight the battles. Except they never get to write any of the books, now, do they? Not even the rules we’re supposed to follow. ‘Is that fair?’ you might ask. Obviously, I’m not a thinker.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“You’re the thinker,” she said. “You tell me.”
“Am I a thinker?” I said.
“Questions, questions, questions. You’re beginning to sound like him.”
“Ka Noel? Is he a thinker or a doer?”
“Ay!” she said, throwing up her hands. “Look what you’ve done!” There was a tear—a small one—near the zipper of the pants she was washing. “You’re giving me a headache.”
I went back to quietly scrubbing my laundry, pouring a handful of lye, then rinsing it off in the cold current. I took up my bamboo stick and swatted the dirt that remained, repeating the process with the lye.
“Don’t get me started with him,” Ka Anna said after a while. “That man is whatever he thinks he is.”
“I don’t actually know him that well,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Let’s hope it stays that way.”
“Why? What do you mean?”
A screeching noise came from a tree on the other side of the creek. Ka Anna turned around and looked up. “Silly bird. Why do you have to be so loud?” she said. “Anyway, we better get on it. I need to head back before lunchtime.”
“Can I ask just one more thing?” I said. “Does Ka Noel have, you know, some kind of special powers?”
“That’s what they say.”
“Have you ever seen it?”
“Me?” she said. “Oh, I try to stay far away from him when he starts doing any funny business. Besides, he’s got a lot of fans already. One less person in the crowd doesn’t make a difference, does it?” She paused. “Now, between the two of us, there’s something you should know.”
“What is it?”
She cleared her throat. “Even with all those people around him, admiring him and obeying his every command, I think that, deep down, that man is really a lonely man. And believe me,” she said, “a lonely man is the most dangerous kind of man there is.”
* * *
From Feudalism, we progressed to Colonialism and Imperialism.
I was eating lunch with Ka Noel inside his hut. Lunch was always an unpredictable affair, because Ka Noel depended on the villagers’ donations for most of his food. On one hand, the surprise was part of the fun. On the other, it was often the source of agony. That day, Ka Noel opened a can of sardines to add to the boiled squash we received.
“What the friars did was unforgivable,” he said. “They parceled out land among themselves, enslaved us, took the women as they pleased.” He continued with the theme of tyranny, talking about how the government of Spain, even though it had a proper constitution, was bribed by the priests to look the other way. The friars had so much power, Ka Noel said, that there was one time, after the governor-general who was appointed to the Philippines got into a feud with the archbishop of Manila, when the archbishop and his men stormed the palace and killed the governor in cold blood.
I looked down to see my plate of rice oozing with tomato sauce from the sardines.
“So if you’re wondering why you can’t speak Spanish, Lito, even if we were colonized for almost four hundred years, it’s because the friars didn’t want to educate us. For them, our ignorance was their power.”
“Oh really,” I said.
Ka Noel shifted in his chair. “What’s wrong?”
I said nothing. I moved the rice grains around with my fork, piling them into mounds, then crushing those mounds. That was when he touched my wrist.
