Three Propositions of the White Wind

Luna Sicat-Cleto
Translated by Bernard Capinpin

First Proposition: The white wind arrives once the glare is noticed

On the chance that you’d sit next to her on the bus while tangled in traffic, you would only have to wait for the signal that would prompt her to reminisce whenever the vehicle would pass by a glass building or a large mirror. It could also come from foil, or even from the tint of cars. Or from the ray of sunlight reflected off the traffic light, or from shades. It only needs to be blinding. Anything that shimmers. That is a portal for her to reminisce about how she was once courted by a Diwata. Everything began with the sleeve of her khaki jacket. One night, she hung the jacket near her bed. The next morning, she noticed that the sleeves were tucked in the jacket’s pockets—had the jacket been cold? The next thing she noticed was somebody’s hiss whenever she was alone in the Music Room. Psst. Psst. The Music Room was at the end of a row of classrooms. To reach it, you had to get past a labyrinth. Psst. Psst. Why was it that whenever she would turn around or look for the source of the hissing, she would find no one. Not a scuttle, not even a giggle. Only a whistle, but she was not used to being whistled at.

The Music Room was at the very end. Right in the middle, a dead end. This was the most spacious room in the group of cottages. It was located in the highest cottage, the one farthest from the road where only three cars ever passed. Stored in the room’s partitioned locker were all kinds of instruments. It had a display case that held instruments too expensive for students to use. The ethnic instruments came from different places, and it was nice to think that they were donated. But it was more likely that they had been bought or collected as debts from homes that were reluctant to part with them, as they were heirlooms from their ancestors. But that’s just between us. Ms. Cacawasan kept the key that was used to lock up the instruments, it hung on her hips wider than a clothes iron.

Neatly placed in the cabinets were instruments like the violin, bandurria, guitar, flute, and clarinet. These were separate from the students’ personal items. There was an agreement that whenever a student needed to use an instrument, he would need to return it after. Everything was jotted down in a logbook, everything had a receipt. All the instruments were cataloged, each having a specific number. They had to be inspected first, before being put away. Every year, the instruments were inventoried, and during budget time, the Music Department made a wish list for a new batch if new instruments were needed. Each instrument was expensive, the school never held out on these things. Like luggage, each had tags from the airports and countries they had flown from. In another stockroom, broken instruments were dumped.

Actually, Bayang thought, the Music Room was a mausoleum. The corpses of instruments only reanimated when played. But she also thought that the place seeped the negative vibes from the instruments it held hostage—the reason being that they were not with their proper owners. Many of the instruments were donations from famous musicians, solicited, for example, from Madame’s countless cultural tours. Some came from Ukraine, Laos, Vietnam, and Liberia. Some had been bought from pawnshops in India, Portugal, Germany, and Nepal. The local and indigenous instruments had their own sellers who more often than not were Madame’s acquaintances.

Bayang thought that those corpses had their own past lives: trees from a forest, the skin and hair of beasts, the ribs and palms of plants, the scales of animals. They were no different from the taxidermies of Sir Mael. There were eccentric instruments that paid no heed to the rhythms of silence and noise. Like that kudyapi. Like a lousy lover, it couldn’t be depended on for many things, especially not for the very thing that had led you to first try strumming it.

Only one person had handled it before. Only one brave enough to play it, and he was a famous musician. It was used in a brief one-time concert. The musician was headed to a music festival in Bath, London, and his visit to the mountain was part of the exchange that funded his trip. He was given a travel grant, but only for his airfare, and he was left to shoulder his living expenses on his own. The musician felt insulted but didn’t show it. His numerous medals, hits, and popularity were nothing to the Minister of Culture (appointed by a military official who had become the president in a coup). He mentioned this in his spiel. The audience seemed friendly. Though they were only in their teens, they recognized the musician because Bayang had included him in their lectures on popular music. And even though she wouldn’t admit it in front of the musician, she had a complete collection of his CDs. From the songs that seemed to have been recorded in a bathroom. Back when the musician was still famous for giving voice to the grievances of the farmers and workers, and the songs were used in rallies. Up to his albums concerning environmental protection. The musician had just released a new album, which Bayang bought but didn’t like. Was it because he sounded too much like the persona of some soppy hit? Nothing seemed to have changed in the songs’ arrangements. They only included a sitar, a hegalong, a marimba, and a geomungo, turning them into what sounded like World Music. Perhaps she was searching for something new, something that hadn’t been heard yet. She hoped now that the musician would once again have his spark back.

In the middle of the musician’s concert, the kudyapi’s string suddenly snapped. A cable from the soundboard was unplugged and the feedback shrilled. The audience covered their ears, many grimaced in pain. Bayang was still in the middle of singing along. Before the string snapped, she could clearly hear the breathing of the one beside her, the shuffling of feet, even someone who had only thought to unwrap a polvoron. After the snap came the chatter, whisperings, talk from walkie-talkies. The musician smiled, just smiled. The damage control was quick, they were able to find a canned recording of the same instrument. But it sounded off. After a few jokes, which the audience readily consumed, the kudyapi’s sound was taken over by the sound of an electronic hegalong that belonged to an alumnus in the audience. The concert ended without a fuss. But it became a matter of conversation between the musician and Bayang behind the stage.

“That was close,” he said.

“You handled it very well. You toned down the melody, didn’t you? And your backup picked it up quickly.”

“And that was all you.”

“And the young musician.”

“Right. But you know, I’ve noticed something with that kudyapi. Where did it come from?”

“They say that it was an heirloom of a datu from Maranaw passed on to his clan.”

“Am not surprised,” he said in English. “Was that part of your haul from Mindanao?”

“I couldn’t say. It was just part of the set, together with the kulintang, agung, etc. We’ve been able to use the kulintang and agung, but the kudyapi, not yet.”

“Why?”

“We’re afraid that it might break.”

“Oh, so I used forbidden lab equipment.”

“Hey, that’s an acknowledgment of your status.”

The musician shrugged it off. “We must have a connection with the instruments we play, shouldn’t we?”

“Of course.” The musician lit a cigarette and offered one to Bayang.

The woman smiled. “Sorry, but I’m trying to quit.”

“Really?” Pause. “Why?”

Bayang didn’t respond. Her companion nodded. He snatched the cigarette from her mouth and then returned the cigarette pack to his belt bag. Bayang was slightly surprised by the act but oddly, let it pass. “Hey, don’t you dare underestimate your voice. You have a wonderful voice. It has a quality that I’ve long been searching for—that was Lolita Carbon’s voice before it cracked.”

“You. I should report you.”

“Why, did I say something?”

“Lolita Carbon was an icon just as you are.”

“Why? Are you two close?

“No. But it’s subtly ageist. And sexist.”

The musician laughed. He looked back. Perhaps she might have turned him off? Was accepting the cigarette a form of solidarity? Was the comparison to Lolita Carbon a compliment? Wasn’t this what the honor code meant, that you respect your body, especially when you use it to play?

This was what her strict piano teacher had inculcated in her about her hands: she shouldn’t neglect to care for her hands or let them tremble. She shouldn’t do the laundry with her hands, she shouldn’t cook. She shouldn’t become a domestic goddess, haha. Even volleyball, which she enjoyed, she gave up. She was a silkworm fattened to spit out saliva, becoming useless after forming a cocoon. Child, those are your gifts, she remembered her father saying to her. Her father himself had chided her to obey her maestra’s orders. But what were flawless hands for if you couldn’t grasp what you wanted to hold in your palms, things other than the piano’s keys? (What is it, Bayang? Is your brain still inside your skull, or is it already in the wash to be scrubbed thoroughly?) Bayang shuddered at the thought. Were her hands really that valuable? Could she turn her back on them? She should. Could she? Definitely.

The musician shared many anecdotes, and Bayang wasn’t sure if there were parts she’d missed. Now there was a young woman dancing on the stage, followed by her company. She wore an Ifugao costume, tapis bought from under a bridge in Quiapo, with beige nylon pockets, making it appear like skin. Along with her necklace made from puka shells and coconut husks carved to look like a wild boar’s fangs, there were small pots balanced on the dancers’ heads.

“Haven’t you ever wondered how authentic the dances we see are?”

“I think it’s naive to assume they are authentic at all. We’re not in Mt. Kiangan,” said the musician.

“You’re right. Because if we were there right now, there would be a wild boar being roasted and we would be dancing like this,” and Bayang copied the dance step that imitated a bird’s flight. The musician joined in the joke, and they were already on the stage before they were pulled into the dance by the women. The audience seemed to be infected by their energy. Everyone joined in. Sir Giacomo, the faculty, even Mang Lino and Ms. Praxi. All of them aside from Finn, who continued to quaff down lambanog, staring at her. Was he jealous? Bayang smiled at him. Finn looked away and turned to another one of their co-faculty, the long-legged Glenda. Bayang pretended not to see. She let herself enjoy the dance. When it was over, the musician gave his hand to guide her down the stage. She didn’t remember Finn having looked away.

“As I was saying, I feel something in that kudyapi. You know? As though you opened an old refrigerator while your feet were wet. To be electrocuted by that would not be enough to kill you. But it would be striking enough for you to remember having been electrocuted.”

Why was the musician talking to her like this? Why were they chatting about electricity, vibes from wood, strings, and keyboards? She was uneasy with where the conversation was going. She wanted to head back to the cottage. She didn’t mind not having to say goodbye to Finn. But she had one more glass from the punch bowl.

“One time, a lute player from China told me an anecdote. How he foolishly allowed another musician to use his lute, and it was said that after that, he couldn’t play a single note on that lute.”

“Wow. It was as if he was robbed.”

“Exactly. But it was also said that the one who got the lute’s soul also died a miserable death. Because the lute kept on calling him to play, and play he did, non-stop, until he stopped breathing.”

They smiled at each other.

“That’s just a story.”

“Possibly. But I believe it.”

“What if I tell you that that kudyapi, especially the frets, was a bit red. Could you guess why?”

“Varnish?”

Bayang shook her head.

“Blood.”

Bayang nodded.

“There’s a story behind how that kudyapi was bought. Besides having come from a tumultuous town, the collector who bought it had drooled over it for the longest time. Until a tragic event happened to the datu’s family.”

“What was the tragic event?”

“We don’t know, but it was said that the entire clan was decimated.”

“It could be an intertribal war.”

“Possibly.”

“Or some family member was bitten by greed.”

“More likely.”

“A princess could have been kidnapped by an older lover and the spurned lover took revenge.”

“Could be.”

They laughed.

“It’s just a story, it could be true, it could be false. I just got that story from the custodians who clean this place when classes have ended and during the break.”

“Why? You talk to them?”

“No. I just listen in to their conversations.”

“Ah, so you are an eavesdropper. Then maybe you’re not a musician.”

“So what am I?”

“A gossip columnist?”

“Humph!”

Finn was still in the background, still drinking lambanog, taking an occasional glance at them. Now he was talking to Loreto. Glenda disappeared. And Bayang knew that he was growing impatient. Loreto always told the same story—like the birds chirping with the same intonation and timbre in their throat every morning.

“Actually, Rizal and I have the same height …” Bayang heard Loreto’s punch line when the two men passed in front of her to get more kangkong kropek. “So my wife said that’s the reason that I always attract girls.” Bayang almost choked on the vegetable lumpia she had been chewing.

“Actually, this is not ugly,” the musician was saying. What was he referring to as “ugly”? The kudyapi, the venue, the food, or she herself? She stared at the musician and imagined her girlfriends fainting if they knew he was now in front of her. He had expressive eyes that could be those of a brokenhearted actor. His face and stature also gave the impression of him being a shy country bumpkin, but these aspects were hidden behind a trustworthy demeanor. She could sense what lay beneath the impression he gave, but she didn’t know how she arrived at this sense. Was it in the Sagada-weave jacket and black shirt and pants he wore? Was it in his haircut shaved close to his scalp and the brass bracelet on his left hand? The musician was following her eyes, and he smiled.

Bayang found a safe topic. “I’ve read your mother’s works. I loved her stories. Is she still writing?”

“Not anymore, but she’ll be happy to know that she’s being read.” The musician had already finished his punch. “Want some more?”

“No, thanks. I still have work tomorrow.”

“We’re leaving tonight. Are you staying here or—”

“Am based here.”

“Too bad. I thought we could still talk on the way.”

Bayang smiled. The kudyapi they’d been talking about was returned to the cabinet in the Music Room. Sir Giacomo approached them.

“We’ll be leaving in thirty minutes?” he said to the musician.

“Sure.” The musician patted him on the back, and he left. Finn waved at them and left with Loreto to their dormitory.

Music was often described as structured sound imposed on structured silence and noise. Bayang thought that if her life were a recording, it wouldn’t make for smooth listening. You’d be able to hear the needle scratching the record, the breaths of the singer, the hum of a pianist enthused with playing, the spray of saliva from a trumpet or saxophone. If it were rock music, there would be a lot of fuzz and distortion. Beads of sweat would have dripped.

But why was it that, despite the “noise” she’d experienced in life, the color and manner of her dress were muted?The polo she wore had always been of a light color. When she and Finn had just begun to flirt, she rarely wore a skirt or a dress, and if it weren’t for her curly locks and occasional make-up, she wouldn’t have been thought of as a girl. Bayang had only started doing herself up when they were officially together. It was strange that she had begun to buy floral dresses, skirts, umbrellas, and doll shoes. She even wore perfume, which she hated the most. She was self-conscious of her armpits, which she wanted to whiten and shave, and she cursed the growth of hair. Her thighs now experienced waxing. She frequently got pedicures. She shaved her bushy eyebrows to contour them. She used to shy away from gypsy accessories. But then she started sporting small earrings and a thin bracelet of fake gold as though she were Claudine Barreto. At the start, she wanted to become like the other girls who had judged her femininity. She felt that she was a mere insect, lost in the tree she landed on. That was her mistake. In that school, the notion of “being true to oneself” never became a hindrance. Her identity here was as a music teacher, like her colleague Loreto. But she was treated like a parrot.

Loreto handled the classical and Western canon while she took ethnic and indigenous music. She wanted to ask Sir Giacomo why it seemed that their assignments were arbitrary. They both were music majors, they even had MA’s. But she was nothing compared to Loreto’s foreign degree. There still wasn’t a contemporary program. She was more than willing to exchange anecdotes about the pieces they’d first learned to play—like “Eye of the Tiger” on the electric guitar or “Still Loving You” by the Scorpions. They’d reveal how tacky they were before studying their “formal lessons” or the “great” pieces. She wanted to mix the forms, include dance, a script, those kinds of things. She knew that if only Sir Giacomo would allow her, they could even finish a musical of their own.

Well, she’d already been typecast as a curly-haired pest and temptress supreme. Sometimes, when she went by the Music Room early, she played the piano. Freestyle. “Gymnopedie No. 1” by Satie first, and then she would improvise. Or Brubeck, even Philip Glass. She imagined herself unhindered, as if possessed in front of the piano. Nobody would notice. She didn’t accompany the others in the morning. It was her habit to go to school at least one and a half hours early to prepare herself physically. There was no problem because the custodians were already there, sweeping and arranging the classrooms before class started. She had already befriended the men there, smiled at the women taking out their tablecloths to dry and dusting off their welcome mats on the foyer. That morning, Loreto saw her playing alone. He clapped. He almost laughed when he saw her. Would anyone ever tell her that she looked like a pigeon?

“Bayang, you’re a mystery to me. You’re not one of us, you don’t have vices, and you only like to collect CDs and books.”

“Don’t you collect CDs and books?”

“Not as much as you do. You’re like a termite when you obsess.”

“You’re too much!”

“But you can play like a concert pianist.”

“You flatter me too much.”

“Have you ever heard Finn play like that?”

She looked at Loreto. “He never asked me to play for him.”

“Really? But you play a lot?”

She looked at Loreto intently, from head to toe. Height: five feet, maybe just 4’11” because of his high shoes. Weight: 110 pounds. Choc Nut muscles, signs of flab in the mid-area. With a slight odor. Astigmatism, slight strombosis, left eye. Bembol Roco bald pate.

That was the problem with what happened back then. She merely pretended not to get the “joke.” The rumor of their relationship had already spread, and she could not say that it was “merely in her head.” Their colleagues had assumed that they could freely probe them, as if their story belonged to everyone.

Bayang continued playing.

Loreto coughed and opened the window.

“That’s why when I teach piano nowadays, I always remind them that the instrument they’re playing is equivalent to their bodies. What is within is without.” Bayang stopped playing for a moment.

“Now, you’re the one surprising me, Loreto.”

“Why?”

“Well, you’re also a Buddhist.”

“No, I’m Catholic.”

And Bayang continued playing until the class arrived. The children took their seats, set up their instruments, and fastened their sheet music to their stands. She now had no one to baby when it came to this arrangement.

It’s difficult to distinguish musical noise (or noise resulting from the process of composition, like the plucking of fingers on the guitar) from regular noise, the unmusical and the more musical, because Loreto was right, “what is within is without.” The body cannot be separated from the instrument. Isn’t that why the violinist’s chin forms a callus? Or why the trumpeter’s diaphragm has learned to stop itself from sneezing or coughing out sputum? Aside from incidental noise, i.e., the cry of a misbehaving child put on time-out to give the parents the pretension of having raised the child “well,” the noise from the orchestra accompanies the musical composition: so the wind blown out and expelled from the clarinet’s embouchure is like a drunkard’s snoring, the explosion from a tuba’s vales like a secretary’s fingers cracking after encoding. The afternoon would pass like this, thought Bayang. Music gliding with the noise. The self becoming true to itself, vulnerable. Because, after the rehearsal, one would need to put things in order. They would put their instruments back into their caskets, remove the clips from the sheet music, return or hide the papers in the coffin-like filing cabinet, take their knapsacks, and go out to wait for the shuttle, another coffin delayed from being buried but reeking of accidents. Bayang shuddered again. She disliked this habit she had. That she didn’t know whether she had a third eye or what. But whenever she remembered the asbestos on the brake pads as they turned and twisted, she became nauseous. Wait, this had been going on for some time. Whaark. It was good that she had quickly reached the cubicle. Whaark. Breathe in. Vomit. Breathe in, vomit. She had a love affair with the toilet. When she went out, she cast a glance at the kudyapi in the display cabinet.

“Ma’am Bayang, what should I do? I’ve torn out page five?” the child asked, unaware of her struggle with her gut. Bayang looked around. No one was around. She quickly scanned her blouse, patted her skirt a little.

“You can get a duplicate.”

The child left the music room and went to the office. A little while later, Ms. Cacawasan entered, carrying the master keys to the filing cabinet. Bayang entered the comfort room. Bayang had just washed where she had vomited in the sink. Ms. Cacawasan looked at her, but she just opened the first drawer of the filing cabinet, pulled out a bundle from a folder there, and gave it to the child. Bayang would have forgotten the incident if it weren’t for the sudden waft of stench in the room. It was as if a sewer had just been dug up, the odor of rotten cabbage, canal water, mud, decomposed material mixing. She seemed to be more nauseated.

“Are the toilets broken again?” asked Ms. Cacawasan. She went back in the comfort room almost at the same time as Bayang. The projectile vomit of tapsilog and saliva almost hit Ms. Cacawasan’s fingers. She retched for ten, fifteen seconds. Someone handed her tissue paper and she didn’t turn to glance at the hand’s face. Ms. Cacawasan turned around and talked into the walkie-talkie again. “The toilet? It’s clean. A while ago. Nothing’s changed.” As soon as Bayang went out, the secretary sprayed air freshener that made the room smell just like someone had only fried fish in the kitchen. Bayang smiled as if amused at the scene she imagined. When Bayang returned to the classroom, she was greeted by a strong and odious smell. She covered her nose and mouth. “Hay naku, there might be a problem with the septic tank,” said Ms. Cacawasan to the walkie-talkie. “Do you have any advisory? Please ask Sir Lino.”

Bayang came back, retching at the toilet. Whaark. But nothing came out. Her stomach was now in pain.

“Ms. Bayang? Are you all right? Do you need to go to the clinic?”

Bayang shook her head. She and Ms. Cacawasan looked at each other. She was the first to look away.

“Ms. Bayang, perhaps you need a break? I could ask Mr. Loreto to handle your class.”

If there was any trait Ms. Cacawasan had that Bayang adored, it was her understanding of the relation between noise and silence. She knew how to conceal.

“No need, I’m really just like this at times. I’ll manage, I’ve already taken medication.”

Ms. Cacawasan smiled at her. It was like she was facing a dog too weak to move.

And there, the class had a reason to leave the music room and rehearse outside. When they left, it seemed that Bayang’s ailment halted. No, said her thoughts in denial. She was not pregnant. It was merely her imagination. (Un)immaculate conception. Later, her upset stomach had resolved. She was not nauseous anymore. Now she was sleepy.

“Class, come,” said Bayang to her class. The children looked at each other.

“Are we going home?”

“No, we’re just changing venue.”

She heard only a collective sigh, but she ignored it. “Bring your instruments with you, anything portable. Add notebooks and pens. We’ll start with composition.”

The bandurria players and guitarists, the players of taklobo and panpipe looked at each other. “Ma’am, how will we rehearse without the piano?”

“Well, we can use the one in the auditorium. One by one.”

Another collective sigh. “That’s why we’ll start with composition first.”

They walked toward the main assembly hall of the school. The main assembly hall looked like a biotope, a man-made greenhouse. Inside, large bromeliads and a variety of flowers grew. There were natural-looking ponds that had koi. While walking, she heard whispering. What were they doing over there? “Ma’am, how about the heavy instruments?”

“Did I say that you should bring them?” An irritated tone was evident in her voice.

“That’s all right. You can even bring your cello if you want to and if you can manage.”

The child who asked shrugged. “Anyway, for Levy, she brings her violin everywhere.”

“But Ma’am …”

Someone called for their attention. It was Loreto, out of breath, running. “I’ll join you.” Behind Loreto was his class, which, like hers, was also bringing their instruments.

“How come it’s like one of our buildings was demolished.”

“According to you.”

“They couldn’t stand the foul smell.”

“Whatever caused it? It stinks, doesn’t it?”

“Ma’am, the mouth of the toilet has severe halitosis.”

“Maybe it was just Ethan who left his plaque on his toothpick.”

“Shhh! That’s enough. That’s not nice.” To Loreto, “Where do you think it came from?”

“I guess it’s because of the school room near us that’s been renovated. Sir Giacomo had a fountain installed, didn’t he?”

“How’s that connected?”

“Oh Bayang, you still don’t believe that this is a magical place.”

Unbeliever. Have I already mentioned a cult resides in that place? And, like in the Vatican, they dwell in the innermost globular assembly hall. The transparent polycarbonate roof was remarkable in that it hadn’t yellowed yet from the bombarding elements of sun and wind and rain. You would think it was a force field that folded when invaded, as some contours opened and closed according to the natural light. The architect was said to have modeled it after the Aquarium of Genoa Italy and the Mehang Gardens of Singapore. Of course, the Opera House in Sydney was an influence. It was globular like an upright squash. The exhibited flowers added a Filipino character—here you could smell the competing ylang ylang and sampaguita, even the rafflesia and gumamela and pitimini. There were many bromeliads and orchids. Model fish, eggs, and sarimanok were hung as installation pieces. The design of the arches and corners formed an imitation forest made from industrial materials. There were slopes you could slide from, contours that reminded one of ramps for toy trains or marbles. During Arts Month, the children paraded around with their works. In one corner of the biotope, one could see what they called the Mouth.

It was a found sculpture. It was a cavern obscured by a balete tree’s roots, which had remained deliberately untrimmed since the globular structure was built. If anyone faced an important decision—to join a competition, for instance, or a decision whether to go home or stay away from family—the Mouth would give a sign. You needed to sacrifice something for the answer to be “true.” The Mouth opened if it wanted to say Yes and remained closed if the answer was No. After all, Yes and No were already very metaphysical answers. How they managed to make the Mouth agape, Bayang didn’t know, because it was at once open (like a tunnel) and closed (because you couldn’t see through the inside, like a black hole, due to the dark.) She didn’t know anyone who dared find out where the entrance to the Mouth went, if it ended at the other side. She didn’t know anyone, but it was possible that no one had told her of it. What did she know? The students weren’t the only ones who knew of this secret spot, but also the maintenance workers and admin. But many had said that anyone who entered it would be cursed by the Diwata. Where the rumor started or when, no one knows. You could ask who the crush of your crush is, if your lover is cheating on you, if you would pass Visual Arts 100, or if you would be accepted in the auditions. The freshmen were given a walking tour once their parents had already left for home. Bonding between freshmen and seniors would include making sure the Mouth remained a secret, known only to those who were truly from there. Its myth wasn’t spread outside of the circle of students. Whatever is disclosed in front of the Mouth, stays with the Mouth.

When Bayang was younger, she had been puzzled by the ritual performed by her classmates. It was 1979. There they were, carrying fruits, sugarcoated bananas and sweet potato, rice, nganga, cigarettes. Atang, they called the ritual. An Ilocano word. Did it come from Sir Lino? If the school had a celebration, one of the maintenance workers offered food there. Not once did she participate in this. If it was unavoidable, she would pretend to pray when everyone’s eyes were closed.

Loreto shook his watch as they passed by the Mouth. “Have you ever made a wish here?”

Bayang, who seemed not to have heard anything, continued to walk on.

“Like my watch, it is always set in advance.”

“Huh?”

“It hears your desires even if you don’t say it.”

Bayang kept laughing and laughing. Her stomach ached from too much laughing.

“I always shake it like this so that the gears will synch with my pulse.” Bayang laughed again at Loreto’s answer, but she was brought back to her senses by what she saw outside the biotope’s pyroplastic wall. “Is that a kite?”

“Yes, they’re kites.”

“Wow! Look at that, oh. Beautiful. Lovely.”

They had been made and were being flown by Finn’s class. For a moment, the children inside the large squash were amazed. And as if their soles had been scratched, they rushed out of the biotope as though a spaceship had landed. “Wow!” The sky was filled with large birds, dragons, butterflies, fishes, turtles. The children jumped and grew excited when they saw the teasing skin and bones flying in the air.

“You know, Bayang, if you’d ever been to Japan you would remember their kites. It has a special significance for them.”

“And what significance is that?”

“Well, they have what they call a Boy’s Day there.”

“And what’s it for?”

“Fathers would fly kites to pray to their ancestral spirits to guide their newly born sons.”

“But what if the child’s already grown?”

“Then they join in the ritual. They themselves make the kite.”

“I’ve never been to Japan.”

“Well, you should try. While you’re still young. And while you don’t have a family yet.”

Silence. “Whatever’s happened between you—”

“I haven’t talked about it, Loreto.”

“Who knows? Perhaps Finn might ask you soon.”

“Maybe you will hear news from us sometime soon,” Bayang let slip out.

What? Why did she say that? Were they close?

“Good news?”

“Well, it depends on how you look at it.”

“Hmmm. I might have to think about it.”

Bayang only smiled.

They’d already walked a few meters away from the Mouth when Loreto suddenly stopped in the middle. “Do you hear that?

“What?”

“Psst. Psst.”

“Come on, Loreto. You should have your ears checked.”

Loreto stopped again, seemingly determining whether what he heard had the right pitch.

“There.”

“It might be something else. It’s only the two of us here and most of our students have stayed to watch the kites flying.”

Loreto scratched his invisible dandruff. He shook his watch. Listened to the tick-tocking.

The composition class failed to convene. Bayang and Finn seemed to have an understanding that this event should occupy the music students, who were amused by his kite-making demonstration. Bayang loved to watch Finn when he was like this: like an older brother or uncle or father. He taught them how to cut and stick the sail, the paper of the kite. He taught them how to fasten together the bridle, even how to test its balance. He workshopped the designs that flew lightly, explained why some designs crashed. When he launched the kites, his curly hair floated off his scalp, and he looked like a thrilled cherub. He was able to make the most serious child laugh, the most reserved child rowdy, the misbehaving child obey. They were like a group of friends when they talked, giving each other high fives when they understood each other. Time passed by quickly. The children were glad that the shuttle had arrived. Finn and Bayang sat beside each other, smiling, but kept quiet.

In the cafeteria, the foul smell wafting from the Music Room became the topic of conversation. It turned out that it was not only the music faculty’s classes that were affected. The lectures on drawing, the barre exercise, and the potter’s wheel had also stopped. They all had one complaint. They couldn’t get rid of the smell. Bayang was weirded out. They all had the same description. Foul, nauseating, like rotten cabbage, egg. What’s that? Like a decaying corpse? No, like a soiled sanitary napkin, said one. You know, the repulsive stench of rank blood, like the Sampaloc extract, but the stench was magnified as if it was mixed with mud, shit, sewer water. Someone said that it smelled like the Smokey Mountain. Payatas. What’s strange, she said, is that it was not only the Music Room that was affected, but it had reached the Ballet Studio. Even the Arts Room. Bayang asked the date. Nov. 29, 1990. That night, she wrote down the date. She also jotted down that she had vomited. She remembered she needed to go down the mountain for a check-up.

She didn’t need Finn to accompany her. Surely, he wasn’t interested.

Second Proposition: Oh, Have You Seen It?

Bring a pocketbook or notes. If a Walkman is available, buy the one that snugly fits your ear. At times, although he would notice that you wouldn’t be interested or would have another preoccupation, he would read it as an opportunity to perform. Psst. Psst. He would whisper in your ear. Someone would be calling his name: Psst. Loreto. Psst. Loreto. He would be in the bus or at home. Someone would be hissing and calling him by his nickname. Ssst. Itoy. Itooooy. How many times had she contemplated whether to make a complaint against Loreto to Finn. She had tried, but he merely laughed it off. Maybe he had a crush on her. It was as if she was in the wrong, she should be flattered. But, she said, it’s not just a simple nuisance anymore. Sometimes she was surprised when she went out of her cottage. On the patio of the porch sat Loreto. His thighs wide open. Looking at her as if they had talked about meeting in the lobby. And his only response when he was asked why? “He wanted to tell you something.”

“Who is he?”

“The one I told you about.”

Finn kept on laughing and laughing. Eh, do to him what he did to you. “What? I’ll open my legs wide apart on his porch and Pass The Message? I was insulted.”

Finn sighed. He motioned to keep quiet, the “police” were nearby. She was mulling over whether to bring it up to Sir Giacomo. But ever since they had both been advised to “hold back” she’d hesitated. Her roommate Nure Hellena was busy gossiping in Mael and Sir Lino’s cottage. Going to her women teachers was out of the question. How about Cressi? Could be, but … she couldn’t tell who Cressi was.

Sometimes, friendly. Especially if they had met each other in the library and both had wanted to borrow the same book. One time, she saw her at the mall, talking to a student. Cressi’s face was downcast when the student suddenly turned away. She tried hard to forget what she had glimpsed. She tried to erase the face of the female student who, aside from having a pleasant face, she’d noticed was crying.

So she kept it to herself. Until the time it was him she sat beside on the bus.

And then he told her how flowers, by coincidence, had been scattered by his porch. Rosal, daisies, madre kakaw, santan, roses. A shower of petals. As Loreto was telling her this, his hands gesticulated as if they were conducting. When he thought about it, who was crazy enough to gather petals and shower them in front of the welcome mat of his cottage? How many times had he tried waking up early to catch the culprit, and yet he couldn’t catch him, even when he told his co-faculty in the male dormitory about it. That’s when he remembered the miracle that had happened in the grotto of Lourdes, when two children became intermediaries.

“What’s that?” said Bayang and regretted interjecting because it only led Loreto to go on with his story. But she really didn’t know about this miracle.

“You don’t know it? Didn’t you watch it on TV when you were growing up?”

“Sorry, our TV was always broken until we had to throw it away.”

“Isn’t that why there are many girls named Bernadette?”

“Sorry, I DON’T HAVE A CLASSMATE NAMED BERNADETTE.”

Then she quieted down. “Ay, sorry, I forgot that I was on a Walkman, so I screamed.”

“She, Lucia and—I’ve forgotten that name of the other one. Anyway, they were three poor children in France who had heard and seen an apparition.” And then Loreto told her about the children, and again, she didn’t completely listen, she only had fragments, scraps of details of the story. Hadn’t they smelled flower petals? Rose, they said. Roses have their own distinct smell. Yes, said Bayang in her mind. It smells like funerals. According to Loreto, after several cycles of the petal shower, it was replaced by an apparition of insects. Sometimes, he would see a formation of ants. Taking the shape of a heart.

“In Lourdes?”

“No. Here. What were you thinking? You’re not even listening, eh. How did you ever become a musician? Anyway, in termite mounds, I’ve seen the face of a woman.”

“She didn’t want to be like a tadpole drifting down the stream only to be caught and dissected.”

“Who knows? Termites could know how to draw.”

“One time, I saw butterflies. Flying around, glistening in front of me and at the back.”

“Hey, that happened to me too.”

“Not only one, okay? Three at once, five.”

“Maybe you should change your deodorant.”

Loreto paused, hurt. “Should I continue my story or what?”

The clincher to Loreto’s anecdote was that he decided to stroll around SM. He wanted to replace his watch. It had already been five years and he felt the battery wearing out and its hands slowing down. Now, he was always late to his dates with his girlfriend, the girl he lived with, Marge, who was good at cooking, who made good …

“Pinakbet, yes, you’ve told me before,” said Bayang. “You should adjust it so you wouldn’t have to shake it?”

“Huh? What did you say?”

“I said, you should adjust your watch.”

“Bayang, that’s not what you said.”

“Why? What did I say?”

“You should ask someone to fetch you right now.”

“Huh? Hey Loreto, stop it, that’s not funny.”

“And you rubbing it in my face is not cute. I’m being gentlemanly to you.”

“Why are you flirting with me if you already have a wife?”

“Who says that I’m flirting with you? I’m just telling you my story. What’s wrong with that?”

“Eh, why are you telling that to me?”

“Because you’re my friend. Why, am I mistaken?”

Bayang breathed in deeply. What a pity. She hoped that she’d be nauseous now instead.

“Okay. Continue your story.”

There was a saleslady who approached him. Very beautiful, he said. You wouldn’t know her to be a saleslady with that beauty or flawlessness. But she wasn’t a mestiza. She was brown. With a full set of teeth. Her hair shone. Slender. With attractive eyes.

“Like your eyes.”

“Huh?” Bayang scooted herself toward the window. She looked back. The students were sleeping, tired from the trip, from the rehearsal. Exhausted from the traffic. It was raining and the windows were shut. The aircon blasted.

He was being assisted by the woman when she suddenly disappeared. He thought she had to talk to somebody. But he waited for a few minutes by the rack of watches near the eyewear section. He was actually tired of trying out Ray-Bans, but the salesgirl hadn’t returned yet. When he was about to leave, a cold wind blew. “Oh, have you already found it?”

“Can you repeat that, Bayang?”

“Which one?”

“Oh, have you already found it?”

“Why?”

“Nothing. I just have something to prove.”

“Oh, have you already found it?”

Loreto became quiet. “Do you want me to add special effects?”

“Her voice is sweet, Bayang. Not like an ordinary human. Even you, though your voice is beautiful. But it isn’t as sweet as her voice.”

A sweet voice. As it turned out, she wasn’t the only one privileged to have heard Loreto’s story. Bayang hadn’t bothered him again since he’d gotten annoyed with her. Anyway, it was best that she knew that his patience had limits. He’d just bother someone else. After all, many people were interested or eager to listen to those kinds of stories. And not long after, the news seemed to have taken flight when it was whispered to the ears of the earth. Loreto had told nearly everyone about it. Within that small population there. Bayang would have bet that even the ants and bees knew of Loreto’s Diwata story.

Here, gossip is music.

Even Sir Giacomo himself went on with the story. A reporter from a magazine was called on to write a feature on the supernatural. A photographer took a photo of Loreto, but when the final article was released, it didn’t carry his face. The magazine chose to use a scenic shot of the Music Room itself and the corridor of SM mall where Loreto allegedly saw the enchanted woman. After the article was published, Mount Pinatubo erupted. On the mountain, we felt the tremors. Many houses were buried in lahar, many lives affected. They’ve said that since the tremors, many minds haven’t returned to their original state. Sir Giacomo met one of those whose wits had left on a road in Pampanga. At that time, they were traveling to Apalit to help the victims of the lahar. By chance, they were met by a vagrant woman with a garland of fresh flowers. Sir Giacomo joked to the children, “Is that method acting?” Nobody laughed. “Sir, she seems to be wearing expensive orchids, oh.” Sir Giacomo said she might have stolen them from a garden. But the madwoman said that she was the Diwata of the mountain and she saved the lost. Sir Giacomo pitied what he saw. The woman was beautiful underneath the shagginess and odor. She was said to have carried a bag of petals, and when the bus occupied by the scholars was about to leave, the madwoman threw petals at them. The Diwata of kilometer 45.

Third Proposition: You would no longer find them, though you name them after the Wave and Current

Antonio Pigafetta had called them viejas. I mistook them to be girls in their youth. But no. They were old women. They had experienced becoming mothers or widows, experienced having sex, they were held in high regard by the community because they acted as the bridge between the living and the departed. Through them flowed their petitions, and it’s also through them that the petitioners sought their fulfillment. For as bridges, they accepted being trodden upon, accepted being possessed, accepted that worlds have edges and that they can be joined. They had a kambay fabric which they stepped upon in rituals and which their actions determined: to pray, to worship the sun and moon, to have a specific sacrifice. In Pigafetta’s eyes, the rituals of the viejas were comprised of unintelligible prayers and, unacceptably, dipping makeshift trumpets made from dried wild grass into a wild boar’s blood. From one end of that trumpet, blood was sprinkled onto each one’s forehead. When Pigafetta witnessed this, he noticed everyone had been sprinkled on except him. A sly way of marking the stranger, the outsider. He was a visitor, a foreigner.

The viejas removed their tattered tunics. They could’ve easily removed it, thought Bayang. The tunics were made of only a single piece of sackcloth, not like the layered tapis and garments worn by ordinary women like them after the cross had been nailed through the town and through their consciousness. Perhaps, for them, being naked was nothing. But the foreigners’ eyes viewed it differently.

They ate the offering served on the coconut shell and leaf. Perhaps grilled seafood, fruits, coconut milk, meat. Through these methods, they ate the offering. They ate first before anything else. Pigafetta hadn’t recorded whether they tried to offer him some.

Probably not. After many decades, another foreigner would write a chronicle about them. He would use another name for them. Babaylan. Loarca described the movements of their performance—they danced, grinded, their movements tensed up enough for their mouths to froth. A possession? Bayang smirked when she read it. Two decades had passed, and she was still haunted by the past.

Sometimes, while she watched Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, she remembered herself and the times when she was still shrouded by her own desire. The theater’s stage was built to look like a ramp with a slight incline at one end and a slide at the bottom. A space that was perhaps terrifying to step on because, if an actor should make a wrong turn, he could tumble and break a leg. The play was about a possession. It was about the power of the crowds. It was about a conspiracy between the extremes of conformity and paranoia. It was a possession that was fabricated, a lie that was shown to be the truth. It was only to conceal a relationship born out of lust. It was only for some young girls to have a little freedom from religion. She had once watched the actress who played Abigail Williams, the character who was coiled in scandal and who was wound by the coil of the whole community’s reason. Was she like that when she looked at her lover? As if she was about to suck him dry? As if to solicit his pity? She truly gave all to her work there, poured herself as far as she was able. But Miller’s characters were more fortunate, or even any character for that matter. When a blackout occurs, the page turns into a mausoleum, waiting for a reader. Only to rise to life once understood.

They rode the bus home together. But Bayang felt that she’d been abandoned in Salem. Left to hang there.

One morning, she found herself alone eating breakfast in the cafeteria. As before, all the female faculty members sat at one table and the men at another. Finn didn’t have breakfast. She would find him during lunch, and it would be as if they had agreed not to notice each other. She had already written her resignation letter. Written far back, even before her severe morning sickness. She hoped to bring it to Sir Giacomo’s office after eating. She knew this would mean that she would lose her salary and perhaps couldn’t get work immediately.

But what else could she do? That’s how it was. She was pregnant. Among all the other options, what was best for all would be to let go. She didn’t want to be like a tadpole drifting down the stream only to be caught and dissected. If only “your student weren’t children”—she remembered Ms. Nabiyaan’s mouth wide open—“we could keep you.” Wow. It was worse. She shouldn’t have tried to console her. They could’ve talked, woman to woman, and she thought that it wasn’t only their gender they had in common but also how their uterus and eggs were chained to the future of women. How she could’ve been a role model. Fuck. Even the flowers of the champaca were falling down the trees. Their fragrance did not diminish. In fact, just before they decayed, they were their most fragrant.

Finn’s silence was the answer to her question. He wasn’t ready. She didn’t need to pass by the Mouth. She knew that a few more nights and the lump would appear. Like a stray note, it would rise higher and higher. It would grow rounder, not more convenient.

A friend took care of her. A fellow woman who had undergone the same process. She hadn’t known that they would be with each other through the same problem, that only the time frame would be different. When she called up Becca and invited her to go out, she thought she was joking when she said she had also gone through the exact same experience. Something inside was throbbing and she didn’t know what to do.

“It was like an invasion that was also an extension … like a solution that was also a resolution.”

“Extermination?”

“Redemption?”

“What’s that? Lyrics?”

“Exactly.” Becca laughed, and she laughed too.

“It’s like I’m being haunted when I see someone pregnant.”

“Dearie, three out of five people are women. It’s crazy.”

“I know.”

“Dear, may I ask? Who’s in charge of selecting the songs we hear when we’re at the grocery, at the mall, or in the elevator?”

“I don’t know. The mall?”

“You could think that someone only selected the playlist and you at the brink of crazy have no right to be crazy because that someone couldn’t care less if you have an existential crisis or what.”

“What if you’re in the market, on the street, by the alley?”

“Same answer. They wouldn’t care because you’re not us.”

“Hay naku, if only I could know who, I would shoot him. It’s like he deliberately chose a playlist to make you weep in a public place when you couldn’t find a handkerchief or tissue in your bag.” Bayang laughed at herself.

“It’s as if you don’t know yourself. You’ve always been on the edge. Something inside you seems to rip apart, every time.”

Bayang smiled. “God, I shouldn’t dress up for you. You always see me. Every time. Shit.” Bayang rummaged in her bag.

“Did you forget something?”

Bayang didn’t reply. One by one, she emptied the contents of the bag and placed them on the table at the burger place. “What are those?”

“What, tell me, have I lost anything or—”

“Nothing. It’s here.” She lifted the thing she had remembered: a handkerchief.

“What did you bring here that’s important?”

“Keys. A train ticket. Money. New passport. Only those. The others, trash.”

Becca looked at her friend, observed how she automatically stroked her belly.

“Think about it. If you’ve decided, call me.”

“I think this is it.”

“What?”

“I’ve already decided.”

Headline News flashed before her eyes. I’m not the same as before I became pregnant. Her friend’s eyes greeted her: It’s over. Get on with your life.

She believed her friend, Rebecca. Actually, she was a good girl, she’d just had a boyfriend and made a wrong choice. She fell for the romance of having a punk lover riding a motorbike, the whole Sister Christian song. Rebecca had a large physique, almost six feet tall. The length of her legs and joints literally had no end, and she had the guts to wear killer miniskirts and leather jackets. She was often teased because of her height and sometimes mistaken for a transgender woman. She became friends with Bayang also because of music, when they were both part of a band, The Virgin Donuts.

They had been bullied and that was what forged their bond. Others supposed they were lovers, but as for Bayang and Becca, they left them to come up with any story they pleased, for whatever happened, Bayang and Becca remained good friends. Their friendship grew stronger because of their coalition, a life-changing experience when they were young. While Becca had been teased because of her height and her eccentric way of thinking, Bayang was easily belittled because she didn’t know how to fight back. Now, they were indifferent to the bullies in the canteen and the classroom.

“When this happened to you, did you tell anyone?”

“No one knew. Only me and Barge know.”

On the computer, Becca logged into the search engine and voila, search results appeared. “See, you don’t even have to use a broom, crochet needle, or hanger. There’s a solution.” Safe and proven effective, it said. Bayang raised her eyebrows.

“Notice the irony?”

“I know.”

“Don’t do the sign of the cross, ha? It doesn’t help and superstitions don’t help. In fact, they’re a part of the problem.” Becca knew how to rouse someone up, trumping even brewed coffee. “I had no other option but to trust it. The English wasn’t broken, and it seemed they sold misoprostol and mifepristone due to the number of hits. I clicked the link and followed the instructions for meet-up and payment. I prepared myself and the money.” Becca told Bayang the amount.

“Wow, that’s huge.”

“Only 15K, actually. But the rest, the 45K, is for contingency.”

“Contingency?”

“If you’re brought to the hospital, in case you can’t stand the horrible cramps.”

“Only cramps?”

“Well, among other things, excluding the psychic torture after. Remember, this isn’t just your ordinary dysmenorrhea.”

“Okay.”

There was an honor code when exchanging money, Becca added, the instructions would be emailed. The payment wasn’t a problem for Bayang. She took advantage of her meager talent as a singer, and she was able to save enough after one and a half weeks. She didn’t borrow anything.

The meet-up and pick-up was quick. It happened in a crowded place, a terminal in Cubao. You would have thought she and Becca were in a Bernal film with white shades and striped shirts. Bayang fasted for two hours because that was the instruction before she drank the misoprostol, which at first had no effect. She was a little dizzy. And she thought she could tolerate it, so she rode the MRT. And there, she fucking vomited in the train. Becca took out a 7-11 plastic bag. Projectiles here, rocket mission there. There were disdainful eyes, whispers. Hang-over. Wasted. Chemo. Pregnant. Shame. She was assisted by Becca whose arm acted as her cane. They left the train car with Bayang almost collapsing to the floor. Becca whispered to her: “Think about it, Bayang, this has already happened to me, but far worse. I’m a big person and I was retching like crazy. And I didn’t have a bag with me.” Becca laughed at the vision, and Bayang also laughed but not at her. They rode a taxi. They went to Becca’s place. After drinking the dosage of mifepristone, she slept through it. She woke up. She woke Becca. Becca didn’t grumble. “Actually, that’s also what I thought—that I could sleep through the contractions …”

“Of course not, no? Ow—Shit Shit Shit. Son of a bitch, Finn. Son of a bitch!!!”

The bleeding was continuous, clumps growing larger as it went on. How could Hinulugang Taktak compare to this? “Becca, is this how it is? I think I’m hallucinating from the pain. Like I keep seeing pink jellyfish things crawling.”

“Hello jellyfish, that’s what your attitude should be …”

“That jellyfish is my baby, Becca.”

And she cried and cried. The blood flowed out from her uterus, dripping out thicker and thicker drops, escaping from the pain, as though a vacuum cleaner was inside her vaginal walls. The blood performed a duet with her tears.

Years later, as she was lounging on a bamboo floor in a large hut in Bali, a guru explained how our bodies’ chakra was a mere inch away from our core. The energy emanating from the core was supposed to be positioned and placed in conjunction with that in the mind and in the heart. She hardly understood his English, but his gestures that pointed to the parts of the body, his flickering eyes, and his shaking head were a great help. The chakra in the core, the heart, and the mind were in concert. Because there was an unseen cord that bound them all. And that invisible cord was what you should intend to hold. You are like Buddha in the world of sinners, who has suddenly seen the thread of a spider’s gossamer. When Bayang tried it, she was amazed at where her meditation had brought her.

In that place much like the Philippines, the wind was fresher, the people were more obedient to traffic regulations and gave more importance to their own culture. Wherever your gaze landed, you would see their gods, who had simple tents for shelter. It was there they placed their gods and their guardians. Together with the offering of cooked rice, some fruits, and flowers. It was like the mountain she had left and fled from. After their worship, they placed a grain of rice on their foreheads. It was a way to give thanks for all their blessings. Everywhere, there were those who played their traditional songs on the instruments handed down to them by the nuno. It was there where she gained a better appreciation for the gamelan and its notion of eternal melodies, concerts that had no beginning nor end, but its silence and its noise in balance. Even their musical notation didn’t resemble that of the West. It had its own methods of numbering and computation. They had books etched in wood filled with various inscriptions, from their epics to their medicine to their witchcraft. She landed in that country not as a music teacher. Now, she assumed the identity of a cultural studies scholar.

She decided to broaden her knowledge. She visited a theater workshop in Ubud. She met Wayan Piscayan, the acting teacher. After the students were given an acting orientation of watching Wayan’s performance, they were encouraged to try the method. They would wear one of the masks placed there. Bayang examined each one. One looked like a lion, a dog, a monkey, a tiger, a crocodile. She wore the mask she liked most. She didn’t know why she picked it. Perhaps, like an almost-forgotten description by a musician, she felt butterflies in her stomach. She couldn’t determine what kind of animal it was. The masks that the performance mentor in Bali lent had no labels. The actor would only find out after the exercise. She wore it like a cloak. It was nothing special, just like a part of a larger cloth. Saliva from the other actors who had used it had already landed on its material made from the bark of banana trees. It smelt like a pillowcase that had been salivated on. It had the texture of banana leaves pressed dry but a little firmer. The odor was disgusting, once noticed. But she managed to ignore it. She remembered that she herself was in another world and not in this world. She opened her chakra. Aligned her mind, chakra, soul. She continuously hummed out a tonal ohmmm like her companions. Until she was possessed. She found herself in the middle of a forest. Everything green. She felt the ground she stood upon, the itching, rustling, hissing of plants that clung, that hampered, that grew deeper. Something twitched, a shadow, and she knew she wasn’t the only beast there. She sensed the animal’s red heat and that was what she tracked down. There, it’s there. Her sensation of walking and moving her legs was gone.

She was leaping, as if about to pounce, as though her agile feet had become four.

She tried to catch up to the heat, a red aura of heat from her fellow beast. The heat blazed on, her heart throbbing faster and faster as if she were chasing her own shadow, and all of a sudden, she saw something familiar. A drop of blood, clotted blood. It was dripping. It was seeping through. It was thick, sticky like bubblegum when held. Boiing. What was that? The dripping ceased. She heard a gong and its echo that pierced and shattered the world she had entered—the signal to remove the masks. She was no longer in the forest but in a living room of the bamboo theater. The “beast” she’d chased after was panting. Everyone was terrified of its ferocity. A fellow workshop delegate was scared that he had been pursued. He was a master’s student from Vietnam who seemed to be especially nervous about being assaulted, but when assuaged, accepted that that was how Bayang possessed that beast, the spirit behind the mask. He bowed and was bowed to. Bayang was frightened and at the same time struck by her ability to summon the intensity from her chakra.

“Bayang? Bayang, is that you”

Someone lifted her face. In front of her was a woman with a familiar smile, the teeth’s perfect whiteness she had once complimented. It was Cressida Valmonte. “Oh My God, it’s been what—ten years?”

“Yes. It seems like the time of dinosaurs. How are you?” She noticed that she had straightened out her hair, had a slightly lighter complexion, but that she still had the same air. It was like a thinner Oprah Winfrey auditioning for a play on the South’s slavery. She wore a blazer, cigarette pants, and heels. She took a pink paperback out from her bag. She proudly told her how she carried around a volume of Dickinson’s poems that she’d given her.

“What about the other book I gave?”

“Which one?”

“The Sappho one.”

“Oh, that. It was swept away by the flood. I was distraught. I lost many books, letters, every trinket I had collected.” They both smiled at each other. It was hard to talk when they sat down like that, they needed to speak louder, she remembered the times they’d spent talking in the cafeteria. They briefly exchanged news of their lives. She, jobless, and her, working at a call center. She didn’t mention that she had traveled to other places. That black hole of a place where faces pressed to another’s armpit wasn’t conducive to conversation.

“Oh yes, how about …”

She wanted to ask Cressi about a different person. It was Finn she wanted to know about. But instead, she heard about Loreto, who had died.

“What?”

“Yes, I was also surprised. He crashed. He was on his way to a relative’s wake. His motorcycle was hit.”

“He knew how to ride a motorcycle?”

“Apparently. You know those large motorbikes ridden by white people with long hair? He has one of those.”

“A Harley Davidson motorcycle? Wow. Approximately 1 million to P350K pesos. Loreto was rich.”

“His body flew. You know, Bayang, he was impaled on one of those construction posts. Shocking.”

“Really? Wow. That’s painful.”

“When the ambulance arrived, he was gone. The paramedics were stuck in traffic. Hey. He was very young.”

“He might have been a little more than forty. It was twenty years ago when he became our colleague.”

“Yes. He was certainly one of the memorable ones …”

“Psst.”

“Psst.” They giggled at the same time.

“We’re mean, aren’t we?”

“Not really.”

“You’ll visit his wake?”

“You?”

She shook her head.

“… but I loved him.”

She wanted to say: “I didn’t,” but she held back, “Yes. Everyone loved him.”

They both seemed to lower their heads or glance at the door, which periodically spewed out people or left them outside. The commuters were accumulating. The bellies of those in dresses and pants obstructed the way, even the open bags with hand sanitizers peeking out, the hands carrying gym bags or vinyl trolleys. When they parted at Buendia station, Cressi was gone. She had already gone down, she didn’t know if she’d waved at her.

They say that an ordinary person rarely listens to music intentionally. Most of the time, a person only absorbs music from his surroundings. Music only forms one part of a composite of experiences—for instance, entering a fast food chain like 7-11. The music playing there was music all the same, even though it was only the 96.3 FM station being aired, and the conversation between the two DJs was better suited for a carnival. Bayang bought a Yakult and empanada. She sat at the side, stared blankly, and calmed down her mind. “Can this be love / I’m feeling right now …” Geneva Cruz was young when she sang that song, the favorite of the children she was with when they went down to Folk Arts. She secretly liked the song and was amused by the spontaneous burst of singing by the children, as though they couldn’t contain their glee, their desire for their feelings to be heard overflowing. She even secretly bought an album by Smokey Mountain at Harrison Plaza. Finn couldn’t help but laugh when he discovered her true “taste,” combing through her cassette collection. She hated that, his seeming to be innocent when browsing through stacked or exposed items, like illicitly reading someone else’s diary; as if conducting an inventory. “So what if it’s uncool? I like those songs, why should you care?” She had wanted to tell that to that bastard, but she was in love then with that man and remembered how her knees shivered whenever she heard him sing. Oh, God. It seemed such a long time ago. That was a time when she only had to listen to those songs and she’d immediately remember her twin jellyfishes she’d expelled from her uterus without notice of eviction. Where were Alon and Agos now? Were they floating in the air as protons and atoms? Were they floating in the Yakult she drank, together with the lactobacilli Shirota strain? They would have been cute had they lived. They would have been curly-haired like their father, as brown as their mother, perhaps they would have known how to paint, how to sing.

She was tearful. Well, after the demolition, her hormonal mood swings had gotten worse. So that was it. She was tearful because of the imbalance. Even a woman’s body undergoes climate change. She stopped walking. The building in front of her was familiar. Are you Harrison? Hey Harrison, what has happened to you? And it spoke: here, in ruins, the street children sniffing Rugby haven’t left, the accumulating garbage hasn’t been collected, the jeepneys and the cars’ fumes odious. That’s right, she said. She was facing a depository of cigarettes and Juicy Fruit, the polluted canal. Had he seen Agos and Alon? Perhaps. The girl selling sampaguita looked like her. Before, she would only have had just a few more baths and scrubbings than that child. But she had also been that scrawny, her legs like clothespins. She wore undershirts and shabby school uniforms at home. The mother called out to the child. She was about to go near the woman. Asking: Have you seen Agos and Alon? The woman stared at her, listed something on a quarter sheet of pad paper, which she pocketed in her apron stained with sauces and smells. Bayang saw the candy being sold, the menthol candy, coffee candy, orange candy, which had names unrelated to them, unlike misoprostol and mifepristone, which had names fit for a birth certificate. She saw the flowing water in the canal and remembered that she had once speculated that perhaps Agos and Alon might have been carried away by Manila’s canals, like a new Moses who had been taken in by a good soul. They would be raised, they would be sent to school, and the grand moment would come when they would meet each other. Probably on a talk show. Probably in a concert. Perhaps not in this world or age, or possibly in the market, among the fruits and vegetables, but most likely among the fish, like a salmon returning home to the river it was born in, that is, if it hasn’t yet been lost or cooked or canned or exterminated by an oil spill. Until the moment she thought that she had arrived at Quiapo and was about to cross the bridge, Smokey Mountain’s damned album was still playing. It was strange that the pop group was named after a literal mountain of garbage, now called Payatas. It was also funny that the lyrics were in English, and the song sounded like it was invested with heartbreak. A self-pitying effect. Return to a land called Paraiso. Shit. In the path of flies and money, everyone knows there’s money in trash. She hailed a taxi. The driver laughed when she told her destination. That she wanted to go back where she came from.

“So that’s how it is?” She immediately left the taxi and walked, searching for someplace to sit down, to lean on. She found one place, and she hid herself behind the wall from the people who were on their way elsewhere.

Epilogue:

November 23, 2010, was the date when a group of journalists were killed in an ambush in Maguindanao. The reporters were on their way back from attending a junket to cover the press conference held by the wife of a clan leader in Maguindanao. The conference had ended, and the reporters were headed back when armed men blocked their vans. Everyone inside the vehicles was shot at. When they’d ascertained that everyone was dead, the armed men broke into the van and pulled the corpses out into an open pit. Mutilated, pounded, crushed, trampled on. Muddied IDs, bloodied shoes, dismembered arms and legs. These were the photos of this terrible incident that circulated. Faces agape and eyes wide open. Piles of soil buried the corpses that were trampled on, crushed, pounded, mutilated. The day was November 23, ten years after Bayang had smelled the open pit at some other place, at some other time.