Ilustrado Part 22

"You'd do great."

"I won't be shirking my responsibilities? Just leaving, I mean."

"No." I look at Sadie closely. "I don't know." I study her perfect face. Her perfect nose. Her bottom teeth are a little crooked, just to remind me she's real.

"You're still going to go look for Dulcinea, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Tomorrow."

BANG! Our car is rocked by an explosion. Sadie and I whip around. My G.o.d. Something is ... The PhilFirst factory is aflame. Fire streaks in all directions. First one, then another, then a lot of fireworks, actual fireworks, shoot into the sky. Green. Blue. Yellow. Popping. Whistling. Hissing. Then they go off simultaneously. Then they take off in spurts. A huge orange flower wilts in the rain. A star studded with pearlescent bursts and a blue cl.u.s.ter in its middle lights the nearby billboard of Vita Nova. A crimson spiral winds sideways into the sign that says JESUS ALONE SAVES, shattering its neon letters in a deluge of gla.s.s. Streakers scream vertically one after the other, whizzing high until they burst into b.a.l.l.s of sparkles like motes of white cinders. More, then more, rockets fly out. One of the factory buildings becomes a ball of fire-one second there, one second consumed, one second gone. Its incandescent structure stumbles like a skeleton into the water. Flames spider across the river's surface like gasoline alight, tufts of orange and yellow creeping slowly as they spread, rising steadily across the polluted water. The river is ablaze. The water burns, smells like singed hair, sulfur, scorching sugar. The low cloud ceiling, its soft rolls, seem to smolder from the chemical sun below it. Even the distant horizon is stained red with this false dawn.

"I'm not an addict! What are you doing?' Dulce yelled, pushing their arms off her. "Please, why are you doing this?"

She looked at her mother and stepdad, imploring them with her eyes. Mom was crying, Dad was shaking his head. The doctor and the male nurse forced Dulce's arms through the straitjacket, then buckled her tight. She couldn't move.

"But it's all true!" Dulce said. Mom held the diary in her hand.

"Dulce, dear Dulce. Just admit it. You made up these stories."

Dad knelt down in front of Dulce and put his arms on her shoulders. "Babygirl, you're sick. These men are going to take you to the hospital to cure you."

"You're not even my real father," Dulce said, knowing that those were the worst words she could say. But she was so angry with him for allowing this.

Dad didn't bat an eyelash. "You're my babygirl and I want you to get better."

Mom waved the diary and pleaded: "Dulce, please, just say those are your fantasy stories. Just say you don't believe them."

Dulce didn't know what to say. If she said what she wanted to, they would never believe it. If she said what they wanted her to, she'd never be able to believe in herself again. But maybe she could prove it to them!

She closed her eyes real tight and tried to make herself lighter than air. Just believe, she thought. Just believe.

For a second she felt herself lifting up. Her feet left the ground.

I'm doing it! I'm doing it!

But it was only the doctor and the nurse carrying her, lifting her to the bed in the back of the ambulance.

-from Ay Naku! Ay Naku!, Book Three of Crispin Salvador's Kaputol Kaputol trilogy trilogy *

Sadie jumps to the front seat and turns on the radio. A woman's voice sings: "There's a light of hope, when you light a Hope."

"Is it safe," she asks, "to use the car battery?"

I don't reply. I'm transfixed by the scene behind us. The river courses with fire. h.e.l.l must look like this. "Miguel," Sadie says. I snap out of it.

"-everend Martin addressed the crowd just moments ago before we went to station break," says the commentator. "We now come back to you, live. Crowds are continuing to swarm over Jones and MacArthur bridges to join the rallies, while riot police have formed a barricade at the corner of Recto and Legarda, to prevent a march on the Presidential Palace. I spoke earlier on the telephone with Senator Bansamoro, who said the scene is extremely tense. One thrown stone, one gunshot could set it all off. Our reporter Danjen Adapon is on the scene. h.e.l.lo Dan?! Can you hear me?"

Poo-tee-weet.

"Read it," Sadie says. The message says: Wen u smile the world smiles wid u. When ur down ppl will rally bhind u. But wen u fart u r alone coz ppl will never stand by u! Xcpt 4 JESUS! He died 4 our sins!

[image]

I hand back her phone. "Sadie, let's check the radio for ..." But she's already busy dialing her driver's number.

"f.u.c.k!" she says. "The battery just died!"

"s.h.i.t. I left mine in the hotel."

"Loud and clear, Rolly. Loud and clear. The scene here is difficult to describe. I'm speaking to you from the roof of the Chow King restaurant on C. M. Recto. I would say, uh, the crowd numbers as many as, uh, two hundred thousand. Maybe even five hundred thousand. It is an ocean of people. Reports do indicate that various factions have been called here to oppose each other, but from what I see, this crowd has come together peaceably. Most have been here for hours, waiting to see what their leaders will do. More arrive every minute. People are sharing umbrellas and food, many are singing songs. The atmosphere is like a carniva-Uh ... the ... Wait. Oh no. There is a confrontation between Reverend Martin and Wigberto Lakandula. They are exchanging words on a stage erected on the back of a truck. Oh my golly, Reverend Martin has pushed Lakandula to the floor! Um, Lakandula is refusing to fight. He is now being led away by some supporters. I recognize the elderly Congressman Respeto Reyes. He is holding Lakandula's hand. Uh, just one minute, please, Rolly." The reporter converses with someone off mic, their voices unintelligible and hurried. "Uh, Rolly, I now understand that Lakandula is leading his followers quietly away. Oh no, there seems to be trouble now. Someone at the other end of the crowd has destroyed a shop window. There seems to be a large group heading toward Makati. A car, no, a taxi has been turned over. They're throwing stones at policemen. At windows with lights in nearby buildings. Oh my golly, they are throwing stones at us ..."

Even as he listens, our fiery protagonist wonders if tonight is the revolution Crispin wanted for so long. He regrets not having joined the crowds.

He thinks of one option for a life. An old man soft and bent over his typewriter while the world changes without him. An old man striking keys in acts of violence without valor. An old man imagining into being a young man's moment, like now. A stormy night beyond closed windows. The threat of mortality far, far away. Decisions to be avoided and never paid for.

The river surges with the sudden warmth. The Pasig's waters move toward us, no longer possessing the flat, defeated surface of its former self. The flood in which our car sits flows backward, opposite the river's current. There must be a break or overflow up ahead. The water rises, its level perceptible on the disappearing hood of the car. Bright flashes continue from the factory, slathering everything with color: the street is red, then black, then green, then yellow, then orange, then black, then orange. A chair floats nearer, thuds on the b.u.mper, pa.s.ses to our left. Sadie disconnects and reconnects her cell-phone battery. "Power!" she exclaims. She dials. "s.h.i.t," she says, "answer the phone. s.h.i.t, answer, please answer, you motherf.u.c.ker. Please. Aw f.u.c.k. Battery died. What do we do?"

"The safest place for us is in the car. Your driver'll be here soon."

The dark ma.s.s moves closer. Sadie holds her breath. She switches on the headlights, but they are already submerged. What little light they cast skims the surface of the water, as if our car sits on the edge of the moon's broad reflection on a pond. What had been looming now arrives.

It's one of those ice cream carts wheeled around town by bell-clanging vendors. Painted white with jaunty blue and red embellishments, the word STARBUCKS STARBUCKS is stenciled along its side. The cart stops, then is moved again by a current that seems to be getting steadily stronger. The shadows behind it shift. A flash of green reveals two children perched upon the cart. A flash of blue shows them to be a girl of around ten carrying her naked toddler brother. is stenciled along its side. The cart stops, then is moved again by a current that seems to be getting steadily stronger. The shadows behind it shift. A flash of green reveals two children perched upon the cart. A flash of blue shows them to be a girl of around ten carrying her naked toddler brother.

Even as he watches, he hears the keystrokes from a distant dream. An old man imagining and typing what must be said.

Poor little rich boy. A side must be taken. If you choose your own, you side with oppression, fratricide, indifference-you will never be content among your own. Rich little poor boy. If you side with the others, you choose treason, patricide, betrayal-you will never be accepted among those unlike you. Religion taught you to revere the family. Education taught you to value the majority over the few. Something to be done, Pozzo. You cannot sit this out. The airplane has landed. The people have clapped. Take a last breath. You're on the stage. the majority over the few. Something to be done, Pozzo. You cannot sit this out. The airplane has landed. The people have clapped. Take a last breath. You're on the stage.

He sits under the lights, thinking of a second option for a life. Patience, however, is just another name for inaction.

I watch them float haltingly, the cart catching on the submerged street. They are less alarming as shadows than when lit up and helpless.

Even as he thinks, he rationalizes yet a third option for a life.

A splash is made to save the children, to hoist them the few yards to safety, to watch them scuttle back to hidden places, to be a hero engorged with hidden pride, the trumpets crying joyfully, to announce his guiltless return to America, having done his small part, to start a new life in Park Slope with the malleable young Sadie, and with the confidence that comes with being loved by a young beauty, he will sit down and finish my biography, and it will make him feel fulfilled, because he will have written with the vigor of the newly liberated, because he will have, in one single soggy act, absolved himself of our sins.

"If you open the door, the car will get ruined," Sadie says. She's crying. "My dad will kill me."

We both turn around. The road that was just several yards behind us is now vanished under the flood.

"My driver will be here any minute ..."

I look at the water. What if it's too deep? I think of my father, running into the burning airplane. What if he hadn't been so foolhardy? I don't want to go into that flood. What if he hadn't been so selfish to his children? No. We need the people we love to be heroes. We need to know that somewhere someone better than ourselves can save us.

"Please don't," Sadie sobs. She's clinging to the steering wheel as if it were a life raft. "n.o.body will see you."

I don't want to go. But I'm afraid of what I would become. "Sadie, come with me."

"I can't," she says. "You don't have to, either."

The door is heavy and won't open. What if she's right? I lean my entire weight against it and it gives only slightly. Water pushes into the car. It's warm and oddly comforting around my feet and ankles. I can't open the door. I'm stuck. I don't have to, go. I look at Sadie. She's tucking her knees up against her chest, Manolo Blahniks in either hand, her feet stacked on top of each other. The water is rising in the recesses of the car floor. I pull the door closed. I open the window. The electric motor grinds down with difficulty. I want it to make it, but I want it to fail. It makes it. The flood is almost level to the open window. When the fireworks light, the surface is gla.s.sy, gloomily reflective. I see myself in it, like a mirror, watch myself pulling my body through the window and falling forward, my face meeting my face, into the brown, muculent filth. My feet flay for the bottom. Sadie is screaming. Maybe she's right. I find my footing. Her pleas urge me on. The water is chest high.

An orange firework lights up the sky, then fades. The current is strong. The ground beneath me is rea.s.suring. I stagger toward the children. A red firework paints the distance between us. The sister watches me with a blank expression. She becomes a shadow. The darkness between flashes is interminably private. She and her brother are bright yellow. I smile and wave. What the f.u.c.k am I doing? She shifts her brother higher against her shoulder, moves to tighten her fingers and legs onto the ice cream cart. The brother hides his face in her shoulder. Darkness again. Unseen things touch my legs, wrap around my waist, then are pushed away by the current. The children look like ghosts. Everything is too sodden or afraid or exhausted for sound. "I'm nearly there," I shout in Tagalog. Then we're all gloriously blue and I'm close. Five more steps. The little girl whispers something to her brother, who turns. He smiles, his round cheeks and forehead a fading sheen of azure, then a bright and deep yellow. The girl's teeth flash livid lemon. Three more steps. The children stare like statuary, their slick faces bra.s.sy from the spectacle in the sky. Something brushes my leg. The children put out their arms to me. Two more steps. Their faces, orange on one side, emerald on the other, smiling like the kids I'd see at Fourth of July celebrations on the banks of the East River. One more step.

My foot searches for ground. My whole body plunges into empty darkness.

9.

In the dark emptiness, the light is a rectangle like the corona of an eclipse. The k.n.o.b is wet in his hand. Maybe it is his hand that is wet. Two lines crease his palm like sister rivers. Or maybe they are different parts of the same river. The door swings. I call to him from inside, "There you are, my protagonist."

He steps gingerly on the sandy floor. I sit in a circle of brightness at my desk. "A dream is a palimpsest," I say. My typewriter steams before me, the fingertips of my right hand embraced by the keys. My other hand I hold out to him. A b.l.o.o.d.y hole through the palm is where a scar once was. I tell him one of our jokes. "Why can't Jesus eat M&Ms?" The young man shakes his head. I reply, "Because the M&Ms keep falling through the holes."

He turns to rush away, but moves ever so slowly. As if running through water. In the hallway mirror, he is naked. He leans toward his reflection. He sees an image of me, as I once was. He reaches out his hand. Or is his hand following mine? Our fingers touch. The mirror ripples.

The surface of the gla.s.sy sky shudders. His feet find a bottom, he pulls up, and follows his arm through and out the water, his fingers a rictus gripping a handhold in the air. Our gallant protagonist stands and coughs, lungs heaving gratefully. The warm water tasted like phlegm. The depth is now chest high. The two children are several yards away, their ice cream cart stuck. Floating quickly past are leafy branches, the head of a bald Barbie doll, an empty bottle of Silver Swan soy sauce, plastic bags like jellyfish. He wades through the sludge, his movement ever so slow. Gossamer newspaper pages wrap and disintegrate against his arms and chest. How-he wonders-did the distance between us become so great?

He reaches the children. The fireworks continue, flashing their faces green, blue, red, yellow. He takes the toddler tightly in his arms. The sister clambers onto his back. They weigh surprisingly little. It is our young man who now feels safe.

The riverized road glows suddenly with elemental whiteness. His shadow, stretching against a cinderblock wall, transforms into a three-headed monster. He turns around. It's the twin suns of headlights. A four-by-four vehicle.

Mutya slides her hands over Antonio's bare chest. "Mr. Astig," she says, touching his many scars. He sits up before she can ask how he got them. He adjusts the satin sheet around her shoulders. Their sweat still trickles between her bounteous b.r.e.a.s.t.s from their lovemaking. He leans in and licks it up.

"Now that you've saved the damsel," Mutya says, running her hands through his hair, "what's left?"

"I have an old iron thumbscrew with Dominador's name on it."

"That's how the story ends?"

"For him. Not me."

"Tony, you held him under a canning machine and he lost his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es ..."

"But he got away! What about all those dead women? Life goes on without them?"

"If you want to fight corruption, baby, you have to start with yourself."

Antonio stands and goes to the window. From that height, Metro Manila looks untroubled.

"Antonio, I'm sorry." Mutya wraps the sheet around her and goes to him. She puts her cheek on his shoulder and looks at the gray city. "It's about more than Dominador. I know. But sometimes courage is really just cowardice. Sometimes the bravest thing is to let go."

"There's too much that needs to be done."

"Don't be a hero."

"I never said I wanted to be one."

-from Manila Noir Manila Noir (page 182), by Crispin Salvador (page 182), by Crispin Salvador *

Sadie doesn't say a word inside the F150. She just sits as if at the edge of a deep sobbing. Her eyes are so dark they look like they have been gouged out. Her driver has no face and he stops at the police substation behind the Hotel InterContinental. They let the sodden trio out before roaring off without a word. The truck's red lights blur, then fade, then disappear in the rain. The police lieutenant looks surprised. Or perhaps it's more like he's just woken up. He gets blankets for the children, kneels to dry their hair, rub their shoulders, then looks up at the young man. Another cop, wearing fuzzy bedroom slippers and a wifebeater shirt with his uniform's trousers, reclines behind a desk, playing a guitar. The old rock ballad "Patience." A third cop sits on the desk, his bare foot held in his hands as he clips his toenails. The lieutenant carries the children to where they can lie down. He then tells our courageous protagonist, kindly: "Hurry home."

The young man runs in the rain, his limbs loose and free. The puddled sidewalks splash with an irrepressible joy. Suddenly, the hotel is there before him. Its power is out. The desk is unmanned. Upstairs, in candlelight, standing naked and tall in the shower, he stretches his arms up. The bathroom in the darkness looks exactly like the one he and Madison had in Brooklyn, with its peeling paint and Tibetan prayer flags hanging by the window. The water's flow is cold, as cold as can be stood. It is so cold it does not even feel cold anymore, but rea.s.suring, cleansing, clear.

"What are you writing?" whispered Millicent.

"Stuff," Dulce said.

They were sitting beneath the plastic bonsai bodhi tree in the corner of the rec room. Other patients were playing pusoy-dos at the card table, or making portraits of creatures at the art table.

"What sort of stuff?" insisted Millicent.

"Just stuff."

"Let me guess. A letter to your real dad? Or, hmm. Maybe our escape plan?"

"Just stuff I'm making up. Fiction."

Nearby, Ceferina glanced up from her painting of a three-headed cat. She stared at Dulce, then called out, "Nurse Erlinda! I think Dulce is talking to herself again!"