Fiction: Dark days of the patriarch

dearest Philippines.”

The foreign correspondents were unusually quiet. The grave air was broken by a question from a Filipina tall and graceful as the bamboo. She asked: “Ma’am, do you intend to write a book about it?” Her name was Dada Walana, a poet who became spokesperson of the Press Bureau.

“Now, that’s a good idea,” the First lady said spontaneously. “That would be a worthy follow-up to my

And so the brothers Relova worked at the construction site of the Manila Film Palace by the bay. But the First lady, suffering from her incurable insomnia, would sometimes leave the palace in her long, black stretch limousine, the sirens from her escort cars wailing in the night, and visit the bay. Her long, black hair would be lacquered and erect even at three o’ clock in the morning. Her red silk scarf would billow in the cold wind coming from the dark sea, and she spoke to the foreman with such urgency. “This Remember, seven is the president’s favorite number.” Then she smiled, but not too widely, for she had just gone through her seventh face-lifting. Dr. Karma, who specialized in lifting faces and breasts and tightening vaginas, told her: “Ma’am, please do not exert undue pressure on your face, for medical reasons.” Translation: she could neither smile too widely nor

At least, this project was a far cry from her last. As Minister of Human Habitation, she ordered the building of a low-cost housing project on top of the bald Antipolo mountains. Not a bad idea, really, except that she only built 5,000 white American Standard toilets.

“Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” she intoned during the ribbon- cutting ceremony. “Our many dispossessed know that, and so they will build their own houses around these toilets. We gave them something they can build on.” And so the 5,000 white toilets gleamed in the afternoon sun for many months. The whole, bald mountain, baking in the heat and studded with white toilet bowls, came to be known as Kubeta Village, or Toilet Village. Pretty soon, the toilets all magically vanished, cannibalized by the dispossessed.

But this promised to be different, this Film Center by the bay.

And so the workers just kept on mixing sand and stone, water and cement, poured them into shaky foundations, cobbled together one storey after another, the whole structure looking like a honeycomb. And scaffolding just collapsed, sending the men falling down into a pit of quick-drying cement.

Noel was outside, shoveling sand into a small lake of cement, stone, and water when he heard the screams. He ran inside because his brother Berto was there. The workers had gathered around the pit of cement beginning to dry. Beneath this lay the other workers, including Berto.

Quickly, the workers grabbed their shovels and pickaxes, even used their very hands to rescue their fellow workers trapped under the Noel in the eyes. He closed his eyes for they had begun to water – the grains scratching against his eyeballs – but he kept on hitting the cement with his pick axe, faster and faster, as dusk began to fall and the bay outside started to display Manila’s

But the next morning they were still trying to crack the cement. Dark circles had begun to ring their eyes. Their stubbles were shadows. They had begun using electric drills. The sound of so many drills was enough to make one deaf for life. But the men kept on drilling. From time to time, they would hit something solid under the cement. Noel was drilling with the purest concentration, his eyes focused on the point where the layer of cement splintered into bits, when a jet of blood suddenly struck him.

First on the knees, arcing across his thighs, and then splattering on his chest. It was then that we began to cry. He dropped his drill and his hard hat and ran, ran home to the squalor of the slums in Malibay where he lived, grabbed an old duffel bag, threw some clothes into it,

Now their mother was here, standing silently outside our white door. Her clothes were the color of ash. Red veins ran across her eyes. She had just travelled for 10 hours in an old train rattling on the tracks. Noel had returned to the building site, to continue digging.

She spoke quietly, softly, to her second cousin, my father, in tones that were respectful, even somewhat distant.

Mama sat beside her and listened, her eyes beginning to tear as Noel’s mother spoke. I pretended I was merely watching Student Canteen on TV, but I listened intently to her story. In the end, she did not cry, just an old woman with something so deep in her eyes you could not touch it.

Instantly, Papa went to his boss, the general, who called up the generals in Manila, who then called up the contractor, etcetera. After a whole day spent making these calls, being through to the Press Bureau.

But Dada Walana – bright and cheery as a parakeet – informed Papa that “Yes, Sir, there was, indeed, a minor incident at the Film Palace, but only two workers were slightly injured. They were promptly given medical attention upon the First Lady’s express instructions, who went there as soon as she heard of the news.”

A week later, Noel would come to us. He looked like a ghost. He had lost half his weight, his shoulders stooped from a week of non-stop digging. In broken words, he said that the authorities had wanted the construction to go on as scheduled. And so the foreman had ordered the guards to keep Noel and the other relatives out of the construction site as buckets of fresh cement were poured on the site, stopping the river of blood welling up from below.

Then they resumed building the Film Center.

But that would come later, for on this day, after helping Ludy cook Tagalog bistek marinated in soy sauce and small lemons and gabi leaves simmered in coconut milk, the mother of Berto and Noel walked to our backyard, past the star-apple trees, stopped under the acacia, and just looked clear across the dry rice thick, gray wall separating our military base from the rest of the world.