Entry #34
[June, 1896]
The sun was barely about, and none of the blind ghosts were up, except for the Moro woman who rose to pray then smack her mouth silly with her favored buyô. The day itself, with that poison spat of betel in the dawn sky, promised oblivion. Not taking the footpaths, I wandered, pretending to seek nature’s privies. I noted a number of curiosities along the way, such as: mounds of fruit carcasses by the lanzones grove; a host of burned insects, their limp-brown wisps of damaged wings; a humongous stray pig, pampered beast in the promised land; and the odd detachment of the shuttered butterfly kiosk, obviously unused.
I stopped in my tracks, I hid behind the nearest baluno tree, wondrous source of all things paho. Its trunk wide enough for my tensile frame, I crouched unseen to witness a strange incident.
It was she, the sweetheart.
Half-sepulchral in the foggy dawn, kneeling on the ground by the empty hut.
A wraith, a ghost.
She sobbed wordlessly, and I didn’t know what to do: I was only a trespasser, looking for the toilet. Please madam, how can I help? And by the way, is this your kasilyas?
Dressed in black, his love wept like a child. Sure, the hut was a graveyard, dedicated to unnamed butterflies, but did it warrant this sadness, so early in the morning even the gumamela looked gray? Her hands brushed at the earth, then gripped locks of hair, and her whole being’s posture of secret, irreparable grief, I knew, was not meant for any eyes. But I did not turn away.
Then I smelled the burning.
A long time ago, I had smelled that smell—the acidic ash of seeds and citrus, fruit trees on fire, a sweet edenic pyre curdling the monsoon air. My knee-jerk recall mixed with memory’s hunger. Guavamangolostlanzones, all the debris of childhood tears. What an odd mingling of sensations occurred at this tremor of morning—terror and tenderness both in the waft of cinder. It was a kind of kaingin, but fresh, like a baby’s corruption. There at her feet—the mounds of burning lanzones flesh smouldered like an altar and offered morbid ambrosia to this day out of time.
The servant Bulag was sweeping at the ground with a midrib broom, his bandaged forehead nodding away. He didn’t recognize me. And before I could move, the Doctor found me.
What fright! What horrible shame and embarrassment! I had not noticed his shadow in the ashen light, and, in fact, recognized him only by his terrible cane.
Its two serpent heads flashed their beastly maw in twin anticipation—monstrous forgeries of each other.
My gut recoiled.
—Mosquito repellent, he said.
Huh? Was he talking to me?
I looked to see if anyone else was around. The sweetheart had vanished without a trace. Bulag, the scamp, was nowhere to be found.
—Lanzones peels are a fine insecticide, he said.
I could not speak.
—Well. Ready for the clinic, Señor Mata?
I gulped. I knew I should apologize for last night’s intrusion, but I was a coward.
—I see you’re an early riser, like me. Did you sleep well? The chickens are a bit noisy, he said.
I shook my head. I nodded. I moved my lips, but I could not speak.
—Follow me then, he said: I was just on my way down.
He strolled with leisure on the path, taking in the cool air, a little mannikin of manhood. Like a trussed insect floating on my spit: I followed. I remember his slippers, a frayed, pathetic affair, leather soles with dust embroidery shaping his heels, and the way he kept flipping his walking stick, the silver-edged snake twirling: a fencer toying with his foil.
It was a curious cane.
As I said, the snake had four eyes and two heads, one at each end. Its ivory contour wove through the dark wood in crafty relief, at both ends a vicious mouth and on each a silver stud that cleft the tongue. It kept darting out at me, as if to eat me. In this way, that horrid amphisbaena reared its ugly head, making awful faces no matter which way the swordsman struck.
Dozens of lanzones fruit lay dashed on the ground, as squashed as my frightened tongue. He towered before me: I cowered. I was as small as a pinned bug, as weak as the stripling trees that lined his home. My arms could not move, as if indeed they had been taped, like unformed wings, to a vitrine foil: pinned. Where were my questions, my sorry notes? My rusty antennae squandered my moment in the sun, in the tepid desperations of their futile flailings. No way was I ever going to turn into a butterfly.
What had I come to the island to speak? I could barely remember the name of his novel—something about tangerines, tamarinds, tangents.
—Tanga, he denounced.
I realized that he had discovered my scientific name: noli me tanga, a vulgar species of citizen with a vague personal agenda. Now he could seal the data in a jar and send it off to the Hapsburgs of Heidelberg, where in a collection of sacrosanct dust I would molder, a glum figure of terrible redundance, baptized for my foolishness by a careful man.
For some reason, the knowledge of my doom gave me peace.
—And what do you do, Mr. Mata?
—Ah. Aha. Ah.
Slowly, the spell eased, and my wings seemed unglued: weak and weightless.
He stood still and waited politely, his walking cane still.
—I work for the Diario de Manila.
My morning voice was strangled, like a cat’s.
—A journalist! And what do you write, Mr. Mata?
—No, sir. A printer. Only apprentice, sir. I
