Authors: Miguel Syjuco
For Junior, the life away from his family suited his wayward nature—Manila in the 1930s, after all, was a place of energy and intrigue, a spicy stew of global influences, in which those who lobbied for independence were considered by certain cognoscenti to be fighting the noble and ever loyal fight, even as they were engaged in necessary compromise.
It was a fine time in one of the finest cities of the world. On the streets, enterprise and history vibrated together, and perspiring archetypes—businessmen, charlatans, refugees, fortune hunters—came from around the globe and thrived: Jews fleeing Europe, Germans operating a glassworks, Portuguese gamblers from Macau, Chinese coolies from Fujian province, Japanese laborers, Indian moneylenders, Moro imams with scraggly beards, Latin American
industrialists in fine linen suits, Spanish insulares born on the islands and peninsulares born in the mother country, Dutch merchants, even the descendants of Sepoy mutineers from the two years Britain ruled our archipelago. Most brash among the immigrants were the Americans, some outrightly imperious, many well-meaning, all inspired by William McKinley’s “benevolent assimilation”—civil servants, missionaries, teachers, soldiers, entrepreneurs, wives. Imported from the far corners of the planet were the latest practices and fashions, each unerringly seized by the locals and turned into a virtual parody by overly vigorous execution. Junior, with his talent for languages, thrived in this city. He was often spotted at the Polo or the Army and Navy clubs sporting a new hat, or photographed hobnobbing with such imposing figures as General MacArthur, whom he visited often in the Manila Hotel, bearing gifts.
But when she was pregnant with Crispin, Leonora gave Junior an ultimatum: Leave his Manila mistress, a beautiful minor actress in the fledgling Philippine film industry, and spend more time in Bacolod. Otherwise Leonora would leave with the children. Whether from the impetus of love or an aversion to scandal, Junior dedicated more attention to his family in the province, and Leonora, at the start of her third trimester, took to accompanying him on his trips to Manila. As a result, after Crispin was born, his position as a “re conciliation child” forced on him intermittent bouts of—when his parents were home—suffocating attention, overstarched hand-me-down sailor suits, mollycoddling, and—when his parents were absent—liberating stretches in which to play with his siblings and spend time with his tutor and beloved gardener. Even Junior’s distant attitude toward his children was influenced by Leonora, who made up for her general lack of maternal warmth by hogging the kids whenever her husband was present, doting on them so sporadically it left them bewildered and forever cynical of her intentions. Indeed, Crispin’s first memories were of being “a performing monkey.” In
Autoplagiarist
, he describes being made to “sit up as straight as a stone saint and recite the infernal ABC’s for my father, then the prayer to Saint Crispin for Mama. More often than not, errors resulted in their disappointment in me and, of course, scoldings for my tutor and nanny and siblings—for their supposed neglect of my education.”
It was the first of many incidents, however, that cracked the struggling idyll. One dry-season evening during the hottest week in memory, as the Salvador children slept, Crispin’s sister, Lena, was awakened by the opening of their bedroom door. She saw the shape of her father’s form outlined against the light in the hallway, and, according to her brother’s account of the event, she “could hear the sobbing screams from our mother’s bedroom, her doorknob rattling desperately against its lock.” Lena, Salvador wrote, heard her father’s breathing—“an unforgettable, savage sound”—and smelled the gin. Salvador described her as watching in both fear and relief as their father bypassed her to stand over the sleeping Narcisito. Distant down the hall, their mother banged and screamed. Then Lena saw her father “brandishing his rattan riding crop, saw it held high above his head, heard it come down repeatedly until poor Narcisito cried out for mercy, witnessed it strike again and again until our brother fell into whimpering silence.”
—from the biography in progress,
Crispin Salvador:
Eight Lives Lived
, by Miguel Syjuco
*
After my parents died, we kids were flown from a Manila polluted by tragedy to the happy, fresh air of the Vancouver airport, the grandparents we hardly knew waiting for us in Arrivals. I remember, slightly, the terror we kids had faced getting on that airplane, our awareness of its heavy fallibility all too fresh in our minds. I recall, vaguely, the grief I held on to during that seventeen-hour flight—though sometimes I feel that, in honor of my parents, its memory should be sharper. Instead, it is the happiness that followed that fills my recollections: the glow of fresh paint in the brand-new house my grandparents bought to fit us all; the breakfasts in the kitchen by the big window from where we’d watch crows gather on the telephone lines; our first exuberant encounter with snow; Granma’s bedtime stories of Grapes’s vast political dreams, the excitement of the rallies, his long campaigns, the glory that would one day come again; Grapes sleeping the days away to spend wakeful nights that were days somewhere else—a parallel unseen dimension we were told was still our home, though we slowly disbelieved it.
To catch up on having missed our childhoods, Grapes and Granma let us camp on the floor of their bedroom, let us skip more school than they should have. I knew my way through the darkness of their room, blacked out completely from the sun, guided by Grapes’s snores or the lingering scent Granma left in bed—Oil of Olay and cigarettes. When Grapes awoke, I’d climb into bed happily, to walk on his back, or hide with him beneath the covers—soldiers in a foxhole evading the Vietcong. At night, we made bullets in the garage: still with me is the tinkle of the machine that tumbled the copper casings, the smell of lead bars and the mystery of bullet molds, the satisfaction of pressing a lead slug in place. With Granma, I read aloud till it was she who fell asleep beside me. I broke her cigarettes so that she’d quit. I imagined throwing tantrums each time I heard her fighting with Grapes; my wails would have outdone her screams and accusations of broken promises, of contrary dreams fueled both by her hunger for peace and by his frustration that he would likely die, unfulfilled, in exile. But I never had the guts to create a diversion. I didn’t know yet the collateral damage of one vitality succumbing to another; even if I knew that nobody should see their grandmother cry.
Then we kids were driven from our warm house to the sad, damp air of the Vancouver airport as our grandparents checked in their hoard of bags—enough to last them the months they’d be gone. Their subsequent trips were longer than the first: to see what it was like post-Marcos, to see if Grapes could return to politics, to see to the zipper business, to run in the gubernatorial election. It was always the same: from the huge, cold windows we’d wave at the airplane being towed slowly backward, wondering if Grapes and Granma could still see us from their seats. We’d wave until it took off, until it was a speck in the sky, and wave some more, just in case.
We’d return to our house on The Square, the one tour buses stopped in front of; to the home filled with gold reclining Buddhas and dark wooden furniture that smelled of polish, with a Xerox and a telex, with a room just for Grapes’s suits, with a treadmill and a massage chair and one of those contraptions that inverted Grapes for circulation and posture. His presence was more ubiquitous because of his absence. We were too busy missing him to miss our father.
My older siblings became my parents.
My eldest brother, Jesu, with his Inuit moccasins and electric guitars, taught by example the concept of cool. With him, I discovered the world beyond books. We camped in the backyard, hiked mountains, assembled a remote-control plane. It was he who held the back of my bike seat the afternoon my training wheels were removed, his arm holding me straight so that I could shoot off free for the first time.
My eldest sister, Claire, the natural mother, was used to, and therefore intent on, being everyone’s favorite. I would sit with her at her dresser, watch her put on makeup, pleased when she made up my face with a fake shiner. When she giggled to her boyfriend quietly on the kitchen telephone, she made us younger ones look forward to finally being in love.
My next older brother, Mario, who wrestled with me and Jerald, was never too grown up to make believe with us at being André the Giant and the Iron Sheik. He’d ring me from our second phone line, pretending to be Irene Cara, making me blush until I cried. Many a morning I’d tiptoe into his room, dodging socks and tissues and tennis balls, to wake him to bring me to school, knowing that later his fingers around the back of my neck would half guide me, half carry me to the bus.
My next older sister, Charlotte, the handful, impressed me with her notorious hairstyles and varsity volleyball jacket. She’d bring Jerald and me to Baskin-Robbins for pineapple sundaes, picking up her forbidden sweetheart on the way, to see him for just ten minutes. From her I learned that my life could be my own.
And of course, my baby brother, Jerald, who had me just as I had him, until I became a preteen and he was still a kid—when he saved for me the cookies he got in class, I refused to eat them, because they were iced with clown faces and were for immature babies. Even then, we stayed best friends.
And always, the parents of us all, the succession of yayas my grandparents imported from home, who’d arrived as Pinay provincials, learned the ways of the West, then left to start the sorts of lives they’d never dared dream of: Sula, who raised each of us, who ran barefoot in the snow to carry me to the emergency room to stop my convulsions, who broke my heart by getting married; Estellita,
skinny, severe, and elegant, she cared for us without knowing how to play; Juanita, who shared with us the games and songs of her still-recent childhood, whom we mocked for her accent and her foreign rhymes; the sisters Bing and Ning, equally patient, equally loving, equally underappreciated.
These were my days: gray rain; rides over Lion’s Gate Bridge; sitting in the backseat, windows down, Level 42, Huey Lewis, Steve Winwood coming to us from CFOX; O-Pee-Chee hockey cards; knees burning on the Last Sorrowful Mystery of one Glory Be and Ten Hail Marys; my purple school sweater and tie; rumors of the Brothers who taught other grades molesting boys in New Brunswick or Ontario residential schools; pissing myself at a pep rally because I was too shy to ask to go to the restroom, then claiming I’d sat on something spilled; the ice on my back and my heart in my ears and the sky in my eyes as I tried to ignore the skating teacher calling my name. Then, puberty: the first odd hair; the unfathomable urges; the relentless turgidity; the desperate experiments against the wall or within cardboard toilet paper rolls; stealing Mario’s lemon-fresh Right Guard deodorant to slick down the new fuzz in my armpits; breathlessly molesting with my eyes the perfectly drawn European girls in the
Heavy Metal
comics Jesu kept beneath his bed; then, the discovery of release thanks to the back massager Grapes kept plugged in beside his La-Z-Boy armchair—the glorious synchronicity of a Hitachi Magic Wand strategically applied during Madonna or Alannah Myles videos on MuchMusic. I heard my voice deepening, I saw contact lenses fitted into place, I watched Arsenio Hall each night, called the New Kids on the Block rad, wore mock turtlenecks and pinned the hem of my baggy trousers, hairsprayed my hair as high as it could go, danced the Running Man and Roger Rabbit, hung out in the mall with my friends, called the New Kids on the Block hosers, went to school dances, during “Stairway to Heaven” had a chick move my hands up from her ass until Page, Plant, Jones, and Bonham started rocking and she and I were forced to part and look at each other one last time before they turned on the lights.
Just when things were getting good, Grapes and Granma sat us six kids down and spoke seriously. “It’s time,” Grapes said, “for us all to return to the Philippines.”
*
From Crispin’s 1990 short story “Noblesse Oblige”: “Efren Del Pais is a gentleman farmer with good intentions.” He willingly, if not eagerly, submits to the CARP laws, the controversial agrarian reform legislation that appropriates plots of private land to distribute among the tenants who tend them. Most landowners resist the reforms—often violently, with militias intimidating the poor farmers and local officials. The smarter landowners take to exploiting a loophole, buying back the land from tenants who can’t afford its upkeep. Del Pais, however, hopes to serve as a good example. The aging haciendero, educated by Jesuits, informed by the likes of John Locke and Thomas More, sacrifices his sprawling farm, keeping for himself only the ancestral home in which he and his children were born. His wife is dead, his son moved to England, his daughters well married, and Del Pais finds fulfillment in giving “sound advice and loans with pious terms” to the tenants who have taken over his land. After all, he’s known many of them most of his life. “Del Pais, in his fading years and with an eye toward his soul, puts his trust in God and man’s laws.”
I remember the story for two reasons. First, in the story, Crispin gives the best account of Swanee (the two balete trees by the garden, the house’s narra floors “polished as if to intimidate women in skirts,” the carved relief-work ceiling in the dining room, the Persian carpets “musked by the mold thriving in the humidity,” the card table with “ridges worn into its surface by elbows, worry, hope, luck,” where his mother hosted games of mahjong and tsikitsa). Second, the story presents a moral conundrum regarding changing codes of conduct and the hard realities of the neofeudal society. It ends with the land Del Pais had passed on, so willingly, being bought up by neighboring landlords, who themselves have just repurchased their own estates. Del Pais is left with only his home and the interest from his limited fortune, “his father’s father’s land lost and he surrounded on all sides by a siege of greed by men who were to him once his equals, though now suddenly in one way more and in many ways less.” The last scene describes the old man standing in his garden, staring at his house “as if it is on fire.”