FIVE
My despair was short-lived.
It was a six hour bus ride to Baguio, which gave me plenty of time to reflect on what Reyes had said. Happily, there seemed to be too much going on outside the window in order for me to do this. The distractions were a comfort. As that uncommonly legal psychoactive drug in a cup of coffee severs the reign of the spirit’s oppressor, so did the vistas north of Manila unleash mine. As the rays of Apollo’s twin sister, cast over a remote mountain forest, often incite dreams from a stagnant mind, so the world beyond my window did mine. I watched huge, grassy fields in motion before a great volcano, which in 1991 had lost its composure upon the arrival of Typhoon Yunya, sending ash clouds around the globe. Miles from the road on which we traveled, the dark mountain brooded in silence, unaware of our proximity. Or perhaps aware, but under the command of its fire god, obliged to let us pass.
Closer to the bus were a great number of Filipino children who screamed and laughed at this chariot from the city. They threw buckets of water at the windows. They bounced rubber balls off the roof. Some held out their hands for money, and I, feeling somewhat like a clown at a parade, could not resist parting with the occasional fistful of barya. The children loved it. Their screams became more hectic, their feet faster as they ran alongside the bus fast as they could. Huts also lined the road. And little shops that sold furniture carved—with astounding intricacy—from the wood of local trees. As we passed one shop I noticed a statue of Jesus Christ that looked real enough—detailed enough—to speak of the man who clothed him, and of his sacrifice, and of stars that led the way. Another shop offered me a glimpse of a young girl placing the finishing touches on a sunflower taller than she was, her hammer and chisel fastidious, her stepladder infallible.
We reached the city at dusk. It presented itself as a momentous cluster of lights on the side of a hill, as had that city in Barker’s old novel about magicians who crossed between realms. The shining windows of many buildings seemed to spill from the sky, as if the landscape were a prodigious mirror that reflected the stars. As the bus drew closer (winding up a serpentine slope at speeds that set my nerves on edge), the work required of my imagination became less. Orange lamps lit streets set at steep angles. I could see people and cars moving from one tier to the next. Signage from cafe restaurants, curio shops, and hotels. Now the bus was amongst them. We charged up a hill, swung right, and pulled into a station.
Rodrigo Reyes had warned me to pack a coat. It was cold in Baguio, he said. Not cool, but cold. I’d laughed at the time. In Manila it was not uncommon for 100 degree days to stretch on for a month or more. What, my thoughts comforted me, did cold mean to a Filipino?
I stepped off the bus. A March wind from Cleveland met me full force, rocking me on my heels. Would there be snow in the air soon? It certainly seemed possible. Shivering, I turned to address the members of the film crew. Some were just stepping off the bus behind me, others were looking for their luggage in an ever increasing pile near the storage bin. None complained about the cold; in fact, they wore thick jackets that I could almost swear mocked my indignant behavior.
“Holy hell,” I said to no one in particular.
One of the cameramen heard and asked if something was wrong.
“Freezing,” I told him.
“Of course,” he replied. “We’re on the side of a mountain.” A gust of icy wind whipped his hair to the side. “We’re also in what might be the most haunted city in the world,” he went on, dropping his voice.
This time I didn’t laugh. I spied my suitcases being unloaded from the bus, snatched them up, and waited for the hotel shuttles to arrive. Ten minutes later they did. There were two accommodating us. We cruised further up the chilly streets. Shops closed for the night reflected us in black windows. More signs flickered and glowed: Rika’s Cafe, Gavin’s Gadgets, Internet Lounge.
The hotel was six stories high, painted black. I stepped off the shuttle and blinked curiously at its facade. All the windows were dressed in white drapery, with tiny electric candles glowing on the sills. A sign at the entrance—wood-carved—proclaimed that this was the Kagubatan Hotel. Inside we found a dim, spacious lobby with islands of furniture set in little pools of reading light. All of this furniture was vacant. The receiving desk, however, was not. A tall, bony girl with sunken eyes asked us to sign a guestbook. Then the bellhops were summoned to show us upstairs.
I was happy to leave the lobby. Its shadowed dreariness was that of a room given up on by the living. Scheduled for demolition. Huge pillars rose to a ceiling I couldn’t quite see. A crystal chandelier, also gigantic, hung over us with a faded glare lost in its depths, as if it had recently been switched off, and was slowly dying.
“Sir?” the bellhop summoned me. “This way.”
My crew had gone to the elevators, and was waiting there. I did not accompany it. Instead the bellhop—a young lad with the steady, confident eyes of one destined for greater things—led me down a narrow hallway lit by a single, flickering light. As we walked he explained that all the rooms upstairs were full. Would I acquiesce, he wanted to know, to taking basement lodgings for the night? I told him it would be fine so long as the accommodations were suitable. The bellhop assured me they were, then asked me to follow him down a flight of stone steps. As we walked the temperature suddenly dropped. I felt a draft from the passage below gently lift my hair.
The passage was concrete, laid over with a thin rug. Black and white portraits hung on the walls. To judge by their dress they were of people long dead. Of themselves these portraits would never have disturbed me; I kept noticing, however, that none of the subjects’ eyes seemed able to focus on the camera, and their jaws were all hanging just slightly askew, as if they’d fallen asleep whilst waiting for the photographer to set the lens.
We passed a room with a table and some chairs. Overlooking them was a stage drawn closed with a black curtain. Just as I happened to peer through the door the curtain twitched.
“How old is this hotel?” I asked the bellhop.
“1900, Sir,” he replied, with a tinge of reverence in tone.
The hallway bent right at ninety degrees. Not much farther down the bellhop stopped, put down my luggage, and unlocked the door to my room. It was narrow, and when the bellhop switched on the lights, glowed the yellow of a dying man’s jaundiced skin. A bed stood against one concrete wall shot with hairline cracks. Near another was an old desk and a TV. The bellhop opened a small door at the far end of the room and switched on another light; a bathroom of clean but crooked green tiling came to life beneath glaring white florescence.
“Very good, Sir,” the bellhop told me.
We’d apparently reached the end of our acquaintance for the evening. I procured for him a light tip. He turned to leave, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to let him escape before asking about the portraits in the hall. The boy raised an eyebrow, as if he’d never even known the portraits existed.
“Oh, those,” he said, after this brief warble in confidence. “Post-mortem photography, Sir.”
I gaped at him. “Post-mortem? You mean they were dead when their pictures were taken?”
“Very much so, Sir,” the bellhop answered with the tiniest of smiles. “The practice was quite common when this hotel was still new.” Now he shrugged, suggesting that the whole matter was of little interest to him. “The portraits are of the founder’s family. Grandparents. Parents.” He hesitated. “Nieces and nephews.”
“Yes,” I told him. “Some of them did look young.”
“Life was different then. More fleeting.” The bellhop’s persona became professional again. “Will there be anything else, Sir?”
“No,” I told him. “Thank you.”
“Good night, Sir.”
And a moment later I found myself all alone in Kagubatan’s small, off the beaten path basement room.
I hung my clothes inside a wooden wardrobe whose doors creaked. Then I switched on the television to PTN. We shared one thing in common with all the other networks: saturation of solicitation. Half a dozen commercials made spirited attempts to sell me things I didn’t need. After these we hit the top of the hour. Smiling, I took a seat on the edge of the bed.
THE PTN EVENING NEWS, a deep announced over the clicking of typewriter keys, WITH ALLEN BAUTISTA.
“Good evening,” Bautista told us. He looked quite regal in a gray suit and red tie. His steady hands picked up a stack of papers, fluffed them, placed them back on the desk. “Magandang gabi. Today is Wednesday, June 7, 2006. The New People’s Army ambushed and killed three Filipino soldiers in Balbalan. An act of communism that President Arroyo has deemed intolerable. Well, that’s nice, but now what?”
I smiled and pulled a bottle of Coke from my bag. As usual, Bautista was drunk on the air. Tipsy after a three martini dinner.
“Other than that we don’t have much happening. It’s been...what”—he consulted one of the pages—“four months since the failed coup at the PPR anniversary. A little more than that since things got a bit dicey at a game show celebration near Gilmore. Shit.”
Coke flew from my nose as I burst out laughing.
Bautista’s expression had become mortified. He ruffled the pages again. “I mean...wow. Things are quiet. Blessedly quiet. Again...nice. It’s good to be bored every once in awhile. But we mustn’t get complacent.” His fist bounced lightly on the desk for emphasis. “Never! Never, never, never be complacent. Especially in Manila. In the union of Serbia and Montenegro, Montenegro has declared independence. And now it seems that Serbia itself wishes to declare independence from...” the anchorman’s eyes dropped to the pages again “...somebody else. I have no idea whom.”
I was still laughing at this when my cell phone rang. The name SETTI flashed on its screen.
“Hey babe,” I answered, immensely cheered by our anchorman’s partially inebriated presentation.
Setti’s soft, sexy purr told me hello before asking if we’d made it to Baguio okay. I told her we had, and that everyone was tucked in at The Hotel Kagubatan for the night.
“Kagubatan?” she said. “Oh. My goodness.”
I reached for the remote to turn the TV down. “Does it have a bad reputation?”
There came a long pause from the other end of the line. “No,” Setti told me at last. “It’s fine.”
On the TV screen Bautista was laughing at someone’s off-camera remark.
“Are you watching the evening news?” came my next question, to which Setti replied that no, she hadn’t felt like watching PTN tonight.
“I just wanted to check on you,” she said, in an unusually concerned tone. “I’ve been worried about you, Fredo. It’s a long ride to Baguio. Traffic isn’t safe.”
“We’re okay,” I assured her. By this point my attention had strayed fully from the news, as a man’s may do from festivity when he notices, among an otherwise jubilant throng, that one, lonesome girl with no dance partner. That girl he feels he must traverse the cacophony and speak to. Turning the TV off, I asked Setti if she was feeling all right.
“I feel terrific, Fredo,” she said. “I really do. I’m in Greenheights with my dad. Do you want to talk to him?”
Before I could answer a shuffling noise in my ear announced the receiver changing hands.
“Hello!” a cheerful voice sang. “Mr. Trentinara! This is Lysette’s father! It’s good to talk to you!”
My speech came errant from the bow, falling to earth far short of aplomb. “Sir,” managed. “Hello. How are you this evening?”
“I am excellent,” the man’s voice—the voice that last weekend couldn’t be bothered with my presence at all—put forth. “Better than excellent. It’s so nice to talk to you!” he barged on, obliterating whatever I may have tried to say next. “Setti tells me you’re such a good man. That you treat her so well.”
“Oh, Sir,” I stammered, “a good woman brings goodness out from any man.”
“That is so kind of you to say. And correct. But don’t tell me all this pleasantry is a scam, Fredo. My daughter would never be so easily fooled.”
“No, Sir. I’m not scamming at all.”
The receiver changed hands again, and Setti’s voice came back on the line. “Have you had dinner?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
“Not yet? It’s after eight o’clock. I should have come with you. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Setti, really. I’ll grab a bite upstairs.”
“Don’t just get a bag of chips and some Coke. Please, Fredo.”
My eyes dropped guiltily to the bottle in my other hand. “I won’t do that. I promise.”
“I love you, Fredo.”
“Setti, I—“
“Anything you need, whenever you need it, I’m right here.”
“Thank you, Setti,” I said, after I pause I hoped didn’t last for too long. My equilibrium felt impoverished. Not once over our two month romance could I recall her talking to me this way. She’d been bossy from the start. Hard-nosed and demanding. I recalled the way she’d talked to me on the hill that first night we’d made love. The way she’d snatched the cigarette from my lips, put it between her own. You don’t understand anything yet, Fredo, but you will.
We talked for a few more minutes. Then Setti all but shooed me off the line, insisting that I go find something to eat. I promised her I would, and that I’d be calling her tomorrow. A minute later I was alone again at the hotel.
Cranking the volume on the TV, I watched Bautista finish his report. Bless him, he’d made it through to the evening’s fluff segment. It focused on the adoption of newborn puppies.
“Please,” the anchorman implored. “Look at this little guy.” He raised a brown and white puppy in front of the camera. “Cute as a button. And ready for a new home.” Suddenly the pup turned and nipped Bautista’s finger. “Ow! You little...” Here I was forced to hold my breath. “Monster,” Bautista finished.
I shook my head. The puppy was certain to be euthanized within a week.
As for Setti... Well, I was still young then. Still in my own fluff segment when it came to women. Learning with a smile whilst on cautious guard for snapping jaws. Dismissing her unusual behavior—along with that of her father—I decided to keep my promise about grabbing dinner, and left the room.
It wasn’t until I got back the uneasiness returned. It was after eleven by then, and I was a little tipsy after a few drinks in the lounge. Still, I was alert enough to ascertain that the hotel basement had begun to feel very much like a basement. For starters, I was alone. No bellhop escorted me through the gloomy passages. This time there were only shadows, and the faces of the dead, hung on cool, cracked walls. Then I came to the room with the stage. The black curtain was still there, and it twitched again to reveal a little girl’s face wearing a mischievous smile. My gait faltered, as will the quality of light when fleeting wings caress the bulb, and I peered inside the room, only to become convinced that the girl had never been there at all. Drink had conjured an illusion. Cheap whiskey mixed with a bad cigar.
That night my sleep was restless. Every time I began to drift off the bed would shake, as if a lady were in the room, demanding my attention, reminding me that I must fulfill my role in our relationship, the things that were expected of me.
“I don’t understand,” I blurted, coming awake for the fourth or fifth time.
On that particular occasion I thought I could smell cigarette smoke, but was too tired to care. I went back to sleep, and woke up half an hour late for the day’s shoot. After lunch I got a call from Manila. The station manager chided me my unprofessional display. Told me that if I wanted to sleep, I could always go back to Cleveland and wait for the Indians to win the World Series. Stung, I promised to behave myself from then on. I also reassured him that the show would be fine, and that he needn’t worry.
Back on the set I caught sight of Oliver Madilim grinning at me from behind a water dispenser. My mind went back to the little girl and the black curtain. From here it leaped to Setti, whom I hadn’t found time to call this morning.
“Four minutes!” the director called. “Four minutes and we’re back to work, people!”
Leering, I showed Oliver my watch and pointed at the dial. The gesture lacked maturity, but then so did his grin, and that twitching curtain, and the shaking bed.
Then I remembered the significance of that time frame—four minutes. What it must mean to Madilim. And I was ashamed, and I spent the rest of that week in relative silence, keeping my head low, and the shadows close, as if they were grand drapes of blackest velour, and I a child accomplished in the ways of chicanery.