TWENTY-FIVE
Mid-December arrived on a chill wind which, as by this point of the narrative you’re certain to know, is quite rare in Manila. As the holidays approached I could often hear an intermittent rain pattering the condo window, as when water patters the tiles around Setti’s feet during one of her showers, or when the wet duhat leaves scramble down the lanes of Greenheights after dark, happy as children with a rope and a rhyme, and dreams to pursue. As I went to work each morning the trees of Salcedo Village were often in sway, with holiday lights twinkling all the brighter for cloudy skies. The shop windows had been decorated for Christmas. There were dolls and deer and painted-on frost to smile at my every step. The smell of coffee through one door; through another, the scent of baked bread. All as the wet streets sighed beneath the tread of purring cars.
Also during that time, PTN’s new show hit number one in the ratings. It was glorious. Stupendous. An achievement whose acquaintance we’d never before made, even during those heady days Allen used to talk about, when the sound of our dauntless pursuit would not fade behind those of the champions, but maintained their ominous music, until at last that decade of blossoming fruit had drawn to a close, and with it, the spirit of things impossible brought to life on the flash of a dream.
We were number one. The first tell-tale sign came from the lobby. I walked in one morning to find all the HR girls gathered around the Christmas tree. They were screaming and giggling. Each held a glass of champagne in her hand.
“Ano ang nangyayari?” I asked, not truthfully expecting an answer.
The girls spun to look at me for a moment, then burst out laughing all over again.
I felt compelled to check the cut of my duds. All seemed in order—tie straight, fly zipped. Yet the girls were still laughing. The sight was hard to take in. They were drunk—silly drunk at the office. Such conduct may be defined as anathema on a global scale. To see it our manager, Rodrigo Reyes, might have shot each of them from their little saddles.
As for me...I lent out a vague smile before making my way to the elevators. More frivolity awaited upstairs. Rock music. Streamers and party poppers. One of our writers, normally the most puritan of distinguished ladies, was dancing atop her desk. Her partner, a bottle of champagne, led from one outstretched arm. A man I vaguely knew as the network gopher handed me a glass. I wanted to ask him what was going on, but to judge by his eyes—unhinged—no intelligible answer would likely redound.
Nevertheless I had no choice but to pursue my investigation. Making my way through rows of office cubicles, I took sight of other kites caught up on the wind of whatever this was. On the floor two men were seated, Indian-style, about a game of tongits. I cut around them, only to be confronted by a girl with a basket of chocolates. She raised the basket to me. Thanking her, I took a bag of M&Ms. Then I repeated the question from downstairs.
“Oh!” she fluttered. “So no one told you? We’re number one!”
The arrow of her speech went wide of the mark, but as it sailed away over the cubicles my deductive abilities were able to decipher its fletching. “You mean the new show?” I asked.
“The new show,” she nodded. “Have some more candy, Fredo!”
With that, she proceeded to dump the basket over my head, as if it were Gatorade and I the victorious coach of a championship basketball series. Gaping through a curtain of Bountys and Baby Ruths, I watched the girl stumble over the tongits players and fall flat on her face.
“Is everybody here drunk?” I yelled over the loud music.
One of the men threw a pile of cards at me. “No!”
“But—”
“Mr. Reyes wants to see you in his office.”
This proclamation excused me from the madness. My journey to the station manager’s office was, however, not without further incident. Two strange men kissed me on the cheek. Another ruffled my hair in the manner of a dad congratulating his son.
“Hey, Twist!” a fourth man shouted before giving me a hard slap on the face. “What up?”
No one had ever called me Twist before. Suddenly the appellation seemed suitable. I was indeed forced to twist and turn my way around several more of the celebrants before at last making it to Rodrigo Reyes’ door, which hung open.
“Boss!” I called through the archway.
He was standing by the desk with a group of men about his own age. All wore business suits crisp and dignified as their smiles were bona fide. And each held a glass of champagne.
“The man of the hour!” Reyes thundered toward me. “Congratulations!”
He and his men raised their glasses.
“So it’s true? We’re really number one?”
“AGB Nielsen and Live Plus Seven have us kicking everyone’s ass!”
“Well in that case...” I gulped down my champagne. One of the men handed me a bottle off the desk. I refilled, drank, and refilled again. “Is the rest of the crew around?”
“Of course!” Reyes told me. “Of course! Get out there and have some fun!”
“We’ve got all the other networks seething,” I grinned. “Finally.”
“I knew we could do it. I knew it.”
“The power of positive thinking?”
Reyes gave a big, drunken laugh. “Not a chance! Call it a hunger instead! A hunger for victory!”
For the rest of that day the staff on my floor mingled and played games. It was as if Christmas had already arrived. I found myself drifting, planet-like, among stars once too far from reach to seem real. Hope and faith. Happiness and joy. At some point the girl who’d dumped the candy over my head came back into orbit. Without acquiring my consent, she took my hand and led me into the ladies room. A row of pink stalls occupied one wall. The girl chose one, pulled me inside, locked the door. The loud music suddenly seemed more faint. Further away. Indeed, I could hear couples in the the other stalls. Gasps and groans. Heavy breathing. It had been so long since PTN had known any real success. Its current antics, I supposed, were justified. But as the candy girl sat down and opened her mouth, I distinctly heard an ancient voice of reason—dead past these dreary dregs of two thousand years—repeat the virtues of moderation in any event. I remembered them. Cataloged them for the light of day. Here, however, glowed a lady in need of sustenance. Was the act of giving not also a trait of the virtuous? Beyond this somewhat barbaric caprice I awaited reply from the previous. None was forthcoming.
Checkmate, Virgil. I am no Scrooge.
∞
Allen Bautista sat across from me. We were in our usual booth at the bamboo bar, talking about good things. The dramedy’s success. Beautiful ladies. Fine cigars. From the latter a veil of smoke hung about the anchorman’s face, lending his features a quality of the ethereal, as if here in this tavern of shadows and sparkling archways he was nothing more than a memory indigenous to a long entombed dream. Christmas was so close as to be invisible. A giant bolide nearing impact, concealed in the umbra of our ugly truths. But as I mentioned, we were keeping such truths at bay, Allen and I. We knew too much about the impermanence of all things sweet to do anything but.
“Well then,” Bautista grumbled, tapping ash from his cigar. “News of your success has not gone unnoticed in my department. How was the party?”
“We probably let things get a bit too out of hand,” I admitted. “But everyone’s back to work now.”
“Marvelous, my good sir, marvelous. Congratulations.”
“I can’t take all the credit. Our writers—”
The other laughed. “Your writers. Hacks.”
Now this surprised me. Bautista was no one to mince words, but surely he knew enough to acknowledge the industry’s contribution from those of the clicking keys. “Hacks?” I said with a smile, trying to make light.
“Indeed. Distributors of cookie-cutter ideas and plot lines. Oh, they dress each of them up a bit differently,” he went on, for I had raised a finger to interject. “Change the characters’ genders. Change their race. But it’s all the same banana. Allow me to set the frame of your basic comedy.
“First, the characters. You have your star. He or she is normally intelligent but a bit lacking on the social circuit. Subject to various, comedic forms of faux pas. They suffer false, hollow issues with both family and love life. Maybe the dad is a grouch. Maybe the brother or sister is gay. But we can’t truly feel bad for the star, because he or she—these days it’s more likely to be a she—has no real problems. She is of upper class or, at the very least, upper middle class. She lives in a massive house or apartment, because there must be room on the set to accommodate cameras and crew. She is a lovable, bumbling bourgeois. We envy her. We also hate her just a little bit.”
Bautista paused here to sip his drink. I sat quietly, not willing to break his stride. Thus far his narrative was more or less on the mark. His “star” represented a key ingredient in a formula long proven to work.
“Next,” Allen went on, “we have our buffoon. The show’s idiot. Usually but not always male. For every line directed at him, he comes back with one so abysmally stupid we can’t help but laugh. This may be compared to a form of leading by grease-ball councilors in a courtroom. He is stupid, yes? But funny, too. Yes?”
“Yes,” I agreed, as just such characters’ faces flashed before my mind’s eye. Kramer. Woody Boyd. Lowell Mather.
“And we have, of course, the best friend of the star. Who is sweet and sensitive. Insightful. It is worth noting that this friend will often serve to diversify the show as well. Maybe he’s black or Asian or Indian. Whatever.
“Now we come to our settings. The scenes.” Allen tilted his head. “Tell me. In any weekly comedy-drama, such as the one PTN currently airs, what is the first kind of setting that comes to mind?”
My answer arrived almost before he’d finished speaking. “A coffee shop.”
“Precisely. All the cast gathers to chat at a coffee shop. The barista is usually also the owner. He is grumpy and irritable, in an adorable kind of way.”
“Like Sammy the waitress?”
Bautista chuckled. “Like Sammy the waitress.” He took a moment to consider his surroundings. The bar. A few chattering patrons. The Christmas-lit archway. “Are we on TV?”
“This whole ride with PTN seems more like a book so far.”
“Yes. Well. Anyway.” The anchorman tapped some more ashes from his cigar. “We have our coffee shop. And of course the house, where the protagonist lives. For reasons I’ve already stated, it is quite large. Some attempt to romance sympathy from the viewer will often be made here. Perhaps one of the star’s parents is dead. Or maybe she’ll tell her mom about a boy she’s in love with. But again—the star endures no real struggles. No one living in a house like hers knows what true struggle is. Her grades are exemplary. She has just been accepted at one or more of the Ivy League schools. She is thin and pretty. Her unrealistically diverse friends all like her very much.”
“It’s formulaic,” I told him, as if this in some way could excuse countless Jewish assembly lines—lazy assembly lines—of their mindless clicks and whirs. “When something works, you stick with it. That’s what went wrong with Lester’s Ghosts. We dared try something new.”
“Yes,” Allen said, after another sip of brandy. “Lester’s Ghosts suffered and died young for its radical ideals. Much the way a new political movement will beneath the bloody barbs of its aggressors. Or the way a literary novel goes unread amongst works that can’t challenge their readers, or appeal to the intellect. It sits on the shelf unnoticed, for within its pages there is not mere escape from the hum-drum world, but a manipulation of our thoughts and feelings. A twist of opinion here. A tweak of the heart there. These are machinations of a sort that take effort from the writer. Crafting and patience. There is no formula. We pour not caustic catalysts into old, dirty beakers. Rather we set, ever so gently, the cross-hairs of a finding scope on some target of our ideals, out of hope that the reader will locate it through a broader and less fastidious lens.”
I sipped my own whiskey as the anchorman spoke. I smoked cigarettes. His speech was sincere, though I knew Lester’s Ghosts didn’t quite fit into its realm. After all, some of the writing on that show was just plain bad. But as to its ideals—a word Bautista had actually put forth—the sting of his point could not have been more keen. We live in a world where chance walks a hollow man, as do those men referred to by the poet Eliot, who dance ‘round prickly pears at dawn, whispering together in quiet, meaningless voices. The goddess Fortuna is spurned—her rudder, ball, and cornucopia feared between the barren, delinquent beats of cool acedia, disclaimed of approbation by her partner, that man of excellence and valor.
I know not how any of this tripped into the story which came next. It didn’t seem to have any connection to what Bautista told me—that is, the story of the fifty servants. Something, however, reminded him that night. First he named the title. Was I familiar with it? I told him I was not. Then I asked a question of my own: Was the story a part of Filipino folklore? No indeed, the other replied. Its roots lay somewhere beneath the cold, rocky landscapes of Scandinavia. Bautista knew it from a Swede who’d been passing through Manila in 1984. The Swede had heard it—or so he professed—from a Norwegian singer in Kongsberg. And the singer heard of it through his mother. And the mother...
Here the anchorman’s trail went cold, but I understood full well about folklore. What I shall include in this narration constitutes my best memory of Bautista’s version of the tale. The details will likely fall short of accuracy. Such is the way of the yarn. And should you, Gentle Reader, one day choose to pass the tale forward, your own best memory, like that of mine, must needs be sufficient.
∞
There once lived a wealthy man high, high up in the icy town of Narvik. His fortune owed to numerous excuses, none of which could be pinned down, even by the most indefatigable of speculators. Some claimed he owned ski resorts (which in Narvik were plentiful); others claimed he sold parkas and other attire necessary for the climate (again, Narvik). In any case, the man lived well. Nor did he happen to be old and ugly, as so many of the one percent seem to fall helplessly victim to, and adrenochrome be damned. This man, whose name may have been Magne or Felix, was in fact quite dashing, to a point where the idea of marriage seemed a preposterous enterprise, as the whole of the land had for years been his harem. No one who knew of Magne or Felix even dared challenge this last. It was common knowledge. And if ever some fool—usually a tourist—did come to question his exploits, said fool quickly became educated by one of Narvik’s myriad proud fathers or disgruntled ex-husbands.
Magne or Felix lived in a large castle that was looked after by fifty—count them, fifty—servants. These servants were loyal and dignified. They shined the master’s shoes. They polished the pewters. There was tea in the morning, and at noon, and at night. The master’s clothes were always pressed (he favored garish yellow ascots, albeit this device may have been a ruse to discourage lovers from becoming too invested in the relationship). His towels were folded; his bed was made. The floors were clean and the walk-paths swept. The servants always did their work in exemplary fashion. To this anyone lucky enough to visit the castle would agree. Nor would Magne or Felix have things any other way.
The only time the master became irritated with them was when he arrived home after one of about fifty-two business trips around Scandinavia each year. This because the servants insisted upon greeting him with “My Lord”. Whether Magne or Felix happened to be in the mood for this kind of thing or not, it scarcely mattered. Upon his every return to the welcome mat, fifty servants greeted him with the reverent phrase. Worse, they lined up in the castle’s great hall to enact it, one at a time.
First came a nod, followed immediately by: “My Lord.”
Fifty times each week, Magne or Felix would suffer this. “My Lord, My Lord, My Lord...” It was all carried off in just the way they performed their other duties—which is to say, in rigid distinction. Magne or Felix never tasked them for it, though after about the tenth “My Lord” his ascot screamed for it to stop. It made for a small annoyance only, and because the servants seemed to enjoy it so much, their master let it slide.
Years passed. Magne or Felix took many lovers, and went on many business trips. He made certain to pay his servants well in both coin and kindness. Unfortunately neither of these could deter what eventually happened. It is perhaps beyond evitable in a castle with fifty servants that at least one of them should become disgruntled. And so it came to be in Narvik.
In this case, however, the disgruntled in question did not approach his master directly. To do so would have applied zero tonic to the servant’s specific problem. And what precisely was the problem? Ah! What problem would you have serving a master like Magne or Felix—a man rich, handsome, and with more lovers than yellow ascots to put them out the rover at full speed with? It was envy, of course. The servant, whose name is lost to time but whom we’ll address as Dag for these purposes, harbored envy for his master’s success.
Hatred? No. It didn’t go so far as hatred. To hate Magne or Felix would have meant to kill him.
Wait...
Dag did kill him. We’re coming to that. But at first, Dag just wanted to be him.
It got bad. Dag worked at the castle for maybe a year before his feelings for its master began to turn green. Up until that time he toiled sufficiently enough as a stogie cutter. It was a lucky gig. The master’s tendencies in all things leisurely were widely considered as lavish...except when it came to cigars, toward which he favored the cheaper brands, though to this day it is not known why, and it really doesn’t matter, except these brands, due to their less than fastidious production values, came off the crops more difficult to cut. Enter Dag.
Dag made for a fine stogie cutter. Not once did Magne or Felix ever complain. Plumes of smoke in just the right amount hovered nightly in his library, which was filled with books he had never read, nor ever intended to read. The literature’s only purpose was to execute a positive impression upon the more belletristic lovers who sometimes visited the castle. And while such lovers were not common among the harem (bookworms are notoriously allergic to ascots), Magne or Felix did enjoy plucking one on occasion, if only for the rhyme of their sweating covenants, or the Shakespearean tragedy of their morning departure.
It would be difficult to describe the goings-on in Dag’s mind. The deviant thoughts, we might say, that connected one after the next, forming a kind of bridge across the gap of his common sense and enabling him, quite destitute of effort, to step safely upon the hitherto uncharted landscape of murder. All I can tell you is that it started with envy. Lending no favors to the master’s fate was his striking similarity with Dag. Both were about the same height and the same weight. True, their hairstyles were different, but this obstacle proved no challenge for Dag, who did indeed begin to wear his hair in a fashion similar to Magne or Felix. This was the innocent beginning. Already though, Dag knew what he wanted: to become his master. To replace him fully.
At first, Magne or Felix barely noticed that anything might be wrong. Mind you, he had fifty servants to serve. And his good judgment could sometimes stray. This was especially true around the home. Consequentially it was not Dag who worried him, but the gardener, a burly man who wielded a huge pair of sheers, and who liked to nod at his master with a smile that was perhaps too affectionate. Soon the gardener was treating Dag with these very same nods, for Dag had adopted the master’s looks and mannerisms to such an extent that he could no longer tell them apart.
The transformation happened over the period of a year. Or two years. Or three. Again, this part of the tale is of little meaning. But it was gradual—so gradual. The gardener noticed, and it was by his acceptance that Dag at last made up his mind to strangle Magne or Felix with one of his own preposterous ascots. It happened in the library, near midnight. Surrounded by some of the most astounding works ever produced in the field of literature, Magne or Felix had fallen asleep in front of the television. Dag did not let the opportunity slip. Ascot dangling from his fist, he tip-toed to the master’s easy chair. Two minutes later, Magne—or was it Felix—lay dead.
Dag disposed of the body in an ancient dungeon below the flagstones. No one had been down there for centuries. It made for the perfect place to let a body rot right down to the bones, at which time, why, anyone who happened to discover the corpse would merely assume it had committed some terrible crime in another era, and was quite deserving of its fate. Better still, Narvik just so happened to be a rather effeminate, democratic town. What it heard first from the television was what it instantly believed to be true. Let the evening news report it as such: Corpse found in a castle dungeon, presumed dead for centuries.
Dag lived happily for a long time hence. The servants—forty-nine—remained in vitro, as did the harem, along with all of those ostentatious ascots. And though he sometimes did imagine his master’s vindictive zombie shambling up the curved dungeon steps in the middle of the night, the fancy was neither potent nor frequent enough to infect the overall vigor of his self-satisfaction. Dag was able to live with what he’d done...
For the following ten years, at which time he committed suicide by hanging in a copse of conifers at the very back of Narvik Old Cemetery. You may visit the spot if you like, though I cannot designate the precise tree from which...
Well, yes. From which the suicide occured.
Suffice to say, we may live with what we do for only so long. And during that time we may be happy, or miserable. Bad dreams lie in wait. Good ones too. And smiles and laughter and frowns and tears. Our guilt is a phantom at the shoulder of our content.
Good night to you, dear Reader. Rest well.
∞
“There you have it,” Bautista concluded. He’d drunk two glasses of beer during the tale, but showed no ill effects. “Any thoughts?”
“The story seems to suggest that a crime can only be lived with for so long,” I replied. My own beer was still half full. I took a swig, set it down, and continued: “Though it carries on in its own unusual style. I suppose that guilt really is somewhat like a phantom.”
“Yes,” Bautista said. “When Bill Sikes killed Nancy at the end of Oliver Twist, he could feel her ghost everywhere he went. Even when he pressed the back of his shoulder against a wall. Nancy’s spirit would move above his head, clinging to the wall like a spider. It drove him mad. Do you believe in ghosts, Twist?”
I started. Here for the second time I’d been addressed as “Twist”. But then Bautista had been discussing a novel with that very word in the title. Plus, he was a little drunk. I dismissed the anomaly once again.
“Yes,” came my unaffected reply, though I refrained from venturing into any detail.
Inebriated or otherwise, our anchorman knew I’d been terse. “Yes?” he asked. “Is that all?”
“I’ve seen some things. Heard some things.”