Orchid House (25 page)

“Yes, yes,” the man said, continuing to nod and smile. “Captain Morrison say green ribbon.” He turned and pointed to the green ribbon holding his long gray hair.

“He says he has many stories of your grandfather to share with you at a later time.”

“Say that I'd love to hear them. He should return and tell me before I go.”

A frown flickered across Markus's face before he translated.

Julia turned to greet the next family waiting patiently behind. Night came quickly, and it felt like hours that she stayed there, meeting people and accepting their words of sympathy through Markus. The Tres Lolas weaved among the mourners, talking to them, joining in with prayers. More candles were set around the table until the coffin glowed from the small flames.

Finally there was a break in those coming to meet her, and Markus went to refill her coffee. When he returned, he asked, “So, is this very different from the wakes in the States?”

“We most often have the funeral only. Before this week, I thought only the Irish had wakes.”

“Many cultures have wakes, Miss Julia. You need to get out more. And the Irish and Filipinos aren't so different, you know, except that we're brown, we like rice instead of potatoes, and we have
duwendes
instead of leprechauns.” He smiled. “We did have many Irish missionaries. And our great national hero, Rizal, married his Irish lover just days before his execution.”

“Who knew?” Julia suddenly realized then she was hungry. “How long will this go on?”

“Nine days, didn't they tell you?”

“What?”

Markus smiled. “I'm joking—not very polite during a wake. However, at some wakes, the novena takes place starting on the night of a death.”

“Novena?”

“Nine days of prayer. Sometimes there are readings from the Scripture, stories of the deceased. It can be amazing how the family and community are drawn together in their faith and prayers. Boisterous family reunions are often the result of a death.”

Markus nodded to a family of five standing before them. Julia blinked her eyes and took their hands. The little girl cried against her mother, and Julia wondered if it was in fear or confusion.

More time passed with hands holding hers, words translated by Markus, the singing, the scent of candles, flowers, and incense, the tears. It was well past midnight when Markus finally told her to get some rest.

“Go sleep for a few hours. I will have one of the lolas or Raul sit watch for a while.”

“I need some air first.” Her head was spinning, from exhaustion or emotion or the scent of the flowers that covered every spare inch of the great room, parlor, and grand entryway.

“I'll walk with you and then get you to your room.”

Outside the lights glowed from the trees. There were tables of men and women playing mahjong and poker, smoking cigarettes, and drinking beer or lemonade.

Julia and Markus walked arm in arm in a comforting silence, passing several men asleep on benches and a family curled together on cardboard on the lawn. She estimated that hundreds of people milled around the hacienda. The palms and trees cut silhouettes into the starry night, and music played on a radio beside one of the tables of gamblers. People nodded at her as she passed, as dice were rolled and money was exchanged to the triumphant from the annoyed. There was a haze in the yard from the candles, cigarettes, and flickering lamps that gave a surreal quality to the scene.

Finally Markus escorted her to her room. He rubbed her head in a brotherly way, then kissed her on the cheek, sending anything but brotherly tingles throughout her body.

“Get some rest,” he said again. “I'll take care of your guests until you return.”

Julia closed the door and leaned against it for a long while. Finally she slid her back down the door and rested her head on her knees.

T
HE FIRST WAKE EMMAN HAD ATTENDED—HIS AUNTIE'S—HAD
scared him half to death. The open casket in the house for two days, the wilted flowers, and the smell of that embalming fluid. He couldn't eat as the others did. His Tito Cris talked loudly with a plate of food in his hand while standing right beside his auntie. Once he actually set the plate on the edge of her coffin, then picked it up and continued eating.

Captain Morrison's funeral was respectable. He hoped someday to have a funeral even half as nice, but not anytime soon, of course.

Sometimes he pictured Miss Julia crying at his funeral, maybe thinking that she might have loved him, and how grateful she was for his saving her life and giving up his own.

Across the room, standing just outside the doorway with a group of mourners, Emman stared at a man he'd seen once before. Then he remembered, though he couldn't be certain for it had been dark. It was the small man from the jungle, Emman was sure of it. He saw the small man make eye contact with another man—and Emman
knew
who that was without question. The man was dressed to look like someone from Manila or overseas. But Emman had studied the “wanted” posters enough to recognize that face.

Moving closer to the winding stairway that led to where Miss Julia had gone to rest, Emman wondered how to guard her and tell Amang Tenio or Mr. Raul what was happening.

Ka Manalo, the leader of the Red Bolo group, was in their midst.

T
HEY WOULDN'T KNOW HIM HERE, HE WAS SURE. NO ONE COULD
possibly guess Manalo was anything other than another contact of Captain Morrison's come to pay respects.

He hadn't implemented a plan. The hundreds attending the funeral granted an opportunity. Manalo and his men could enter the hacienda house and assess for themselves the mood of the people while also getting full access to the layout of the house. The hacienda was magnificent, he couldn't deny. A strand of jealousy and even of wonder went through him at such a magnificent structure. He wondered, if he'd given his life to something like this instead of . . . He cut the thoughts before they continued.

It was too late anyway. He'd been on the watch list for too long for a peaceful civilian life in such a high-profile place as Hacienda Esperanza. Unless—there was always an “unless”—unless the Communists really did change the political tide of the nation.

Manalo saw the boy's stare. And it made him wonder.

There was a commotion toward the grand front entrance.

Manalo quickly aborted any kind of action when he saw who was walking through the door. Even the boy gaped in utter shock. Everyone knew him, with the horrific war stories seared into their heads since childhood. And on top of that, he had the gall to wear his uniform.

If anything could bind the Filipino people into unity, it was one thing. Hatred. And hatred had just walked through the front door.

T
HE KNOCK MADE HER JUMP AWAKE FROM HER SPOT ON THE FLOOR
. Her travel clock said three o'clock—she'd slept all of thirty minutes. But Julia couldn't tell Lola Gloria or Lola Sita or whoever knocked that she needed a break when they'd been downstairs working all day and night.

It was Raul on the other side of the door.

“A man arrived here from Japan and wishes to see you.”

“From Japan? Who is it?”

“His name is Mr. Saeto Takada.”

“So he knew my—” And then the name sunk in. Colonel Takada. Even Julia knew the name of the man who had lived briefly in this house not as a guest but as a victor during WWII. She knew of the horror stories of starvation and brutality, though no one had spoken much about it. At the same moment, Julia recognized the potential impact of this man's presence at the hacienda. “Why is he here?”

“I do not know. He will only speak with you. He is in the office.”

Julia descended the stairs into a house of whispers. The tension was nearly palpable.

Colonel Takada had lived here, walked the pathways she now walked, had ruled without mercy, had ordered the executions of some relatives of people in this very house. This was the hacienda's enemy, her grandfather's enemy, and thus, her enemy.

Mr. Takada's back was to the door when Julia entered the office, and he didn't turn from gazing at the map on the wall. That map had obviously been there for years, and Julia wondered if Mr. Takada had studied it during the year he ruled the house. From this room he might have directed his troops, signed execution orders, written back home to his wife.

She stood at the door until a younger man she hadn't seen walked toward her.

“Thank you for meeting us,” he said, extending his hand. “I am Yoshuri Takada. I am Saeta-san's grandson.”

Julia took the hand he extended first to her and then to Raul. The older man had turned toward them, but did not step forward. He was a small man, rigid and proud, with raised chin, clenched jaw, and a sharp fierceness in his black eyes.

“We are the grandchildren of two men who were enemies,” said Yoshuri Takada.

Julia nodded at that, finding it hard to look away from Mr. Takada, and surprised at the grandson's joviality in his poignant words.

Yoshuri was taller and was dressed in a well tailored suit with a tie. He had an easygoing way about him, friendly and casual. “We have come to pay respects to your grandfather.”

“This is certainly a surprise.”

Julia noticed Raul and the older man staring at one another like two warriors preparing to fight. She felt unsure what to do next. Several men had gathered in the doorway with a child or two peek- ing between legs and arms. It came to her that these men might not be safe here, that they'd risked much to attend her grandfather's wake. Revenge after such atrocities was rarely soothed with time.

Markus appeared at the door then.

The relief surely showed on her face, but she tried to retain a confident composure. “Markus, come in and close the door.”

The younger man was aware of the strained energy that pulsed through the house, but he remained friendly and warm in contrast to his grandfather.

“We would like to present something to you.”

Yoshuri spoke to his grandfather. The old Japanese colonel walked to the desk, where a box rested made of an old wood and carved in intricate designs of battle scenes. Mr. Takada opened the box, and as he unwrapped a scarf of deep red velvet, the blade of a sword shone in the lamplight. Mr. Takada lifted the sword from the velvet, holding it flat as he ceremoniously presented it to Julia.

“It is Samurai,” the grandson said with pride and restrained excitement. “It has been in my family for four hundred years.”

Even Raul stepped to the desk with an expression of surprise. The older man's features remained hard and cold as he handed the sword to Julia.

“Why?” she asked Mr. Takada, then turned to his grandson beside him. “This is too great a gift. I do not understand.”

“My grandfather wishes to give it your family now. To the house and the descendents of Captain Ronald Morrison.”

“Yes, but why would he, when they were enemies?”

The old man spoke then, staring sternly at her. His jaw was firm and there was nothing decipherable in his eyes.

“He says, ‘We were enemies, but I respected him. We are not enemies any more.' This is my grandfather's way of making peace. Of asking for forgiveness, though he would not say so.”

Julia thought of the story of dead Filipinos filling the ditches and roadways of the hacienda. Of the innocent women and children locked in the hacienda prison. The Japanese had been relentless in their destruction of Manila, with the city bombed and nearly completely burned by the end of the war. The Japanese were merciless to the American and Filipino soldiers as well as the Filipino elderly, women, and children.

The facts and stories of that time had felt like a history long dead. There had been much turmoil in the years since, and yet the lost were not forgotten. And now here was her grandfather's great enemy and a household of possible avengers gathering behind the door. Julia knew there could be trouble. Takada surely knew this as well, but he had braved the journey into an enemy land to reach toward reconciliation.

The sword was heavy in her hands. “I thank you from our family, for this rare and enormous gift.”

Markus gave her a proud nod that gave her added strength.

“My grandfather would like to pay respects to your grand-father, and then we will leave. Our car waits in the driveway.”

She looked to Raul for input and received his nod. “Yes, of course.”

Julia opened the door with Mr. Takada and his grandson behind her. Raul and Markus followed.

As she feared, the men in the hallway were of the Barangay. They looked like warriors even in their faded jeans and slacks, amulets dangling at their chests—this time she noticed the green ribbons—many with tattooed arms or backs, the designs creeping up their necks from beneath their T-shirts. They wore fighting expressions, hands on hips or arms crossed as they sought to see Mr. Takada. But Julia stood quietly in the doorway until they backed against the wall to allow her to pass, leading the procession. The old soldier followed, staring straight ahead.

News had spread, and the house vibrated with anger instead of grief. An elderly woman jumped forward and spat in Mr. Takada's face. Julia took the woman's hand gently and stepped in front of Mr. Takada. Julia felt divided in her loyalty to the people here and her desire to accept the overtures of an old enemy who came to ask for peace. The old soldier wiped his face with a handkerchief and continued to stare forward.

“He is a guest at the hacienda,” she said, and Markus translated to those who might not understand. She hoped that their own ingrained culture of hospitality might confuse their thoughts enough to soothe the anger.

They moved forward past a myriad of faces staring or leering, then into the great room and up to her grandfather's flag-draped casket. Julia stepped aside, and Mr. Takada walked to the coffin. The room quieted. The candles flickered, and the American flag glowed in their light.