Three Filipino Women (14 page)

She was now an avid listener. “No, tell me.”

“Well, water has power, too. The Grand Canyon—you must have also seen those seashores with the stone cut and polished by the constant battering of waves. Erosion. Right on Kennon Road—those big rocks cut by water …”

“The Chinese water torture, does it operate on the same principle?”

“They strap a man to a seat and directly above him there is this pail of water with a tiny hole. Water drips slowly, drop by drop, on the man’s head, on the same spot …”

“It would take ages for that kind of water to break his skull,” she said.

“It is not that way,” I explained. “The drops come slowly, they make a sound inside the man’s brain. He waits for them. Waiting is agony, and when the next drop comes, it is an explosion which gets louder, louder, louder. He is driven insane …”

“Is that what you will do to me?”

“This does not work on stone,” I said.

She was surprised, of course, when I really refused to touch her.

For a moment, perhaps she suspected that I was impotent had she not felt a stirring in my loins when her hand had wandered there. I assured her I would not cheat her of her money and she laughed at this. Then turning on her side, she was soon breathing deeply, and then she snored, too, lightly.

THREE
 

T
he mountain cold seeped through the shuttered windows and she snuggled closer. Through stretches of wakefulness, I watched her face in repose; looking at her quiet in sleep, I felt all desire ebb away and in its place this ineffable tenderness. I wanted to enfold her, to shield her from the ignominy that we both knew. I had never experienced this feeling before; it warmed me, filled me with wonder, a strength to do anything to give her joy, to protect her—yes, except how could I protect her from herself?

Once during the night, she roused me with her mumbling. She
was moaning softly. I woke her up. “Ermi, is something the matter?”

Her eyes opened and they were frightened. Her arms shot up as if to defend herself and she said aloud, “Don’t—don’t!” then she realized that it was me.

“I was having a bad dream,” she said, her arms now tight around me. “I feel so weak …” For some time, she just lay beside me breathing softly, her eyelids fluttering. I held her hand and found her pulse beating very fast. “I am all right,” she assured me. “I was being pushed off a cliff—and I was fighting back.”

It was almost daybreak, mayas were chirping on the sill outside, and she slept a little more. The best time to look at a woman, to find the truth about her inner beauty, is in the morning when she wakes up. Ermi’s face, even with the wash of sleep, was appealing in its simplicity.

We breakfasted in our room—fried rice, eggs, ham, coffee and a slice of papaya. Then we went out to buy her a pair of walking shoes. Her high heels were not made for the inclines of Baguio. She bought a bunch of bananas—their skins clear yellow and untarnished. “They are so pretty,” she said. “I will just look at them first.” I also bought her a rattan shoulder bag. After the market we did Mines View Park, Burnham, the souvenir shops. I took pictures of her all the way but she insisted that I give her the film when the roll was finished, which I did.

There was a carnival on the grounds of the Pines and we lingered there on our last night. It was brightly lit, throbbing with music, but there were so few people, it was pathetic. It was, after all, the last days of the dry season and Baguio would soon be bereft of vacationing crowds. She tried her hand at the darts and then at a shooting gallery and was rewarded with two small packets of mentholated candy. Above us, the Ferris wheel was still but there were people
at the roller coaster which had started and was soon clattering noisily above us. “I am scared of that,” she said. “In Manila, when I first took a ride in it, I screamed and ordered it stopped …”

We talked again till past midnight. I was now sure that it was I who was in a roller coaster, that there was no stopping the ride, and that in the end, it would not ease down but zoom up instead into that gray, terrifying space from where there can be no returning.

She was in my arms again, her hair upon my face. She always turned away after a prolonged kiss and I suspected it was my breath she did not like. This time, I held her face and probed her mouth. She did not open it.

“For whom are you reserving it?” I asked.

“You are too much,” she said, sticking out her tongue at last. The taste was of honey salt. “There,” she said. I looked at her eyes that had dredged from me my deepest secrets, my regard for myself and I realized that with her, I was shorn of armor and shield. I did not know till then how vulnerable I had become and I was afraid lest she take advantage of me.

We had begun, surely there must be an ending as well. “Ermi,” I said softly, “please don’t make a plaything out of me. Should there come a time very soon when you don’t want to see me anymore, just say so. I will stay away.”

“What are you saying?” she asked.

“With you, I have no pride,” I said. “It seems as if I had given you a knife and said, kill me. If that time comes, please make it swift.”

“This is all very melodramatic,” she said. “But it never entered my mind.”

I bent over and kissed the line of her neck, her breasts.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

“What for?”

“For being kind.”

“That is not difficult to do,” she said. “Now, shall we make love?”

I looked lingeringly at her. I shook my head.

She raised herself on her elbows, hugged me and whispered, “Thank you.”

After breakfast in our room, I got her bag from the dresser and placed the envelope in it. “What is that?” she asked.

“My contribution to your restaurant.”

She took the envelope and gave it back. “But we didn’t do it,” she said. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“But I do,” I insisted. “You gave me two nights.”

“I had free lodging. I did some sight-seeing and had one of the most engaging conversations in my life. No, you don’t have to give me anything.”

“If I did not do it, it was not your fault.”

She grinned and pinched me. “All right then,” she said, “if you want your guilt feelings eased.” She tore the envelope open, picked out a few hundred pesos bills without counting them, and placed them in her bag.

My first meeting was to be in the evening. There was time for me to go to Manila with her then return to Baguio.

“You don’t have to. It is such a tedious trip.”

“I want this suffering,” I said, shushing her.

We sat together in the bus and on occasion, her hand would rest on my thigh or she would hold my hand as we talked. As in the night when she arrived, the first rains of May were upon the land. They came in sheets over the plains of Pangasinan that had started to green. “See what rain does to a land that is parched,” I said.

She pressed my hand.

“You make plants grow,” I said. “When your gate opened, I caught a glimpse of your lawn—the plants looked very healthy.”

“I love gardening,” she said.

I remembered the people in her house. “Who are those living with you? Relatives?”

She shook her head. “A driver and his family …”

“But you have no car.”

She smiled again. “No, he stopped driving a long time ago. He is old now. His wife and children—and grandchildren …”

“And you are not related?”

“Not blood relations, but something more real. And there is a girl. She was like me, you know. But she became a drug addict. She has a daughter and she cannot work anymore. She has lost her looks, you know what I mean.”

“And you work for them?”

She did not speak. “They are my family,” she said simply.

“You are a good girl, Ermi.”

“Flattery will get you somewhere,” she said.

After our first weekend in Baguio, I noticed a change in my attitude towards the girls in Camarin. Although I still needed them to service my clients, I dropped Ermi from my list. I still went there and sat with one of the girls for drinks or some banter and though the urge was often strong, I started sublimating it with meditation, with my writing. I no longer brought any of the Camarin girls to my apartment. It was easy for me to understand why; though I never told her, it was my regard for Ermi that inhibited me. I just did not feel right anymore making it with any of them, and not because I had abstained from Ermi, either. Maybe, it was a form of loyalty, and considering Ermi’s work, it could easily be misconstrued as a perversity. I had never believed in man’s monogamous nature and had
rather presumed that my sexual needs could never be leashed. Now, I understood how it could be done, without compulsion, not by religious sanctions, not by social constrictions but by that self-willed and strongest bond of all. The knowledge of what love could do gladdened me, surprised me. I was not too old to learn.

The Puesto opened the following year in November. Ermi leased a corner lot on Pasay Avenue, close to Makati. The restaurant was small compared to the plush establishments in the area. Fortunately, the adjoining lot was empty and she promptly rented it for parking. I helped her with suggestions, the decor, how to make good coffee so that people would go there for it and cakes as well. It did not specialize in any particular cuisine. What was offered was almost like home cooking and it could be French, Italian, Chinese, Spanish—whatever was available fresh from the Quezon City markets where she did the shopping herself.

There was nothing pretentious about the Puesto—the tiled front roof, the grilled door, the picture windows which were curtained in the lower portion so that one could have a view of the inside but not of the people eating. The chairs were comfortable, the napkins were of white cloth, the tablecloths in dark red. Ermi’s houseplants were all over the place—trailing lantanas, parlor ivy, orchids—hanging from the ceiling, in corners, lush and jungly in the doorway. They gave the Puesto its ambience. She hired a pretty hostess from the University of the Philippines while she herself sat in the booth near the cashier where she could not readily be seen by the customers but where she had a view of the kitchen around the corner, the small bar, and the counter for cakes and pastries. The baking was done right on the premises and the cooking which she often supervised was in a spotless kitchen that was half exposed to the customers so that they could see the food being prepared through glass
panels. Even the comfort room was spotless. She had a passion for cleanliness as she, herself, took good care of her personal hygiene.

The inauguration of the restaurant was very quiet—just me and her “family” whom I met for the first time.

But even after having gone out with her several times, what did I really know about her? That she was born after the war but would not tell me her birthday. That her mother was in America, that her father was a Japanese soldier although there was hardly any trace of Japanese in her features except for her clean, creamy complexion which she could have gotten from her mother. She had a house in Forbes Park which she rented out. She was easily scared and could get hysterical. She had, she said, “executed” all the men who loved her after she had gotten what she wanted or after the affair had become sticky. I had nothing—just memories. She had not given me a copy of the pictures I took of her in Baguio although she showed them to me. It is not that I regretted giving her small things, a box of chocolates, a book of crossword puzzles, or records when I returned from Hong Kong.

I suspected that through the few times that we had been together, she had begun to confide in me. I had tried to learn more about her from Didi but Didi was an impregnable repository of secrets. She was now preparing to immigrate to the United States; she had tired of what she was doing in Camarin but more than that, she was beginning to reel with the onslaught of the malaise that had battered most of us, the dishonesty, the deceit that pervaded public life and business as well. “I gave you her phone number, Roly, something I have never done—and only because I know you love her. What you need to know you must get from her. Is her past really all that important since you love her?”

It was not; I took Ermi as she was.

We went to Baguio again. Now, I felt guilty, using up her time
without her profitting from me. I owed her a lot now. I was no different from the traditional tenant farmer, forever indebted to his landlord, a serf who can no longer pay his debts in full no matter how hard he works.

Again, I held back. She was amazed at my self-control; she said no one would believe that we had shared a room just so we could talk. But that was what really happened.

By then, her restaurant was flourishing. I hoped that she had already stopped her kind of living but there were evenings when I dropped by the Puesto and she was not there. When I called up her house, she was not there either. I would then be torn with anxiety, anger even, wondering who had taken her out and to what hotel. She had told me to blot these from my mind and I had tried. God, I really tried but it was not possible.

We were at Mario’s that early evening, this restaurant along Session Road, and she had ordered spaghetti with meat sauce which she liked very much. She was feeling naughty. “Always remember,” she said half seriously, within earshot of the waiter who was showing me the dressings for the chef’s salad, “that I am collecting men, just as you are collecting memories.”