Three Filipino Women (20 page)

“You just don’t know how I hated myself afterwards for doing what I had to do in order to live. Even now, when I remember, I am so ashamed of myself. How can I live with the thought that I am alive, that I was a coward? And after what had happened, I don’t want to see you, ever. I have nothing to give you now …”

Her hand was cold and trembling. I had listened with anger mingled with sorrow, anger at the men who had killed her friends
without reason, at the man who had violated her, and even at Malu herself for having brought this upon herself; sorrow at the wrenching pain that she had to endure and which, I was sure, would scar her always. I wanted to scream at her, but she looked so helpless, like a child who needed sympathy, and I realized it was not just sympathy that I had to give; I loved her truly in a manner I had not realized. I could live with what had happened and help her live, too, if she would let me.

“Plat, the ring which you returned—I would like to give it to you still. I want to marry you. With me, nothing has changed.”

THREE
 

W
e went to the same motel and decided to get married—“live together” as she put it, with no particular obligations except that we would be faithful to each other. Mother was building a block of duplex apartments in our old compound in Santa Mesa and we could move into the first one finished. She knew of Malu from the beginning and had met her and liked her, but would not approve of the live-in arrangement and neither would her parents. We would lie to them, tell them we had gotten married by a judge in Pasig, that the church wedding would follow after she finished college and we would then leave for the States together.

Because of her trauma, I was prepared to suffer the coldness that she had hinted at. In the apartment, I could sense the tension in her labored breathing, the clamminess in her arms as they encircled me. She tried to be the woman I desired; her kisses, though not passionate, were woman enough, warm enough, and I savored them, gloried in them.

Soon, she began to relax, even to move sensuously. After a time, I throbbed to the strength of her embrace, the quickening thrust of her hips, the contracting and fluttering of her stomach, and the long drawn gasp at the peak—what I was finally giving her, getting from her. When her movements ceased and she came to rest, I drew away to look at her. Her eyes were bright with repressed laughter. I thought I would begin again; I could feel her twitching, pulsing, and roughly, she pushed me away, saying she was so sensitive she could not bear me moving inside her.

She had phoned home and said she’d be away the whole day. We talked far into the night. We had our meals brought in and after brief snatches of sleep, we sought each other again and again. I finally found the completeness that had eluded me all these years.

I promised not to ask what she did during those two months, who her friends were. My ignorance was protection for everyone, she explained. It was she who brought the sad news to the parents of her friends who, like her, lived very comfortably. They never understood why their children gave up their lives so recklessly.

I decided to draw her away from her commitment, to “domesticate” her, make her a mother and tie her to the home or to a normal career, perhaps dreary but safe and never again would she be close to the vortex of death.

I wanted to tell her father about us, but she refused. “I will just move in with you,” she said. “But let us draw some rules.” She said there would be a time when I would get bored with her. One
night a week, I should go out, be on my own, do anything I liked. “Drag to bed any woman—even a whore—and you can tell me if you want to. I will not be angry. I promise. But do not take a mistress, do not get involved with any woman emotionally. And don’t bring home any bugs.”

I listened to her dumbly.

“Will you permit me to have a night out, too?”

That she asked me at all touched me. I had no choice. “But no affairs,” I said.

She nodded. “And someday,” she went on, reiterating what she told me earlier, “if we part, it should be as friends.”

We moved to Santa Mesa without ceremony. She enjoyed decorating the two-bedroom apartment. She bought the drapes in Divisoria—light green fabrics that went very well with the furniture. She also bought the appliances and started learning how to “cook Spanish” to please me. I went to her father and we had a long talk. I assured him the church wedding would be very soon. I could tell that he was glad Malu was with me, that I would snatch her away from the crowd that threatened to push her to an anonymous and lonely end. Her mother came and looked at our place. She brought a lot of linens and saw to it that our refrigerator was always stocked. She also sent one of her maids to help, but Malu did not want her to sleep in the apartment; she wanted just the two of us since it was not difficult, she said, to keep house.

My night out was Saturday and hers was Sunday. I felt awkward at first, going out alone, and in time I did see a former girlfriend. I visited my old haunts in Ermita and wandered along the boulevard, but always, a feeling of guilt hounded me as if I was shutting out a part of myself from her, which was not what I wanted for I longed to share everything with her—my time, my possessions. In the end, I gave up going out alone.

She continued, however, to go out every Sunday night. Sometimes, she returned just before daybreak. I would lie awake waiting for the taxi or the car that would bring her home, pretending I was asleep, listening to her undress and finally cuddle close to me, her breath smelling not of wine or of cigarettes but of the same familiar scent. I was curious and jealous every time I heard a man outside saying good night, although sometimes it was a woman, for I always peered out and watched but did not ask.

I went to Cebu every so often to check up on our subsidiary there and called her twice a day, sometimes three, just to hear her voice. If she was not in the apartment, she was in school. Sometimes, we would be unable to connect because she was calling me.

We continued the little debates; I asked her once what her group was doing now and she said, “Don’t bother your reactionary head with proletarian politics.”

I reminded her again that it was not a crime to be wealthy. I cited how our employees were getting much more than the minimum wage, that they had health and insurance benefits and paid vacations without their asking.

“Paternalism,” she said, cutting me short.

No matter, it was a year of blessed happiness which flitted by so quickly that I was hardly aware of the time passing.

I wanted her pregnant so that she would, by force of circumstance, be cut off from all those demonstrations that have now become massive, intermittent, and fraught with danger. All the shops in Ermita were now boarded with plywood and the electric posts and embankments all over downtown Manila screamed with the posters of revolution. Chaos pervaded the universities and classes were haphazard and often suspended.

With my motive urging me on, there was no night that we did not embrace. When a long weekend came, we motored to Baguio.
Our house, which we seldom used except during Holy Week or when we had guests, frightened her a bit … six rooms upstairs and two downstairs and we were the only occupants because Mang Pedring, the caretaker, and his family had their own quarters above the garage in the rear. We turned on all the lights.

It must have been the Baguio cold, and remembering our first night there afterwards, she said, “
Dios ko
, the whole night. I was never so tired in all my life.”

A month after our short vacation, she was pregnant. She could not believe it; she waited for the second month. She consulted three doctors and all the tests were positive. I was ecstatic.

I bought several books on prenatal care and continually asked Mother’s advice. Malu’s parents were very happy, too, and they often asked when we were finally going to be married in church.

We discussed it once; if we did not get married, her baby would be a bastard. She thought it was very funny, but I did not. “We will have it simultaneously then,” she said gaily. “First the wedding, then the baptism.”

I looked after her diet carefully and worried that she might start smoking. I told her that whatever she took in, her baby would take it, too. That early, I started buying baby things—diapers, baby powder, safety pins. She said it was all too soon, her stomach did not even show. It was noticeable to me, though, and soon her belt would no longer buckle. She took to wearing larger blouses. She went to school much later and came home earlier. She had cut down some of her activities, even her visits to the
spiritista
chapel in Navotas. But her Sunday evenings were still hers and she kept them all.

One evening, after she had returned from her “free” night out, we talked about the baby’s name. I meant it as a joke when I asked, “Are you sure it is mine?”

She glared at me. “Now, what the hell do you mean by that?”

I was still in a joking mood, but I suppose my niggling doubts came through. “Oh, your Sunday nights, you know.”

She turned away and in a while, she was shaking violently and when I went to her, sobs were torn out of her in anguish and bitterness. I cradled her in my arms, kissed her hair, assured her that I knew I should not have even hinted that I did not trust her.

I don’t really know what happened. She was under expert medical care and I tried my best to make allowances for her moods. Could it be that what I had said bothered her so much? Could it have been caused by the disappearance of many of her friends? At the end of the third month, she started bleeding one afternoon after she got back from school. I rushed her to the hospital where she stayed for a week after she lost her baby, then another two weeks in bed at home to regain her strength before the doctor permitted her to move about.

Now, she was listless and there were times when she was cold to me. I could sense that she was blaming me for the loss. There was milk in her breasts—they were no longer “as small as
kalamansi.
” The loss of her baby—it was a boy—was a deep affliction of the soul and I consoled her by saying we could always return to Baguio. We were, as a matter of fact, planning it. I was anxious that she become pregnant again and the doctor said there would be no problem, but that we should be more careful now.

We were to leave that morning. But the papers did not appear and there was no radio either. Something was wrong—so we did not move. When martial law was finally announced on TV, Malu was white-faced. She made some hasty phone calls and talked guardedly. By midday, she said she would go to the university. All she took was her handbag. When she did not return in the afternoon, I called her department. They had not seen her. In the
evening, I hurried to Dasmariñas; her parents had not heard from her either. A week later, I received a letter postmarked Manila.

I realized then that she had not abandoned the cause and that it was far more important than I.

Without Malu, I should not have remained in the apartment but I did, hoping she would return. I could not attend fully to our business, but fortunately, we had hired good people. Oh, so many hours alone, going over her books, the papers she wrote, bringing out her clothes, rearranging them in the cabinet—the old and faded jeans, the battered sneakers, and the cotton blouses.

I went to the university. Now, I regretted that I did not know her friends, that I had considered them muddle-headed adolescents unfamiliar with the realities of power—things that an economist or a businessman like myself understood almost as second nature.

Alone, confined to the prison of this skin, this skeletal frame, this net of nerves which relayed nothing but my own despair, I wondered about what I did not know so that I could have restrained her. I was nagged by lassitude, by feelings of worthlessness. Mornings: hard-boiled eggs, sugarless coffee, the prattle of people, the noxious gases of a deadened city, and a vigil in the morgue of evening. I would lie in the dark aching for the phone to ring, a taxi to stop before the house, wondering where she was and the hopes that we had fed on.

Alone, I would wander around Ermita and go to my favorite bar. I never stayed long; the roasted squid and the San Miguel were tasteless, and the jokes I heard were stale. The curfew was an excuse to go home early and though the apartment depressed me, it also sustained me. I developed a tightness in the chest which Dr. Alvarez said was a heart condition that given my youth, I should not have. My legs seemed edemic and my feet were always cold. I was absentminded, I could not function well and I easily forgot names, words, places. I suffered hallucinations and would see things from the corner of my eye which were not really there. Sometimes, I imagined things moving on my desk, the pencil holder, the stapler. Was this what love could do? Its ineffable essence? Malu was right, after all; the mind could afflict the body, too.