Three Filipino Women (5 page)

Her house was in a residential area on the East Side, a short walk from Central Park, a neighborhood of walk-ups and boutiques. She was expecting me, and she answered the doorbell. Narita, I saw again, was beautiful, her hair falling down her shoulders, her lips red though without a touch of lipstick. She embraced me warmly and gave me another of those full, wet kisses. She smelled of cologne and freshness and all the wonderful scents I remembered of her. She was slim again and she said, “Yes, I had a boy. I have two boys now. Want to see them?”

She took me to the basement which was prettied up into a nursery. I noticed at once that the older boy was dark and the newborn was, like her and Iturralde, very fair.

She smiled at me, divining my thoughts, and pinched me on the side. “I will tell you everything,” she said.

The house had four storeys including the basement. The ground floor opened to a narrow garden which she had done with rocks, evergreens and huge clam shells from the Philippines. A wisteria filled the other end. I could imagine how beautiful it would be all lighted up for some evening party. Nothing ostentatious about the house although the furnishings were expensive, the beige leather sofas, the Afghan rugs, the soft blue velvet drapes. She had an Albers, two Pollocks, plus her paintings from the Philippines,
santos
, and antique china which would cost a fortune in New York as they already did in Manila. She had three full-time Filipino maids, one a registered nurse who looked after the babies and the house. They occupied two of the rooms in the basement and had their own entrance.

Narita had prepared
pinakbet
which I was not particularly fond of,
but the fact that she had cooked it herself, touched me. She ate a little for she would be going out that evening to a dinner. She would miss the cocktails but since it was close by, she would have more time with me. I wanted to ask many questions but I didn’t have to; she was telling me many things and at the same time asking me about Santa Ana.

“I am not going to be his mistress forever,” she said finally. “His wife won’t divorce him. But even if she did, I won’t marry him. He is a wonderful, thoughtful man—and he has given me all the love and attention that someone in his position can give. He is also a very lonely man, a very misunderstood man, and I love him very much.”

“What is love to you now, Narita?”

I had not meant the question to be so crude.

She was holding the silver spoon and had just ladled out another spoonful of the vegetable stew into my plate. We were in her dining room, before that finely carved rosewood table with the silver candelabra and its four unlighted candles and lace tablecloth.

I had already taken off my jacket and was very comfortable in my turtleneck sweater. I had even shucked off my shoes and had really made myself at home.

“Do not ask me to make definitions,” she said sharply. “Look at me, what I do, how I react. What are words?”

“Extensions of our thoughts.”

“But they could be different from what we do. And I want to do a lot, to live a lot. I also know where I am headed. I have two boys—but that’s not enough. I could live for them, but what do we live for anyway? You ask me what love is, you may just as well ask why I am alive …”

I had not intended to get into a philosophical discussion only to get lost in a maze of contradictions, but she was doing the talking. “We all grow up,” she said. “Or am I presuming things?”

I held her hand.

“Did you know that I have an M.A. in Far Eastern studies from Columbia?”

I had heard about her studying, but the degree surprised me—not that she did not have the talent for it but that she had the perseverance.

“It is always fun, trying to learn more.” She spoke humbly. Then, “But some men—all they want out of life really is sex, and after that is over, you have to talk a bit, right?”

I smiled in agreement.

“I have had my fill of that type. In fact, one of them is the father of my older boy. You looked surprised when you saw him … He was an aide of Papa,” she explained simply. “He was a military type, you know, chest out, chin in, all muscle and no brain. Oh, it was a wonderful, physical relationship, all the orgasms that I had read about but never knew till I met him. But he was a stud—nothing more, just a stud, and how boring he could get after he was used!”

No woman had ever spoken to me before as frankly as she did, and for the first time, I felt uneasy with her and something akin to apprehension. But it went away quickly for she laughed then and asked about my latest girlfriend.

I was dating a Radcliffe girl at the time, a sweet Southerner from Memphis who often came to my place to bake corn bread and cook that slightly hot Southern dish with lots of okra, prawns and tomatoes in it, it almost tasted Filipino. I described Anne, her vices and her virtues, but not our lovemaking.

It was just five o’clock but already it was dark and she got up and switched on the lamps. There was no doubt in my mind that I desired her. In my younger days, I often fantasized about how she would look in the nude. I remembered those times when we were
ten or eleven and we raced in the rain and bathed in the creek beyond their house. Her breasts were just beginning to shape and her nipples, small pinkish dots showed beneath her cotton chemise as she rose from the water.

I had finished a plateful of California rice and some of the vegetable stew. She stood up to put away the dishes for the maid to wash in the morning. In a minute, she called from the kitchen. “So, how often do you have it now that Anne has gone home for the holidays?”

“I can be a celibate till she returns,” I said. “And how about you? You said he won’t be back in Washington till February.”

She returned and led me to the sofa in the living room. “It’s no problem,” she said, laughing.

“Without Anne, it is a problem,” I said. “You have to spend a bit on a girl, take her out to dinner, buy her some candy—all those preliminaries that most American girls seem unable to do without.”

“I have dildos,” she said.

“Isn’t that rather boring and automatic?”

Again, that tinkling laughter. “Not if they are live ones.”

Then she looked at me with that kind of knowing, inquiring look I couldn’t mistake.

“I am no dildo, Narita,” I said.

She pressed close to me. “I know,” she said, rising; she took me down the corridor to her room. “We will take a bath together,” she said matter-of-factly.

I marveled at the clearness of her skin, as she let me look at her, her breasts, still firm though she had two boys, the flat stomach, unusually unmarked by childbirth. “You must be careful now,” she said, “or else I may have to go back to the hospital. After all, it’s only been a month—and this is the first …”

I was only half-listening; I was too engrossed with her beauty. She
was telling me that men never had a sense of responsibility—it was the women all the time who had to be responsible, but that was fully taken care of now. She told the doctor who delivered her baby that she did not want another, ever, and the doctor had seen to that.

I would have been creation’s most exultant being and there was no hardship I would not have dared; but in that moment when I thought earth and high heaven were finally mine, she pushed me, not brusquely, but certainly with enough force to let me know, to remind me that I should be careful and in that businesslike voice that was a chill change from her caress, she said, “You are messing my hair, Eddie, and I still have that dinner tonight …”

She woke me when she returned a little before midnight and she slipped into bed, cuddling close, her breath smelling a little of wine, her hands wandering all over me. I desired her still but it was her comment about the human dildo that bothered me and would always continue to bother me. I was passive throughout. If she noticed it, she did not say anything. She had her pleasure, more perhaps than the ambassador could give her, and when she was finally tired, she lay beside me.

“I really have no one to talk to here,” she said. “The Americans can be very good friends but they seem so superficial and their view of the world is really limited, not so much by their experience but by what the media tells them. They lack intuition, the passion to see things not just as objects, the way we can do it—”

I asked her to put it simply.

“I thought I was explicit,” she said. “I’m tired of America. I want to return home. I have been here too long. Papa is getting senile. I’d like to go into politics when I return …”

I had to get used to her calling Senator Reyes “Papa.”

“You’ll botch it all up,” I said. “You have too much candor, too much openness.”

“Only with people I really know,” she said.

“What does the ambassador say?”

“I will leave him soon—he doesn’t know it yet. But that is a sure thing.”

“Just as you left that colonel?”

She pressed my hand and was silent.

“I want you to help me when I go into politics. You don’t have to worry about your job in the university. I know that you will command a very high price—but Eddie, I will make it all up to you. On your terms.”

“But why me?”

“Because you know me,” she said with feeling. “My weaknesses. You will protect me, and you will be loyal to me—just as I will be loyal to you, in my own way.”

“But what can I do?”

She was silent again for a while; then she started: “It is really time that we had more brains in our politics, not the old backslapping, vote-buying kind. Magsaysay thought he had all the answers, but actually, he was old-fashioned, buying off the journalists the way he did. No, we can be more scientific than that. If you know what I mean. We should have constant polls, quantify, analyze trends. These are sophisticated approaches. This doesn’t mean that we will abandon the old methods—the guns and goons, the bribery, the innuendo and the false rhetoric—the way Papa had done. And the Old Man, you must admit, has gone very far …”

“But politics is just an instrument, Narita,” I said, annoyed at the brazen implications of what she was saying. “There must be something behind it. Meaning: What is power to you?”

For a while, she did not speak. In the soft light, her face was grim until she broke into a smile. “I will show them,” she said. “I will show them …”

“Show whom?”

“Those nitwits in Assumption. I was the only girl from Santa Ana. They came from Silay, Bacolod, Iloilo—you know, with their twelve-hectare
haciendas
, acting like princesses. And they had nothing between their dirty ears.”

I remembered Father’s few hectares from which he made so little, barely enough to pay for the mortgage of the house in Diliman, for our education and I reminded her we had only a few hectares.

“But you never snubbed me, Eddie—not till recently, and I had to go to you on bended knees. I will take care of you, too,” she laughed. “In fact, I have already done that.” She pressed her warm breasts to me.

“You can’t embark on something like this, nursing an old hurt. That was years ago, Narita. You have to live and work beyond it. If you become a congressman …”

She drew away. “You must be kidding. I won’t start that low. Nothing less than the Senate for me. Let me tell you this: I know much more than all those asses in the Senate, including my father-in-law. Five years in the United States, I know how power works here, in New York, in Washington. I know all the important House and Senate members, the Ways and Means Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee. And their aides—mind you, never forget the aides. Why, the ambassador often relies on me for advice. Do you know what I am trying to say? For as long as we are an American colony, we should know how our colonial masters operate. And, brother, this is where it starts.”

Her brief exposition on Washington politics was impressive; she had not gone to Columbia for nothing.

“Do you have a program?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said instantly. “Also, one for how to get to power …”

I was getting a bit dizzy and I did not want to ask more questions. She just went into a quiet monologue: “On the local level, meaning Negros, I would like to dismantle the sugar industry. It is a colonial industry and it has tied us to the United States. Unless, of course, the quota system is given up.”

I wanted to ask her how she could do that, her Papa being in sugar, the ambassador being in Washington for no other reason than to protect our sugar interests. And my family, what would happen to us? We knew nothing except sugar …

“I’m interested in culture as well. Not just in the arts, that’s common enough. But in reshaping our mores. Sociocultural engineering. You know what I mean. And in foreign affairs, I want our relationship with Japan and China analyzed further, clarified. We should recognize China immediately. I told Jack—”

“Jack who?”

“Kennedy, of course,” she said, poking me in the ribs. “When he was a senator—that it was wrong for the United States not to have any relationship with China. China is not a threat to the United States, the way the Soviets are, and Japan will be. Japan is a real threat to us—and our damned politicians and businessmen, they are selling us down the river.”

“I hope you will not end up being like them,” I said.

“No, Eddie,” she said gravely. “For one, I don’t need money now. I am rich—very rich. And I need help from young people like you because you are not yet a victim of habit, because you’ll be anxious to prove yourself, try out new ideas. And you will be surprised to find how really close we are. And I am not talking about this …” She kissed me briefly. “Maybe because we come from the same small place, that’s not even on most Philippine maps … But don’t you ever remind me of it again.”

Domingo Guardia, private secretary to Ambassador Iturralde:

I am from La Consolacion. My father had worked for the Iturraldes as accountant and it was the ambassador who sent me to college and I worked for him till the day he died. I am not going to tell you anything which is not known to many people, including Doña Alicia. Anyway, both of them are dead now and what I will say will not hurt anyone, even if you do not live up to your promise of discretion. Out of loyalty, I must insist that you edit my comments carefully and use my name sparingly. Mind you, I am not bound by government regulations. I was never employed full-time by the government. I was always hired as consultant or on a contractual basis. My pay comes from Iturralde and Company. Yes, I remember the ambassador told me when he returned from Manila that he had attended a wedding of the son of Senator Reyes. They were very good friends, you know—sugar and politics. If I am not mistaken, he said something about how beautiful Narita was and it was a shame that she had to marry someone like the son of the senator who was known to be good for nothing. Well, he met Narita again in Washington about five years later, I think, after her husband died. She just had a baby by that colonel and the ambassador felt strongly about the man—that he was not fit for her. They were not married so he really had no compunctions about having him sent back to Manila so that he could have the field to himself. One thing about the ambassador, he was a very decisive man. He knew what he wanted. I think he explained the situation to Senator Reyes. At least, he didn’t want his wires crossed. I wrote some of the delicate communications on the matter, you know, and before the colonel knew it, he was given his walking papers—I mean, he was reassigned to Manila. It was neat and simple. The ambassador was old
enough to be Narita’s father. She seemed to be attracted to older men. In a way, it was Doña Alicia’s fault. She never liked traveling, the cold climate, and in the many years that he was in Washington, she visited him only once—for a month. She would rather stay in La Consolacion, in that old rambling house, tending her orchids or, on occasion, going to Manila to visit friends and dine at the Casino. And since they had no children—she could not have one—it was not so difficult for the ambassador to rationalize the affair. I really don’t remember too well how it started but all of a sudden, the ambassador was always in a hurry to go to New York on weekends. Sometimes, he even took the Greyhound. Imagine—Ambassador Iturralde on a bus! I have seen pictures of Narita before, on the cover of Philippine magazines. But you know something? She also appeared in
Town & Country
, in
Harper’s Bazaar
—and that takes some doing, with no publicity agent. It was her beauty, her wit, her circle of friends and, most of all, her gracious ways that did it. She was truly our first international beauty—and she had enough mixed blood to be fair but enough Malay features as well to be a Filipina. When I first met her at the embassy Christmas party, she was coming down the stairs, holding on to the arm of the ambassador. She was in a black gown, no lipstick, no jewels and God knows she had lots of them, including the diamonds that the ambassador bought for her as a matter of habit. I know because I used to go to Tiffany’s to pay for them. I also looked after their insurance, all that sort of thing. She was the prettiest creature I had ever seen, prettier than Miss America or Miss Universe. We all paused to look at her and when she moved into any circle, conversation stopped. We did not want to talk for fear that we would be distracted. We just wanted to look at her, those eyes, those lips, that perfect nose. Oh, I am forgetting myself. I always do when I see a beautiful woman. How lucky can you get—I am speaking of that colonel, of course.
He did not deserve her. Well, the ambassador had had several women before Narita; this girl from New York, very good in her own way, but you know how American women are—they are never feminine enough. And there was this Spanish girl, royalty—from Madrid. But these were ordinary affairs. Nothing profound about them the way it was with her. I know. The driver knows. She rarely came to the embassy although the ambassador was always taking her to receptions and dinners and introducing her as Mrs. Reyes. But everyone knew of course. The ambassador seemed revitalized. You know that old Chinese belief. I will tell you—one of her rare visits to Washington—it was Saturday, too, and all the staff was out, except me because I had something to rush. I always worked overtime, you know how private secretaries are. Well, I bade them good-bye but I forgot something and had to return to my room. I had a key, you know, and floors carpeted as they are and me quiet as a cat, they did not know I was back. They had locked the door, but not the door to my room which adjoined the ambassador’s reception. There was a big sofa there—and they were doing it right there. I looked and I tell you, the ambassador still had it in him. Don’t include this—what does it show? That I am a Peeping Tom? I only wanted to show that she was good for him. They stayed on till close to nine o’clock. I did not bring my coat and it was cold outside and I was hungry. So I went back downstairs and started banging doors and turning on the lights and the ambassador came to my room and I feigned surprise that they were still there, and I said I had forgotten some work and my coat—and, you know, they took me out to dinner before they drove me home. He changed his will twice; I typed them both. When his son was born, he changed it again. He gave her a big slice of his property, a house he had bought shortly after the war, in Washington at the other end of Massachusetts Avenue. It is worth over a million dollars now. And,
of course, stocks in the mines, many of the things in his name which won’t be questioned in board meetings and all that sort of thing. All those diamonds. And part of that cash at Chase Manhattan and a bank account in Zurich—things that Doña Alicia never knew about and did not care to know. He would have married her—you know, specially after their son was born. He wanted her to use his name but in the end felt it was wiser that her married name be used. What does it matter anyway? After all, no one can deny the boy’s parentage. And come to think of it, both her children are American citizens—having been born in the United States. I wish I also had that advantage. I could have applied for it; after all, I had lived there so long and the ambassador would have helped me. But America is not for old people. I really don’t know what made her leave him—oh, it is not as tragic as you’d think it was. It was a quiet parting of the ways, with no regrets. After all, she was just returning to the Philippines where he could see her anytime he wanted. And there were also the trips that she made to the United States anytime he asked her to come. But it was a separation just the same. After that, the ambassador drooped. The fires in him died, the juices ran out. He was not the same again. It was really just a matter of time before the cancer finally got him. But he had lots of memories. When he was dying, he would call her up and there would be tears in his eyes. I sometimes listened to the conversation. It would often last for a full hour and he would ask about his boy and Narita would come loud and clear on the line. It was very happy and also very sad.