Transmutation

Daryll Jane Delgado

That day, for the first time, I missed summer's fiery burst of sunset. But rarer still was that I should wake up to a dusky pelt beating against the wooden windows. A sob rose from I didn't know where, only that it sounded oddly hollow in the empty room. My throat constricted from I didn't know what and I had a terrible headache, I definitely knew, could only come from oversleeping. Or, maybe from the hard protrusion of my journal under my pillow.    I was about to reach for my black, tattered notebook from under me, but then decided not to. I could sense something quietly, precariously hanging in the air. An indefinably palpable blandness. Like a thickening sensation of the palate, when one tickles it with the tip of the tongue. That taste of traitorous stillness that could burst anytime into explosive laughter, hemorrhageous crying, or violent sneeze. Or, as though in so many of my dreams, when I would be quietly walking on a regular-looking street, on a fairly normal day and suddenly from out of nowhere comes a snake, and we would stare at each other, careful not to make any move.    I held on to the moment and abandoned my journal for a while.    It must have been seven already, though the increasing noise of the rain made it seem much later, more desolate. Or maybe I just really hated missing sunset.    A pit in my tummy gaped wide, and I allowed it to. I imagined an emptiness swallowing me, as I lay unmoving, watching the shadows of mango branches before me sway. When I tried to dispel it, tiny shards of pain remained. The sweet kind. Oh, as if I didn't know that these self-inflicted miseries usually last longer; I mused, when I finally came to.     I slowly sat up on my bed, gripping a wooden pane for support. I stared out into the night, its darkness often interrupted by raindrops glinting in mid-air before joining the wrinkled river. In the distance I could see the deserted bridge connecting barangay Aswang to the Poblacion, enveloped by a yellowish haze. It seemed dreamy -- the light from the bridge lamps diffused by the fog. I wanted to cry out to it. But I decided to reserve my crying for something, rather someone else.    At intervals, guitar music, laughter and parts of a rousing conversation wafted to me, like background noise in a long-distance call between my thoughts and me. These were actually coming from below, where a merry dinner of some twenty-five or so relatives was going on.    I could almost see them, their gaping mouths oily from too much lechon, teeth red from tuba, the oldies outdoing each other's stories of war and once-grand times. Tio Minoy's anecdotes of how he ferried guerillas from Aswang to Poblacion, Tio Tonying's memories of his GI father, Tia Mimay's delusions of a love affair with a Japanese officer, my grandfather's illusions of being hailed as the town's only living legend. I could picture Aunt Mary (formerly Tia Maring) and her fake blond coiffeur in the middle of it all, with everybody else vying for her attention. She had just walked away from a successful divorce with a million-dollar alimony from her former American husband. Since she arrived, a trail of relatives had been at her beck and call, though all pretended indifference to the thick wads of violet bills in her purse.    It was Aunt Mary who received the call from my sister and communicated our condolences to our in-laws in Europe. It was also her who fabricated the lie for the sake of the catholic relatives and the whole population of the Poblacion.    "Don't worry, Inday, we will pray for him. We'll right away start the nine-day novena, we'll take care of the masses…there'll even be flowers at the family cemetery, candles twenty four hours a day, we'll take care of everything," Aunt Mary comforted my sister, though she herself had looked like she needed more comforting with her loud, racking, wet sobs, knowing fully well that if the people found out the truth no one would dare utter a single prayer.    And I thought, yes, right, he would really like that. For nine days, three old women who barely knew him, chanting his name a different way for each mystery of mispronounced, latino-waray version of the rosary… Kaluuyi ginoo an kalag ni Marino… Mariano… Martin… Marianito… Manito… Maning… I decided to create my own ritual of grief and mourning for Marcelino. Listening to my merry relatives made me feel like giving in to a tantrum, as though I were a child again, abandoned and left out, waking up from an extended nap to find Mama no longer beside me. And to find her concerned with something else besides putting me to sleep.    This childhood affliction (a peculiar, paralyzing sense that I missed out on a breakthrough everybody but I was a part of) often attacked in the most unexpected circumstances. This used to plague me at school. I would find myself peacefully smoking in the Sunken Garden; pensively walking under huge acacias; having a spiritual moment in the toilet; absentmindedly waiting for a jeep in the university's sloping streets; and the Angelus bells would toll, and I would start to cry. Or want to anyway. There's just something so sad about fading light and echoing peal of church bells.    That evening though, the light had turned charcoal and no more bells tolled. (And Psychology did have a name for what I thought was a rare disease).    So, I went on watching the rain, amused at how a single drop would touch a surface of the body of water and make it come to life - reverberate in uncontrollable spasms. I felt myself quivering with the waters. My skin grew taut, my abdomen, hard. I had to lift my eyes away from the sight of that liquid copulation.    The waters seeping into cold, black shores did not help. But I stood transfixed behind the wooden windows. Until the fall of rain on river became an unbearable rhythm, beating away with my nerve endings.    The rain came without warning. Like love, like death.    In the middle of everybody's mixed dread and anticipation of what was supposed to be the country's worst experience of drought, the rain poured.    Just as I had begun to find some meaning in my drifting existence amid these horrible family reunions; just as I had been reveling in the drugged slumber induced by the monotony of mountains, rushing rivers and endless lines of palm trees; in the middle of my dry drunken stupor, I suddenly found myself awakened to the impact of his loss.    He had no notion, I was sure, that when I last waved to him at the airport, though he was the one leaving with my sister - his wife - I was actually the one running away, escaping from him and the nameless force that had gripped me, drying my well of words and memories.    I had decided there and then, that it was up to me to take away a potentially fatal stressor - him. He had slung his right arm over my sister's shoulder, and reached out with his left to ruffle my hair. My sister: caressed on her sexy oiled shoulder. And for me? A meaningless ruffling of the dead cells of my unwashed hair. They were both wearing bright tie-dyed clothes, looking rather cute and yet dignified in what would only be utterly ridiculous on others, on me. And I was in drab browns and khakis -hopelessly innocuous, terribly neutral.    "Goodbye, dear girl. We'll send you photos of Tolstoy's grave," and he winked conspiratorially. Though I had no idea what we had agreed to conspire on. I had gone on standing for several minutes where they left me, looking at their conspicuously clad figures until they merged with the crowd.    An hour later in my own flight, with every plunge of the plane into blobs of choking whiteness, I convinced myself that it was I being swallowed by the clouds. Every time the plane emerged into bright clear space, I gave up, little by little, the fondness, the awe, the desire, and then the hatred I had of him. The mourning had started even before the death.    I stepped off the plane into the island of my birth, the kingdom of my pretensions, two months ago. I arrived as arid as the fields, as dull as the El-Niño-burnt leaves. My resolve to forget and then write after the therapeutic forgetfulness was as fierce as that hateful summer sun.    I allowed myself to be whisked from one barangay fiesta and inebriating Kuratsa to another. I demeaned myself by appearing to enjoy the election campaigns of my grandfather, the endless get-togethers of my clan, the early-morning masses and the nightly novena prayers. Everyday was a 'wonderful vacation', with each night a torment - sleeping, or pretending sleep in between sisters, cousins, and antique, earth-smelling pillows.    No corner of the decaying ancestral house was ever empty or silent enough for my spiritual meditations, much less any physical stimulation. Well, in a way, that was good. I lived, somehow. Though that did not keep me safe from experiencing random little deaths (um, not always in the French sense).    Sometimes a mere word, an infinitesimal sound, or a fleeting color would be enough to open up a painful flow of pondering. It was hard, as they all loved to talk about him.    "Remember how he couldn't tolerate the deathly and ratty smell of bulad, at first… and how he would discreetly leave the house so we could eat in peace?"    "I always saw him feeding the poor stray little ones…"    "He didn't mind wearing crumpled shirts."    "He was always smiling…"    "Sure, he didn't go to church… but he could speak real Latin!"    All these spoken, gushed out in between sniffs and sad smiles.    They especially loved the fact that he, 'a foreigner who was very much like a Filipino', was a part of the family. They easily found excuses for his blatant unfilipinoness - his atheism, his unslippered feet, his sour spaghetti and unsalted sour fruits, his long hair, and legendary leftist ways (even when dancing, they said he had two left feet, which this dancing family thoroughly enjoyed).    He did not even look the typical European to them, what with his dark skin and still darker hair. But he had the nose and the accent even when he started speaking Tagalog. In no time at all, they all managed - were all willing - to overlook his apparent African roots. Even as they continued to find humor in my dark skin.    Like he had once said, we were quite conspicuous amid this mestizo clan.    Funny, but when I was a kid, they used to tell me that I would surely marry a foreigner. Mama said European men would kill for my mahogany tone. Instead, it was my fair elder sister who got to marry his kind. As for him, I wondered still what it was he killed and died for.    My sister met him while she was on a European tour with her dance troupe. One June evening, Papa's birthday, she called from Portugal, surprising us all with the announcement of her sudden marriage to him. Sure, she had only known him a few weeks. He was connected to the Organizacion de Cultura Folklorica Internacional that had sponsored the tour, and he trailed after her dance troupe around Europe.    She then convinced us all that he was the man for her. And since he had always wanted to work in the Philippines anyway, marriage was the best solution. All we knew of him was that he was a writer of some sort, Harvard-educated, advocate of women and children's rights, a dance enthusiast who couldn't dance.    Father had tried to affect an obligatory plaintive tone. But I could sense his excitement, too, as he took the call in our mini-parlor, surrounded by a platoon of tias and tios. They already loved him, before he became a man. He was only an idea, a name, and they loved him already.    Meanwhile, I had stood just outside that circle of colonial mentality cum familial love, watching the circle getting larger inside the room, as I tried to make sense of half a conversation. And the circumference just grew and grew, until their uninformed emotions finally reached me.    I started to love the idea of him, too.    The first time he came to meet us, he didn't look the least bit real to me. I thought he looked like Heathcliff, a looming figure in his black turtleneck sweater. I had just graduated from elementary then, and hardly looked like the lovely ghost of Wuthering Heights.    He gave me a gift - his own copy of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, which I took with me everywhere I went, even until college. (I have tried to fathom the connection between this book and his feelings towards me; there had to be, to make this a cohesive story).    For my father, he brought an enormous piece of salted ham. Papa kept it refrigerated in smaller packages, marking each piece for one month from Summer to Christmas. That was how much he - not just his gift - was valued.    Every summer after that, I had been 'required' to spend it with them in Manila, to help take care of their son, while he and my sister went off to different exotic and exciting places with their artist friends (those pretentious farts who wouldn't even glance at me). I did not mind my sister's treatment of me so much. He, on the other hand, was very generous -- giving me things and books, bringing me to plays and concerts, and talking to me even more than my own sister did.    He it was who taught me how to read for binary oppositions, when my classmates were still grappling with themes and plots and author's attitude towards subject matter.    There were just some awkward times, like when I would pass by their room with the door slightly ajar and I would see his naked, hairy, dark thighs, intertwined with my sister's smooth and fair ones. Or when, while putting their son to sleep, I would doze off in my flimsy pajamas beside the little boy, and I would be awakened, as his hands would brush against me while he arranged the blanket over us, or tried to extricate a storybook from my hands.    Those four summers were the fastest for me. My time passed in years, not days. I grew up, under his seductive shadow, though he hardly noticed it. He seemed to think of me forever in the league of his kid. Maybe because it was the boy I spent most of my time with.    His son was certainly fond of me, though the twerp - who looked every bit like my sister - was nothing more than an excuse for me to stay at their place, and be close to the father. In the name of the Father… I had to deal with the son.    The kid even named his favorite plaything after me. What a sensation it was watching the father play with his son, holding in his great hands the toy that bore my name. Even though there was absolutely nothing in common between the robot rabbit and me.    At least I got accepted to the same university my sister went to and their 'famous' friends even became my teachers. I had woven my way into their circle, aha! But I still had a long way to go. Yet how he hurt me when I heard him discussing me with my sister the day before I started college. She wanted me to live with them, but he thought I'd be better off in a dormitory, 'with her own, and on her own', he said.    So maybe my sister did not have such noble intentions in her wanting me to stay. I knew she just wanted somebody to take care of the kid so she could devote more time to the stage. But I would have been happier at their house still -- to see him every day walking barefoot around the house, lounging on the sofa with a book, guzzling beer while viewing incomprehensible films. I would have been content to pretend interest in his pasta dishes every night, but all the while alert to his every movement and every word exchanged with his motley group of friends - to add to my vocabulary of him. Or to see him simply taking refuge in the darkness of his parked car during so many midnights. And I was quite sure I was the only one who knew of these nocturnal sessions of his.    Once I had come home without warning on a weeknight, and was surprised to see his still silhouette hunched over the steering wheel. I though he had been about to sneak out of the house, and was trying to hide. Or else had gone out with friends, and got too drunk to get himself out. But when I peered at him, he just glanced at me, expressionless.    So, another time I caught him in the same manner, I had to pass by the back door so as not to disturb what I thought may have been meditatative moments for him. But I had waited, lying awake in my bed, straining my ear for his footsteps. At around five, that was the only time I would hear him go up the stairs. In the morning, I would scrutinize his face for signs of whatever realization or, at least, tiredness from his strange ritual of the other night, only to be disappointed each time. He never showed any sign. And all the more that I felt I had to stay.    But my sister eventually agreed to send me off to the dorm. And I consoled myself with the idea that, maybe, his decision to let me live away was just the Humbert in him. I had wild dreams of him visiting me in the guise of a relative when in truth... Never mind. None of it happened anyway. I'm no Lolita, after all. And he didn't even like Nabokov that much.    I kept all these to myself. More savagely so after he left. Dared I think all could be pieced together by a rainy night?    Knowing that he would never have the chance to know anymore, I would find myself wishing otherwise. I would never be satisfied knowing that to him I will forever be the younger sister with marijuana pendants and butterfly earrings. For which things he loved to tease me.    Strange, delicious yet difficult, how all those times I felt I would die of longing for something I had not even known nor tasted in all of my seventeen years - another's flesh, to be touched, kissed or caressed. And yet, this predilection paled when compared to the longing I was then experiencing. A simple one. For certain, even ridiculous.    A smile. How I so longed for that single, certain smile of his. (At the risk of sounding like a Frank Sinatra song). Or, how about: A hint of a smile so distant as death. Great line! It almost beats like a Shakespeare! So distant as death... Oh, God! I could almost see it unfold before me.    It was that same day we left Manila - them for exciting Europe, and me for boring Barugo. He had been coming down the stairs, perhaps from a hot scene (I simply refused to call it love making) with his wife; he had that look. It was almost two in the morning and I was alone in the dining room, torturing myself with thoughts of him and my sister. Then he noticed me, just as he reached the landing. He planted his huge hands on the rail, his hair falling over his bare chest, but not covering the mole on his left.    He had been standing directly below the light, his head barely escaping the bulb. Then he leaned further, and I thought I saw something in his eyes when he saw me holding the Steinbeck he gave me. He might have been about to go down, would have taken the seat beside me and engage me in another one of those quasi-literary conversations we sometimes had. But I stood up, ever so slightly glancing for the last time at his mouth, before the slight twitch disappeared. If it ever did, I did not want to wait. For I knew.    Oh, how I had known even then. As strangely as I did on that one unremarkable night, just before Mama died, when I saw a tear glint as she laughed at some silly joke of Papa's; the exact moment she opened her mouth, the way her eyes became chinks of damp light; and the tiny dark man I saw peeping from the corner of her irises.    Somehow, I knew that was going to be my memory's choice of the many facets of this man.    "Inday! Marian! Kaon na. Are you up?" Our spinster aunt, the novena leader.    "Oh, no. No, not yet. Go away!" I wanted to shout back.    The rain had stopped, almost escaping my notice. I could definitely hear steps moving towards my direction. And then more voices. I knew that in a minute the room would be flooded with light, just as the next day and many days after would be bereft of rain. But I couldn't let it go then. I might have found it already. I couldn't -- didn't know how to stop the trembling, I could barely move away from the windows. It was all coming to me, at last. I could see the verse through my own mist and rain.    I scrambled in the bed for the notebook under the big pillow and the pen that had rolled out of the notebook's spring. It was still dark, I almost couldn't see a thing, so I was creating certain bed noises in the process of reaching for the journal and the pen.    And that was how they caught me, how they burst upon me, really -- mumbling, or groaning, they said, something about pens while making those creaking noises, in a very compromising position over the big soft pillow.    But, with the promise, the eccentricity of the rain despite El Niño, the continuity of the river, the brightness of the bridge, the merry noise below, the wooden windows and his sweet, mysterious suicide… nothing mattered anymore. Finally, I was convinced I found my line.    Without glancing at the appalled relatives, I wrote on a clean page: Transmutation… That day, for the first time, I missed summer's fiery burst of sunset.