The Solemn Lantern Maker Read online

  It is this lit heart that the American catches through half-closed lids. Or did she just dream it? Like the tender hand wiping her aching belly, making her less sad about something that she’s now forgetting. Everything is slipping away. Even her landing at Ninoy Aquino International Airport only a few hours ago and how she rang home to her husband—how stupid of her.

  “I’m fine—I just landed—I’m fine, on holiday of course—and—and don’t worry, I’m fine … we’re fine.” Harder to speak to an answering machine when you’re crying, but even this has gone now, even how she stood for a long time before a star flashing like a multicolored alarm warning her not to ring again. Then at Customs, a two-man band was conjuring Rudolph and his sleigh—everything’s slipping away like the blood washed off by a stranger’s hand finding even her secret parts. Who is to say what we can hide and reveal to others and to ourselves, when even the body wants to forget?

  “You’ve no right to come to us like this,” Nena mutters to herself as she rinses the bloodied rag in the pail. “You’ve no right to make us remember.”

  Does the American hear? The boy who saved her is still telling himself that she’s only sleeping. He’s outside now, listening to his friend’s false bravado, watching him turn his cap at all possible angles.

  “She could’ve died, you know, if not for us—you think she has lots of money?” Elvis rummages in his pocket for a cigarette. “White people have lots of money—ah, Noland, you just don’t know.” He lights up and takes in a lungful like a pro, then blows at his friend’s face. “Relax, we saved the Amerkana. Isn’t that great?” He giggles nervously. “I think she’s Amerkana—trust me, I know their talk—I know Americans, Australians, Germans, Japanese, yeah man, I know many-many international but America’s the best, so cool, like this cigarette—see, it’s super cool, like New York, man, I love New York.” He giggles even more, slapping his thigh, then turning with the usual gesture. “So gimme five!”

  Noland doesn’t welcome the open palm, lest he betray how wet his hands are. He sits on them, eyes darting up and down the railway track at the neighbors now trooping to the intersection. They’ve heard of the shooting and the pile-up that followed as everyone tried to flee the scene. The festive spirit is edgy, shrill. Something is happening, really happening! There’s Helen and her husband Mario, abandoning their video hut of pirated films and taking their patrons with them, all primed for the live action over at the intersection. There’s the wire-man Mang Pedring, who has lit those star lanterns, imagining a disaster of smashed merchandise. There’s the nightly gin party from Mang Gusting’s store, broken up by a shot of something even more fiery—just who died, bro? There are the karaoke women, washerwomen by day, led by Lisa-oh-oh!, who’s not quite sure whether she’s sighing “oh-oh” or saying yes “o-o” to fate and its machinations, like this terrible, terrible crime. There’s Manang Betya finishing the rosary, her cries for heavenly intercession growing more desperate. And there are the children trailing behind, their Christmas trumpets and firecrackers heralding something louder around the corner. Even the littlest ones are out, suckled on their mothers’ breasts, eavesdropping on the rise and fall of stories: the conjectures, the gossip, the tales taller than any action film.

  “Hoy, Noland, I better join them now.” Elvis makes a move to go. “Must get back to work, yeah, man,” he adds, winking, and Noland can’t say that work’s over for the night, that he has to clean up the cart and throw out the bloodied stars, that he can’t come with him now. His hands are wet, his pants are even wetter, but in the dark his friend can’t see; nor can he know.

  7

  The angels are watching over a boy, a mother, and a stranger. The cherub on the ceiling is smiling through rain stains. It’s from a soap ad, not quite as heavenly as the Christmas angel that lost its trumpet. This cut-out from a billboard covers a gap in the door, between wood and corrugated iron. Above the kerosene stove is a sooty Saint Michael, the trademark of Ginebra San Miguel, a cheap gin, with his sword raised to slay the devil under his feet. In another corner is Saint Raphael, the archangel with the fish, looming from a 1996 calendar as if to say, “Here, fish for supper.” His wings have peeled with age but a new pair has been drawn over in pencil.

  These were homeless angels once. The boy found them in the public dump. He was eight and they were living in another slum when he found his first angel. He had scurried up a moving garbage truck along with ten other kids and the driver was yelling, “You want to kill yourselves?” but they were all stuck into it, scavenging, checking out, and choosing. Then he saw her being tossed back and forth by two giggling boys. She was a Christmas angel, he could tell from the trumpet and the still joyful face despite the dirt. She was as tall as the boys, a billboard from last Christmas. She’s my girlfriend, no she’s mine, she loves me, no, me, me! The boys played their little game until the truck pulled to a halt and they got back to work, tossing her aside. She landed in the mud, still blowing her trumpet, which quickly slipped into a puddle. Noland had to jump off the truck before the puddle claimed her too.

  She was wet. The trumpet broke off entirely when he lifted her into the cart. It had rained last night and it was drizzling again, so he took her under “the church,” as he calls it in his head. The large domed structure with its Roman columns looks curiously out of place in the dumping ground, which used to be a cemetery. Perhaps it was once a mausoleum. Beside it, some niches still stand. He used to play here often, alone, hide-and-seek with the silent dead. The other children didn’t like the mute boy in their games.

  Under his church, he cleaned her up, then brought her home. He thought she looked perfect at the door, standing just so, even without the trumpet. He cut out stars from an old magazine and pasted them around her. Later, he found the other angels. When they moved to the railway tracks, he refused to leave them behind. The new home was perfect, more so at Christmas when the lantern stalls along the highway lit up like heaven. He cut out more stars, pasted them around the hut. Then he dared to be extravagant.

  One Christmas, he bought some Japanese paper and bamboo from money earned selling his scavenged bottles. He made his first lantern, a tiny star. By a stroke of luck, he sold it to someone who had just bought a shell lantern. He happened to be standing with his star beside one of the stalls. The nice lady thought his creation “cute” and rare these days when lanterns were made of either plastic or shell. “Farolito—little lantern,” she said, pinching his cheek. He couldn’t name his price, but she gave him fifteen pesos. He was stunned. His mother wept and thanked his angels, not for the money but for the return of her boy. He was coming alive. He stopped whimpering into space, stopped wetting his pants. He made more stars. In this joy, all sorrow could only be irrelevant.

  But not tonight, when the hut is waking up to old stories. There’s no room for them here, no room! The angels understand; they keep to the shadows. Sometimes the flickering heart of the Christmas tree catches their intent, though less heavenly this time. They’re eavesdropping, maybe on the boy’s thoughts or the stranger’s dreams, or the mother’s anxiety. It’s in her bones, gnawing at the marrow of her legs. Little mice. The angels hear them.

  “Why did you bring that woman here? What’s got into you? Why did you ever get friendly with that Elvis?”

  The boy has grown up with his mother’s anxious querying, her way of conversation, as if it could force him to answer, scold him to speak.

  “Hoy, can you hear me? Elvis is big-big trouble, the devil himself.” She is tiny, like a girl, but there’s nothing girlish about the bony limbs, the gray hair. She keeps rubbing her legs under the long housedress, from calves to thighs. She can hide them from the eyes, but this pain, this pain—“Why don’t you listen to me? I know what’s good for you. Hoy, are you listening?”

  He is listening to the white woman’s breathing.

  “Tomorrow she must go. When she wakes up, she’s out—I’ll have no police here, no uniforms. You hear me?” She sits still, listeni
ng to the police sirens going off again, then scrapes the last mouthful of rice from her plate on the floor. Her hand shakes as she brings it to her mouth. “And eat your dinner! You think we can afford to waste food like this?”

  Her son waits for each rise and fall of the stranger’s chest. Nena watches him, wants to drag him back—eat your dinner! She shifts her useless legs. Times like this, they remind her that they’re still here, useful for remembering … times like this.

  He squats at his guest’s feet, watching over her long after his mother blows out the candle in the Christmas tree. This isn’t the only light in the hut. Sometimes the television works. He found it too, in the dump, when he went early before the other scavengers arrived. Mario, who runs the video hut across the tracks, fixed it. It’s dented all over and the black-and-white picture often disappears; the boy pounds it with his fist to make it come on again. When it’s on, his mother does not scold and all’s well with the world. Of course they only watch it when they can pay Mang Pedring, who’s in charge of the street’s illegal wirings. The wire-man can fix up any electrical connection secretly and disconnect it just as discreetly, and promptly if you don’t pay.

  “Leave her alone, son, and come to bed. Tomorrow she’ll go.” The mother has spread some cardboard on the floor, an arm’s length from their only mat, where the white woman sleeps. If she reaches out, she’ll touch her face. Is it still wet? She cried the whole time Nena was washing her. Maybe she wanted her eyes washed too, though she never opened them.

  “Noland …” the mother calls out. She’s afraid he will sit forever with the stranger in this familiar pose, watching in the dark—no, we can’t go back there. Ay, why did you come? There’s no room for you here.

  There is no room for another time. The hut is too small even for the present. Life must be squeezed to pocket size, breath must be kept spare, so there’s enough left for the next day, so the walls hold up. Be frugal where life is fragile. Tears are an imposition here.

  8

  Hands open in supplication or fold close to the chest in prayer, but sometimes it’s closer to play. Tap each other’s hands and clap:

  Star-light, star-bright

  Make-a-wish-a-wish-tonight.

  But tonight there’s no star-light, star-bright over the slums. The sky is too murky and the city lights too bright. Back on the farm, they watched each star come out, rising from the hill just above the fields of rice that her husband planted. “Those are angels,” she told her son, “watching over the rice so it can turn to gold, watching over the land so it can be safe.” Before sleeping, they invoked heaven with the little play of hands. These days she only scolds: “I want you safe.” This is prayer too, just as wishful, just as anxious.

  “Star-light, star-bright …” It plays in Noland’s head. He has his own worry, his own wish. How can his mother dress an angel in rags?

  Outside the midnight train is passing at top speed. Briefly earth and heaven conspire for the eyes. The ramshackle huts and their tinseled trees, the parallel highway with shining stars at each lamppost, the lantern stalls, the zipping cars, the last street vendors and beggars, all collect in a blur for the passengers who are nodding off to sleep. The train rocks them, rocks all the dreams it carries and passes, rocks them into one, and the earth shudders at the weight of this suddenly singular life.

  Noland closes his eyes, paces his breath with his guest’s, his face rapt, caught in the attitude of intense listening. Then he hears it. “That’s good, that’s good,” says the rise and fall in the American’s chest. He is relieved. What he can’t say, he thinks hard. What he thinks hard, he tells in comic strips: stars and angels framed in hundreds of little story boxes strung together since he found his first angel, four years after he lost his speech. His comic strips are unusual, each story frame flowing into the next with no gaps in between, except the page breaks. It’s really only one story, like the angels and stars that he’s brought into the hut or drawn in his notebook. His mother knows about it but pretends she doesn’t. He hides the notebook, hides the stories that he’s conjured, like this one. He does not need a light to draw this quick tale, which he does now in three boxes coming to life in black ballpoint.

  Four stars in the sky.

  Angel falling from the fourth star.

  Angel on the pavement and three stars in the sky.

  It is the cosmic reduced to the simplest terms.

  9

  Hush, I know a story you don’t know. The conspiracy of silence leaves the angels breathless in their watching. They see the boy hide the notebook again and crawl back to his guest. But she’s too long for this mat, this blanket, her feet stick out! It worries him. Should he find something else to cover her feet? But it will be only some old towel or rag, even more shameful than these worn bedclothes, which never bothered him before.

  A quick sensation in his gut perplexes the boy. He does not know that it is shame, this squirming inside for the first time, because he cannot offer more. He turns slightly toward the corner where the television sits, an unconscious move for reassurance toward his priceless possession. It makes him feel sort of rich. All rich people have televisions—look, we have a TV too!

  The boy shrugs, crawls to where his mother is sleeping and lies down. He can’t make the mat or the blanket grow longer, can he? He can’t complete the act of kindness yet. Later, in his dream, he will save her but not her feet, and what a shame. It’s a pity tonight he does not trust the angels in the hut. But when they breathe, do they not kindle the fires in their chests? And light up the hut, as they light up the night? He put them here in the first place, did he not? Still undeniably of heaven and regal despite the soot and stain, the missing trumpet, the repaired wings. But perhaps tonight is too dark for faith. “Real angels” are meant to be all clean and bright, complete and white.

  The white woman tosses and turns, not about her naked feet but her empty womb.

  In the early hours of the morning, the mother wakes. The cardboard is wet, her son is wet. He does not stir when she changes his pants. She bites her lip the whole time. The hut is too small; there is no room to weep.

  DECEMBER 20

  10

  Keep it shut. Keep it dark. Keep it perpetually night. From the time the unknown American is taken in by Noland, it seems as if day will never be allowed in the hut. His mother insists on total secrecy, lest the police, the uniforms, come. She feels it in her bones, this old panic, as if her limbs were being pulled apart and anytime they’d snap. She insists the stranger must leave when she wakes up.

  When she wakes up. In his head Noland conjures scenes of wonder, of wondrous blessings, for she’s an angel, isn’t she? But first she must eat. He checks the two pieces of pan de sal—oh, to have some proper meat for a sandwich. What do angels eat? He frowns at the glass of water beside the bread. Some Milo soon, yes, Milo’s good. He knows this drink so well from the TV ad: Go-go-go Milo! He tries to tidy up, but there’s not much to tidy. The hut is only a little longer than the sleeping guest and as wide as two of her arm spans maybe, and certainly much below her height.

  Noland worries about the piles of boxes, the lantern papers strewn around, the stove, the television, and even the Christmas tree sitting on it. They all seem to take up so much space now. How will she fit, when she wakes up? Will she see that half of the floor is dirt? The wooden planks once rescued from a demolished stadium haven’t made enough floor. He retrieves some of his hanging stars to cover the floorless part, a bit of heaven to conceal the earth, but how he wishes they had a light-bulb. A TV but no proper light—but a TV anyway, he reminds himself, giving the box a good wipe.

  It is six in the morning. The only lights in the hut are pinpoints from the cracks and an opaque glow behind the patches of plastic and paper. On the roof, a spot on the cherub’s brow, a little sun the size of a coin, and where the corrugated iron door joins with the wood, a line of light cutting the pasted angel in half, then the few pinpoints streaming in, exposing a detail here and t
here. A corner of the stove, a clump of paper stars above, and even the American’s face almost catching light, Noland hopes, if he moves her just a bit. She must be with the light—but, he relents, she must rest. Anyway when she wakes, when she finally moves, it will be real morning. He draws little scenes in his head, all good tidings, all bright.

  Outside the train passes, the hut trembles.

  He proceeds to make more lanterns, smoothing out the Japanese paper with the tenderness of a craftsman. He will sell more stars tonight, he must. He checks on his guest again, inspired with plans that make him smile to himself. The watching angels know the smile, rare for this boy. If only he could see himself, that he looks like them, almost, when his lips break their solemn repose.

  “Noland, Noland!” It’s Elvis banging at the door, making him jump. Quickly he sneaks his friend in, gesticulating that he must not, must not ever, tell anyone about their guest, or else—but Elvis calms the flailing hands with a McDonald’s bag handed over with a swagger, see what I brought, then quickly takes out a burger himself, oh, I haven’t had breakfast myself, while telling stories about the crime scene last night when he returned to it and how Bobby Cool was so angry they both disappeared, but he took care of everything and of course he won’t tell Bobby about the white woman—so, is she awake?

  No, she’s not! Elvis overacts his disappointment, shaking his head dismally. “What do we do with her, Noland? You think she has plenty of money?”

  But Noland is busy peeking into the bag. He finds the other burger, which he lays beside the two bread buns, for when she wakes. He’s pleased with his friend. He gives him a pat on the head.