The Solemn Lantern Maker Read online

  The news cuts to the reporter Eugene Costa, trying to wrangle an interview from the man himself. Senator G.B. “Good Boy” Buracher is surrounded by children singing “Silent Night.” He’s hosting a Christmas party for orphans at a hospice. Two girls aged six and five are on his knees, perplexed by all the attention. His bodyguards block the reporter. The news cuts again to the intersection, then to a speeding Pizza Hut motorcycle and back to the City Flash anchorwoman asking, “But who is the Pizza Hut man?”

  Then just as in life, which can’t stay singular or still, the news moves on to the joint exercises of the Philippine and the United States military in their common fight against terrorism. At efficiently stage-managed press conferences, the countries’ respective presidents affirm current bilateral relations and “our long history of friendship.” But the camera is fickle. It cuts to a veteran activist asking whether this paves the way for the revival of the U.S. military bases, which were shut in 1992.

  Face after face, news after news, life after life, but Nena sees only her son’s face evoking another from an earlier time. This is not a solemn face, though, but one fraught with query and puzzlement, with cares more numerous than the stalks of rice he planted long ago, as numerous as the stars watching over them, turning them to gold.

  23

  It whimpers, then is still. It does not know what hit it or whose hand dealt the blow. A dog cannot query its fate. It just dies. Elvis can’t take his eyes off it, dragged back to the store by Mang Gusting. He shuts his eyes. He can’t escape the last hiss of life when the head is severed from the neck. Can anyone die twice? He’s sure he hears a final-final expiration. He feels his own neck, at the jugular where the pulse is undeniably still there—or is it?

  What a waste of so much Kentucky Fried Chicken. As he retches his way to Noland’s hut, he assures himself he’s only cleaning his insides. The German was overly generous. His affection stretched for two hours under the shower. He’s sore. The German got his money’s worth, every cent of his one hundred dollars. Elvis checks the bill in his pocket. It’s crisp and clean.

  Close by Mikmik and her gang sing carols from hut to hut. The girls are bursting with Christmas cheer and prank, jumbling up lyrics, making them wicked, giving them oomph. They rev up with the traditional carol:

  Ang pasko ay sumapit

  Habang ang mundo’y tabimik

  Ang araw ay sumapit

  Ng Sanggol na dulot ng langit.

  Christmas has come

  While the world is peaceful

  The day has come

  For the Child gifted by heaven.

  Then they revise it:

  Ang pasko ay kumapit

  Sa mundong masungit

  Ang araw ay sumabit

  Sa bulsang ubod ng buwisit.

  Christmas latched itself

  Onto a cruel world

  The day derailed itself

  In a pocket of bad luck.

  Up and down the track, the children are condemned for sacrilege, blasphemy, and consigned to the devil’s lair. Hah, that’s what you get for leaving a daughter with a father who can’t run a store and, worse, can’t even be faithful. So what would he know about raising a girl?

  Mikmik’s mother has worked as a maid in Hong Kong for six years now. The neighbors envy Mang Gusting’s Hong Kong dollars but not his domestic lot. His wife sent money for a store, then a karaoke to draw more customers, who only sang and drank each night on credit. And Micaela, who demands to be called Mikmik now, has grown up an impossible handful, giving everyone a reason to blame the absent mother and the incapable father.

  What is it like to be incapacitated by longing? An empty bed, a daughter’s brooding; the ache in the loin, the dent in the heart. In the first year, he cried each time his daughter cried herself to sleep. In the second, he went to the back of his store at midnight, read his wife’s letters, and watched the cockroaches feast on his cum. In the fourth, when the karaoke machine was bought, he sang with his friends and watched the women, especially Lisa and her pulsing throat when she reached for the high notes. Much later, he took Lisa to the back of the store, but not to sing. Some heard her cry out, or so they say, thus the “oh-oh” tag to her name. But that’s over now. Everything passes—the years, the preoccupations, and the affections. This Christmas, his wife did not send any money, not even a greeting card. He suspects she found out about his affair. One of her friends probably wrote her and dumped on him. Such things happen in this neighborhood.

  “Hi, handsama,” Mikmik greets Elvis with her limitless bravado, mixing up the word “handsome” and sama, “bad.” Her gang of younger girls blow their Christmas trumpets.

  “Hi, bee-yoo-tee,” Elvis tosses back, even if his spirit isn’t quite all there. Thank God it’s dark so she can’t see he’s turned white. He heads to the public pump to wash off the smell of retch. Bobby said there’s another job late tonight—fuck you, Bobby. He pumps the water onto his head, his face. He’s dripping when he gets to Noland’s hut.

  “Gotta towel?”

  Noland and his mother are at the Amerkana’s feet; she’s still asleep. Nena shushes the dripping boy, but Noland is ready with a rag for his friend, gesticulating with worry—she’s very sick.

  What do you know about sick? He’s sore, queasy, exhausted, and he can’t get the dog off his mind, that last hiss. “So, we selling?” He rubs his hair dry, and his cheeks for color. He can feel how white he’s become, but these people can’t see, of course, caught up with that woman. “No? No selling?” No one can see because no one has ever looked. “I’m going then.”

  “Good,” Nena grumbles, but Noland gestures for him to wait as he gathers his wares in a bag; no need for the cart. No time to make more stars today. She’s sick, you see. He’s torn between going with his friend and squatting at the feet of that woman like some slave dog. Elvis can see that.

  The shadows in the hut grow still. The heart of the Christmas tree flickers. All are dying for an ending.

  “Let that devil boy go, Noland,” Nena scolds but the boys are soon out the door. She sighs, lays a hand on the white woman’s brow.

  At the intersection, Elvis is sullen. He squats under the giant stars, mouth tightly drawn. The stall owner eyes him suspiciously. Bad temper, bad luck. “Hoy, don’t block my customers,” he scolds, waving him away.

  Bobby looks him over too, sniffs him. “You smell funny—glad I brought these,” tossing him a bag of fresh clothes. “Tonight’s special.”

  Elvis simply shrugs and receives the business accessories, including a cell phone, the whispered details, and his share of the German loot, in pesos of course. Bobby never tells him how much he collects. Never mind, he won’t know about those two extra hours either. They’re even.

  “See you there, don’t be late.” The pimp is off to set up the night.

  Under the blinking lights, Elvis is red, green, and yellow, and different. Noland notices, and touches his arm. Elvis flinches. No, red, green, and yellow, and sad. Noland rearranges the drooping cap. Elvis shrugs, spits out an expletive. When they do see, he can’t bear it.

  Suddenly he laughs, a hard note in Noland’s ears. “Okay, Noland, let’s conquer!” He grabs a handful of stars then is off, charging at the traffic.

  As they dispatch the stars, they stray from the intersection, farther from Mang Gusting’s store. The boy is perfect again after several turns of his cap, these revolutions of mood and luck. What luck this relocation of the heart. He is saved from the smell of dog barbecue. At Mang Gusting’s, the karaoke party is in full swing. The beer flows with Christmas carols and Mikmik has lit up a string of firecrackers. But her father remains sober. Whatever made him think that Lisa’s pulsing throat was smooth and graceful? Of course, her notes are still the highest of the singing lot, untouched by any man’s affection or disaffection. What luck that disaffection is unknown to a mother’s charges in Hong Kong. Those two little girls have doctors for parents and a Filipina amah who loves them like her own.
r />   24

  Nearly two hours before midnight and the stars have descended. Now sprouting from buildings and dripping from trees, lights and more lights glitter along Ayala Avenue, which has never known the pliers of the wire-man Mang Pedring. Noland beams at Elvis. It’s like he has died and gone to heaven.

  A change of heart, a change of scene. Heaven has relocated itself, and Noland is making blissful noises in his throat. Almost words, Elvis imagines. Earlier he slipped his friend a balato, a gift of four hundred pesos, because he said he’d scored a deal, though he won’t talk about it. Two extra hours in the shower for a cool hundred dollars—ah, he’d outbargained that stupid German.

  A warm feeling crept through his chest as Noland’s mouth fell open. That’s it, all trace of sullenness dislodged by a feel-good flush. Elvis was back at the wheel, navigating with ease as he extended the gift. “Why don’t you come with me and splurge? I’m off to the shopping heart of the city.”

  Noland hesitated but was swept off his feet by Elvis’s stories about those lights and other possibilities. What if?

  “Told you, didn’t I?” Elvis beams at his friend’s awe. They’re now a jeepney ride away from the intersection. Elvis explains how easy it is for Noland to catch a ride home. He’s shown him the route, pointed out the jeepney to take. “No rush, it’s midnight shopping. Buy your mother something nice for Christmas.”

  Noland fondles the bills, gets more inspired.

  “You sure you don’t have holes in that pocket?” Elvis asks, assessing the other’s rag of a shirt with a Spider-Man print. He should have told him to change. “Keep your hands around your money. Easy to lose it in this shopping madness.”

  But how do I go in there? Noland’s heart fills up with the immense size of Glorietta Mall and its implications. When Elvis said let’s go “mall-ing,” Noland looked perplexed and his friend laughed. “It’s shopping or window-shopping, eating, etc., etc., getting into the grind like everyone else. An expedition!”

  Noland has never been to a mall. He heard about it from the kids in the other slum where they used to live. It’s so big with so many corridors leading to so many shops with everything that anyone can buy and eat. The choices will make you dizzy, the corridors will get you confused, get you lost.

  “Just follow the crowd, you’ll be fine. Or ask the guard over there.”

  Noland flinches at the mention of the guard.

  “Okay, I’ll lead you in, walk around a bit, but I have to meet Bobby somewhere around here, so I can’t stay long.” He looks at the fake Rolex that’s too big for his wrist. Somewhere around here is the condominium of a Chinese businessman who’s expecting an overnight. Bobby said to look “expensive,” so he brought him the bag of imitations: Elvis had changed into Lacoste, Nike, and Rolex, but it’s the same New York cap. I NY. Didn’t the Amerkana say so?

  “C’mon, then.” He leads Noland by the hand, murmuring, “I think we should buy you a shirt,” but a shirt is the last thing on Noland’s mind. He imagines corridors and corridors of housedresses. With four hundred pesos plus the lantern sale in his pocket, anything’s possible. But inspiration falters as they walk in. Near the entrance shoppers haggle for colorful gift boxes and designer perfumes on sale.

  Why buy empty boxes that cost a dozen kilos of rice each? Why have a lady spray you for the price of more than a year’s supply of rice? Of course there’s the little box that she wraps up for you. Noland scratches his head.

  The shoppers clutch their bags tighter as he stares at the thousand-peso bills laid on the counter until Elvis drags him away, whispering, “Noland, you don’t stare at money here—you want us to get into trouble?” He tips his cap at the frowning sales attendant. “Just looking-looking, miss.”

  They walk on, Noland oh-ing and ah-ing in his head over this magnitude of Christmas spirit, the lights more glorious than what Elvis promised, the stars and angels all colors, sizes and shapes, and the din of carol and chatter leaving him breathless. Here is a church with richer altars, where masses offer a full range of intent, from joyful to anxious consumption.

  They follow the faithful, lingering here and there for Noland’s sake. Elvis is looking at his watch, Noland is ogling the display window of a bookstore where angels float, hanging from barely visible strings. He smiles at the shimmering creatures with golden hair, golden wings, and golden trimmings on their silk costumes. All with tall noses and looking serious, perhaps because they’re guarding books. Under an angel’s gaze are three little books arranged strategically to inspire each other: 101 Bathrooms, 101 Living Rooms, and Finishing Touches. Good thing Noland can’t read. How to imagine a hundred and one bathroom options when for him it’s the creek beside the hut.

  Suddenly he jumps at the sound of orchestrating phones. He turns around. Three shoppers are intent on their palms. Elvis rolls his eyes to heaven.

  A far-off century may suspect an epidemic of obsessive-compulsive palm reading, but this is only the new world texting, reading messages, and viewing photos. Thank God for efficient intimacies here, where most of the shopping rolls on dollars sent home by millions of overseas Filipino contract workers and migrants. The Filipino heart travels with an unflinching sense of duty. When the body is unable to return, the dollar flies back, or the beloved comes home on a little ring, a little beep. Back to where Christmas shopping must go on, where shoppers will never know how to freeze in winter and loneliness, or how to be raped by the employer from whom all the dollars flow.

  Ignorance is bliss. The mall is busy, so life can only be prosperous.

  Suddenly another ring. Elvis makes a big show for Noland’s sake, naturally hand to ear as if the little gadget were born with him. It’s Bobby tracking him down. “Of course I’m here, just across the road—okay, over and out.” He fusses with his cap and clothes. “Gotta go, Noland—no, you’ll be okay. Listen, if you keep following all those people, you’ll get to Landmark, where you can buy anything and cheaper too, and I showed you where to take the jeepney, didn’t I? Don’t worry, you’ll be okay, it’s easy.” But Noland won’t let go of his hand.

  “Remember, I showed you the jeepney route that goes all the way to your street, or close to it anyway—and buy yourself a shirt, okay?”

  Noland is still holding onto him, for a moment his lifeline, this boy who looks strange and rich in his fake glory, noosed by a line too short, where the knot tightens at the end.

  DECEMBER 21

  25

  Dinner is pork buns and Coke at 2 a.m. Nena queries Noland’s rich takeaway at every mouthful. “Where did you get this, and the shirt, and the money? Did you sell all your lanterns?” She’s more anxious about her son’s bag of shopping, which he’s trying to hide. “You didn’t steal, did you? That Elvis didn’t get you into some scrap again, did he? Is this why you’re so late?”

  Elated, Noland isn’t listening. He is quickly beside his guest, checking for fever, catching his breath. He did not take the jeepney. He walked under the dripping fairy lights in his new shirt with the same words as on Elvis’s cap: I NY. Fifteen pesos from the bargain box. He likes the big red heart, much bigger than the cap’s.

  “Where’s he having Christmas anyway?” Nena asks, offhand. Perhaps she knows something about “that devil boy,” perhaps not. After all, questions are like expletives sometimes, a mere impulsive twitch with no wish for answers. “Come to bed, Noland, she’ll be okay.”

  He wants answers, but can’t ask for them. He wonders about his friend who never runs out of money and never volunteers anything about himself. He wonders about the kind man who bought his star two nights ago and told him to keep the change, and the wondering stabs at his heart. He wonders what’s wrong with his still sleeping guest and whether the bottle from Quiapo will make her well and when she will wake up.

  He prefers home to the streets now, knowing she’s here, that she might be awake. The thought always quickens his heart and pulse, pushes his feet into a sprint. His mother notes he does not even look at her w
hen he walks in, heading straight to the white woman, squatting at her feet, watching over her before he does anything else. She resents his attention but doesn’t have the heart to stop him, or maybe her heart is no longer whole for this. Once it broke because of this very same attitude of watching.

  He came home earlier to deliver the herb. Nena worried endlessly about how she could give it to the Amerkana when she was asleep and what if she made a scene if she woke her, what if she screamed again, what if the whole neighborhood found out, but what if she never woke up?

  For Noland at the mall, what if was all light and lightness. Ah, those stars, those angels. He walked, gazed, lingered, long after Elvis had gone. One display window perplexed him: two Christmas ball gowns flanked by stars without the usual finish. Just glittering wires, bones of a star. The lightbulb was naked, the heart exposed.

  But why hide the heart anyway? A little trick for the eye, a subtle camouflage is enough in the hut. Noland’s handmade tree proves this. Long after dinner, the candle still flickers inside the milk can, inside the bamboo. He raises a hand to stop his mother from blowing it out. He can’t sleep, he won’t. He’s still at her feet, listening to the ebb and flow of her breath, checking for fever. What if.

  Nena cheers up her boy. “She woke up and asked for water … I gave her the herb … don’t worry, I think the fever’s settling down…” Then just before she drifts off: “But she must go tomorrow…”