The Bamboo Stalk (15 page)

Mama Aida ran her hands along her arms, as if trying to stop her hair standing on end. ‘I ran downstairs in my nightclothes and went out without shoes,' she continued, crossing herself. ‘Whitey was crouching at the door of Father's house, howling at the sky. Someone had undone the collar that was tied to his
kennel. The cocks were still crowing. But what really scared me and sent a shiver down my spine, José, was seeing Inang Choleng stooped at the window of her house in the darkness. She was topless and had her arms crossed under her shrivelled breasts. She was looking down, as if she had something in her arms.'

Aida leaned forward, put her elbows on her knees and covered her face with her hands. ‘I didn't dare go near my father's house. I hadn't gone inside for years. I ran off to Pedro's house without looking back at Inang Choleng's house. I knocked on his door with both fists. Pedro asked what had come over me. “Father's dead, Pedro, he's dead in bed,” I told him. “Who told you that, Aida?” he asked, because he was sure I wouldn't have gone inside. I pointed to the patio outside father's house. “Whitey and the cocks,” I said.'

Uncle Pedro came and sat down on the other side of me and his sister left straight away. ‘I'm going home,' she said. ‘Enough. I can't bear to stay here any longer.' My uncle didn't look at her, but he picked up the story where she left off.

‘After Aida told me I ran to Father's house and opened the door. Whitey beat me inside. It smelled like the candles had been blown out only a short while ago. I pressed the light switch but nothing happened. I lit my lighter and found my father lying naked on his side, with his knees folded up against his chest, like the foetal position. He had covered his face with his hands like someone who doesn't want to look at something horrible.'

*   *   *

Merla arrived three days after Grandfather died. The family had
decided that his body should stay in the church for five days so that all the family members could see it before he was buried.

Merla came to the church with Maria, who sat in the back row near the door while Merla came forward to the front row. She greeted us and said, ‘I'm sorry to hear the news.' Uncle Pedro made room for her next to me and she sat down.

The family members and the guests started to leave one by one and by sunset Merla and I were the only ones left inside. She turned to me and looked me in the face. ‘You hypocrite!' she said. ‘Don't pretend to be sad to lose him, José.'

I put my hand on her knee and looked towards the coffin where the body was lying. ‘In fact I am sad, Merla,' I said. ‘I had never looked at his face till now.' I squeezed her knee. ‘If I had seen him again before he died, I would have told him I forgive him.'

I took my hand off her knee. She stood up and walked towards the coffin. ‘What matters is that you've forgiven him. That's up to you, not up to him,' she said.

‘What do you mean?' I asked. Her back was towards me and her face towards the coffin, which was just a few metres away.

‘We're not rewarding others when we forgive them their sins,' she said. ‘We're rewarding ourselves. They call it catharsis.'

My silence didn't mean I agreed with what Merla believed, but I wasn't going to argue with someone crazy right now. I wanted Mendoza to be absolved of his sins against me before he was buried, and when he was absolved, I would have a clear conscience too.

‘Aren't you going to have a last look at Mendoza, José?' Merla asked, without turning towards me. Merla stepped towards the coffin and I followed with heavy feet.

The coffin was at the front of the church, open on a table
covered with a piece of white silk. It was surrounded by white flowers in silver vases. The coffin was white with decorative touches in purple and golden handles on all four sides. There was a crucifix hanging above it on the wall. To the right there was a picture of Mendoza in a frame on a wooden stand and some basic information about him – Sixto Philip Mendoza, born 6 April 1925, died 21 June 2005, aged 80.

I stepped towards the coffin, where Merla was standing praying. Grandfather was lying under the glass cover with his eyes closed. His face was grey and the powder they had put on it didn't hide the pallor. He looked respectable in a way he hadn't looked when he was alive. He was wearing black trousers and a white shirt with vertical black stripes.

I looked at the inside of the coffin lid at the end where his head would be. My mother had attached strips of purple cloth to it, each with the name of a close family member: Aida, Josephine, Pedro and his wife and children, Alberto and Adrian, Merla and José. When the lid was closed the names would be on the ceiling of the coffin, in front of Mendoza's face, so he would be reminded of his family in the other world.

‘Let's go, José,' said Merla. We crossed ourselves over the body and left him in the tranquillity of the church.

On the way home, I asked Merla to go on ahead. ‘I have something to do. I'll join you later,' I said.

I went back to the church. The man in charge had switched off the lights and was about to close up. I asked him for a little more time to pray for my grandfather. ‘I'll be back in five minutes,' he said. He went to a table, took a candle and lit it. He gave it to me before leaving.

Holding the candle I went to Grandfather's body and looked at his face. His eyes, his nose, his lips and the other parts of his
face all seemed to be moving because of the candle flame flickering in the dark. I turned to the coffin lid, reached out, and with my thumb and index finger I pulled off the strip of cloth that had my name on it.

‘Sorry, Grandfather,' I said, looking at his face behind the glass. I closed the coffin lid and walked down the short corridor that led outside, with the candle in one hand and the strip of cloth in my other hand. ‘That way you won't be reminded you have a grandson called José,' I said to myself as I walked away, leaving the coffin behind me.

At the door I stopped and turned, facing the coffin. I rounded my lips to blow out the candle, confident that I would never again hear that call of Mendoza's: ‘José, José, José.'

 

9

The White Rabbit appeared without warning five days after Mendoza died. Maybe it had been waiting for him to die.

I had been waiting a long time, rabbit, for you to appear in front of me. I would follow you, trip up and fall down a hole that leads to my father's country. But apparently falling down a hole isn't as easy as I imagined.

*   *   *

At noon on the fifth day after his death a luxury limousine, decorated with vast quantities of flowers, carried away the body of my grandfather Mendoza. He who had never travelled in such a car in his lifetime did so in death, on his journey to the cemetery near his piece of land.

The wheels of the limousine turned slowly. The family and the many other mourners walked behind it, carrying wreaths of flowers and umbrellas to keep off the sun, as they took Mendoza to his final resting place.

Meanwhile the White Rabbit was waiting for me somewhere, wearing his famous waistcoat, holding his pocket watch and counting the time.

A week before Mendoza's funeral the White Rabbit had been at another funeral, saying his own last farewells to a friend, after a separation that had lasted fifteen years.

*   *   *

Mama Aida was at home. She hadn't come to the burial with us. Although my mother and Uncle Pedro had tried to persuade her, she flatly refused to come. ‘As far as I'm concerned, my father died a long time ago,' she said, ‘when we were children. The only new thing today is that you're throwing his body in a dark hole like the hole he pushed me into when I was seventeen. Off you go and take the children with you.'

When the burial was over and we were together at home, Mama Aida said someone had called to ask after Mother. ‘I asked him to call back in two hours,' she said. Right on time, the rabbit called.

‘Yes, I'm Josephine,' my mother told the caller. She jumped to her feet in surprise. ‘How could I not remember you? Of course I remember you, Ghassan.'

Ghassan. The name hit me like an electric shock. My father's friend. The fisherman. The soldier. The poet who played the oud.

The memories teemed in my head and all my senses came to life: the music I had heard in Boracay, the smell of fish and other disgusting smells, maybe the smell of the bait in the plastic bag that Walid was carrying in the old photograph.

As soon as my mother said the name Ghassan, I couldn't help rushing upstairs to Merla's room, where there was another telephone. I picked up the receiver and put it to my ear to hear their conversation – my mother and Ghassan.

‘I imagine it's time for him to come back,' said Ghassan in a rough voice that was nothing like that of a poet, maybe the voice of a soldier. ‘That's what Rashid wanted, fifteen years ago,' he continued.

My mother breathed faster when she heard my father's name.

‘I asked Rashid to look after my mother if anything bad happened to me. In return he asked me to look after Isa if anything happened to him,' said Ghassan.

‘Rashid? Something bad?' my mother said, so quietly I could hardly hear her.

‘I had great hopes he'd be released from detention,' said Ghassan, his voice gentler now and hesitant. ‘I'm sorry but . . .' he continued. The soldier's voice was gone and he went on in the voice of a poet. ‘One week ago the Tarouf family received the remains of Rashid from a mass grave in southern Iraq.'

My mother didn't say a word.

‘Doesn't he want to come back to Kuwait?' Ghassan asked.

My mother started crying and I answered on the other line. ‘Yes, I want to go back, I want to go back,' I said.

Ghassan promised us he would look after everything. ‘I know people who can help us bring him back,' he told my mother. To me he said, ‘Give me some time to prepare your papers and get you a Kuwaiti passport.' He said he'd like to come to the Philippines to bring me back to Kuwait himself but there was a reason why he couldn't do that.

‘I'll be in touch,' the rabbit concluded.

 

10

Death is strange. It comes and then lingers, moving slowly and looking for someone else whose life it can snatch. As long as it's passing this way, why bother to go away only to come back later?

Five days after Mendoza died we received the news of Rashid's death. A week after the burial of Mendoza, death went off with the soul of Inang Choleng.

The neighbours noticed that the bowls of food outside the old woman's door hadn't been touched since the morning. ‘It looks like Inang Choleng is ill,' one of them told Mama Aida. Aida went to the old woman's house and came back minutes later with her face frozen in shock. With dry, trembling lips she picked up the phone. ‘Josephine, come quickly,' she said, then burst into tears. ‘The old woman's dead.'

She threw down the phone, then threw herself on to the sofa crying hysterically. I was so shocked I was tongue-tied and couldn't think straight. She didn't cry when her father died, I thought. Uncle Pedro came in looking pale and my mother arrived leaning on Alberto's arm, followed by Adrian with his mouth open and large drool stains on his shirt. Mother sat down next to Mama Aida, covering her face with her hands and crying. ‘The poor woman's died after waiting so long,' she sobbed. ‘She died when her only hope died.'
What's going on here
, I wondered. I looked around at their faces: Mama Aida sobbing, my mother in tears, Uncle Pedro
sad, Alberto silent, Adrian in his own world and the neighbour puzzled.

I went upstairs to Merla's room, sat on her bed and picked up the phone. ‘Inang Choleng's dead,' I told Merla.

‘That's sad, but what's wrong with your voice, José? The woman was close to a hundred, maybe more. Did you believe the children when they talked about Inang Choleng as the witch who would never die?' Maybe I did believe in the legends about the old woman, but it wasn't her death or the legends about her that puzzled me.

‘Hello? Hello? José!' Merla shouted, breaking my train of thought.

‘Come, Merla,' I said at the end of our conversation. ‘Something strange is going on downstairs with my mother, Mama Aida and Pedro.'

*   *   *

Everyone but me went to Inang Choleng's house. I sat waiting for Merla and as soon as she arrived, she asked where everyone had gone.

‘To the old woman's house,' I answered. She looked at me in surprise.

‘José, you frightened me. What's going on?' she asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I don't know,' I said uncertainly, ‘but . . .'

I didn't finish the sentence. She took my hand and pulled me away. ‘Let's have our first and last look at the inside of the old woman's house,' she said.

I didn't want to let go of her soft hand but I did. ‘Are you mad?' I said. ‘You're going to go inside the witch's house?'

She looked at me in surprise. ‘So why did you ask me to come, José?'

I didn't know what to say because I didn't know what had made me do it.

‘I don't know, Merla. But your mother was really sad, my mother and Uncle Pedro too. Their reaction when they heard the news was weird.'

‘Everything's weird in Mendozaland, everything,' she commented.

‘But my mother said the old woman had waited a long time,' I said, interrupting her.

‘Don't be silly, José,' said Merla, interrupting me this time. ‘What else would a woman her age be waiting for, other than death?'

I didn't say a word.

‘So let's go and see the old woman's shack.'

The neighbours were gathered outside Inang Choleng's house, at least the men and the women. The children were watching warily from a distance. Uncle Pedro's wife and children were outside. My stepfather Alberto was sitting on a rock nearby. When Merla and I approached, Uncle Pedro's wife said, ‘Pedro and Josephine and Aida are with the priest inside. Aren't you going in?'