The Ride. It was a cold October dawn when we left Ormoc for Maasin. We had wakened at 4:30 and the household was very still. When Laila, my companion and I went out of our room, the breakfast table had been set.

The house we stayed in was near the church and the Ormoc pier. That morning, we left the house with our things for a one-week stay in Southern Leyte, part of an official trip for a government agency involved in the Population Program.

We had been on the PUJ for almost an hour when the day broke finally. It was overcast. I was wearing a sweater which I took off later when the sun finally came out.

We changed rides three times, passing by the coastal towns of Baybay, Hindang, Albuera, Bato and several others. The trip from Ormoc to Maasin would take four hours we had been told. It was 11:30 when we finally reached the place.

The Town. Maasin was a small southern town capital; a marketplace, grocery stores, a hardware, a hotel. With our bags and things to last for a week, Laila and I took lunch in a small crowded restaurant in the marketplace, thinking on our next move. Should we take a taxicab? Or a jeepney? Which jeepney? Whatever would take us to the provincial capital where the health people ought to be found.

Mercifully, a POPCOM vehicle passed by, a Land Cruiser, one of those US/AID vehicles scattered all over the rural places in the country, which we quickly spotted and which we readily hailed.

The provincial capitol was located in what one might call an out-of-town place. Several kilometers from the town proper, it stood alone amidst a very rural expanse of trees and tall grass. The doctor greeted us most warmly and after the basic introductions and scheduling of our activities, his staff made arrangements for our accommodations.

The House. The house we were brought to was a two-story affair in town, just within the vicinity of the marketplace, walking distance form the municipal hall and the church and the local RCPI.

We were met by a dark squat woman with uneven shades of powder on her aging face. The partial gold caps on her teeth shone every time she smiled, and she was always smiling when she talked. Her eyes hinted of wanting to bulge but it was charming for they were always lighted up by her gold-strewn smiles. She kept calling us “ma’am” reverentially and offered us boiled peanuts while we talked about the terms of our stay, the rent of the room, the cost of each meal, etcetera.

She was a Filipina married to a Chinese. The family had various businesses in town: a dress shop which occupied half of the first floor of the house, a merchandise store in the marketplace, a hotel in the town plaza, a grocery and a refreshment bar a few blocks away from the house.

She talked about her children with obvious pride. One son was in Manila taking up Law. The one we hadn’t seen yet was taking up Medicine in Cebu and was around for the semestral vacation. In two week’s time he would be going back to Cebu.

She smiled again. We were very tired. “Could we go up now,” I asked. “Yes, ma’am,” she answered and called somebody to take our luggage upstairs.

The House was long and wide. The front of the sala downstairs, which served as receiving room, and living room – functioned as a dress shop as well, where stood two display mannequins, a glass cabinet case with various clothing materials for customers to pick from, and two sewing machines. On the wall to the left, a piano stood. Further back, with only a curtain serving as divider, was the kitchen and the dining area.

It was a house full of mirrors. There were mirrors all over the place. There was a huge one in the dress shop area where one could view himself full-body as he passed by.

All the bedrooms were on the second floor. The corridor on the way to the bedrooms were filled with mirrors, photographs and diplomas; family photographs singly and collectively; yellowed photographs of the children mostly when they were young; high school diplomas. One outstanding frame contained a baccalaureate degree diploma from a local school with a girl’s name indicating graduation with honors.

An atmosphere of semi-darkness pervaded the house, especially upstairs – mostly because the rooms which were situated between the windows overlooking the street and the verandah were clumped against each other and the windows were often closed.

From our room going to the verandah, one passed the bathroom first and then the two rooms which were always closed. The verandah overlooked the sea. In the morning, the sea would be pearly white. In the evening, it would all be darkness and the blowing of the wind. At dusk, or before sunset, the sea would be so breathtakingly beautiful.

Below the verandah – there were rails one could lean on – were tall round white rocks and just a few steps ahead was the sea itself, the water brackish with the refuse coming from the neighborhood waste. Afar, the water looked purer. On some afternoons, the sky would be plain orange with the fire of the dying sun; other times, bright flaming colors of orange and red would be slowly transformed into hues of blue and ash and grey; and in a few minutes, it would be totally dusk, the sky and the sea finally one and only the dim, sick yellow of the moon would provide a little light.

The house lights came between eight and nine in the evening and went off at twelve midnight. Before the lights came at such time, a dim orange bulb in the stairway landing outside our room provided the only source of illumination. At the strike of midnight, the whole house would be in absolute darkness. Somewhere in the night, there would be the sound of the opening and shutting of doors, of voices and footsteps coming up and down the stairs.

One evening, we saw a very beautiful girl. She must have been anywhere between nine and thirteen, with features reminiscent of a Chinese doll or a French gamin: fine milky white skin, innocent wide Oriental eyes, small pink lips, smooth dark hair. She was wearing a long dress in pastel-colored floral prints - which could be a sleeping gown - and she was being carried by a big woman whom we also saw for the first time.

That first afternoon, while resting in bed in our room, we heard a voice calling for his mother. In an angry, sulking tone, somebody was asking why his things were taken out of his room and transferred to the other room.

Later, at dusk, we heard somebody playing the piano, some local melodies and a song which I had always liked, something called “Misty.” To hear it being played in a different, so distant place, in a strange house in a darkening room was both eerie and beautiful.

Somebody rapped on the door to say it was suppertime. Laila and I went down and were guided to a table set for two. On another table were three people already starting to eat. The mother smiled and said, “This is my husband and this is my son studying in Cebu”.

We nodded from where we stood.
“He’s the one playing the piano?” I asked.
“Yes, he’s the one.”

The father was a gaunt, almost tubercular-looking Chinese, whom we saw only during suppertime; who attended to the various businesses, we surmised, and who was silent most of the time.

The Boy. He must have been around 19. He was tall and slight, with very faint Chinese features. He took on the complexion of the mother which on him was a beautiful light brown, having blended finely with the fair skin of the father. Everything about his face was a fine composite of the parents. He looked like neither of them, having emerged with features distinctly his own, only subtly reminiscent of his parents and definitely more good-looking.

After supper, there was piano music again. I found myself listening intently, very intently. I was trying to hear something I wanted to hear, trying to hear more from the music being wafted from downstairs up to our room now only dimly lit by the reflection of the orange bulb outside, the curtains having been pulled to shut off the light we no longer needed.

During breakfast the next morning, I saw him caressing his mother at the breakfast table and when he saw us, he got very prim and proper, giving us a respectful nod. I felt him looking stealthily, shyly at us. For a while, I thought I heard a sigh. He finished ahead and again threw us a deferential look before he left.

That evening, we weren’t able to sleep well. Someone was tossing in bed in the next room, the room where he was staying.

The next morning, we saw the girl again. She must have been older than I had thought. Probably between 17 and 19. She was being carried downstairs by the big woman. Her face was slightly powdered, her lips faintly colored, and as before, she was wearing a long dress in floral pastel prints.

Later in the afternoon, back from our work which we finished early, I asked the mother about the girl.

Her eldest child, she said. She was stricken by polio at the age of seven. How they had tried to save the girl. They stayed in Manila for a long time, going from one specialist to another. But the girl was very precocious, very intelligent. She went to the commercial school in town and finished a business degree with honors, despite the bad leg. She was the one managing the grocery and refreshment parlor several blocks down the street.

“That’s why we rarely saw her,” I said. “Does she always have a companion to carry her?”
“Only in going up and down the stairs, ma’am”.
“How old is she?”
“She’s twenty-four”.
“She’s very pretty. And she looks very young. I though she was around 18.”
She smiled, a little sadly.

Thursday was a holiday. Laila and I woke up late, took breakfast, went to church and then walked by the pier. Later, we did some shopping in town and sent a cable at the local PT&T.

Back in our room, we heard somebody playing on the piano again. The same song. But this time I also recognized some light minuets by Bach and Chopin.

At lunchtime, we did not see him.

In the afternoon, writing on the table outside our room, facing the mirrors and the photographs and the diplomas, I heard somebody coming up and I felt that it was he.

It was he. He smiled. A very self-conscious smile. I wanted to say something, a lot of things, but felt too shy. Instead I buried my face in the scraps of paper I was trying to organize.

At suppertime, we took the same places we had the previous mealtimes. Right after supper, he left.

At nine o’clock the house was plunged in darkness. Low voltage. He wasn’t in his room yet. That night, for the first time, there was no “Misty” on the piano. I waited for him to come, but soon fell asleep. Later, I woke up at the sound in his room.

He was awake. As I was also awake now. He kept tossing in bed. He would make a sound like trying to stifle a cough. He would sigh heavily, like somebody troubled, tormented. I heard him get out of bed, and go back to it.

To be continued