Carlos Ojeda Aureus - Naguenos (Philippine writers series)

N a g u e n o s

CARLOS OJEDA AUREUS

University of the Philippines Press

1997

Copyright 1997 by Carlos Ojeda Aureus

Published by the University of the Philippines Press and the UP Creative Writing Center

All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, broadcast or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission from the author and copyright holder; nor may translations from this work be undertaken, adapted for radio, stage or television, produced and distributed without expressed and written permission from the above, in care of The Director, University of the Philippines Press, U.P. Diliman, Quezon City 1101, Metro Manila, Philippines.

PHILIPPINE WRITERS SERIES 1997

LIKHAAN: Sentro ng Makathaing Pagsulat

Editorial and Production Supervision by

Gemino H. Abad and Laura L. Samson Cover Design by

Arne Sarmiento

Linda T. Lingbaoan-Bulong

Body text set in Revival and titles in Fujiyama2

ISBN 971-542-146-6

The stories in this collection have been previously published in the Philippines Free Press and the Philippine Graphic. Grateful acknowledgement is due these two magazines for permission to reprint these stories.

Printed in the Philippines by the

University of the Philippines Press Printery Division

N a g u e n o s

Contents

Sanctuary 25

Flakes of Fire, Bodies of Light 44

Wings 70

The Late Comer 83

Typhoon 109

The Night Express Does Not Stop Here Anymore 125

Chinita

CHOC-NUT in hand, and a brown envelope tucked under an arm, Ricardo Caceres entered the seminar room wheezing.

He was not tired: the trimobile had dropped him in front of the seminary entrance, right under the streamer announcing the two-day seminar-workshop in Naga. That was just a few steps to the seminar room.

He was not late, either: the registration of participants went on in the hallway, and Msgr. Nero, who was to deliver the invocation, was still in the parlor chatting with the delegates from Sorsogon.

He was wheezing because one of the student observers, a coed from the Ateneo de Naga, had walked up to him earlier in the porteria to ask which way it was to the registration table, and when he opened his mouth, no sound came out. Instead, his ears flushed hot and his heart pounded in his temples and his bronchial tubes tightened.

Mr. Caceres hoped the wheezings would subside, but he labored and whistledeven after every one had risen and sung the Pamban-sang Awit, even after Elmer Alindogan had delivered the opening remarks and Lily Fuentebella had read the message of the Archbishop.

He kept rewinding and playing back the scene: a chinky-eyed schoolgirl in cotton-knit sleeveless blouse and patchwork shorts approaches him, brows drawn a bit together, lips half-poutingexcuse me, sir, can you tell me which way it is to the registration table?her 2

Carlos Ojeda Aureus

eyes squinting against the sun, her hair freshly moistened by an early bath, her nose beaded with sweat...

Rosendo Alvarado, the emcee, set the tone for the self-introduc-tionsjust call me Ross, as in Diana Ross: couturier, beautician, mani-curist, ex-Miss Gay Penafrancia, gay rights activist, atbp. I'm also a Leo, I finished in Ateneo, and I like Msgr. Nero because he buys my nata de cocoand soon after, every participant stood up and dished out similar CVs. So her name was Cynthia Dee, Chinita for short, a graduate of St. Joseph Chinese High School, now enrolled in Ateneo de Naga, majoring in English, minor in History. She also described herself as a Gemini (what white, perfect teeth), an ACIL treasurer, a Depeche Mode follower, a typical Atenista, and an avid fan of Greg Brillantes and Horacio de la Costa.

He sat two chairs behind her. It was not exactly the best spot, considering that a Gerard Depardieu look-alike already sat right in front of him, and Mr. Caceres had to strain sideways to make believe he was listening intently at the speakers to be able to watch the white curve of her nape and bare shoulders slightly reddened by sunlight from the latticed windows. The bra, strapped precariously at the back and embossed cleanly through the thin blouse caused his imagination to run amuck, so that when his turn came to introduce himself, he squeaked his name, cracked a flat joke, and shrunk down to three inches.

What was happening to him? He felt fine when he left the house that morning.

Mr. Caceres' bronchial complaint was not congenital. It came to him (he remembered it very clearly; he had written it in his diary) one Septuagesima Sunday thirty years ago in the Naga Cathedral when he first heard the Mass said in the vernacular and the priest faced the people instead of the altar. At first the attacks were not that bad. The whistling sounds came in 1968 when he read Paul VTs Humanae Vitae. With medication, however, he had kept his ailment under control. Lately, he found out that he could dispense with the medication if he listened to Las Mejores Obras del Canto Gregoriano.

In fact, the cromolyn sodium had lain in his cabinet for more than

Naguenos

3

a week now, virtually untouched ever since he had been soothing himself with Gregorian music.

But after she had approached him that morning, not only had the attacks recurred: strange things started happening too. Familiar sights and soundsthe arcaded facade, the Spanish windows, the clip-clop-pings of calesas in Barlin Street, the whirring of the lawn mower in the football fieldall had suddenly sprung up to giddying light and sound and color. His energy had perked up and seemed boundless.

Even his Casio quartz sped up to a point that one number of the program blurred into the next in rapid succession.

She was no Elle Macpherson, he kept snapping himself out of it, just a little girl lost asking directions. By whose authority do little girls wield the power to upstage the high and the confident, and put them off guard and awkward? What right do they have to constrict a man's bronchial tubes and have him all choked up? And all she did was ask where the registration table was.

Was he in love? But how could anybody in Naga possibly imagine a cranky old bachelor like Mr. Caceres in love? Why, in the words of Ross Alvarado, Mang Carding had not even been in like nakuhawhy, but Mang Card-wing did not even know how to smile, excuse me. Of course, he was vain about his looksa cross between Ric Manrique and Diomedes Maturanalthough at fifty-two (and despite pints of Foltene applications) he could easily pass a stage audi-tion for the role of St. Anthony of Padua or Thomas Aquinas. That would be in character, for he spent his life reading up anything and everything about the Catholic Church, from the