Merlinda Bobis - Fish-Hair Woman

First published by Spinifex Press 2012

Spinifex Press Pty Ltd
504 Queensberry Street
North Melbourne, Victoria 3051
Australia
www.spinifexpress.com.au

Copyright Merlinda Bobis, 2012

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Edited by Stephanie Holt
Cover design by Deb Snibson, MAPG
Photos by Valerie Chan and the Legaspi writers
Design for news items (Anvil) by Ariel Dalisay
Typeset by Palmer Higgs
Printed by McPhersons Printing Group

The National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Bobis, Merlinda C. (Merlinda Carullo)
Fish hair woman / Merlinda Bobis.
ISBN: 9781876756970 (pbk.)
9781742197968 (ebook:ePub)
9781742197937 (ebook: pdf)
9781742197944 (ebook: Kindle)
A823.4

	This publication is assisted by the Australia Council, the Australian Governments arts funding and advisory body.
	The writing of this novel was assisted by the NSW Ministry for the Arts.

Prologue

T he howling bounces around the trees used for coffins. It climbs to a mournful pitch, slopes down and tapers to a whimper. Then it starts again, the same distressing ascent and decline. Sometimes it simply keels over.

I, Luke McIntyre, assure myself its not me but I feel the strain in my throat. I swallow, gripping the sheaf of papers. And anyway they cant hear. They are the handful of passengers flying to Manila, the soft-spoken, soft-soled lot of them. Its business class and the mood is affluent restraint, like a signature hush. I drum the seat in front of me with my sandals. Someone murmurs her annoyance. Quickly a steward appears to serve the nicest admonishment against the drumming or the fraying sandals, who knows. Bloody snoot!

The howling starts again. It dives into the river and I cant breathe. The water fills my mouth, my throat, my lungs. It is sweet, it is very sweet.

Chapter 1

L emon grass. When the river was sweet with it, they came for me. Half an hour after the Angelus, when the dark was wrestling with the light, they came in a haze of the first fireflies. Tinsel on the green uniforms of the three men, bordering a sleeve here, circling a belt there, filling buttonholes, dotting an insignia and smothering the mouth of the sergeants M-16. Young Ramon, he of the sullen face. So like a dark angel with his halo of darting lights, harbinger of omens from the river. Putang ina! he cursed, swatting the lights on his pouting lips. I knew it was going to be my final assignation and I heard keening in my scalp.

A river sweet with lemon grass and breathing fireflies how could you believe such a tale? But in Iraya we had mastered the art of faith, if only to believe that our village was still alive during the purge by the military. So when they came for me, I believed their story, and every strand of my hair heard my heart break.

Hair. How was it linked with the heart? Ill tell you it had something to do with memory. Every time I remembered anything that unsettled my heart, my hair grew one handspan. Mamay Dulce was convinced of this phenomenon when I was six years old. Very tricky hair, very tricky heart, she whispered to me in her singsong on mornings when I woke up to even longer hair on my pillow after a night of agitated dreams. You had long dreams last night, Estrella, with long memories too.

But were you alive when the soldiers came, I could have affirmed our secret tall tale with more clarity. You see, Mamay Dulce, history hurts my hair, did you know that? Remembering is always a bleeding out of memory, like pulling thread from a vein in the heart, a coagulation so fine, miles of it stretching upwards to the scalp then sprouting there into the longest strand of red hair. Some face-saving tale to explain my twelve metres of very thick black hair with its streaks of red and hide my history. I am a Filipina, tiny and dark as a coconut husk, but what red fires glint on my head!