The Caprices (3 page)

So much of war is waiting.

This afternoon Mrs. Garcia is taking the bus with Jose to the neighboring town to visit her cousin Lourdes. She does this every Friday. Now that she has Trinidad to care for, keeping up the Friday trip gets harder and harder. But she is the only one who visits the old woman. Imagine. She herself an old woman, visiting another. All the men are gone. She’s lucky to have Jose around. He too would leave, crawl into the mountains, become a guerrilla, but he is too deformed to be of much use, even though he is clever. Jose is looking out the window. A group of Japanese soldiers are wading through a rice paddy, rifles ready. They flash by so quickly that Mrs. Garcia isn’t even sure she saw them.

“Did you see that?” asks Jose.

“Don’t let them see you looking.” She says this more as a constant reminder than in response to current danger.

“An American must have escaped.”

Mrs. Garcia did not want to leave Trinidad. She’s worried about the child, but this is the same reason she doesn’t want her on the bus. Who knows what she might say and who might hear it? When Trinidad first came to the province, she wouldn’t speak. Now she speaks all the time, crazy stuff. What do you expect? Intramuros had been emptied of everyone she knew, and there she was—little Trinidad, wandering around. No one knows where her parents are, or Miguel, or what happened to the house. Mrs. Garcia pushes a tear off her cheek with the back of her hand. She grimaces when she does this, as though dust has irritated her
eyes. Yes, her stupid son probably was keeping a radio. All those years of law school down the drain.

Shori hears banging on the metal gate. Will he never be able to take his nap? He peeks out of the door. He hears his houseboy’s voice. “Important that sir sleep.” But curiosity gets the better of him and he steps onto his balcony. There are two soldiers.

“What brings you here?” asks Shori.

“An American has escaped.”

“Have you alerted the guard?” “Woken up” would be better. That fat ass sits in the pillbox all day. He should drink. That would be better than this nameless, compulsive sloth. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Shori has told the guard to keep the natives on their toes. The guard has interpreted this creatively. Shori has seen a woman creep into the pillbox. He has seen her creep out, her hands bulging with cigarettes. He wanted to say something, but was worried. That guard knows that Shori spends all day in his house. He probably senses that Shori just wants the war to be over, that he is thinking, If the Americans invade, I can go home. Shori must pluck out this ugly thought time and time again, as if it were a stubborn weed. Better not to stir the guard. Better to leave him sedated with food and aboriginal sex. How sympathetic everyone would be if they only knew how hard it is to govern.

Trinidad pushes open the gate. She looks up and down the street. No one is about, except for a lame dog hobbling along. He stops to sniff at some garbage. Trinidad wonders why no one has eaten him yet. She slips through the gate, pulling it shut behind her. She is wearing her good patent leather shoes with the shiny buckles. Some sense of occasion has made her do this. She has plaited her hair; the right braid is perfect, but the left has ridged bumps rising out from the part. No matter. She has more important things to think about. The woman in the basement is angry;
her moaning kept Trinidad up all night. But Trinidad’s mind is still clear. She walks quickly, not looking to the right or left. She would like to get there before people start waking up from their siestas.

Mrs. Garcia massages her cousin’s legs. High blood pressure. Poor Lourdes. And she no longer has her medicine.

“How does that feel?”

“Good, of course,” says Lourdes.

“This war is bad for all of us.”

Lourdes laughs, sticking her tongue through the gap where her two front teeth once stood guard. She laughs, poking her tongue through this space, making a hissing sound. “War or no war, I am supposed to die. I am an old woman with a bad heart. No injustice there.”

Mrs. Garcia’s eyes fill with tears, but she catches herself just in time. Her eyes are wells, but no tears fall.

“What are you thinking of?” Lourdes asks.

“Even without this war, you will die. I have no hope of keeping you around. I have already started to miss you.” Mrs. Garcia leans back to sit on the floor. She gives up her stoicism and lets the tears roll down her face.

Lourdes starts to laugh again, in sympathy for her cousin. “At least I won’t have to live much longer under the Japanese.” She leans back in her rocker. “And to think, you’re just waiting for the Americans to return.”

Mrs. Garcia looks at her cousin. She is right.

“Why is it,” says Lourdes, “that every damned time one conqueror shoots at another, there’s some stupid Filipino standing in the middle?”

Lourdes plants her crooked forefinger in the center of her forehead.

This, finally, makes Mrs. Garcia laugh.

• • •

How can there be another person at the gate? And this time, Shori really was about to drift off. Dreams are the only escape from this place. Shori can hear the houseboy. It’s Tagalog. What business can a native have at his doorstep? Shori pulls himself up. He walks again to the balcony. Walking is like swimming in this heat. There is a girl at the gate.

“Are you selling something?” asks Shori.

The girl immediately bows her head. She is silent.

“What does she want?”

“I don’t know, sir,” says the houseboy. “She insists on seeing you. She says it is important.”

“What do you want?” Shori asks.

“American.” Trinidad is unaware of the lucky coincidence that day. Shori waves her inside. He was hoping that the American would surface in some other town. Who knows? Maybe this girl is lying.

Jose is almost finished with the living room floor. Mrs. Aragon says that she is nearly blind and doesn’t care about the state of the floors anymore. But Mrs. Garcia insists. Every Friday Jose sets to working the red wax into the floorboards, polishing with the coconut husk beneath his foot. This takes him longer than most, but who else will do it? It is hot, but Mrs. Garcia is wearing a scarf. Earlier, when she thought Jose was not looking, she unwrapped it for Mrs. Aragon to see the deep scratches in her neck—five neatly spaced lines as though intended for music. And imagine. That little
loca
Trinidad asking him that morning what was up with the scarf. Why would her grandmother wear such a thing in this heat? Maybe she wasn’t faking. Maybe Trinidad really can’t remember. Jose picks a sliver of red wax from beneath his thumbnail. That would really be frightening, if she couldn’t remember.

• • •

Who would have known that in addition to the usual ills of the Japanese, this man was a pervert? It is Friday, and everyone knows that Mrs. Garcia takes the bus to visit her cousin Mrs. Aragon, that she takes Jose along with her, that the stately—although run-down—house, shaded by tamarind trees and hidden behind an imposing wall, is empty except for Trinidad. He does not know if he wants to be a part of this, even if he is just driving them there. He is just the kalesa driver, not the moral police. Diablo clops along at a steady rate with his head, as always, leaning to the left. It makes you think you’re headed in that direction, but no; Diablo’s head goes to the left, but his hoofs go straight. I am just a kalesa driver, he reminds himself. Then he sneaks a peek, pretending to check the sky for an improbable rain cloud. He processes his mental picture at leisure. Shori seems harassed. His hair is uncombed, which is unusual for him. The top button of his jacket is undone. Trinidad looks straight ahead. She is wearing her Sunday clothes. She seems very determined. What a serious little girl this Trinidad is. He wonders if what they say about her is true. Is she really demented? She must be. Why else would she be taking Shori to her house? But wait.

“Americano?” asks Shori, doubting and threatening at the same time. He pulls at the collar of his shirt.

“Americano,” replies Trinidad with a solemn nod.

Is there an escaped American in the Garcia house?

Trinidad sees the ring glinting on Shori’s finger. This has been much easier than she imagined. She did not know that an American had escaped from the camp. She was going to tell Shori’s houseboy that the American was a guerrilla sneaking out of the mountains, that he was injured and needed a place to stay for a few days. The houseboy could relay anything you needed to communicate to Shori, but Shori had come without any explaining on her part.

Shori notices her eyeing the ring. He flexes his fingers in an
effeminate way. This reminds Trinidad of a stretching cat. There is much of a cat about this man. His whiskers sprout strangely from the sides of his face. His nose is small, upturned. His upper lip is soft and fleshy, plumping over the lower, and when he speaks she sees the tips of two triangular incisors extending down from the row of yellowed teeth. Not like a man at all, really. This morning Trinidad instructed Auring to leave the doorway to the basement stairs unlocked. Auring looked suspicious. No, more worried, but Auring will say nothing. Trinidad knows this with great certainty, although she is not sure why.

Mrs. Garcia is cutting slices of bibingka for herself and for her cousin. Then she remembers Jose and cuts a piece for him, since it is his favorite sweet. Jose watches her cut the third piece out of the corner of his eye. Then. Then the knife falls to the floor. What has frightened her? Why are her eyes so wide with fright? Jose hurries to the kitchen, his crooked body swinging on its cruel axis. He feels the strain of speed pulling at his spine.

“Ma’am. What is wrong?”

She is shaking her head. She is pale as a ghost. He would like to hug her then, tell her not to worry. He would like to take her by the hand to sit her in a chair in the living room.

“Ma’am,” he says again, “what is wrong?”

She sees him finally. In a quiet voice she says, “We must take the early bus home.”

Shori has his gun. What is there to be afraid of? Not that he cares what this child thinks. This American had better be where she says he is. It’s one thing to send a man over, it’s another to have to go on your own. The ridiculous thing is that none of his men were available to apprehend this American because they were all out searching for him. Some would find that funny. Shori doesn’t. At one point this was probably a beautiful house. There are paintings of fruit and flowers in the corners of the ceiling, but
the ceiling is rotting. Everything rots in this country. The furniture is heavy and ornately carved, much of it with the letter
G
—that much he can recognize. There is a layer of dust on everything, and the corners are blunted by thick deposits of cobwebs. He follows the twin pigtails and narrow shoulders. Where could she be leading him? They walk through the kitchen. The floorboards creak beneath his weight. The child raises her two dark, round eyes and meets his in a most impolite and disquieting fashion. Shori sniffs. He achieves the nonchalant look of the truly uncomfortable. The child swings open the door. A staircase swoops down into the darkness.

The child raises her arm. She holds Shori firmly in her gaze, then gestures him downward.

“Bring him here,” says Shori. He’s not sure if the child understands the Japanese. Shori gestures up and out of the basement. He holds his ground.

The child looks at him, wide-eyed, angry.

Shori peers into the basement. He can’t see an American down there. In fact, the basement’s so dark that he can’t see anything in there at all.

He feels two small hands hard at the base of his back.

He is plunged into darkness and his ankle is sending him distressing waves of pain. He is sitting on a dirt floor. What happened? There is no reasoning in this hellish country. He hears the jangle of a key trying to find resistance in a lock. Shori finds his gun and he points it about him; he can only articulate his fear in Japanese.

“I have a gun. I have a gun,” he says to his invisible menace, the harsh breathing. This darkness makes the sound of his own breathing too loud, too harsh.

Mrs. Garcia is sure she saw Auring standing in the kitchen. Auring, her old nanny, who has been dead for close to a month. She stood clear as day there in the kitchen. She was wearing a
faded pink dress that Mrs. Garcia remembered her favoring around the turn of the century. She said, “Baby, go home.”

Mrs. Garcia waves a fly from her nose. It settles on her hand. She waves it off again, this time more vigorously, and watches it spiral upward toward the ceiling of the bus.

“Jose, why aren’t we moving?”

“The driver’s putting water in the engine.”

Mrs. Garcia feels fear in the bottom of her stomach. She closes her eyes and watches the slow pools of purple erupt in the blackness. She would like to sleep for a year. She is that tired.

Shori’s eyes struggle to focus. His ankle feels icy. The blood is pulsing in his ears. He holds his breath and hears a movement on the floor. A rat, maybe. This terrible country is full of them. He widens his eyes and, slowly, nameless shapes begin to emerge from the dark backdrop. His nostrils are dilated, like a wild animal’s. He could be dead any second now. He could be killed, his guts ripped neatly from his belly by an angry, skeletal American right here in the bowels of this evil house. Shori can make out a doorway about ten feet from where he sits. Brighter shadows outline the rectangle of the door. Shori has never thought of darkness possessing degrees. He watches the shape slowly change as the door swings open on singing hinges. A small chair leans on the wall by the door. Shori wonders if he should get the chair to use as some form of protection, to use as a barrier between him and the unknown. Suddenly, the chair moves and begins creeping along the wall. Shori has lost it in the darkness. He hears the soft, light breathing of the figure. He raises the gun in the direction of the sound. Then, without warning, the figure appears between him and the doorway—a moment of revelation. Shori hears a crisp popping sound. He’s moving across the floor, scooting back, still sitting. He breathes heavily. His right arm swings in wide arcs. Then all is quiet. His left hand is closed in a painfully
tight fist. His right hand is closed around the gun. How many times has he fired? He isn’t sure.