Swirls of the East Wind: A True Believer Helps Smoke out a Wily Ruler

Part I

Action is eloquence.

—William Shakespeare

One

SOMEONE will pay for this. Someone, Ampon said.

Please stop now, Marina, teary, tried to douse his smoldering thoughts. You know what you’ve gotten into.

I’ll hear my friends, he scratched his right leg again, close to the seat of the wooden bare-bone low chair.

Listen to us too. His sister Marina Guttierrez pleaded.

We’ll see who’s right.

You can’t solve all burdens in the world. As an elder sister, Marina felt obliged to be blunt, as she had been in the past, with her feelings.

Ampon Loyola’s world, seen as turbulent, kept boiling. Marina got puzzled where his mind would pull him.

Marina vaguely noted happenings; she had no nerve though to confront the world. She let it go by as she kept to the sidelines, fence sitting. From her small, black and white TV set, she grabbed snippets of happenings that permeated the airwaves.

Ampon seemed familiar with the events at the other side of the world. He also seemed aware, though vaguely, of the underpinnings of protests breezes to the islands.

The house remained silent for some minutes. Nobody said anything.

Paterno Guttierrez broke the quiet.

Early evening, isn’t it? Paterno, in his usual self, grinned, his eyes trying to size him up. How’d you . . . Paterno’s voice trailed. How? . . .

How I got here? Ampon volunteered. He swung his head back and forth, trying to hear a crack. Instead, he cracked his right knuckles with his left.

Dug a hole? Paterno asked, as he noted the shock of gray hair stood out, its base in a cluster of a small coin. A tunnel?

Marina’s and Paterno’s eyes were on Ampon’s seated person, his hair rendered waxy by the lone incandescent bulb.

Marina felt ill at ease, although she knew her husband in his kidding frame of mind, as at most other times, smiling broadly.

We slip through cracks, Ampon tried to match Paterno’s ribbing.

The skin of his face glued close to the bone, reflected the trim portions of the diet they got in the detention camp; his trim, wizened body encased in clothes that appeared washed in slushy water.

Concrete walls or Stalag 17? Paterno asked again, alluding to the prison movie. He had in mind Ampon’s gumption to be in their presence probably from a narrow opening, a fissure, ignored by the armed constabulary guards.

Not that sort. They got nothing on me. Ampon, seemingly unflappable, tried to be matter of fact.

Escape could propel a bullet in your back. Marina reminded them, as she wiped dry with an off-colored rag the few dishes and some spoons.

If given the chance, Paterno said, why not?

Noo. No concrete walls. Ampon struggled to tell more. One to tell nothing on top of what he had to, as if coached to give nothing extra, laconic he was.

And high? Paterno, though curious, shifted his eyes outside, now dark. Your size, you’d find cracks.

True, Ampon stood lean at twenty-seven.

Open air, you’d say. Ampon felt his neck to loosen the collar of his gray short-sleeve shirt. The evening air was dry, more oppressive, unlike in the boat. No walls, he told his sister and her husband of the detention barracks.

No lookouts.

Good no lookout, Marina said. Maybe now the inside story can be told.

Interlink fence, barbed wires on top. These were fresh in Ampon’s memory. The outside, too far to walk to . . . you’re likely to pass a turtle.

What about your food? Marina cut in, habitually thinking of food in the house.

Standard.

Standard government issue? Paterno asked.

Rice, eggplant, bananas most of the time.

No fish? Marina asked.

Anchovies. Ampon said. Mostly.

No soup? Marina followed up.

Soup every day, with tomatoes.

Eggplant, yellow banana, red tomato: colorful. Paterno quickly connected the items.

Brown rice too. Ampon added. Yellow corn sometimes. As to the eggplant, at the detention camp, he said his peers were puzzled the eggplant fruit offered no suggestive shape; its inside, nutrition seemed not close to a hen’s egg. True, the fruit is fleshy. It has a meaty texture, but some said tobacco is related to it. Tobacco.

A lot of colors. Paterno added.

No meat at all? Marina wanted to know.

A cut of pork in the soup, on weekends. Ampon told her.

I wonder, she said.

To get the pork you get a magnifying glass.

Enough to live, Paterno matter-of-factly said.

Just to survive.

Not enough to climb the interlinks. Paterno observed.

He then asked Ampon to partake of what they had tonight, part of what the elderly lady had for snack before she left.

Ampon eat a big stick of green but ripe banana with a sweet smell. He told them he had a good meal in the boat to Cebu city in the central Philippines.

We were virtual . . . Ampon told them.

You were detainees. Marina looked toward Paterno. An amateur activist, she thought. Not criminal convicts.

You said open air? Paterno asked, curious when there was a cloudburst.

Open. Guards could see. The roof of the stockade, a spread of green plastic corrugated sheets. No plastic walls. Except the outhouse. Ampon stood up to feel his back pocket. And concrete floor.

You slept on concrete? Marina asked.

"If you had cuchon, or foam." He told them.

All that time. Paterno tried to make himself comfortable on the stool by the window.

Terrible. Marina said. Three years?

Over three years. He tried to be more accurate.

Not a life term. Paterno said.

Same with businessmen, millionaires? Marina wanted to know.

Seen the Senator? Same interlink? Paterno asked. He could picture the senator fuming.

Businessmen, in a converted gym. Enclosed by interlinks up to the beams. They mix freely. Ampon tried to clear his throat. The senator somewhere else. Nobody knew.

 . . . in the papers, and on the radio. Paterno recalled in the morning of the declaration. The news blared out hour on the hour that day.

Quiet reigned for a moment in the house. It appeared that the house had the only light; other houses were dark.

Isn’t it hurting . . . Paterno’s voice tapered off.

Three years.

Maybe . . . It can swing either way. Ampon scratched one side of his right leg.

You will . . . ? Paterno hung with the question.

He was curious if Ampon would search for a new life, his student days shunted aside, if he had an agenda, and the present giving him a wide gap of free time.

MARINA and Paterno easily recreated in their minds how he came to their residence this early evening.

Ampon rapped the wood staircase rails a few minutes after an elderly woman had left the house. He did not see her face, only the back of her dress.

The good day voice turned Marina’s face to the door, she took some three steps, and looked down below, the house floor set high from the ground.

Ampon’s here. Marina showed off a grin.

Paterno dashed to the door, seconds after Marina, surprised that they would have Ampon unexpectedly, and tonight.

Come on up. They chorused.

They had no hint Ampon would visit with them this evening. Marina gazed at him, the eye of her memory trying to reconcile his looks now to the last time he stayed with them. His shock of gray indistinct, his unbarbered hair covered it.

He kicked his sneakers loose by the door, after stomping away the caked dirt.

We just had someone here, Marina told him.

Saw her in the distance. Ampon said.

Recited the soul prayers for the departed, Marina told him. When the conversation lulled, the city was dark. The coastal city, Cebu, now asleep, nestled in the mid-east of the province. Cebu island province, shaped like a seahorse, its belly facing the Pacific, head thrust forward, its tail unfurled down.

Is that all? as Paterno asked him to put a vinyl bag in the room.

A man’s simple possessions. Ampon turned to his bag by the door.

Put it inside, Marina told him. Then she said, Give it to me.

Ampon tiptoed to the room to deposit the bag and his sneakers.

No explosive, I take it, Paterno said, in his distinctive grin, headed for their room.

Here, the remote fuse, just the fuse, as he played in his slim, bony right hand his half-peso coin.

Two

THOUGH his mind took a break from the two days’ sea trip, his memories of camp life came up again with last night’s questions and banter.

After he washed his face with his bony hands and arranged his hair with his fingers, his eyes rekindled his vision of the city after three years.

The morning sun promised a sweltering day.

I’d like to see the city again, Ampon told Paterno and Marina.

They had breakfast of rice, eggs and cocoa drink, thinned down with a good portion of water. May be home late, more likely . . .

Visit your old haunts. Paterno urged him.

‘‘More jeepneys now, less tartanillas," he observed the horse-drawn rigs that seat four passengers, two at one side, and the cochero, or rig driver, outside in front.

Yes, faster, Paterno said. Jitneys blaring with the radios.

The city where he studied, one of the cross points in his life. During his student days, he resided in the city center.

On the eastern edge of the city is the Paterno house. Built high on round posts, it had long wallboards, their upper edges laid over the other. Like other houses, it had tin roof. Bare-bone. One of clusters of houses, the Paterno house appeared seamy compared to the northwestern margin, where the city’s few middle class lazed about.

Ampon took college in the city of Cebu where his sister and her husband have a home, though far from downtown.

Ampon, visiting the house, asked, Is my books still here?

We’ve his books, right? Paterno asked Marina.

Don’t ever . . . Marina grinned. The books were in a carton.

Where are they?

I disposed of them.

Textbooks, you rid of them? Ampon asked.

I know. The rest risky.

Could just keep them.

Didn’t want the CIS an excuse. Marina meant the military intelligence agents. She heard stories that this class of military men was unsparing and rough, something to be dreaded. There was that red book.

They all had that.

It sent me a chill. Marina said.

Only a book.

The hair in my arms stood when I saw it.

A book lying there. Ampon said.

Imagine the CIS.

They won’t come. Ampon said.

They could march us off heaven knows where. Marina was acting true to her emotional nature.

When, she seemed to have an alarming sense of danger. It was as if a neural switch in her brain would rush fear impulses to her body. Her gray matter between her ears was hard-wired differently from Ampon’s.

Ampon went back to the city center. He trudged back the dirt road that vehicles do not pass because it was a dead end. Reaching the intersection, he had to wait some ten minutes before one jeepney came with a vacant seat.

A little past nine o’clock now, on a Friday, most of the commuters already reached their destinations.

Ampon hunkered down to an empty space in the right row, a common feature of a wartime vehicle converted to passenger use, its exterior often decorated in bright colors. He sat across five people, two of whom looked at him as he seated himself, others just looked ahead blank or just seemed to fix their thoughts on a warming Friday morning.

Along the way, houses lined close to the road, a mixture of small stores and residences, except when he got to what was now a highway that cut across the city.

At a highway intersection, the jeepney took a different route from what he used to know, passing by City Hall and the tile-roofed kiosk known as the Magellan’s Cross that sat right in the middle of the street.

The gazebo housing the dark tindalo wooden cross memorialized Magellan’s trip that ended in death by an arrow from the island chieftain Datu Lapulapu. Datu meant Lord, then.

The kiosk had been closed for a time to sightseers except through the slots of the vertical wooden bars; now the door has been opened to allow people to get right inside and look at it closely, or leave some coins in a poor box, perhaps after lighting a candle and letting it stand on the gazebo floor.

Colon Street, where the Magellan’s Cross stood, teemed with people, colorful in their garments, though not fast paced, Ampon felt, as busy as when he left.

Ampon got off at Sikatuna street and looked around for house numbers which were nonexistent on most houses. He got the number 376-A Sikatuna Street when he left the detention camp a month before Camp Crame authorities let him go. He went behind the house numbered 376 and stood awkwardly motionless for a few minutes. He finally asked one fellow when he passed by the door.

Does Rolando Fargas live here? Roland was a consistent fixture of street assemblies.

No . . . What’s he like?

Maybe in his thirties. Or late twenties. Ampon replied. Must be late twenties.

Left no address, no?

Perhaps Lahug district, beside the Club Filipino. Club Filipino was a golf course.

I’ll find him. He thought the fellow knew Rolando. Ampon sensed that if it was beside Club Filipino, it is cinch to locate.

He took another jeepney that plied the Lahug route. He passed the army regional command for the Visayan islands group, which occupied six hectares, including a housing compound for officers and families, two social halls, and a trio of tennis courts.

Ampon did not worry because they focused on people they know. His face, unknown to them.

That is different from the seldom noticed National Intelligence and Security Agency. He knew Junel Floristo years ago, invariably seen at rallies, mixing with the demonstrators, his eyes perhaps noting the speakers and other demonstrators as if trying to etch their faces in his brain. He said at one time that the demos would not translate to a win to govern.

Indeed Ampon could credit the stars’ alignment, if he believed that, but he usually waved away outright the out-of-this-world. Alighting from the jeepney, he surveyed the row of a few houses.

Whom he saw but Rolando. I won’t get you? Ampon said, familiar as they were in days they were together on the streets.

Who would?

Ampon grinned, did not say a thing.

You know what? Rolando started to give Ampon the news. Jerry, gunned down.

That happens, Ampon cut in. How did happen?

By men . . . in a motorcycle.

That’s the new modus, Ampon said.

We’re expecting you, but not expecting . . .

Well, as they say . . .

You found a crack? Or tunneled out?

Slipped out cracks, recalling he and six companions taken in a rented house.

One thing good with cracks.

They couldn’t pin me down.

Association can put you in the crosshair.

No smoking gun, none. Ampon told him life in the camp. Things expected to worsen.

From our side, or the enemy’s side?

The country’s. Some more is coming.

Then what are the plans?

Exploit the weakness. Ampon thought that Rolando could run a province.

How?

If we can’t demo, go under.

Not enough to go around.

There will be. Ampon said, meaning finances.

Where?

We’re getting help from a neighbor.

Have looked more broadly. Rolando stood up to get some hot water. He asked Ampon if he would like coffee.

Good. You’ll see the point.

Honestly, I’m now wary. Rolando told him that he is getting married in four months.

Ampon expected none of this turn of event. To Ampon’s agenda, this was a twist. If he rejoined, he would have more influence as he was outgoing and outspoken. He could be a spokesperson.

But Ampon was not at a fork in the road. He was not confronting a quandary of ‘to be or not to be’, or this route or that route. Ampon has long reached that decision. Long settled: no gray or a shadow in his mind. Not an impulse.

Ampon took a jeepney home, its stereo drowning his thoughts reviewing a mental checklist what he had to do next.

TWO days later, Ampon got an invitation from Rolando through a friend to dine at a restaurant in the city perhaps, he guessed, to celebrate his freedom. The friend told him only three of them had that date.

Ampon thought he could be lucky as his friend Rolando Fargas would be there, and may rejoin the movement to keep in step with the march of events. Lito Salvador told him the name of the restaurant, Kinamot, a seafood restaurant. Kinamot is a new dining venue along Jones Avenue, with its wide two-way lanes. There were few passing cars at the time, but some jeepneys.

They arrived at the restaurant by jeepney, at one time Lito with Ampon, then Rolando Fargas alone. On getting to the restaurant across the street, they found it only had seafood on its menu, of course not expecting a gorilla in the room in it. As the name suggests, it offers no silverware. Patrons use hands. The three of them washed their hands in one of two full-grown—maybe a 100-year old—giant clamshell half with the faucet over it.

They ordered the usual rice, slices of tuna, kingfish, bluefish and salads. Ushered to a table, they talked about the new venue, got an appetizer of crispy curls before entrées started to reach their table; next they started eating, with the sauces.

Against the wall were frames of a stylized lobster and an obscured, stylized silhouette of a woman.

They chattered that it was a pioneer in its menu and the use of an old technology: using hands in eating.

They were more than halfway on the entree when a man barged in, whipped out a firearm and ordered the cashier