Manila was a lonely town. Most of his friends and relatives had gone back home.
Cousin Moling had left on a wild adventure, island hopping from Luzon to
Mindanao with a group of Agusanons and Surigaonons. Popong was losing interest
in Rosita and his other girl friends. He was losing interest in his skirmishes
with the enemy. He was buying and selling rice and corn as a front and this,
too, was getting boring. He was ready to go home.
All the Filipino prisoners had been paroled and ordered to return to their own
hometowns as part of the Japanese plan for pacification. But Popong chose to
harass the enemy. His group of escaped Philippine Scouts, seven of them,
engaged in sabotage. At first he found his narrow escapes exhilarating. He
would occasionally tease the enemy by leaving his card in the homes of the
Japanese officers that they ransacked. His card was plain white with nothing on
it but a tiger's paw mark.
Captain Watanabe, head of the Kempetai, was getting really frustrated. The
intelligence report was that this was the same Tiger he heard about in Bataan.
"You're mine." he vowed. Catching this cat had become an obsession. Then came
the order.
"Captain."
"Sir."
"I want you transferred to Mindanao."
"Sir, yes sir. But General, I can function best here in Manila."
"No, Captain Watanabe. Our people in Mindanao needs you more. The whole island
is swarming with guerillas. They have become organized. They have even attacked
our garrison in Butuan. Our Kempetai head there is stupid. He is being brought
back here. I shall have his balls for dinner next week."
"Yes sir. When do I leave?"
"Captain Handa needs you there immediately. You shall report to him directly
but your orders will still come directly from me."
"Hai, General" Captain Watanabe bowed submissively but he was mad because he
knew he would not have any chance of capturing Tiger anymore if he was going to
be transferred to Butuan.
"This is a disaster." he thought.
But Captain Watanabe was wrong.
Popong had made up his mind. He bade goodbye to his comrades and took the same
route as cousin Moling did but it took him only three weeks to get to Surigao.
He was alone and the piece of paper Dr. Shimoura gave him facilitated things
for him.
He landed in Surigao where he immediately bought a horse and rode it all the
way to Cabadbaran.
He saw her there.
And he became oblivious of everything else.
The days became nights and he thought of nothing else but her.
Those were the days of blooming flowers and nights of shooting stars but he saw
only her and nothing else.
Her eyes were the lightest brown this side of heaven. They sparkled with the
sunlight when she smiled. And when she blinked, her long eyelashes caused a
disturbance in the air, sending ripples across the room, ripples that sent his
heart into wonderful painful, uncontrollable spasms.
Was it in his dreams or was it before he was ever born? Was it in another life?
The voice he heard induced a deja vu. She laughed and he was sure he had
heard that symphony before. Popong was always the romantic.
"Nang, who is that young lady standing behind the table? Yes, the one with the
white towel on her shoulder? The one with the pearl earrings. No, no, don.t
point, please."
The old woman was carrying boiled ripe bananas in a basin balanced precariously
on her head. She stopped in front of Popong, looked across the room, towards
where the table of medicines were. She looked at him and smiled knowingly like
a gypsy, " Sir, you are made for each other. Angay gyud mo kaayo."
"I know. She shall be my wife. What.s her name?"
"Lilian. Lilian Famador."
That night there was an argument in the Agapito Famador household.
"Leave your sister alone."
"But, Papa, she is only a child!"
"She is almost twenty-two years old, for goodness sake."
"But, Pa, I know this guy." Ben was livid. He knew Rosita was Popong's girl
friend. He also knew of his other girl friends in Butuan, Cebu, Manila,
Sariyaya, Baguio, Albay, La Union and every where else where he stayed for more
than a month. He saw Popong make eye contact with her little sister at the
emergency relief center where she volunteered as a nurse's aide. Since then she
had been walking around like a zombie. He did not like this swaggering
predator. He reminds him too much of himself.
Captain Benjamin Famador knew Adolfo Sanchez just arrived from Luzon and had
immediately joined the guerilla movement under Khodr. He heard of what happened
in Bataan but he thought that that was not bravery. That was foolish bravado.
What also disturbed him was that Popong was good looking, charming, and took
too many unnecessary chances. Besides, he was a Butuanon.
He did not know how to talk to his little sister. She always had a mind of her
own. He and younger brother Elmo almost beat up Roberto Lara for trying to hold
her hand when she was in high school. Lillian was so upset, she did not eat for
a week. Well, it's different now. They were no longer dealing with high school
flirtations.
He could never out-argue his father. In exasperation, he left for the veranda
and just sat on a bench, smoking that awful hand-rolled "tabaco." "I hope the
Americans will come soon. What I would give for a Lucky Strike!" He leaned on
the wall gazing at the blinking Cabadbaran stars, contemplating the inevitable.
He finally sighed, "Tiger, please don't die."
The hastily scribbled note said, "Asinan Beach, six oclock. Monday." She read
it a dozen times, folded and unfolded the paper the note was written on until
it became soft and friable. (Author.s Note -She still had that piece of paper
among her souvenirs with his pictures in an old brown manila envelope when I
interviewed her in May of 2006. The words were hardly legible and the edges
were frayed.)
The incongruous melange of color, the orange of the sunset, the blue of the
ocean and the white cotton candy clouds on one side and the rising moon and the
peeping stars to the east, bore witness to this rendezvouz.
He had arrived early. He sat on the large boulder that reached out to the
water. She also came early. She came from behind the coconut trees. He extended
his hand when he saw her and she reached for it. She trembled when their
fingers touched. She let out a sigh at that first embrace. He felt her
heartbeat through her left breast as he sought out her lips. It seemed so pure,
so right, so overwhelming. What was happening had the aura of an intense
irrational reality of a dream.
They had met just once before, at the Emergency Relief Center. They had never
spoken with one another before. Neither said anything yet. Words would have
been a redundancy. That kiss recited a thousand poems and that embrace sang a
thousand love songs.
"Sssh", she whispered when he finally tried to say something. "Let me tell you
something first and then you can have the last word."
She paused as she took his hands and brushed her lips against his fingers. She
looked deep into his eyes then solemnly declared, "My life and my innocence are
all I have that I can call my own. Tonight you can have them both."
The Butuan playboy almost fell off the boulder. Hastily trying to control the
situation, he tried to make light of what she had just said.
"Well, my virginity is only a memory. It has long been gone." He answered
teasingly. "But I shall claim my right to your virginity only after the
wedding."
"Wedding ?"
"You are going to be my wife before your next birthday. I don't like any of my
wives to be old.", he raised his right eyebrow.
"And if you refuse, my cousins and I will kidnap you." He raised his left
eyebrow.
"Yes."
"Yes what?"
"Yes, yes, yes. I will marry you."
"And if your parents disagree?"
"Then please kidnap me."
"Oh, really?"
Sweet nothings in the time of war.
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Next Chapter - Chapter 9
