OUR cameragirl follows Sienna around in the kitchen. But into the space of flashback memories, in the thirteen paragraphs below where I shall henceforth narrate a bit about Sienna’s history in this house, the camera cannot follow—only the cameras of memory, and a film editor’s splicing inserts of lower-resolution scratched photos into this memory space, can enter there.
Sienna used to be an exceedingly thin girl of thirteen. She grew up in Soria, the daughter of a fisherman and a fishmonger woman, and worked in Tacloban for a while as a waitress after two years in high school, thereafter becoming at age fifteen—due to an environment-acquired interest in and dedication to seafoods—the assistant cook in that restaurant she worked for. Labor department people ate at the restaurant and knew about the fifteen-year-old cook but what did they care about it? The girl could cook, and if they threw her back in school, would she even have stayed in school? She’d certainly stray back into some other job in order to help her parents and eight-year-old sister, and there would only be that endless cycle until she reached her eighteenth year. So they left her alone, left the restaurant employing her alone, left a hundred other establishments employing teens and even children alone. Then, at age sixteen, she found work at Mr. Sagana’s. Mr. Sagana was her former teacher, who hired her as his live-in cook, and quite comfortably in her own hometown of Soria. With Mr. Sagana, she didn’t have to ask permission three days in advance to visit her parents in the little, quiet Samar town.
Mr. Sagana was not a rich man. He was a public school teacher with a relatively low salary, thus regarded as the poor heir to his uncle’s old house in Soria. He could not expect his cousins to help him in the maintenance of the house, let alone in coming up with payment money for the inheritance and estate taxes due the state. His uncle, in his deathbed, told him—and all his other cousins who got their own house inheritances—to better give their houses to a third or fourth cousin if they can’t maintain the house passed on to them, to keep these houses from decaying. Mr. Sagana signed the condition, and though the lawyer said it may not necessarily be binding in the sense of having vague words, especially with no third party involved, overall it would just be a record of the nephew’s word of honor to his dying uncle, no more than that; only the two parties, and the lawyer and his two secretaries, acted as witnesses to these parties’ not-so-legally-binding word of agreement.
The house Mr. Sagana inherited was one of twelve houses all over Samar that Mr. Sagana’s uncle, the old local passenger-launch shipping don, accumulated by accident. Mr. Sagana’s uncle, in all his almost-daily journeys to different ports of call within the island of Samar, and sometimes across the San Juanico Strait to the city of Tacloban, had accumulated these houses, mostly small ones except for that one he got in Soria, as collateral payment for unpaid dues by copra small dealers who intermittently got hit when suddenly copra’s price fell in the 1970s. Because of those unpaid dues, the don almost went bankrupt himself. His interest rates were definitely not in the level of usury, unlike many in Samar to whom the small copra dealers would often run to. Mr. Sagana’s uncle’s small houses went to Mr. Sagana’s second cousins. However, just for being a Soria citizen like his uncle, Mr. Sagana got the big house in Soria.
The houses Mr. Sagana’s uncle would allow as collateral were the old ones, especially the ones with both the Spanish and American influences in their design. These copra dealers, although financially unstable, had their own set of acquisitions from relatives who had gone poor. Mr. Sagana’s uncle improved the houses he got, but according to their original time’s architecture, for consistency, calling on a friend expert to consult on the melding of colonial Spanish wood and iron embellishments, etc., and some American-era simplicity of lines and color added into these structures, reflected in the roofing structure of, say, his new Soria house. The result here was a combination of Spanish openness due to the Spaniards’ long exposure to both the tropical archipelago’s equatorial hot sun and the Pacific cold breeze, side by side the American quick adaptations, a product perhaps of the new colonists’ desire to transfer American New England or Georgian shapes into Filipino buildings. The ultimate resultant was a house with natural ventilation, reflected in the wide doors and windows, inconsistent with the hot ceilings that did not involve insulation between roof and ceiling but mere galvanized iron roofing sheets not even a foot apart from the wooden ceiling. Mr. Sagana’s uncle’s interest in old Philippine architecture started from his high school days in the island seminary, when he was assigned by the rector to help in the library of the high school dean, a certain Fr. Dumas, who dabbled in architectural research. Mr. Sagana’s uncle’s interest in the subject, embracing both virtues and flaws, he continued in the redesign of his first boat, inherited from his father, which became the most popular launch with a canteen serving beer and a roof deck with tables fixed to the floor. Within a year, Mr. Sagana’s uncle, who quickly became a sort of local don sponsoring town councilors’ elections, bought a second and third boat. Then a fourth. And a fifth. And the legend goes on.
Soria was not the don’s headquarters, but in this house in Soria—which became his vacation house for its desirable view of the San Juanico strait—the don employed five helpers. Mr. Sagana, however, upon his inheritance of the house, couldn’t afford those five helpers, not even a weekend laundrywoman. A live-in cook and housemaid would be nice, but that too was out of the question. Mr. Sagana was an only child whose widower father had also just died. His cousin, Albert, the don’s sole child as well, immigrated to Europe and promised as an alienated homosexual not to come back to these atmosphere of homophobic launch boats and heckling palm tree-laden beaches. Mr. Sagana thus became one of twelve nephews and nieces in whose hands his uncle had no choice but to leave the houses, sadly and out of spite for his son who left him, formalizing the papers in front of a lawyer and the inheritors as he awaited his death by cancer creeping inside his colon. Nobody knew how father and son first drifted apart, though it is easy to conjecture; many, even today, say it was obviously due to the son’s homosexuality and the father’s strong shame over it.
Mr. Sagana, however, a mere teacher—as we said—from Guiuan, another town in Samar at the southeastern tip of the island, not only was not a fan of such houses (if only he had the resources to build his own according to his own modest modernist liking!), he also had not the wherewithal to maintain the house’s painting and wood upkeep with re-varnishings or replacements. Add to that, his teaching salary in his new school in Soria was smaller than what he used to get in Guiuan.
Luckily, Mr. Sagana had a daughter whose handsome American-mestiza mother (estranged from Mr. Sagana due to a love affair she had with her male dentist) trained her so hard not only to be finicky about housework but also with her studies. In no time, the daughter’s mother would join her and Mr. Sagana in this house when her doctor-lover died and her daughter needed all the help to finish her nursing studies attained through a scholarship care of the then-mayor’s education program. It did not matter that the mayor sponsoring the scholarship hated the don who used to own Mr. Sagana’s house; Mr. Sagana’s daughter’s industrious studies deserved the award. The new objective of the Sagana family, therefore, became that of pushing the daughter to finish her course, away from potential boyfriends and other political or social temptations, for her to take all the necessary exams and thereby qualify to work somewhere abroad, anywhere abroad.
Maria Lourdes finished her nursing degree and after a year in a Tacloban hospital easily found work in Hawaii. Soon, Mr. Sagana was able to hire a cook for him and his wife, two cooks later in fact, but only because their first cook also had to work at a roadside canteen in the evening, and Mr. Sagana didn’t want to get rid of her because of pity. Rumor had it, though, that the cook also worked as a prostitute at night, soliciting potential clients from that roadside canteen. Others said she merely had to get away from the house to avoid Mr. Sagana’s sundowning advances. The second cook the Saganas hired was Sienna. The first cook later died of dengue fever in the city of Catarman up north while on holiday with a northerner boyfriend. Mr. Sagana became a depressed man after that, so depressed in fact that he lost his wife again, to another third party, a man in a wheelchair that Mrs. Sagana met in the town plaza. Rumors had it that Mr. Sagana also had an affair with the remaining maid, Sienna, an affair which Mrs. Sagana supposedly knew about, but since the marriage was not that healthy from the beginning, it didn’t really matter; each had a “diversion,” it seemed, if the gossips were to be believed. Now, behind all this, the house revived its old glory with the new American money Mr. Sagana received from her daughter in Hawaii. It was not true that Mr. Sagana had been suffering from dementia.
But Mr. Sagana’s mysterious depression, from losing his first maid, left an emotional vacuum in the house. Sienna, affected by all that was happening in the family, cooked, cleaned the house, ate while working, ate when tired, gardened while eating, accompanied Mr. Sagana to the bank to get his checks from Maria Lourdes and to the noodle shop right after the bank. And that was about it, her routine. Sienna never understood why she had to accompany Mr. Sagana to the bank and the noodle shop. Was it to fan the rumors, to spite it? She never knew the answer. She never really cared; the noodles were good.
After becoming aware of the situation in Samar island, a decision was made: Maria Lourdes, angry at her mother’s new abandonment of her father, decided to bring Mr. Sagana to Hawaii, promising never to come back for as long as her mother was alive, and so had the newly-refurbished house up for sale, ready to be taken advantage of by anyone who could see its offered price was at the lowest an antique but well-maintained house of the old intricate architecture could fetch. Sienna, grown quite fat now from all the boredom and acquired depression, all the consequent eating in the couple of years she spent in the quiet Sagana house, went back to her cook’s job at that restaurant in the city of Tacloban in Leyte island.
Luckily, Mr. Sagana had a daughter whose handsome American-mestiza mother (estranged from Mr. Sagana due to a love affair she had with her male dentist) trained her so hard not only to be finicky about housework but also with her studies. In no time, the daughter’s mother would join her and Mr. Sagana in this house when her doctor-lover died and her daughter needed all the help to finish her nursing studies attained through a scholarship care of the then-mayor’s education program. It did not matter that the mayor sponsoring the scholarship hated the don who used to own Mr. Sagana’s house; Mr. Sagana’s daughter’s industrious studies deserved the award. The new objective of the Sagana family, therefore, became that of pushing the daughter to finish her course, away from potential boyfriends and other political or social temptations, for her to take all the necessary exams and thereby qualify to work somewhere abroad, anywhere abroad.
Maria Lourdes finished her nursing degree and after a year in a Tacloban hospital easily found work in Hawaii. Soon, Mr. Sagana was able to hire a cook for him and his wife, two cooks later in fact, but only because their first cook also had to work at a roadside canteen in the evening, and Mr. Sagana didn’t want to get rid of her because of pity. Rumor had it, though, that the cook also worked as a prostitute at night, soliciting potential clients from that roadside canteen. Others said she merely had to get away from the house to avoid Mr. Sagana’s sundowning advances. The second cook the Saganas hired was Sienna. The first cook later died of dengue fever in the city of Catarman up north while on holiday with a northerner boyfriend. Mr. Sagana became a depressed man after that, so depressed in fact that he lost his wife again, to another third party, a man in a wheelchair that Mrs. Sagana met in the town plaza. Rumors had it that Mr. Sagana also had an affair with the remaining maid, Sienna, an affair which Mrs. Sagana supposedly knew about, but since the marriage was not that healthy from the beginning, it didn’t really matter; each had a “diversion,” it seemed, if the gossips were to be believed. Now, behind all this, the house revived its old glory with the new American money Mr. Sagana received from her daughter in Hawaii. It was not true that Mr. Sagana had been suffering from dementia.
But Mr. Sagana’s mysterious depression, from losing his first maid, left an emotional vacuum in the house. Sienna, affected by all that was happening in the family, cooked, cleaned the house, ate while working, ate when tired, gardened while eating, accompanied Mr. Sagana to the bank to get his checks from Maria Lourdes and to the noodle shop right after the bank. And that was about it, her routine. Sienna never understood why she had to accompany Mr. Sagana to the bank and the noodle shop. Was it to fan the rumors, to spite it? She never knew the answer. She never really cared; the noodles were good.
After becoming aware of the situation in Samar island, a decision was made: Maria Lourdes, angry at her mother’s new abandonment of her father, decided to bring Mr. Sagana to Hawaii, promising never to come back for as long as her mother was alive, and so had the newly-refurbished house up for sale, ready to be taken advantage of by anyone who could see its offered price was at the lowest an antique but well-maintained house of the old intricate architecture could fetch. Sienna, grown quite fat now from all the boredom and acquired depression, all the consequent eating in the couple of years she spent in the quiet Sagana house, went back to her cook’s job at that restaurant in the city of Tacloban in Leyte island.
It was Sienna’s birthday when Fidel and Joanna came into that now-famous old restaurant. The restaurant had become reputable for its local cuisine, and the artist-couple were the only patrons that noon, that Sunday noon when almost everybody was away at the beach resorts of the city and the nearby beach towns. After Fidel asked her a question about a recipe and then about the people of the city absent in the restaurants, boisterous Sienna became comfortable with her sole customers and sat down at the table opposite the couple’s table and told them her story, about this day being her birthday, the new recipes she has learned in this restaurant, and even told them the most wonderful stories to tell about her days in Mr. Sagana’s antique intricate old house that was a bit hard for her to clean, she said. She went on and on about the two years she worked there before returning to the restaurant, feeling familiar now with Joanna and Fidel who struck her as affable, likeable, approachable, and quite appreciative of the food she prepared. Fidel and Joanne, married now with a two-year-old kid and on vacation from Manila, had their interest piqued by Sienna’s stories, and that was the beginning of that. The couple checked out the house, fell in love with it and the clean little town above the harbor overlooking the strait, talked to the Saganas’ lawyers, and Sienna resigned from her new old cook’s job at the restaurant to become the new-rich couple’s cook in their new provincial headquarters.
Joanna and Fidel only intended the house to be their provincial vacation house, a hideaway from dirty Tacloban whenever they came visiting their province to be near relatives. Soria was, after all, one of the cleanest towns in the whole region, despite a few dogs roaming the streets. Surprise, surprise: Fidel and Joanna felt that Fidel could paint better here, and a month later all their things were moved in from Manila by a big delivery van that trekked the length of the Bicol peninsula, crossed the ferry to Samar island, and traveled the length of the island to its southern highway fronting the San Juanico Strait that led to the little quaint town of Soria. The couple’s new SUV car was driven by Fidel himself. The rest of their furniture for the new house Fidel took from their house in Tacloban, Joanne from theirs. Fidel, after getting emailed approval from his brother the architect, rented out their Tacloban house to a coffee shop, and luckily the coffeehouse made a wonderful job of propping up the place with new structural additions. Joanna’s father’s house, on the other hand, had been shut down for a long time now, with furniture covered by thin cotton sheets, although every now and then cleaned up by the caretaker couple occupying with their seven-year-old son the small house in the large garden.
Joanna and Fidel only intended the house to be their provincial vacation house, a hideaway from dirty Tacloban whenever they came visiting their province to be near relatives. Soria was, after all, one of the cleanest towns in the whole region, despite a few dogs roaming the streets. Surprise, surprise: Fidel and Joanna felt that Fidel could paint better here, and a month later all their things were moved in from Manila by a big delivery van that trekked the length of the Bicol peninsula, crossed the ferry to Samar island, and traveled the length of the island to its southern highway fronting the San Juanico Strait that led to the little quaint town of Soria. The couple’s new SUV car was driven by Fidel himself. The rest of their furniture for the new house Fidel took from their house in Tacloban, Joanne from theirs. Fidel, after getting emailed approval from his brother the architect, rented out their Tacloban house to a coffee shop, and luckily the coffeehouse made a wonderful job of propping up the place with new structural additions. Joanna’s father’s house, on the other hand, had been shut down for a long time now, with furniture covered by thin cotton sheets, although every now and then cleaned up by the caretaker couple occupying with their seven-year-old son the small house in the large garden.
A year later, Sienna, at age nineteen, had gotten rid of almost half of her accumulated fat, happier now with her new old work under new bosses, happy too with her gardening and new concrete little room in the backyard with a TV set; it seemed to her now that eating was a waste of time, interfering with her play. She had inadvertently diminished her eating, but improved her cooking. Only one thing was wrong: she was puzzled by Fidel, unsure if his cranky face had ever really been happy with her dishes.
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“Wow, ang ganda ng view dito sa likod,” said Joanne.
From the little balcony in the room in back of the house, she saw what could be her backyard garden. An avocado tree and some tall bushes foregrounded a view of the San Juanico Strait below and far Leyte island across the water.
“Hindi tayo nagkamali sa paglipat ng studio ko rito,” Fidel said. “Of course magbabago ang art ko nito, mas magiging . . . makatotohanan? . . . Dahil dito merong mga totoong mangingisda, di ba? Hindi nalang mangingisda ng isip ko, o di kaya mga mangingisdang galing sa mga pictures sa magazines, o sa mga naaabutan nating iilang mangingisda every time nagba-Batangas tayo, sa mga pangmayamang beach na ang tanging mangingisda mong makikita ay yun lang mga suppliers sa mga restaurant sa area. Dito, makukunan ko sila anytime, sa mismong mga barangay nila.”
“Puwede mo rin silang gawing models sa ilang works mo, actually,” said Joanne, excitedly. “At ‘pag nag-exhibit ka sa Maynila puwede mong dalhin ang ilan sa kanila sa opening para ma-introduce mo sa mga guests, o di ba?”
“Aba,” said Fidel, smiling, “magandang idea yan, a.”
They drank wine and ate cheese in the balcony overlooking the weeds in the backyard and the roofs on th e tree-laden slope that fell into the part of the town fronting the strait and its few boats.
They sat there a long time, talking. Of course they spoke mostly Waray here, the language of the region, since they were from here and all their neighbors were Warays. In Manila they would speak Tagalog even to each other, if only because they got used to speaking Tagalog outdoors that they didn’t feel the need to shift into Waray when they were by themselves at a restaurant table; after all, they were both quite adept at the Manila and Tagalog capital region’s language, as well as the English of the urban learned and the Taglish slangs of so many different social niches.
But Fidel and Joanna’s Waray is different from the older folks’ Waray. As a young couple, theirs had a lot of English and even Tagalog mixed into the flow. Certainly I would quote them here in Tagalog and/or English, and that’s all because I’m writing this story for you, my reader-comrades in all the regions, and we all know that the only language we can all understand in all our country’s linguistic regions is Tagalog and English. Right? So. The Waray conversations have all been translated.
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Of course you’d also want to know why I’m narrating my story in English. It’s simple: this is a novel, and most of you who read novels read English ones. You’re quite used to the English language when reading the novel, even those of you who prefer to speak Tagalog when conversing. The only ones used to reading novels in Tagalog nowadays are the consumers of Tagalog romance novels. Am I right? We converse largely in Tagalog, but our broadsheet newspapers are all in English! Right? So.
But, on the other hand, why write the dialogue in Tagalog and/or Taglish? Well, I’m a screenwriter and cinema director, and much like the film dramatist that I am, I deem it stupid to quote Tagalog speakers (much less Waray speakers) in English, even in a screenplay written in English, translating their lines into English when they’ve said these in Tagalog or bilingual Tagalog-English or Waray. Why ruin a good thing unnecessarily? Their Waray lines automatically translated into Tagalog would be the necessary ruination, since it’s for a national audience and there may be no budget for closed-captioning.
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Where were we? Oh! Well, I—Vicente—am here, shooting Fidel with my cameragirl’s camera, spying on Fidel, so to speak, and invisibly too, as you well know. I am already up, quite before the town is up, and that’s because my time is different from the country’s time.
Vicente, that’s me, there stands outside the gate waiting for Fidel to appear on the front porch. Soon the painter would be up, this early in the morning of March 6, not to jog or drive somewhere, but to walk around the now-familiar territory. Vicente waits. He always waits. Vicente and I would always wait.
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