The Bamboo Stalk (12 page)

*   *   *

My grandfather's health had deteriorated by this time and he made many more demands. He raved more at night, whether he'd been drinking
tuba
or not. The daily massage sessions, which once took one hour, now took several hours. The shouting at night, which I couldn't stand, had changed into monologues addressed to his dead wife. He started shouting names I'd never heard before and when I asked Mama Aida about them, she said they were the names of people in our family who had died long before. Then he stopped the monologues and started shrieking frightening things like ‘Help! Help! He's looking at me.' I jumped out of bed, went to his house, and looked in the corner by the ceiling where he was looking, but there was nothing there. ‘Look at him, José,' he said. ‘Can you see him? He's pointing at me and telling me to go with him.' He covered his face with his hands. ‘Help! Save me. I don't want to go.'

‘There's nothing, Grandfather. Nothing there,' I said. I would have felt sorry for him if it wasn't for my memories of how he had treated me.

With his hand over his face, he moved his fingers apart and
peeked out between them. ‘Look at him! He's there!' he shrieked in terror.

I went over to the corner and waved my hands in the air. ‘There's nothing there, Grandfather,' I said.

‘Go closer, José. Go closer.'

At his insistence I went further into the corner. ‘Take him!' he shouted, addressing no one. ‘Take him instead of me, please.'

My grandfather was as shameless in moments of weakness as he was in moments of strength.

I moved a small table up to the wall and stood on it, so that I could get my head right into the top corner of the room.

‘See, Grandfather. There's nothing here,' I said.

He pulled up the bed cover and hid under it. ‘Damn you!' he sobbed. ‘I hope you grow a thousand eyes so you can see things clearly.'

I jumped off the table and went to the fruit basket in our kitchen. I picked up a pineapple and took it back to Grandfather's house. He was still under the cover. I put the pineapple on the small table I'd been standing on and left, closing the door behind me.

*   *   *

I spent the whole day behind a cart selling bananas in Manila's Chinatown. All I earned from my work was a commission on sales, which varied from day to day. But even on Saturdays and Sundays, the busiest days, it was hardly worth anything.

On the pavement opposite where I parked my cart, Cheng parked his cart, with the narrow street between us. Cheng was a Buddhist of Chinese origin, born in the year of the tiger, 4683 according to the Chinese calendar. He was eighteen at the time and worked for the same banana merchant. His commission was more than my commission and he sold twice as many bananas as me because of his experience in this work and because he knew so
many customers. When I asked him if we could share a place to live, he asked me when I was born. I told him I was born on 3 April 1988. He closed his eyes, thought a while and counted on his fingers. ‘Year 4685, the year of the dragon,' he said. ‘That's excellent. We both have wood as our element.' If I had been born in the year of the snake, the horse or the sheep, Cheng wouldn't have let me share his room, because they have fire as their element, and wood and fire don't go together, he said. Chinese astrology is complicated and Cheng didn't trouble himself with the details. He just looked at the basic elements, such as earth, fire, water, wood and metal, and took his decision on that basis. It was the kind of madness that my Kuwaiti grandmother went in for when she decided whether things were good or bad omens, or so my mother had told me.

For a small amount, Cheng made space for me to share his little room on the second floor of an old building in a street close to Chinatown. The room had one window, which looked out on the Seng Guan Temple. When we spread our mattresses on the floor at night, there was only just room for a small fridge in which we kept our food in plastic containers. On my first night in his room I asked him why he had agreed to let me move in, given that the room was so small. ‘I need a voice to listen to, other than my own,' he replied.

I pointed to behind the door, where there was a guzheng, or Chinese zither, leaning against the wall. ‘Isn't the sound of your instrument enough?' I asked.

He smiled and said, ‘I told you I need to hear a voice other than my own!'

Cheng had fixed shelves over the fridge and we put everything we owned on them: our clothes, towels, books, bars of soap, plastic noodle bowls, candles and small statues of the Buddha in various poses.

At night we lay on our mattresses, chatting in the dark until we fell asleep. One night, after I'd told Cheng where my father came from, he said, ‘Ah yes, Kuwait. I read that name in the list of goods for export in the office of the businessman where I used to work.'

He paused a while and then asked me where Kuwait was.

‘It's close to Saudi Arabia,' I said.

‘They don't grow bananas there,' he said, shaking his head. ‘They import them from here.'

‘If you were a banana, maybe you could go to your father's country,' he added with a laugh.

What a choice I had – either a pineapple at Mendoza's place or a banana exported to my father's country.

 

2

When Cheng was asleep at night, I looked out at the Seng Guan Temple through the window of our room. It looked awesome, dark grey, with a tiled roof in the style of Chinese houses and with lots of decorative reliefs on the walls. There was a statue of a Chinese dragon and one of a bald old man with a smile on his face and a long beard. Above the arched doorway there was a plaque with an inscription in Chinese, and under that plaque, inside the arch, it said
Seng Guan Temple
in English. I loved the place and grew curious to find out what went on inside, but although I was curious I never thought of going into the temple.

Instead of visiting the temple, my curiosity led me to the shelves above Cheng's fridge. I pulled out one of his books and from that night on I started reading by candlelight when he was asleep. I read the teachings of the Buddha, about his life and his disciples and how he sat in the lotus position under the fig tree, and the story of his enlightenment.

I found his personality fascinating.
If I had stayed sitting under my favourite tree on Mendoza's land, would I have become a Buddha
, I wondered. Damn that relay tower.

Cheng noticed I was interested in his books, especially as I asked him many questions about his religion and the rituals. After that he started telling me about the Buddha every night and in return he would ask me about Jesus Christ. We compared
them, noticed the similarities in how they were born and how they lived, their disciples and all the things that happened to them.

They were great men
, I thought.

Would I be betraying one of them if I followed the teachings of the other?

Both of them advocate love and peace, tolerance, charity and treating other people well.

*   *   *

One day Cheng invited me to go to the temple with him. I hesitated at first, thinking it might not be allowed, but he assured me the temple let in Buddhists and non-Buddhists. ‘You'll feel serene inside,' he said.

Shortly before sunset, when we'd finished work, Cheng and I went to the temple. It was nothing like a church, but the feeling was the same.

‘Watch me, and do what I do,' Cheng said, and when he realised I was confused, he added, ‘Or you can just sit there', pointing to some red leather cushions on the ground. There were six rows of ten cushions side by side, each no more than a foot off the ground. I sat in the middle, on the fifth cushion in the fourth row. The light was low. In front of me there were three large glass enclosures with a life-sized golden statue of the Buddha in each one. In the middle enclosure the Buddha was standing upright surrounded by golden decoration in relief against a dark red background. In the other two enclosures the Buddha was sitting cross-legged.

Cheng and I were the only people in the temple. Cheng went up to the glass enclosure in the middle with his hands pressed
together under his chin. He bowed his head and started to pray.

All my senses were on high alert. Many things can be discovered and experienced for free, as Merla said. I was impressed by everything: the incense smoke that hung in the air like a thick fog, the smell of jasmine flowers in all the corners. And the silence. Silence in itself can give rise to voices inside us that seem to be the voices of people that we feel we can trust. The voices show us the way to unfamiliar places and we hurry off confidently.

Cheng finished praying. He walked over to a large bronze bowl, lit an incense stick and stuck it in the soft sand in the bowl.

Before Cheng prepared to leave, I went up to the glass enclosure, leaving the red cushion behind me. I stood in front of the statue with the tranquil face. I bowed and made the sign of the cross. When I looked up, I found the expression on the Buddha's face was just as tranquil, with no disapproval of what I had done.

I went to the bronze bowl, lit an incense stick and planted it in the soft sand. Then Cheng and I left together.

*   *   *

In the evening, after we'd spread our mattresses on the floor, Cheng sat cross-legged on his mattress. He rubbed his hands together like a fly. ‘Could you pass me the guzheng, please?' he asked.

I went to the corner behind the door, where he left his instrument propped up against the wall. I picked it up carefully with both hands as if it were a child. It looked magical. It was
made of ivory inlaid with tortoise shell. The twenty-one strings were carefully tuned. I passed it to him. He put it on his legs, then took off his shirt.

‘Are you going to breastfeed it?' I asked him. He laughed at my joke.

‘I'm used to playing naked. If you weren't here,' he said.

I burst out laughing. ‘OK, OK, that's quite far enough,' I added.

He fixed little rings on his fingertips, with prongs like claws on them, and looked serious. ‘Before you sit down, José, switch that light off and light those candles on top of the fridge,' he said.

I switched the main light off and lit the candles. And then . . . but how can I convey here the sound that instrument made?

‘
Jasmine Fragrance
,' said Cheng, referring to the piece he was about to play.

The fingers of his right hand strummed three strings at extraordinary speed, repeating the same chord, while the fingers of his other hand skipped from string to string, filling the room with magical music. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and I felt my entire body respond to what I was hearing. I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes. It was obvious that the instrument could make music. But how the strings produced the fragrance of jasmine, now that I can't explain.

As soon as he'd finished plucking the strings he handed the guzheng back to me and pointed to the corner behind the door without saying a word.

‘What magic that instrument produces!' I said as I put it back in its place. He smiled and didn't say anything. He stuck his legs under the cover and lay on his mattress. I blew out the candles and lay on my mattress, waiting for him to start the usual bedtime
conversation, but he didn't speak.

‘Aren't you going to chat tonight?' I asked.

He adjusted his position, turning his back to me.

‘I just said everything I have to say. Everything,' he said.

 

3

Late one night Cheng woke me up. ‘José!' he said.

‘What's up, Cheng?'

He was lying on his front on top of his mattress.

‘Heat up the oil and do your work,' he said.

‘It's nothing to laugh about,' I replied angrily. ‘It was because of words like that that I left Mendoza's land.'

Cheng tried to make amends. ‘I wasn't joking. Didn't you tell me you were willing to do the jobs your grandfather made you do, as long as it was somewhere else and you got paid for it?'

I sat up straight. ‘And will you pay me?' I asked.

‘Don't be stupid, José. Do your work first and I'll tell you later.'

I gave in without understanding what he meant.

‘I need some oil,' I said.

He pointed to the corner of the room. ‘On top of the shelf there.'

Within half an hour my massage had Cheng fast asleep.

‘Cheng! Cheng!' I said, waking him up.

‘Tomorrow, José, please, tomorrow,' he said, like someone who has been disturbed in mid-dream and doesn't want to miss the rest of it.

I gave his shoulders a firm shake. ‘You're not going to cheat me, Cheng, understand?' I said angrily.

He sat up. ‘Selling bananas isn't the right job for you, you idiot,' he said, his eyes still half-closed.

‘It was my only option.'

‘Look, José,' interrupted Cheng. ‘I'll take you to the Chinese centre tomorrow morning, at the street corner behind the temple.'

‘But I can't speak Chinese,' I said.

He laughed so much that his eyes closed. He pointed at my hands. ‘But your fingertips do,' he said.

Cheng was talking about the Chinese physiotherapy and massage centre. To be a physiotherapist, you needed a professional diploma. ‘But to be a masseur, all you need is magic fingers like yours,' said Cheng.

*   *   *

At the Chinese centre they gave me a test. ‘Not bad,' the man in charge said, ‘but it's not enough.'

He got up off the couch and walked towards a wooden screen around a shower stall. He disappeared behind the screen to wash the oil off his body. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the sound of the shower water. ‘You'll need some practical training in Chinese massage, traditional massage, Thai massage, dry massage and massage with hot stones,' he said.

I signed a contract with the Chinese centre as soon as I passed the training course. It said I would work for a fixed monthly salary plus commission for the services I provided. The most important part wasn't mentioned in the contract – the tips the customers pressed into my hand if the service met with their approval. This gave me an income several times the amount I earned by selling bananas in Chinatown.