Chapter64 December1984
The taxi was caught in a mild traffic jam at the crossroads of Roxas Boulevard and Vito Cruz Street, perhaps because of a large gathering being held at Philippine International Convention Center.
After a short silence, Kristina said. “Trina, whenever the taxi I’m on comes close to MIA... How should I describe it? ..I always become uneasy.”
“Uneasy?”
“Yes. ..Strange. ..Especially now when I know it’s not me who is going to leave for Japan from the airport.”
“So, why?”
“Well, in fact, I know why, Trina. And that happens to me because of the story I was told repeatedly by one of my grandmothers in Panay Island a long time ago, that is, before I started working as a karaoke singer in Manila.
“This may be the kind of story spread all over the Philippines, or you, too, have heard of, at least once or twice. But this is a very special story for me beyond question.
“And according to that grandmother of mine, in Panay Island where I was born and raised, Trina, the Japanese military that occupied the island did a lot of terrible things to the islanders. ..They killed the local people -young and old, men and women- and raped young women, only because they claimed there was a movement of, or even a slight hint of movement of, rebellion by the local people.
“And the grandmother’s two older sisters, one older brother and one young niece, that is, one of my aunts, only five years old at that time, were among those who were killed by the Japanese military. The grandmother actually saw, ..was forced to see, her sisters, brother and niece being buried alive together with many totally innocent people. ..They were buried alive.
“I recall the story every time my taxi comes close to the airport. Recalling it, I always become uneasy. You can guess, Trina, why that grandmother of mine stopped repeating the story to me after I began working as a karaoke singer, can’t you?”
Without any word, I nodded to her.
-----
“But today, I guess I feel a little differently, Trina.” Kristina continued. “Well, I still am uneasy, but it feels a little differently. ..And I guess that’s because of that incident.”
“That incident?”
“Trina, I’ve never told that story to any one of my Japanese patrons, either in Japan or in Manila. I just can’t tell such a story to my patrons who’re merrily enjoying their drinking and singing, or to the Japanese whose personal views of the Philippines and Filipinos were still unknown to me, can I?
“But Takano-san was an exception. I told that story to him. ..And I’ll never forget his tears that filled his eyes while he was listening to the story.
“Well, that happened a little before your return to Sakura, Trina. And I guess I just wanted him to understand me and my job by telling him such a story. ..Believing that he must be one of the persons who could fully understand me, just like you to whom I frankly confessed about my boyfriend Roberto.
“However, it was way beyond my expectation that he filled his eyes with tears, so sympathetically. ..He looked so saddened He looked so hurt as if it were himself who had buried my aunt and others alive.”
-----
I did not tell Kristina that Takano-san was such kind of person indeed.
I did not tell her that, having been told Takano-san had been just as he was now, even before he had come across me, or even before he had found Melba, perhaps, I felt I understood now even better than any other time before why Takano-san had had to involve himself so deeply in the incident in Zapote, for instance.
-----
In Makati, several days before, Takano-san had calmly shown me his willingness to compensate Ruben and Alberto in place of 'them', by helping Alberto. And such my perception might have been right.
However, Takano-san was a person who had expressed himself as a typical Japanese, who had been fighting, struggling, to turn such himself back to real himself.
-----
I kept my eyes closed silently.
Kristina went on. “Having seen his tears, I added hurriedly, ‘But, Takano-san, that’s an ancient story, in fact. Wakai nihonjin kankei naiyo (Younger Japanese people have nothing to do with that).’ ..It was too late, Trina. With a very clouded face, he said, ‘You can say that younger Japanese people have nothing to do with what happened to your relatives about forty years ago, Kristina, only if no Japanese have done anything harmful to Philippine people since then. But...’
“So, I dared to tell him, ‘I don’t care those happenings, Takano-san, as a matter of fact, as long as there are opportunities in Japan for me to work and earn such an amount of money that I can never make in the Philippines.’
“And my words appeared to have saddened Takano-san even more. So, intending to change his dark mood, I introduced to him a related story that was widely believed among old people in Panay. ‘The grandmother of mine told me this, too, Takano-san: Those who were truly cruel, who directly did all those terrible things to local Filipinos were Koreans in fact, not Japanese soldiers.’
“The added, new story, too, worked negatively, Trina. The tears in Takano-san’s eyes finally began dropping on his cheeks. He said, ‘If there were Koreans there, Kristina, they were the people who had been forced by Japanese military to leave their motherland and to assist Japanese military operation. I believe that they had no freedom to act, much less to rape and kill local people, on their own wills. So, if indeed Koreans directly brutalized local Filipinos, I can tell you, Kristina, they were ordered by Japanese military to do so. At that time, such order by Japanese military must’ve been so absolute that those Koreans could do nothing but obey it. Those Koreans would’ve been executed by Japanese military if they hadn’t obeyed its orders.’
“I think, Trina, Takano-san’s tears at that moment have changed something in me.”
Kristina abruptly fell into deep silent.
-----
I opened my eyes. Our cab just had passed by Baclaran Church.
“You’re karaoke singers, right, girls?” The driver spoke to us. The radio music had been turned off.
“Yes, we are.” Kristina replied. “Can you tell?”
“Sure, I can. ..Both of you are so beautiful, so well made up, wear different clothes from ordinary girls. Besides, you’re heading to the airport with such large bags. ..Going to Japan, both of you?”
It was Kristina again who answered. “She is, but I’m not.”
Adjusting his rearview mirror to me, the driver said, with peculiar laughter being mixed in his voice. “Then, you better live in Japan a little more carefully than usual, for some crazy Japanese might attack you. ..Out of revenge.”
“Hey, would you knock it off?” Kristina demanded to the driver sharply. “Don’t cast such a bad spell to the person who is going to fly to the country in a few hours, praying that only good things may happen to her there.”
“I’m sorry.” The driver apologized, at least superficially. “Of course, I had no intention to cast any bad spell to anyone.”
“If you had said that with ill intention, I wouldn’t have forgiven you.” Kristina responded. “But what did you mean by out of revenge?”
“Well, radio news has been telling us for the last couple of hours that one presumed Japanese man had been shot to death in Makati last night. ..Seemingly, both of you haven’t heard the news, have you?”
Kristina said. “We haven’t. But I wonder what connection the murder has with that revenge thing.”
“So, that was my bad joke. I’m sorry. ..However, it was reported that the Japanese man had been killed in front of a karaoke saloon in Makati, named Palace. And the guy who had killed the Japanese was a security guard of the saloon. So, I just figured that it might keep two of you and me from getting bored on the way to the airport if I brought up a silly story, like, that one of relatives of the killed man might attack a Philippine karaoke girl or two in Japan to take revenge for the man’s death, bearing a grudge against all Filipinos who work in karaoke business. ..A while ago, you guys suddenly fell in deep silence. So, I just volunteered...”
“Indeed, that was a silly joke. Besides, we weren’t bored at all.” Kristina retorted, and turned her face to me. “No matter what, that’s a big news, isn’t it, Trina?”
My eyes were suspended in the air. The name of Makati was sounding to me tremendously bad omen.
-----
“Do you happen to be,” the diver adjusted the rearview mirror, this time, to Kristina, “singers at the Palace, girls?”
“No, we are not, “ answered Kristina, “but such kind of news, I think, isn’t totally for others because the killed man may’ve been our customer, too. By the way, you said the man was presumed to be a Japanese. And is that all you know about him?”
“Well, radio news has been telling us only, like, ‘Considering the circumstances, the police assumed, the man killed must be a Japanese.’ The report said the man had possessed nothing with him, from which he could be identified.”
“Any argument or something between the killed man and the Palace?” Kristina asked.
“I guess that’s not the case. The story reporters have been telling, along with some interviews with people who had been at the scene, was like this, in short:
“It was near twelve o’clock midnight, last night, that a Japanese patron came out of the Palace: And when he was about to climb into the rear seat of his car waiting for him across the street, a little away from the karaoke saloon, a man who appeared to be a Filipino emerged from nowhere and abruptly began yelling at the patron in English: One security guard of the Palace, though he wasn’t clearly aware what was happening in the dimness in front of him, pulled his gun anyway out of the holster in case he should use it to protect Palace’s patron, and tried to find what the emerged man was actually doing against the Japanese man: The emerged man, still yelling, grabbed the patron by the arm and pulled the patron, whose upper body was already in the car, out of his car: Having sensed of his patron’s crisis, the security guard pointed his gun at the emerged man, and ordered him, ‘Freeze!’: The man turned to the guard and told him in Tagalog, ‘All I want here is to talk with this Japanese man,’ as if he were begging the guard for a great favor, literally, according to one of the reporters.”
“Hey, Trina!” Kristina almost cried. “You’re hurting me!”
I had not realized that I had been taking hold of her hand so tightly.
Loosening my grip, I murmured. “I’m so sorry, Kristina.”
“That’s okay, Trina. But, is anything bothering you?”
I lied. “No, nothing...”
“Yeah?” And then Kristina returned her face to the driver.
-----
The driver continued. “Being virtually begged by the man, the guard presumed that the Tagalog-fluent Filipino might not have approached the Japanese patron to rob him or anything like that: The two people kept arguing in English, however: The security guard had to think hard how to respond to their argument: And it was then that the chauffer of the patron’s car, who seemingly had been watching all the movement of the two men and the guard from inside the car, opened the door at the other side of the incident and finally came out of the car: The Filipino told the chauffer in Tagalog the same thing, ‘All I want here is to talk with this Japanese man’: Although he appeared hesitant momentarily, the chauffer started stepping carefully toward the two men arguing: Having gotten panicky, perhaps, by the movement of the chauffer, the Filipino all of sudden grasped the collar of the patron’s baron Tagalog with his hands and began swaying the patron’s body, once again yelling something loud: The security guard walked a few steps closer to the now-struggling two men, and shouted again to the emerged Filipino, ‘Freeze!’
“And it was at that moment that another man rushed out in silence from the darkness across the street, and ran toward the two men now almost tussling: The guard intuited that the second man was an associate of the Filipino: The guard had to judge that the second man was joining the Filipino to assault the Japanese man, whatever reason they had: The patron shouted something in Japanese: Now the guard had to point the muzzle of his gun toward the second man: And he repeated the same word, ‘Freeze!’: The second man didn’t stop: Instead, he kept approaching the spot where the Filipino and the Japanese patron were almost brawling now: The guard didn’t have a time to be hesitant: He pulled the trigger: Though the first shot missed the target, the second one appeared to have hit one of the man’s legs: The second man stumbled almost in the air: The guard pulled the trigger for the third time: The bullet apparently hit the man’s chest: So, having made sure the man was falling down onto the ground, the guard returned his eye toward the two who had been brawling: But the Filipino was already gone into the darkness around: Lying on the surface of the ground was the second man shot by the guard, badly bleeding.
“It was reported..: Both the attacked Japanese and the security guard couldn’t identify the killed man: The chauffer and the Palace’s employees had never seen the killed man before: Nobody saw the face of the escaped Filipino clearly: The Japanese patron claimed he had had no time to see the Filipino’s face, being busy to avoid the Filipino’s violence, while the guard said he had been a little too far away from the two men struggling: And all the chauffer saw was the back of the Filipino:
“The Japanese patron answered police’s question that he had completely no idea why he had been attacked in such a manner, as well as that he wasn’t very fluent in English, and the Filipino had had a strong accent, so, he hadn’t been able to get what the Filipino had been telling him: Meanwhile, the security guard, who had heard most of what had been exchanged between the Patron and the Filipino, was reported to have been unable to catch the content of the exchanged words because he wasn’t too good in English: The chauffer? He maintained that he had been so confused that he only remembered he had told himself he had had to protect his employer, the Japanese patron. But except that, the chauffer had no memory at all on what on earth had actually happened.”
-----
“Has the name of the patron ever been mentioned?” Kristina asked the driver, and then she whispered to me. “It’s too bad if the patron is Sakura’s customer, too, isn’t it?”
My body was trembling.
I was feeling I could guess who the attacked patron was, who the escaped Filipino was. I might have known already who the man, shot to death, lying on the ground in Makati, smeared with blood, was.
The cab driver responded to Kristina. “Yes. I think news reporters told us the name of the patron. But I can’t recall it right now. ..Keep your ear to the radio news and you’ll know it sooner or later.” He glanced at his watch. “The next news will be in about fifteen minutes. Well, I remember the patron was said to be an employee of a Japanese trading company in Makati, whose name was... I can’t recall the name, too.”
My body was still trembling, slightly.
“Hey, try hard to recall it.” Kristina demanded to the driver.
“It sounded like a Tagalog word, I believe. ..Oh, yes, it’s like may (have, possess). ..Yeah, it was Meiwa, probably.”
“Meiwa?” Kristina mumbled, and turned her face to me. “I don’t think we have a customer who works for a company whose name sounds like that. Do we, Trina? ..Wait a second. ..No, that can’t be. But, ...could be a coincidence. Trina, isn’t it Meiwa Trading? The company Takano-san said he had once worked for?”
With no word, I nodded to her.
“But, Trina, Takano-san shouldn’t have any connection to such incident, should he?” Kristina returned her eyes forward, and said, forcing a smile. “He quit that company many, many months ago, when he was still in Japan. So, the attacked patron of the Palace could be an acquaintance or even a friend of his, but should never be himself, of course? ..Gee, my heart is still beating fast. I got confused momentarily, when I didn’t have to, Trina. My heart was about to explode, suspecting the attacked man could’ve been Takano-san. ..How silly! ..But, Trina, if the killed man was a Japanese, who on earth was he?”
I kept my eyes straight toward the direction the cab was heading for.
There seen very closely already was the building of Manila International Airport.
