Featured Writer

Merlinda Bobis

May 5, 2012June 6, 2012 by mascara

Merlinda Bobis is an acclaimed Filipino-Australian writer and performer who has published in three languages. Her novels, short story and poetry collections, and plays have received various awards, including the Prix Italia, the Steele Rudd Award for the Best Published Collection of Australian Short Stories, the Australian Writers’ Guild Award, the Ian Reed Radio Drama Prize, and three national awards in the Philippines: the Carlos Palanca Literary Award, the Balagtas Award, and the Philippine National Book Award. She has been short-listed for ‘The Age’ Poetry Book Award and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Bobis has performed in Australia, Philippines, US, Spain, France, and China. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Wollongong. Her most recent publication is the novel Fish-Hair Woman. About the creative process, she says: ‘Writing visits like grace. Its greatest gift is the comfort if not the joy of transformation. In an inspired moment, we almost believe that anguish can be made bearable and injustice can be overturned, because they can be named. And if we’re lucky, joy can even be multiplied a hundredfold, so we may have reserves in the cupboard for the lean times.’

Minsan Minsan Sometimes

dusong kasinkinis sakit na singkinis grief as smooth

kan gapo ng bato as stone

dusong minagatok sakit na sumasambulat grief that shatters

na sanribong tataramon na sanlaksang salitang into a thousand words

na nawaran nin nguso walang bibig without mouth

gapobatostonegapobatostonegapobatostonegapobatostonegapobatostonegapobatostone

-from Pag-uli, Pag-uwi, Homecoming. Poetry in Three Tongues (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, Manila

***

The widow watches the morning news as she sorts the boxes: what will be used for the case, what will be kept, what will be given away. Last night, she packed all her husband’s possessions — mostly files, papers and more papers, and only two boxes of clothes. Her Jimmy never cared about what he wore. His colours clashed; he thought darning socks was a waste of time. He cared only about his stories and the arguments that went on forever in his head. She could hear him thinking while they made love. Once he mumbled something about an extra-judicial killing, perhaps a line for a story. It infuriated her. His sense of justice was more ardent than his desire. She pushed him away and he murmured, ‘How can I love you if I don’t love what makes us human?’

The news plays again the clip of the mother screaming as she’s wrenched away from her boy.

What makes us human? That mother’s despair, its resonance in my gut. The widow hears herself answering the dead.

The news confirms that the boy was there when her husband was shot. So was an older boy, a street kid, who hasn’t been found, not yet, but they’ve identified him now.

Again and again her hands sweep back her hair, and her eyes gather the room. What makes us human — can she ever sweep this back into place?

The boys sold lanterns together. The mute boy sold her husband a lantern just before the shooting. Was this, in fact, a sign for the assassin? In the boy’s hut, they found blood on his lanterns, possibly the American’s. The investigation continues.

She sighs at the screen. That we can fabricate stories is what makes us human and keeps us at the top of the food chain.

Again the speculation about a terrorist cult, but less incredulous than in last night’s broadcast. And if indeed this cult exists, what happens to the allegations against Senator GB? There’s a quick clip of the senator having breakfast with his family. He pours his daughter a glass of milk, he kisses his young wife.

What makes us human? The widow feels sick to her stomach. She wants to argue with the dead.

—from The Solemn Lantern Maker (Murdoch Books Australia, 2008) (Delta, Random USA, 2009)

***

Driving to Katoomba

Today, you span the far mountains
with an arm and say,
‘This I offer you —
all this blue sweat
of eucalypt.’

Then you teach me
how to startle kookaburras
in my throat

and point out orion
among the glowworms.

I, too, can love you
in my dialect, you know,
punctuated with cicadas
and their eternal afternoons:

‘Mahal kita, mahal kita.’

I can even save you monsoons,
pomelo-scented bucketfuls
to wash your hair with.

And for want of pearls,
I can string you the whitest seeds
of green papayas

then hope that, wrist to wrist,
we might believe again
the single rhythm passing
between pulses,

even when pearls
become the glazed-white eyes
of a Bosnian child

caught in the cross-fire
or when monsoons cannot wash
the trigger-finger clean
in East Timor

and when Tibetans
wrap their dialect
around them like a robe

lest orion grazes them
from a muzzle.

Yes, even when among the Sinhalese
the birds mistake the throat
for a tomb

as gunsmoke lifts
from the Tamil mountains,

my tongue will still unpetrify
to say,

‘Mahal kita, mahal kita.’

—from Was A Fast Train Without Terminals (Spinifex Press, North Melbourne)

Detainee

how easily a speck of bird
shatters the evenness of skies —

she peers, stunned, from cell 22

that such dumb minuteness
can shake the earth.

—from Rituals (Poetry collection). Life Today, Manila, 1990

***

Five

Lengua para diablo

(The devil ate my words)

I suspected that my father sold his tongue to the devil. He had little say in our house. Whenever he felt like disagreeing with my mother, he murmured, ‘The devil ate my words.’ This meant he forgot what he was about to say and Mother was often appeased. There was more need for appeasement after he lost his job.

The devil ate his words, the devil ate his capacity for words, the devil ate his tongue. But perhaps only after prior negotiation with its owner, what with Mother always complaining, ‘I’m already taking a peek at hell!’ when it got too hot and stuffy in our tiny house. She seemed to sweat more that summer, and miserably. She made it sound like Father’s fault, so he cajoled her with kisses and promises of an electric fan, bigger windows, a bigger house, but she pushed him away, saying, ‘Get off me, I’m hot, ay, this hellish life!’ Again he was ready to pledge relief, but something in my mother’s eyes made him mutter only the usual excuse, ‘The devil ate my words,’ before he shut his mouth. Then he ran to the tap to get her more water.

Lengua para diablo: tongue for the devil. Surely he sold his tongue in exchange for those promises to my mother: comfort, a full stomach, life without our wretched want . . . But the devil never delivered his side of the bargain. The devil was alien to want. He lived in a Spanish house and owned several stores in the city. This Spanish mestizo was my father’s employer, but only for a very short while. He sacked him and our neighbour Tiyo Anding, also a mason, after he found a cheaper hand for the extension of his house.

We never knew the devil’s name. Father was incapable of speaking it, more so after he came home and sat in the darkest corner of the house, and stared at his hands. It took him two days of silent staring before he told my mother about his fate.

I wondered how the devil ate my father’s tongue. Perhaps he cooked it in mushroom sauce, in that special Spanish way that they do ox tongue. First, it was scrupulously cleaned, rubbed with salt and vinegar, blanched in boiling water, then scraped of its white coating — now, imagine words scraped off the tongue, and even taste, our capacity for pleasure. In all those two days of silent staring, Father hardly ate. He said he had lost his taste for food, he was not hungry. Junior and Nilo were more than happy to demolish his share of gruel with fish sauce.

Now after the thorough clean, the tongue was pricked with a fork to allow the flavours of all the spices and condiments to penetrate the flesh. Then it was browned in olive oil. How I wished we could prick my father’s tongue back to speech and even hunger, but of course we couldn’t, because it had disappeared. It had been served on the devil’s platter with garlic, onion, tomatoes, bay leaf, clove, peppercorns, soy sauce, even sherry, butter, and grated edam cheese, with that aroma of something rich and foreign.

His silent tongue was already luxuriating in a multitude of essences, pampered into a piquant delight.

Perhaps, next he should sell his oesophagus, then his stomach. I would if I had the chance to be that pampered. To know for once what I would never taste. I would be soaked, steamed, sautéed, basted, baked, boiled, fried and feted with only the perfect seasonings. I would become an epicure. On a rich man’s plate, I would be initiated to flavours of only the finest quality. In his stomach, I would be inducted to secrets. I would be ‘the inside girl’, and I could tell you the true nature of sated affluence.

—Banana Heart Summer (Murdoch Books, 2005) ( Random USA, 2009) (Anvil Manila, 2005)

Covenant

after you bomb my town
I’ll take you fishing
or kite-flying or both

no, it won’t hurt anymore
as strand by strand, we pluck
the hair of all our women
to weave the needed string —
oh isn’t this a lovely thing?

now hurl it upwards, mister

and fish that missing
arm-kite of my mother
leg-kite of my father
head-kite of my sister

perhaps, they’ll ripple
the blue above your head
perhaps, they’ll bite just right
to grace your board and bed

arm-kite of my mother …

from wrist to halfway
above the elbow curved
as if still holding me,
the arm-kite

has no inkling
of its loneliness

when was it orphaned
from its hand that once
completed an embrace
and from the rest of it

before it flew
beyond retrieval?

leg-kite of my father …

it is my father
this knee, calf and half a foot
carved to new design

here, a muscle curlicued
there, a tendon filigreed
almost to perfection

but let me tell you, mister
the butcher at the market
does better art than this

head-kite of my sister …

not that she’s rude
forgive her, sir
my sister just can’t help herself

she has fallen
in love with staring
head-kites are hopeless like that

but they make up for it — see, where the neck
is severed, it is red and blue,
patriotic colours no less
like where you pin your medals on

arm-kite of my mother
leg-kite of my father
head-kite of my sister
rippling the blue

kite and fish or both
but always game

like the greener island to your south
that needs defending
or the white dove roosting
on that scrap of metal
with which you prop
your chin, so it could tilt
at the right angle of honour

how it gleams like hope
and rectitude

streamlined as only metal could be
in the hour of kites

‘Itsy-bitsy Spider’: the tune of ‘arm-kite of my mother … ‘

—Pag-uli, Pag-uwi, Homecoming. Poetry in Three Tongues (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, Manila, 2004) Covenant was adapted by Bobis into a poetic sound drama produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC Radio): National broadcast, 2002-2009.

***

from Chapter 19

They say I died when I was five years old and Pilar had a change of heart, as if all its little corners had refurbished themselves. Oh, how I wish I had stayed dead. I could have dreamt up life as a perfect coffee grove. But I came back to life, Tony, to dream warily on the page instead. These days, after the act of dreaming a different fate, I always look behind my shoulder at the reader who might tell me what I shouldn’t have written or what I failed to write, or what I so inadequately conjured. Wrong dream, wrong dream, you might say as you push back this page as if it were coffee.

Imagine acres of prime coffee shrubs with heroes and villains brewing together a coffee-and-World-Vision ad — how can I get it wrong? But I can, we all can, even if I try to retell the coffee grove out of its history. That coffee farm was fifty paces away from the stream where I nearly killed Sergeant Ramon on that night of fireflies.

Inside me he wilted as the noose of hair tightened around his neck. All lust arrested, all cum recalled as the distended flesh shrivelled — the reflex withdrawal of a dying snail, one without a shell, one so terrified that there was nothing to shrink into but itself. Then his men arrived, eager to take me to the coffee grove before we head for the river.

But what if I depart from the blood trail? As storyteller I could confuse the soldiers in a new tale. What if I walk them to an unfamiliar coffee grove instead, where they would be welcomed by this query: Kapeng mahamoton o tsokolateng mapoloton? Very fragrant coffee or very thick chocolate? Each man would be freed from his rifle and handed a cup of his choice. The trigger finger would curl around the tin handle, warm and curved like a wife’s languid mood at breakfast after a night of love in another time. But Ramon’s men were lifetimes away from my imagined idyll when they caught up with us. They arrived in the stream where their sergeant was struggling between coming and dying, his neck bound by my hair.

‘Let go!’ The taller man shoved his rifle at my brow.

I dropped the noose.

‘You okay, Sarge?’

Sarge was gasping for air.

The other soldier yanked at my hair, yelling, ‘Putita!’ He knew where to hurt most.

Waves of memory tearing from scalp to toe and spanning the stream, then weaving on, fifty paces away. Putita! Little whore. I heard this before, spoken in hushed tones. I was there when they found the naked body of the church singer Manay Sabel in the coffee grove.

Soldier logic: because she fed and fucked the enemy. Comrade Sabel collected compulsory taxes from the village. She had advanced in social station, a far cry from the time when she hid pork crackling in her pocket. The communist rebels had appointed her to ‘oversee’ the farms in Iraya; a percentage of their produce must be paid to the people’s cause. It was even rumoured that she was the mistress of one of the cadres. So among the coffee shrubs, a spray of bullets three months before the harvest. And the berries crimsoned overnight.

But in my own coffee grove, she will be standing behind a hand-mill instead, alive and innocent and with no pork-crackling scent in her pocket, grinding coffee with Mamay Dulce. Together they will welcome the soldiers with very fragrant coffee or very thick chocolate. And the men will be embarrassed about their rifles, and their embarrassment will cloud memory. Why had they come to Iraya? No, not to purge it. Just passing by, Manay Sabel. They will utter the usual greeting of a stranger to the homes of the seen and unseen. ‘Please, may we pass.’ We called this out not only to the homes of the living, but also to the haunts of the spirits: a mound of earth, a wooded spot, a river. Or a distant land?

Please, dear reader, may we pass — let my memories pass through this page, through your eyes that have seen safer coffee groves. Tony, once you told a story about the coffee street back in Sydney, where friends and lovers gathered over a variety of cups at any time of the day.

‘You not work, Mister Tony?’ Pay Inyo, the village gravedigger and storekeeper, was impressed.

Tony almost laughed.

‘Tell me, please, Mister Tony, tell me about many coffees.’

‘Espresso, caffe latte, cappuccino; thick chocolate too. And tea, various kinds.’ And his tongue remembered.

‘You speak delicious, truly-truly.’ The old man revelled in this dream of beverages, the lilt of strange syllables. ‘Say again, please,’ he urged, hanging on to each word of his favourite white man. ‘Say again so I taste your home, Mister Tony. Only rice coffee in Iraya, see. Or instant from my store, cheapy-cheap. Very fragrant coffee and very thick chocolate? For fiestas and long talks with special-est guests only. But now, no more, no more,’ he apologised, holding out his empty palms.

Very fragrant. English words that Pay Inyo learned from his guest. Like very foul: for later, for the smell of the dead.

Ah, the missed fragrance of coffee. Because there was no time for picking the berries, none for drying them in the sun or toasting the magic seeds, and the hand-mills were rusting with disuse. Time was for survival, for staying small, invisible before the eye of the gun.

‘Up, you little whore.’

The M-16 dug at my temple.

The other soldier grabbed my hands as I rose, trying to cover myself. He leered at my nakedness, giggling about our new destination. ‘The coffee grove is just around the corner, putita.’

They took important women there.

‘No!’ Ramon snapped between lungfuls of air. ‘Not there!’ he said, barely getting the words out. I could see the marks of my hair around his neck.

‘But we’re all in this together, aren’t we, Sarge?’

The blow was quick and sure, even from a half-strangled man. He buckled over. Then Sergeant Ramon asked, ‘Am I not as chivalrous as your white knight?’ passing a proprietorial hand between my legs. I gagged, my tongue thick with despair and self-loathing. I heard him whisper, ‘They could take you there now, but I won’t let them. We’re going to the river — then we can finish the business, can’t we?’

No, we cannot — my own business of rewriting the coffee grove is about stalling for time, hoping it could trick memory. So let me weave an alternative tale about us nice folks brewing this exotic spot with coffee cups on our heads and dancing up a fiesta. A postcard shot if you wish, Tony, so you can quell your shudder with a longing sigh for this village in the East.

Beloved, we will save you in the coffee grove. Here you will feel forgiven with a simple gesture of welcome: Iraya handing you a cup and sitting you down with kindness. My whole village will be in attendance, rapt in the ritual of making very fragrant coffee and very thick chocolate. The soldiers will exercise their gun-weary arms at the hand-mill and they’ll whirr like a swarm of cicadas, promising only the best brew. Then Ramon will arrive in his bicycle with two huge cans of pan de sal, pan de coco and pan graciosa: our welcome breads of salt, of coconut, and gracefulness. And you will break bread with him, for in my new story Ramon was never a soldier, he never held a gun, and he pouted only when the village kids tricked him of an extra piece of pan de sal when he wasn’t looking. And like yours, Tony, his eyes will be clear, oh so clear, they will mirror all the colours of Iraya.

The scene will be picture-perfect: the ‘laid back peace’ of your own home, Australia, will displace our state of war. The river will always be sweet and tasting only of the hills. My village will drink only of sweetness and never know terror or grief or rage in their mouths, and they will sleep soundly in the night, like you. Oh yes, we can conspire. I will not find you in the water, my love. I will not find anyone. I will not even have to be born. Don’t you wish this sometimes? Stripped of its melodramatic timbre, this is plain heart-talk but with such anguish, one is surprised the breast does not cave in: I wish I was never born. Never the hairless child, never the angel of dead bodies, never the village freak turned village icon. I just have to say this incantation. I just have to tell another story. And all will be saved.

But can words ever rewrite a landscape? Can the berries suddenly uncrimson with talk? Can bullets be swallowed back by the gun? Can hearts unbreak, because for a moment its ventricles are confused at the sight of a refurbished coffee grove, besieged by peace and domesticity?

I can dive a hundred times into the river, fish out this or that beloved and tenderly wrap a body with my hair, then croon to it in futile language such as this, but when I lay the dead at the feet of kin and lovers, their grief will just shame my attempt to save it from dumbness. Listen to the mute eloquence that trails all losses, the undeclaimed umbrage at having been had by life. This is a silence no one can ever write and least of all rewrite.

—Bobis, M. Fish-Hair Woman (Novel). Spinifex, 2012: 55-58. Adapted and performed by Bobis for radio (ABC, 2007) and stage (Spain, US, 2009).

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Issue 12 May 2012

Mascara Literary Review

Merlinda Bobis

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