DAWN ON THE PASIG

Frail coils and eddies of mist rose up from the turbid green-grey waters of the Pasig as the small flat–bottomed ferry nosed up to the jetty on the northern bank. Dr Salvador Carriscant, wearing a frayed and worn dustcoat and a small peaked cap, was the only passenger at this hour. He stepped off the prow on to the wooden decking and pulled his collar up. He was dressed this way in an attempt to allay suspicion and to draw the minimum of attention to himself. It was still cool and fresh and the almost-risen sun gave the air and dew-drenched landscape a pewtery, matt finish. He hurried past the curious glances of the few indio peasants, waiting with their sacks of vegetables, and disappeared down the path that led through a fringe of riverine trees towards the distant white walls of the Malacanan Palace.

This was his third crepuscular visit to the archery field, driven there by a vague and desperate plan of first seeing the American woman again and then perhaps following her back to her home or place of work. But it was the need to take action itself, primarily, actually to have something to do, that prompted these early rises. He felt that he could not make any more enquiries without drawing attention to himself, and he certainly could not, should he ever encounter her again in public, approach her and try to explain who he was and why he was there. He had to see her on his own, he realised, only then could he resolve the misunderstanding.

And he deliberately did not think beyond that moment, if it could be engineered, and what would happen subsequently; all his efforts would be directed simply to bringing it about, after that chance, destiny, fate would have to determine what happened next. He felt both foolish and exhilarated by these dawn excursions: he knew, from the vantage point of disinterested rationality, that all this creeping about in the bushes was preposterous and demeaning, and yet there was no denying that the sense of adventure, of what might be, was exciting and fulfilling in its own right. In the past few days he had lived more intensely, his waking hours had been more charged with anticipation, than he could remember in years. Perhaps this was a definition of an obsession? The ability both to see the manifest error in a course of action and yet pursue it fiercely just the same…Whatever it was it fulfilled him; it allowed him to go about his business in the hospital, to lead a normal family life with some measure of control and equanimity, for he knew that in a day or so he would be sitting damply once again in the acacia wood near the Palace, the sun warming the treetops, waiting for Delphine to appear.

Delphine.

He muttered the name to himself, tasting its two syllables, as the path entered the woods. Delphine. At least that ghastly encounter on the Luneta had procured her Christian name. The other day he had been on the point of asking Bobby if he knew an American woman called Delphine but at the last moment an onset of caution had made him hold back. That question could only prompt others in return; better to keep his own counsel for the moment.

He left the path and made his way through the wood towards the screen of cogal bushes that marked the perimeter of the archery butts. He had found a position that gave him a good view of the field and of the track that led from the Palace and San Miguel, up which carriages had come. He settled himself down in his hiding place, his back against the seamed trunk of an acacia tree, and prepared to wait.

The grass field was fully sunlit and the first flies were beginning to buzz around his head when he heard the clopping of horses’ hooves and the crunch of carriage wheels from the lane. Three carriages pulled up and about ten or a dozen ladies noisily descended, fussing around, fitting wrist guards, stringing bows and selecting arrows for their quivers. He saw almost at once that she was not there and the frustration that this covert scrutiny had held at bay for the last forty-eight hours washed over him with full depressing force. He sat back wearily against the tree, rebuking himself all over again, the cries and laughter of these young American women at their sport carrying to him across the grass, and the soft padded thuds as the first loosed arrows struck home against the straw targets.

He called to mind her face, that first day he saw her; called to mind the way the quiver strap had defined her breasts—quite full and large, he thought now, larger and rounder than Annaliese’s. And he found himself remembering too the way she had swung her hips to the music that evening on the Luneta…She was a tall woman, there was nothing gamine or petite about her, nothing girlish. And her skin was so strange, white as a milkfish…Her buttocks would be milk-pale too, he thought, and her thighs…He tried to imagine her naked, shutting his eyes against the dappled canopy above him, altering his position to allow his swelling erection a chance to shift freely beneath his trousers. A wand of sunlight beamed through a gap in the leaves above him and warmed his flank. Holding these images in his mind, embellishing them, he reached for his handkerchief with one hand while his other tremblingly undid the buttons on his fly. Delphine. Shucking off her quiver, her light fingers on her blouse buttons, her pale blue-veined bubs, freed, swaying, her—

“Yay! Pasayluha ako.”

The old thin-chested man in a frayed knee-length baro stood about twenty feet away, staring in amazement at him through a gap in the trees, frozen in the attitude of picking up a fallen branch, a small bundle of firewood under his other arm.

Carriscant clawed himself to his feet, aghast, doubling over simultaneously, covering himself.

The old man smiled warmly at him, showing his few remaining betel-stained teeth and said something in Tagalog, chuckling.

Carriscant thrashed his way through the undergrowth to the path. He heard the old man calling after him and somehow his delighted words penetrated the howling screeching mortification that reverberated in his head.

“It’s only human, my son!” The old man was shouting after him in Tagalog. “Don’t feel shame, it’s only human!”