He walked down the stairs, leaving Timeteo, Paco, and Frank on their beds in the darkened room. Perhaps they couldn’t sleep either. They’d hear his departure as men accustomed to being wary at all times, but none would follow him.
He waved a hand in the air to stop a taxi, and as he told the destination, Manalo wondered when he’d last ridden in a cab and what fare they charged now. Walking the kilometers back to the safe house after the day he’d had did not appeal to him.
The city was still alive with people walking the streets and streaming from the malls. He couldn’t believe how many malls had cropped up, and more were being built. When he’d last been in Manila, the economy struggled to such an extent that whole areas of the city were desolate. Now rich developers were being made richer, while the poor remained poor even without Marcos as the unmitigated president.
Rock bands and vendors lined up beneath the palm trees of Manila Bay. Their lights reflected onto the dark water, and far out in the bay ships both large and small could be identified by their pinpoints of light.
As he walked along the baywalk, a powerful longing came over him. He needed more than food or water or rest. He no longer desired success or power or war. What he needed, he could not have. Malaya. All he wished was to crawl into bed with his wife, put his head on her stomach, and feel her hands in his hair. Once there, he’d remain forever and cry a thousand tears.
“Comrade.”
“Comrade Pilo.” Manalo slapped his back and smiled as if meeting a long-lost friend, in case someone was watching. Their smiles were forced as they asked about each other’s families and found a bench before the view of water and night sky.
“What happened tonight?” Comrade Pilo asked him in a lower tone.
“I was hoping you’d know more than I do.” Manalo would not accept any form of reprimand after the situation into which they’d been placed. “What is going on?”
“Mistakes were made.”
“Yes, that much I know. But why was that boy there in the first place?”
“The granddaughter of Captain Morrison was here today. At the Manila Hotel, in fact.” They both looked in that direction and could see the building rising up past the opposite end of the baywalk. “The young man was the driver bringing a Mr. Raul Sarmiento to pick her up. We followed, and the car broke down. Once they approached Manila, I turned the tracking over to our ‘friends.’
“They picked up the boy, which they should not have done. They thought he had information, but they did not even know the questions to ask him. Our friends do not know about the American woman, Captain Morrison, or the strategic importance of Hacienda Esperanza. And so, you know the rest.”
Manalo realized they were sitting on a bench not far from where he and Malaya had sat, oh, how many years ago was that now? Fifteen, eighteen, maybe more. He tried to keep her from his thoughts.
“What is the objective for our going to Hacienda Esperanza?”
“Under no condition can hope for the American woman or Captain Morrison be revitalized. She is the beneficiary to the plantation, but that is not legally possible because she is a foreigner. Unless contracted with a Filipino individual or enterprise, she cannot own the land outright. Their lawyers are working on that, and this is of much concern. We need the land to be sold, divided by investors, or given to the people. But the American must leave. If the hacienda gains some measure of power and her position is associated with that in any way, then the entire region will gain a stronger political stability, and we’ll have lost a key region of the country.”
“So we encourage dissension.”
“Yes. Chaos, fear, retribution. The area must be rife with insurgents, but not necessarily Communists. The Muslims could be contacted, and if they can do our work, then all the better. They care nothing for diplomacy, while diplomacy is our only means of battle at this point.”
“The Muslims will kill the woman.”
“No, we don’t want that. The capitalist sympathizers already have one hero, Captain Morrison. We cannot give them a martyr as well. But the sooner the American woman leaves, the better. I will negotiate with either the Muslims or our ‘friends’ and see what they will do, and I will try to control their zeal.”
“Good luck with that. What about the boy?”
“Let me work on that as well. Your plan was good, to return the body. But I will take that responsibility as well.”
Manalo nodded his head in thought. This was what they needed: objectives for their mission, not obscure instructions to go to the area and see what they might see.
Then Comrade Pilo surprised him, saying, “Manalo, you won’t go back to the safe house tonight.”
“Where am I going?”
“Let us walk awhile, and I will tell you. But you will not join your men for three days’ time.”
THE SECRET IS IN THE ORCHID.
Julia searched the pages of her grandfather’s logbooks, sure she’d read that phrase somewhere. She sat in the massive bed, the books piled next to her. The softly ticking hands of the windup clock pointed to just past four in the morning.
The antique furniture in the room had brought the phrase to her mind. Carved into the thick wood of the headboard, the bed-side table, and the large wardrobe was a design Julia recognized as an orchid blossom and leaves.
The room had a scent of dampness and age, and the house around her creaked and moaned in the darkness beyond the dim glow of her bedside lamp.
Old houses make noises, she reminded herself. Hallways and staircases rarely used now sighed in either annoyance or relief at the movement and life she brought here. An outside breeze further stirred trees against the roof and eaves. Did the house wish to be alone? Or had it longed for living things to move through its empty rooms and hallways like blood returning to deprived veins and cells?
Tiredness had fallen quickly over her after meeting the many people of the hacienda and going on a quick tour. One of the older women had made her a plate of food called pansit—some kind of brown noodle mixed in a smorgasbord of meats, vegetables, and seasonings.
She’d eaten at a grand dark-wood narra table in what had once been a dining room for entertaining. And as she’d eaten, the three older women had smiled and watched every bite, enthusiastically responding when she enjoyed the meal. Julia learned that they were sisters and distant relatives of hers. They pointed out antiques and told stories through the one sister who spoke perfect English.
“You should eat some more,” Lola Gloria had said. “Dinner isn’t for several hours.”
“Sleep?” another had asked; Lola Sita was her name. They were indeed doting old lolas.
The house was so large Julia thought she could get lost. The rooms were filled with treasures, some from all over the world; Hacienda Esperanza was like a museum with all its collectibles, sculptures, books, and artifacts.
Julia missed dinner; she slept so long and hard. Awakening in the dark of night, she thought of her grandfather here in this very house so many years ago. He and her grandmother had slept in the room across the hallway, Lola Gloria had told her when she asked. Her mother had been born in the same room, a fact she had never shared with Julia. After her grandmother’s death, and after Julia’s mother was sent to live with family in the States, Grandpa Morrison moved downstairs to the office, never sleeping upstairs again. That floor had been mostly uninhabited for over thirty years.
Julia felt small here. That was the only description she could find. Small in form and small in existence compared to this grand house full of ancient lives, stories, and memories, in a country far from home. Only once before had she felt such a sense of smallness, as a child in her uncle’s boat in the rough Pacific waters beyond the point at Harper’s Bay.
She reached for another logbook and carefully turned the pages. There were notes on better farming methods, how to use solar energy for the hacienda house, the best way to restore antiques. Nothing about orchids. Where had she seen those words?
The secret is in the orchid.
Her mother had a painting of an orchid and a wooden hair comb with the same carved emblem. Perhaps this had been her mother’s room as a child. Once again Julia wondered why she knew so little about all of this—it was the strangest feeling, like discovering the truth of a parent a child had never known.
She almost missed it. There, in his tight script, written neatly along the bottom of a page. The secret is in the orchid.
There was a sketch of the flower beside it, but nothing else. The rest of the page was devoted to a plan for a grain silo.
For the longest time Julia stared at the words, wishing to hear her grandfather’s voice explain what he’d written there. Finally she rose from bed and opened the balcony doors, sliding the panels into a hidden slot in the wall.
The second-floor terrace was a refreshing relief compared to the pressing indoors. The air felt crisp and damp, but not too cold. By day the encompassing view included the back courtyards, gardens, the thick foliage along the eastern borders including the overgrown orchid fields, and to the west the vast farm fields ending only in the far-off mountains. Julia leaned over the thick railing with wide carved balusters secured to the balcony. The grandness of old Spain was about this house.
The scent of tropical mountains came on the lightest of breezes to touch her face and push her hair back. Above, the stars shone brightly. There was no light on the horizon in any direction, and in the deep darkness Julia spotted the Big Dipper and then the North Star welcoming her like familiar faces in a foreign land.
There was a rustle in the bushes beyond the back courtyards, then the eerie cry of a night bird. The sound was strangely familiar; Julia felt that she could repeat the bird call and that she had done so in the past. Her thoughts whirled with both the strangeness and odd familiarity of this land.
The Far East. Southeast Asia. The stretch of Philippine Islands. The Province of Batangas. In her mind, Julia remembered the world map and envisioned coming closer and closer to the pin-point of space that the hacienda occupied like one faded star in this brilliant night sky.
These days on this side of the earth were foreordained, she felt, to bury her grandfather, assess the lands, and seek a new path for her future.
The night bird called again, a haunting cry. A breeze rustled the fanlike arms of the palm trees.
Julia knew that much lay in store beyond her three goals. And how she wished to know, what was this secret of the orchid?
HE’D BE THERE IN MINUTES NOW.
Manalo stood up in the back of the truck and felt the brisk predawn air slap his face and fill him with the scent of the jungle. He always loved that moment when night made its turn, like the turning tide out on the sea. It was the change of night to a new day, a shift in the atmosphere that could be felt if one sought to perceive it.
The road sign announcing the village ahead sent a rush of adrenaline through him; he felt sixteen again and newly in love.
Only six hours earlier he had been in Manila. Then Comrade Pilo told him he wouldn’t be going with his men. Instead of heading to the mountains surrounding Hacienda Esperanza, he was given one day and one night with his family. He’d left at once.
The children surely slept; he would love to see them in their beds. How he’d love to watch Malaya sleep as well. Tonight he would. He would make love to his wife this morning and again in the night, and then he’d watch her sleep and memorize everything about his children and wife to take with him until he saw them again.
And the next morning before he left, Manalo would make love to his beautiful wife one more time and hope in several months he’d hear of another child growing inside her. He worried about her when she was pregnant, especially after his sister’s death in childbirth, but she had always wanted six children. He never saw her so happy as when she was pregnant, rubbing her round stomach with joy and glowing with excitement.
He wanted to see this house they’d lived in for six months—a house with running water and a plumbing system. She’d thanked him, knowing he’d pressed the issue after the shanty they’d been in for three months before that. If he had to live apart from them in the jungle, a fugitive from the government, and he couldn’t put them in the type of house they deserved, at least they would not live in squalor.
On the phone she’d told him her routine. How he loved just to hear her voice and know of her schedule—it was something he took with him during the days and night of separation.
The baby who was not really a baby now would rise first. The older boys liked to stay out late and would sleep half the day if their mother let them. They resented the moving from place to place, and he’d no doubt hear about it again on this trip. At seventeen and fourteen, they didn’t want to change schools again. Aliki was material for a university. Rapahelo would rather flirt with the girls in town and hang out at the arcade or basketball courts. And then there were the twins, his sweet girls of seven years. He wondered if they still liked putting ribbons in their hair and climbing all over his back for horsyrides.
Manalo spotted the welcome sign for the small village and gave the roof of the truck cab a quick pound. He hung on at the rapid deceleration, then tossed out a backpack and hopped out after it himself, giving a one-handed wave to the driver. Never had he returned to the family without gifts. He collected them for months until he saw them—telling stories of the origins and his most recent adventures.
The cocks already crowed as he approached the village. On the porch of a closed-up sari-sari store, a dog rose up and stretched, letting out a bark when it saw him. Manalo whistled, and it came cautiously toward him until he patted its head.
“Tell me where Kalye Rondolo is, old mutt. You know the streets here, hindi ? And what kind of watchdog are you anyway?” He hoped the dog he’d sent the family a year ago did a better job than this one.
The village could hardly be called such, with its few houses and one café grocery. His boys were unhappy with such seclusion and spent as much time as possible at school and in the larger town nearby. At least that’s what they’d said on his last phone call.
Manalo turned down a narrow dirt road and dropped into a valley where a morning fog hovered in the air and the scent of wood smoke welcomed him toward home. His pace quickened.
Even after so many years together, Malaya’s skin felt glorious; it mystified him how it could be so soft. And the scent at her neck, the depth of her eyes . . .
Then he saw the house down in a thicket of dark trees. He couldn’t see wood smoke or any light coming from the windows. Maybe she slept in with the weariness of motherhood upon her.
He jogged now, the pack heavy on his back ready to be unloaded and the gifts distributed. His heart beat hard more from anticipation than exertion.
If his men could see him, the hardened fugitive leader of an insurgent Communist group, running toward his family, nearly giddy with anticipation, he’d never hear an end to their mockery.
Manalo came to the stairway of the porch and stopped suddenly. Instinct bred from years of warfare forewarned him. No roosters crowed the sun to rise; no dog barked. The house didn’t breathe life.
He quickly evaluated any danger. His mind flashed to the corpse on the floor—the boy from Barangay Mahinahon. Could it be coincidence they were headed toward that very region? He thought of Comrade Pilo wanting to meet him at Manila Bay, and the sudden and unusual reprieve to see his family. His men were without their leader and traveling to a new region, or perhaps were still in Manila. Manalo remembered how he had once stood inside an empty house as an assigned assassin, with the photo of the man he was to kill. He’d done the job, followed his orders, not allowing himself to question who had been the human behind the glassy, empty eyes. Was someone waiting inside for him in such a way?
Within seconds, Manalo sensed he was alone here. No one waited to put a bullet in his head. He knew before he walked inside that there was no one there at all. He wandered the empty rooms, trying to gather the presence of his family. There was a kitchen, sala, CR, and three bedrooms.
Along a windowsill he found a line of army men lined up. His foot kicked something soft. He picked up a stuffed animal and breathed in the scent of a toy well loved.
They’d left quickly, and recently. The smell of Malaya’s cooking lingered in the kitchen. The brick oven was cold, but not as cold as it would be if left empty for more than a day.
The ache of being that close, hours close, overwhelmed him and brought him to his knees. All he knew was the house was empty. And his family was gone.