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BY PETER SOLIS NERY
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Monday, October 9, 2017
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- MERCEDES
She told him stories because she loved him. She had a way with words. He believed everything then, and only wishes he could believe anything now, too.
*
Matt remembered his grandmother’s big, old wooden house.
Clean, but already showing some decay from lack of money for proper upkeep.
The living room had shiny floors adorned with modest rattan furniture, walls lined with endless shelves of countless books, a rectangular aquarium against one wall, and above it, a large golden medallion mounted on a plaque of mahogany wood.
*
Mercedes’ award for writing the novel Love in the Time of the Sea Monster, a longer version of her famous children’s story “The Legend of Isla Pulang Pasayan.”
In reverie, Matt could almost smell one particular day—tiger balmy, with a mix of Vicks Vapor Rub.
He, seven or eight, frail, sickly, running in from the outside.
His grandmother, in her late fifties, white-haired, soft spoken, Spanish mestiza features, feeding the fish in the aquarium.
Excitedly he called, Grandma! Grandma! It’s here! You have a delivery!
He ran to her, tugged her skirt, pointed to the postman with a medium-sized package at the door.
*
Mercedes approached Vicente, the postman, signed the receipt, took the box, nodded, Thank you very much.
The postman could not help but ask, Is it your book, Señora?
I think so. This is quite heavy, she responded.
Well, congratulations again, Señora, said Vicente, genuinely pleased. The whole island is proud of you.
They exchanged pleasantries again before postman Vicente waved goodbye to young Matt who had a smile as wide as the sky.
*
Let’s open it, Grandma. Can I open it? Please…
Mercedes smiled amused, Go ahead, hijo.
So much love in her eyes.
Matt excitedly opened the package, took out one of the twenty copies of an illustrated children’s book—The Legend of Isla Pulang Pasayan, sparklingly new, hot off the press.
He opened the book to the dedication page:
To my beloved grandson, Mateo,
who wants a pet bakunawa.
*
Matt likes books.
Sickly as a child, he found comfort in his grandmother’s bibliographic collection.
(He read Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame as a child.)
Even until now, even if he does not buy them (a struggling musician can only afford Songhits with guitar chords), he approaches a book with reverence.
Knowing that books give us a new way of looking at things different from the prevailing thought.
Books allow people to think for themselves, allow access to knowledge forgotten, or even out of favor with the times.
*
That’s exactly what Mercedes did—wrote a book about the forgotten bakunawa when supposedly UFO’s were in vogue.
Mercedes knew all about the mythical creatures of the half-forgotten Hiligaynon literature.
She enchanted Matt by chanting how the bakunawa, with its mouth, the size of a lake, swallows the moon during an eclipse, how early Filipinos would make noise with pots and pans to scare the bakunawa sea monster into spitting out the moon back into the sky.
She even drew for Matt the serpentine moon-eater with its red tongue, mighty whiskers, and two sets of silvery wings.
*
How long is the bakunawa, Lola? young Matt asked.
Very long, maybe the length of thirty carabaos put end to end.
The scary bakunawa lives in the deepest parts of the ocean.
It only comes out once in a blue moon.
Blue moon?
The second full moon of April.
All months have a full moon, but April has a second full moon. Don’t ask me why.
*
But Matt knew that if he pressed the issue, Mercedes would have no trouble concocting a tale as she did when Matt asked why the island had pink sand.
Or why it was named Isla Pulang Pasayan—the Red Shrimp Island.
She knew much about red corals (Corallium rubrum), gorgonian sea fans (Iciligorgia schrammi), and shells that caused the pinkish sand on the beaches of the island, but she preferred to explain it with a fable about the horrible bakunawa, and a school of prank-playing shrimp.
It was all about a practical joke gone wild. (To be continued)/PN
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