EXILIUM REX

Chapter 15

Thursday morning has arrived earlier than expected at the Arguelles-del Mundo backyard. Widower Mang Kanor has been scattering instructions to his two sons ever since they set foot on the ground heavily-laden with leaves.

“No, Angelito! No, no! You must fasten the rope to the tree first, east-side, so that it will not accidentally fall on the bungalow!” The old man thoughtlessly knocks on the wood of the tree. “Pepito, Pepito, help your elder brother! Go climb that branch over there and we will topple this old giant down slowly, carefully – limb by limb.”

Disgustingly, the older Angelito finishes tying the trunk of the tree to a large boulder near the eastern wall of the yard and butts in to his father’s coaching. “Tatay, if we do it your way, it will take ten years to bring down the caimito. Just stand aside over there and let me and Pepito handle this. We’ll mow it down with one fell swoop of our chainsaw if we have to!”

Mang Kanor is clearly outnumbered, and so does what his son has asked him to do. To stand aside and just watch everything unfold before his eyes. The transformation of space. The dying solitude of his own memory of the place. The death of a garden no one could just imagine as such.

Seconds turn into minutes into hours. The chainsaw mindlessly churning to cut the body of the old del Mundo tree in half. While younger Pepito chooses to start raking the dead leaves into a pile in one corner of the yard. There is no more truer truth than this. Mang Kanor closes his eyes in the hope of distracting himself from the noise. The whirr of the saw blades. The painstaking sight of utter loss.

Suddenly, a strong rush of wind descends on the yard and slightly swipes the bald top of the old caimito. Mang Kanor listens as he hears Angelito’s chainsaw quickly ground to a halt and Pepito’s raking cease. The old gardener opens his eyes. The cut is already more than three-fourths of the way and the tree is now precariously swaying with a very unpredictable tendency.

Then, another brutal swing of the monsoon falls on the yard, and, this time, hits bull’s eye the veritable heart of the tree trunk.

“Ay, ay, ay, ay!” Mang Kanor shouts to his two sons to move away from the old caimito. He is more than doubly sure it is going down.

True to his prediction, the tree turns as if standing on its toe, desperately wobbling for form and stability; yet, with the lords of gravity pulling it to submission, fate finally cuts the rope tying it to the east-side of the yard, tugs it ever so slightly westward, toward the waiting guttered roof of the Arguelles-del Mundo native bungalow.

A loud smash jars their senses.

Mang Kanor is still in paralyzed shock as Angelito runs to kick down the main door of the native bungalow. But he manages to follow his oldest son moments later. While Pepito appears frozen in his stance, almost leaning on the farthest wall of the yard, holding on to the rake like a useless trident.

From his view, Pepito is not quite sure on what he is seeing. For between the caved in sheets of roof and smashed wooden panels of the obliterated ceiling, Mang Kanor’s youngest son could see, somehow, seemingly awaiting the next descent of the wind while carelessly leaning on the edge of a fall, the broken necklace with beads scattered all around (with the pendant apparently not in sight) which bore the remains of a more than a time-old old germ of a transgression suddenly exposed. Stimulated, nourished, fertilized, cultivated to reveal itself, as if, by karmic imagination.

From inside the destroyed Arguelles-del Mundo house, Pepito could hear his father’s cry.

“Señora Gemma! Señora! Oh, Señora!” 

Outside, an onslaught of ferocious storm winds descends again on the Arguelles-del Mundo backyard, now with full force, to scatter the thousands and thousands of leaves of absence in the air and expose the long-forsaken ground of truth in such a marvelous scandal of pale morning light; while the roots of the cut down caimito tree have become like the digging fingers of a dying human hand on the rich loam, forever never letting go of its own harvest for dearest, dearest space called – life. 

In this garden.

*

If Gemma Arguelles is really dead, then who is the woman sitting on the backseat of the rogue NBI agent codenamed Arnaiz?

It is already an hour or two close to a rain-drenched midnight as the two sedans with tinted glass panels and bearing no license plates make their way right through the alley between the condemned Manila Barangay Bureau building and the old Ombudsman edifice. Three quarters of the way, there is a narrow and long passageway to the right of the DSWD compound for stray children which can fit a car one at a time. With headlights turned, the first sedan driven by agent Arnaiz maneuvers the odd angle off the alley and into the passageway. After successfully doing so ever so slowly, the other car being driven by agent Jawo follows suit. The narrow and long passageway is actually the back alley of the old Ombudsman edifice and is infamously called by the denizens of the place as Little Boracay.

Why Little Boracay?

On any other night except this rain-drenched night, this passageway transforms itself from being an empty and dull parking place directly facing the murky waters of the Pasig river, and into a busy and bright avenue of sounds and colors and lights of beer-guzzling, karaoke-bellowing government officials and employees from the nearby Manila City Hall, but attracting even as far away as the national government offices near the Rizal Park, including the one located across the Agrifina Circle – the National Archives and Museum.

On any other night except this rain-drenched night, the makeshift kubo-kubos lining up the long and narrow passageway, with the firewall of the Ombudsman edifice at the right side and the old and almost forgotten river at the left side, would be filled to the curb with this strange group of nightlifers seemingly enjoying themselves station by drinking station. The ambiance could be very well likened to a wild beach or a street party. Especially during payday Fridays.

Thus, the Little Boracay monicker.

Unfortunately, tonight is not anywhere close to either a payday or a Friday – or even a touch of Boracay. Unfortunate, that is, for the woman dosed by rohypnol, still unconscious on the backseat of the sedan being driven by Arnaiz, and who has candidly introduced herself earlier to her current abductors as someone who has been considered dead and gone already. Dead, it seems, as the water of the nearby Pasig river.

Gone, it seems, as the late Gemma Arguelles.