EXILIUM REX

Chapter 13

“Yes, Señora Gemma, I will take care of it! What the old caimito tree has scattered, my strong arms shall gather! See these arms? These arms are branches, too, see? For I am also an old tree, Señora! Nicanor is now my name! But a more handsome tree than that ca-i-mi-to! Maybe even as handsome and as strong as Señor Angelo! Ha! Maybe I will dance better than a tree? Or maybe better than Señor Angelo? Look!”

The old man, still surprisingly possessing a unique sort of agility, takes the rake from a pile of leaves, helps it stand in front of him like a young lady ballerina, and bows his head in feigned salutation. He pretends to dance with his long-handed tool; then, realizing himself for a moment there, the less than amateur performer quickly spreads his fat belly forward to roar with a gay sort of laughter. 

Gemma Arguelles laughs with her old-time friend and now her appointed family gardener. She does not have the heart anymore to think of sadness, or anything else just as dark. Separation has a way of taking its unforgiving toll on the wellspring of her own private emotions of despair. Welled up and dried, as everyone noted of her, she is more than ready to face life again. “Siya, siya. I shall leave it all up to you, Mang Kanor. But only until Friday. I want to begin my meeting with my fellow Subanon NGO co-workers this weekend.”

“Yes, Senora! I shall finish it by Thursday! A one day allowance, just to be sure!” Mang Kanor nods his head with a smile.

In concurrence, Gemma Arguelles nods her head, too. Now, she only has to think of her small contribution to the Subanon tribe and what it would take to make peace and development real again. She only has to do this. Starting this weekend. Then she herself, in all likelihood, should have the opportunity to make peace and development again. Make peace with her separation from Angel who had left her for good and had returned to his work in the National Archives and Museum in Manila. Make development with her social work for the tribe of her family. The Arguelles. The clan of the local heroes, Jose and Antonio, her great great great grand uncles. The Arguelles who led the poor from Suba tribe to fight the oppression brought to them by the rich Amianan tribe centuries ago. The great battle as recorded in The Chronicles of the War of Names in the Suyo Islands of the Philippines. Of course, everyone she knew agreed that, indeed, this, social work far from the toxic city, in the spirit of volunteerism, is all that she needed. This is her – space. This is her – commitment. This is her own – peace and development.

She only has to think of this - and the one single memento she has hanging around her neck, the so-called Comb of Lerma, then she would not have to think of purely and solely herself again. The Comb of Lerma, made of copper and with strange symbols of seven rice grains on one side of the shaft and a red triangular flag on the other, studded with jade and other precious gems, the comb Gemma and Angelo used to etch their names inside a heart on the trunk of the old caimito tree Mang Kanor is now tasked to clean up after and trim the leaves and branches.

O, but the leaves, particularly from the giant caimito. Hundreds of them, perhaps even thousands, fallen on the ground. Strewn as if by a godly landscape designer and which covered the rich loam with such consistency and passion of deeply glazed colors and textures – coarse yellows, spongy browns, sharp reds, glossy sables. All in all, a deeply streaked scent of cold withering blanketed the soil. A coldness not unlike the well-buffered marble of a church altar, or a catafalque in a wake.

More than one year would be enough space, everyone told Gemma. Enough distance. All grieving hearts need distance; all sorrowful minds, distraction. After more than one year, it was time to dig out the heart from the murdered ashes of its memory. No use killing yourself with guilt. Guilt sounded so much like guillotine.  

Gemma knows it is time to let go.

“Mang Kanor, would it be possible to cut the old tree down before the weekend?”

Her old-time friend and appointed gardener’s radiant face suddenly turns somber. “But, Señora Gemma…”

But Gemma has already created enough distance between her and the old man of Virgen dela Monte. Enough space. Enough distraction to hear the sound of dead leaves crisply crushing beneath her shod feet. These leaves of absence.

Later, she shall expect all of these to be gathered up in heaps by the hired hand and burned to a slowly-pirouetting haze.

*

A year of solitude, without Angelo del Mundo, has done wonders for Gemma Arguelles, in body and in spirit. She has to credit her resurrection to everyone around her. What her marriage to Angelo – as sudden as their separation – has ruined, his husband’s departure from her life shall build again. Days of solitude made sure of that. Days of space. As wide as she needed. And of time. As long as she needed.

Indeed, enough space to call Mike, the archaeologist, again.

“Hello, good morning. Suyo Research Foundation? Is Mr. De Castro already in? Field work? Oh, it’s quite alright. Yes. Yes, I have Mr. De Castro’s cellphone number. Yes, Mr. Michael De Castro. Well, in case he comes by the office, please tell him Mrs. – I mean – Ms. Arguelles called. Yes, the Arguelles-del Mundo account. Thank you very much.”

Mike, where are you? There’s no more of that gullible fool to be a nuisance to us, bhebhe! No more dead weight to steer around the islands and get lost with such obsession in the myth of the Lai Mabinta-Nong and its imaginary treasure of treasures! I wish I could have cut him loose from my life sooner than when I saved his own life from the so-called Eternal Guardian of the Old Jar!