Fairy Tales 🧚 The Philippines

The Narrow Road to the Deep North

As they climbed toward Bontoc, Ragor felt an eerie sense of openness, as if some wild-eyed group of native commandos were on the loose, and wanted to test their poisonous lead darts on tourists like him. He remembered that it had only been decades since the Igorot male stopped painting wires of black ink around his arms and chest to celebrate the capture of his first head. This feeling became so strong that Ragor held Maria’s hand under the pretence of helping her climb the steep slope. 

Ragor was secretly relieved when Maria said she was too tired to go on. The real reason she wanted to turn back, however, was because Ragor was so terrified that his palms were dripping sweat all over her sandals. She also felt sorry for her feeble Canadian lover who was so used to peace that even the thought of violence made him shiver and quake. So she suggested they spend the afternoon in the safety of the Hill Tribe Museum, where Ragor could wander through an artificial Igorot village without fear.

In the evening they went on to Banaue, a small town surrounded by staggering rice terraces: the Seventh Natural Wonder of the World, which made sense, for one could easily wonder how in the world they could have been made. 

As the days passed, Ragor noticed a deepening sadness on the face of his Platonic mistress. All the way from Baguio to Manila she brooded, as if the holiday had gone sour and the honeymoon was over. On the way to their pensione on Mabini Street it occurred to him that perhaps she felt that way because she’d failed to satisfy his needs. But Ragor was a Blue Dreamer, and didn’t have those needs, at least not in the way she understood them. Or perhaps she was disappointed because she hadn’t visited all the places that she was hoping to visit on their tour of the Islands. 

It didn’t occur to him that she was fearful of the day he would leave the Philippines. But this was the story of her life and she accepted it, just as she accepted the lustful looks the foreigners gave her in the go-go bar. In fact, she had accepted these looks and suggestions to such a degree that she had formed her character into the image of the Catholic vixen they desired. Now it suddenly dawned on her that she was a mere plaything animated by the itineraries and bank accounts of other people’s comfortable lives. 

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Maria had to admit that Ragor's account of their trip was fairly accurate, apart from the fact that she was hardly a Catholic vixen. OK, maybe a bit sexy, especially when she put on her white bathing suit, and when she pretended she couldn't reach the dish of lapa lapa she put just beyond reach on the edge of the jacuzzi. She saw him watch her glistening thighs as they twisted out from the water and stretched toward the creamy dishes of glistening fruit. But she certainly wasn't a vixen, whatever that was.

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Ragor wanted more than anything to take her with him. But he also felt that she was a creature of the streets, and that she’d only wither and die under the northern discipline of Canada’s icy skies. He therefore released her into the tattooed arms of her pimp, who immediately ripped the purse from her side and asked her why the hell she didn’t have any make-up on her dirty little face. Ragor told himself that this was OK, and that in the greater scheme of things she needed to confront her demons. So it goes, everyone has their cross to bear. We may live in different parts of the world, but we all live in the best of all possible worlds.

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:
And, spite of pride in erring reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.

He got into a cab and asked the driver to take him to the airport.

Driving down Taft Avenue, the accumulated weight of poverty, corruption, crime, prostitution, and cronyism weighed heavily on his spirit. It also weighed on his mind, yet everyone he talked with blamed these problems on different causes. Some said the people were greedy and preyed on each other. Others said that the government was corrupt and that the Americans and other Westerners didn’t encourage the government to change. 

On his lap was a newspaper he’d been reading earlier that morning. One article had particularly caught his attention. In it, the author was very good at asking stupid questions that Ragor found quite ingenious. He asked why the U.S. attempted to stop abuses in countries where it had no leverage, yet turned a blind eye to the same abuses in countries where it had so much clout. The substance of the article wasn’t new to him. He was, after all, a Canadian citizen, and therefore well-versed in bad-mouthing American foreign policy. What he found fascinating, however, was that the Filipino author hadn’t made a single reference to the Philippines. 

This ironic, indirect mode of rhetoric made Ragor wonder if he’d misinterpreted what Maria had told him. When she had wept and said, “No, I O.K. I be fine,” he took her at her word and left her in the clutches of that horrible pimp. 

Ragor asked the cab driver to turn around and go back to Mabini Street. 

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Sometimes when she was taking off her make-up before bed, Maria would look at herself in the mirror. Her mind was at ease. She no longer had that desperate need to escape that she had every morning when she looked at herself in the mirror on Mabini Street.

She saw behind her a skinny white figure pull away the sheet and hop into bed. For a split second the mirror seemed to shake. She wondered if all of this wasn’t just some First World fantasy and if she wasn't in fact back on Mabini Street doing more tricks and giving more treats to white-skinned monsters with straw hair and Pinocchio noses.

Shaking her head, she told herself that Ragor was real and that none of this was fiction. She then let her negligée slip to the ground and lifted the 900-count, Cairo-cotton sheets.  

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Next: 💍 The Enigma

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