Feb 26, 2010 7
Desafinado
We’re on a red convertible. Just like in the movies. Waving your hands skyward. Moving with the bumps of the hills, the contours of the landscapes. Everything was fine, fine, fine. We eat the rice cakes you cooked, fresh from the picnic basket. The shrubberies. The weather was sunny and perfectly fine. The watch I gave you, you’re wearing it with pride. The conversations–the sanguine feel of it and the clouds at the background. I think it hurts. Peeling off the skin of my lips, I mean. I think of the past, the watch I gave you, the time must have been four in the afternoon, the winds just playing with the shrubberies. The grasses. Everything’s on display for us. The rice cakes tasted good, the roasted coffee fresh. Nipa huts at the distance. It hurts, peeling this. I wish I could have waved my hands too, but I was driving. At the field we’re looking at the kite and it suddenly crashed. We heard a gunshot. In war movies we’re forced to watch the birds fly with fear.
Everyone’s firing everywhere. All the sounds a gun can make. Like drums slammed so hard it exploded. I wish the strong winds could stop the bullets. It was harsh–the blood on my lips, the broken mirror of this bathroom, bodies everywhere. All the letters forgotten on the bunk beds, still and crying, the blots scattering through the whiteness of the paper until it reaches the border, and it drops. The tears are gray with all the letters and the sentences and the paragraphs of dreams, of longing, of retreat, and it drops on the pillow with the dried tears of malaria and battle fatigue. It was scary. I don’t think it’s best to reply anymore. Any sober man couldn’t, in this situation. We think of tactics and we send the memories off some distant plane in our mind. We’re good with it. We’re trained to do it. Pictures are plastered the other way around so your face kisses the wall. Everything should be drab. Everything is steel and wood and camouflage and dull. Don’t let emotions consume you, they say, before we enter the battlefield. It’s true, though I think it’s more sober to do the opposite. Lick the blood on my lips. Pull the trigger. Think of the blue skies and the reprimands of my mother. The bluest days. The drafts I’ve been keeping on my bunk bed. Why couldn’t your key fit in the doorknob? you asked.
We’re still on the red convertible and you said your umbrella looks dainty because it was laced and that it was yellow. You look good eating watermelons, the juice of it leaving your lips wet and plump. It’s hard to eat watermelons, you say, ‘coz it always drips. Now I’m crying. Here in the barracks crying is a taboo for the generals, but we privates always cry in the bathroom. It’s against the code, Benitez would say. He’s a stone-cold general, his eyes stiff from all the blood he had seen. My tears sometimes wet my lips and I couldn’t peel it off because it becomes moist. I couldn’t fit in the key because of the wave that’s closing in, marching a mile a day. I suddenly knew the answers. I wish the strong winds could calm the birds. I fear for them. Have you passed through this night where you wake up and wash your face in the bathroom, and after all the water dripped from your face you’d be wondering why your cheeks are still wet? Because I’m crying, and it’s a taboo. I wash my face and mask my tears with tap water. Where does this great evil come from? You couldn’t put yourself to cook; you said your rice cakes might taste like vengeance. Blood on my lips again. I couldn’t fit in the key because I think it hurts. They are closing in.
