IT was almost six in the morning when the bus entered the city. It has been two years and nearly three months that I have been away from this city. Has it changed? Have the people shifted in their ways? But why even ask the question, you might say.
I was on my way to the first face-to-face meeting of our group, the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino. In the first few months, we believed in the lockdown until we opted for the new method. We started meeting online. It was possible to do that because by that time there was technology that would allow us to see each other, ask each other questions. The first time we did that we shared our anxieties. We questioned this isolation. But we soldiered on. In those two years, we did not miss a year to hand out the Gawad Urian, still the most prestigious prize a filmmaker can receive locally.
Now, I am back in the city and there are different forms of barriers. Buses were no more allowed to enter the center of the city. A huge, sprawling terminal was built at Parañaque that could allow an ease of welcoming travelers; contrary to this aim, the place is disorderly. Where the sign said “Unloading,” the place was “Loading.” The area that was meant for private cars was blocked by motorcycles offering rides. There were signages all over the place but they were of no help. I found my way by breaking the rule.
I was back in the city then. Nothing has changed. This place was bad with the system but no virus cleared it of that flaw.
Lodging in the hotel, I spent the first few days looking over the roofs of the houses in front. Was the silence imagined? How many died from that household? How many survived?
At the beginning of the pandemic, we humans felt we were threatened. Nature was against us. The forces of the universe worked opposite where the forces of one’s life were going. That threat was no more. The cafes have opened and restaurants dared to offer new cuisine.
I had to see the place where I lived. I needed to look at least at the gate to the compound where for more than three decades I thrived, despairing at the incongruousness of the lifestyle in the city, celebrating with bravado my own little victories. But there were neighbors, too, I missed.
Is Loida still there, with her amazing barbecue and endless updates on who are new arrivals? On the blistering rumors across the street. The night I was rushing to catch a car for the bus terminal, she was there telling me of medicine that could counter any virus. Serpentina it was called. She asked why I was leaving. Is it safer in the province? Who will take care of your things in the apartment? There is my Grab. See you soon. Prof (that was how she addressed me always), I am leaving for Tarlac. Soon.
If this were a cinema, Loida’s last shot was of the sheen on her eyes looking over the meat and blood she was ministering over with her special sauce, the embers from the coals casting deep, deep folds over the rotund face.
Do I say goodbye to Oning, the sweet and tough sari-sari store owner, and assure her things will be alright? Things are never “ok” for her always. She thinks through events, a natural critical thinker she is. Her case is an example of how one need not be over-educated to possess a mind ready to analyze things, to break the elements of a discourse, and appraise them for what they are —a charlatan’s weave or a pedant’s exorbitant exercise in academicism.
Her back turned to me (as was her habit), Oning waved as she held a dustpan, her hand dismissive and yet aware of my fare-thee-well.
My cab was now crossing Roces. Too many bakeries and they are all bannering their entrepreneurial spirit. Boutique stores selling everything from T-shirts and dresses were standing side by side with spa and more eateries. Many humans perhaps died, and yet businesses that allowed families to live thrived.
The wide squatters’ territory bisecting two major Scout streets stand. Nothing informal about this habitat. They too confronted the virus and, perhaps, suffered more economically. Are they all vaccinated?
Where before power was about solidarity and organizing, in the post- or near-post pandemic era, social structures uphold inequalities and the system favoring the dynamism of hunger vis-a-vis surplus. Nothing much has changed about the poor. They are still viral as economic plagues but virulent as elements for votes. The talks continue of them as threatening the social equilibrium but when time for major decisions arrive (as in elections), they are the pawns, the cogs that move the machine for a while but disposable when the well-oiled machinery could run already on golden capital.
The street where I used to live was one of the first to be barricaded, with the health and barangay officials thinking that physical barriers could stop the spread of the dreaded virus. Those blockades never helped in arresting any virus from infecting a household, and another household, till the diseased felt uncountable.
Nothing of these gatekeeping constructions could be seen now. The sensed standard of maintaining distance from each other seemed to be a thought of an era quickly gone. My village was no different from the rest. The health officials had not yet declared the end of that era where the immaterial got hold of our souls and blew them away. But we somehow feel it.
I am back. In fact, if I had not given up the place I was renting, I could always open that old, green gate and enter my room, and start all over again. Or live again in a world where no masks are required, where shields, additional cover for the face had not yet manifested its presence as a prophylactic against the spread of anything that is wind-borne or contacted through skin-to-skin tactility.
And yet the fact is we have reached a world development where countries mark or make boundaries, where the underdeveloped countries do not have the monopoly of being bearers of viruses or other infirmities.
My cab continued its tour. This time, I called the attention of the taxi driver to the fact of my return. I wanted him to show surprise, or display happiness for this passenger who may have been his customer days back when no disease could ever hold the world hostage. He showed, however, no interest. I felt silly. I thought all the while some random individuals would be amazed at what happened to me. But people who left the city were all coming back and there is no gift from that process. He would not be happier just because we came back. I do not even see why it would matter to him that we had come back.
Am I back in Baudelaire’s city, where “all we need to do is stroll about with our eyes open,” where “Life swarms with innocent monsters?”
I know now why this city survives. It is because it never gets to know its beastly mark. It continues on with its innocence, that which frames our lives and makes our death recognizable and acceptable. And oh-so-well-human.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com
Image credits: Jimbo Albano