Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon

Then the haze dissolves, the atmosphere suddenly becomes as limpid as a child's eyes, and for about an hour they can see to infinity. They are steaming into an arena of immense thunderheads with lightning cork screwing down through them all around. Flat grey clouds like shards of broken slate peek out between anvils. Behind them are higher clouds vaulting halfway to the moon, glowing pink and salmon in the light of the setting sun. Behind that, more clouds nestled within banks of humidity like Christmas ornaments wrapped in tissue paper, expanses of blue sky, more thunderheads exchanging bolts of lightning twenty miles long. Skies nested within skies nested within skies.

It was cold up there in Shanghai, and it's gotten warmer every day since. Some days it's even been hot and muggy. But around the time Manila heaves into view, a warm breeze springs up over the deck and all of the Marines sigh, as if they have all ejaculated in unison.

Manila's spreading tile roofs have a mestizo shape about them, half-Spanish and half-Chinese. The city has a concave seawall with a flat promenade on the top. Strollers turn and wave to the Marines; some of them blow kisses. A wedding party is gushing down the steps of a church and across the boulevard to the seawall, where they are getting their pictures taken in the flattering peach-colored light of the sunset. The men are in their fancy, gauzy Filipino shirts, or in U.S. military uniforms. The women are in spectacular gowns and dresses. The Marines holler and whistle at them and the women turn towards them, hitching up their skirts slightly so that they won't trip, and wave enthusiastically. The Marines get woozy and practically fall overboard.

As their ship is easing into its dock, a crescent-shaped formation of flying fish erupts from the water. It moves away like a dune being blown across the desert. The fish are silver and leaf-shaped. Each one strikes the water with a metallic click, and the clicks merge into a crisp ripping noise. The crescent glides beneath a pier, flowing around its pilings, and disappears in the shadows underneath.

Manila, the Pearl of the Orient, early on a Sunday evening, the 7th of December, 1941. In Hawaii, on the other side of the Date Line, it is only just past midnight. Bobby Shaftoe and his comrades have a few hours of freedom. The city is modern, prosperous, English-speaking, and Christian, by far the wealthiest and most advanced city in Asia, practically like being back home in the States. For all its Catholicity, it has areas that seem to have been designed, from the foundation-stones upwards, to the specifications of horny sailors. You get to those parts of town by turning right once your feet are on dry land.

Bobby Shaftoe turns left, politely excuses himself past a legion of excited prostitutes, and sets his course on the looming walls of Intramuros. He stops only to buy a sheaf of roses from a vendor in the park, who is doing land-office business. The park and the walls above it are crowded with strolling lovers, the men mostly in uniforms and the women in demure but stunning dresses, twirling parasols on their shoulders.

A couple of fellows driving horse-drawn taxis want to do business with Bobby Shaftoe but he turns them down. A taxi will only get him there faster, and he is too nervous to get there fast. He walks through a gate in the wall and into the old Spanish city.

Intramuros is a maze of buff-colored stone walls rising abruptly from narrow streets. The first-floor windows along the sidewalks are guarded by black ironwork cages. The bars swell, swirl, and sprout finedly hammered leaves. The second stories hang out overhead, sporting gas lights that are just now being lit by servants with long, smoking poles. The sound of laughter and music drifts out of the windows above, and when he passes by the archways that open into the inner courtyards, he can smell flowers back in the gardens.

Damned if he can tell these places apart. He remembers the street name of Magallanes, because Glory told him once it was the same thing as “Magellan.” And he remembers the view of the cathedral from the Pascuals' window. He wanders around a block a couple of times, certain that he is close. Then he hears an exaltation of girlish laughter coming from a second-story window, and moves toward it like a jellyfish sucked into an intake pipe. It all comes together. This is the place. The girls are all gossiping, in English, about one of their instructors. He does not hear Glory's voice but he thinks he hears her laughter.

“Glory!” he says. Then he says it louder. If they hear him, they pay him no mind. Finally he winds up and flings the bouquet of roses like a potato-masher grenade over the wooden railing, through a narrow gap between the mother-of-pearl shutters, and into the room.

Miraculous silence from within the room, and then gales of laughter. The nacre shutters part with slow, agonizing coyness. A girl of nineteen steps out onto the balcony. She is dressed in the uniform of a nursing student. Iris as white as starlight shining on the North Pole. She has let her long black hair down to brush it, and it stirs languidly in the evening breeze. The last ruddy light of the sunset makes her face glow like a coal. She hides behind the bouquet for a moment, buries her nose in it, inhales deeply, peeking out at him over the blossoms with her black eyes. Then she lowers the bouquet gradually to reveal her high cheeks, her perfect little nose, the fantastic sculpture of her lips, and teeth, white but fetchingly crooked, barely visible. She is smiling.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Bobby Shaftoe says, “your cheekbones are like a fucking snowplow.”

She puts her finger to her lips. The gesture of anything touching Glory's lips puts an invisible spear through Shaftoe's chest. She eyes him for a while, establishing, in her own mind, that she has the boy's attention and that he is not going anywhere. Then she turns her back on him. The light grazes her buttocks, showing nothing but suggesting cleavage. She goes back inside and the shutter glides shut behind her.

Suddenly the room full of girls becomes quiet, except for occasional ripples of suppressed laughter. Shaftoe bites his tongue. They are screwing it all up. Mr. or Mrs. Pascual will notice their silence and become suspicious.

Ironwork clangs and a big gate swings open. The potter beckons him inside. Shaftoe follows the old fellow down the black, arched tunnel of the porte-cochere. The hard soles of his shiny black shoes skid on the cobblestones. A horse back in the stable whinnies at the smell of his aftershave. Sleepy American music, slow-dance stuff from the Armed Forces station, spills tinnily from a radio in the porter's nook.

Flowering vines grow up the stone walls of the courtyard. It is a tidy, quiet, enclosed world, almost like being indoors. The porter waves him in the direction of one of the stairways that lead up to the second floor. Glory calls it the entresuelo and says that it's really a floor between the floors, but it looks like a full-fledged, regular floor to Bobby Shaftoe. He mounts the steps and looks up to see Mr. Pascual standing there, a tiny bald man with glasses and a trim little mustache. He is wearing a short-sleeved shirt, American style, and khaki trousers, and slippers, and is holding a glass of San Miguel in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “Private Shaftoe! Welcome back,” he says.

So. Glory has decided to play this one by the book. The Pascuals have been alerted. A few hours of socializing now stand between Bobby Shaftoe and his girl. But a Marine is never fazed by such setbacks.

“Begging your pardon, Mr. Pascual, but I am a corporal now.”

Mr. Pascual puts his cigarette in his mouth and shakes Corporal Shaftoe's hand. “Well, congratulations! I just saw your uncle Jack last week. I don't think he had any idea you were on your way back.”