Sabina Murray - The Caprices

“A Japanese officer cut them off,” he said. “He sent them back to Japan for a souvenir.”

Trinidad was eased to hear her grandmother’s comforting footsteps on the stairs. She stumbled out to the landing in her bare feet.

“ Ija , why are you up?”

“I had a bad dream. The Japanese will kill us.”

“There is a good chance that will happen. The best thing you can do is go back to bed and pray for us. Pray for our souls.”

“Even Jose’s?”

“Especially Jose’s. He really needs it.”

Trinidad went back to bed. She did not pray. She listened to that faint moaning, which was answered by her grandmother’s sweet whispers. Sometimes, when the wind was still, Trinidad could make out a few words. Once she heard her grandmother say, “I know you are lonely.” And once, “You could kill us all.”

But when the wind picked up, Trinidad was not sure if she had merely imagined those things.

One morning Trinidad followed Auring, who was carrying a bundle of rice and chicken wrapped in banana leaves, down the musty stairs. The air was moldy, damp and thick, but through this dull odor cut the acrid scent of urine — not cat piss, or rats; the smell was a distinctly human one. There was the door with the grating, as Miguel had said. There was the key on the nail. Auring, whispering softly, held the package up to the grating. Trinidad did not breathe. She watched in silence. A slender, white hand reached through the darkness, like a pale shoot pushing through soil. The nails were long and yellow. The hand took the small green package and slipped back into the mystery behind the door.

“Auring, who is that?”

Auring turned quickly, her hand held tight to her heart. “You will kill me,” she said.

“Who is that?”

“Your grandmother will be angry.”

“Only if I tell her.”

It is a sad story. This woman in the basement is Trinidad’s aunt. She killed a man, slit his throat with a kitchen knife. Mrs. Garcia hid her in the basement. She told the police that her daughter had escaped. This was in 1930. Since then, she has not left the basement.

The woman is mad.

Auring unwrapped the white handkerchief that was on her wrist for a bandage. There was a dark brown stain on the inside of the cloth. This was Auring’s blood. Trinidad remembered the suspicious scarf that her grandmother had started wearing.

“She scratched me,” Auring said.

Trinidad looked at the scratch. It was deep with ragged edges. The scab had dried in yellow, crystal-like crusts. Auring’s skin was thin, like onionskin Bible paper. Her veins were blue and prominent. Liver spots covered her arms in purples and pinks.

“Aren’t you scared to feed her?”

“What is a scratch?” Auring said. “One day she will escape and kill us all, if the Japanese don’t get us first.”

“What is her name?”

Auring seemed surprised at the question. Perhaps because it was so predictable.

“Her name is Trinidad.”

Shori thinks this village is hell on earth. It is only ten miles from Cabanatuan, the POW camp for American soldiers, which makes the natives surly. They know what goes on in the camp, and this constant proximity to cruelty and death has made them callous. He has the worst servants in the world. Their Japanese is terrible, and Shori, unlike some other officers, has learned no Tagalog. They are impervious to threats. Occasionally, he remembers that in Japan he had no servants and wasn’t much more than a civil servant himself. Last time this thought entered his head, he beat the maid about her head with a shoe. She did not seem to care. She thought he was going to kill her. When he didn’t, she looked down on him. But he did not kill her then. He would not do that for her, because her thoughts were of no consequence. Today he would beat her, because that was his whim. Tomorrow, he might decapitate her. He stands on the small balcony that extends out from his bedroom and looks over the street. He cannot sleep in this infernal heat. Some officers have the servants fan them during their nap, but Shori knows this is asking for a bolo in the gullet. He watches his maid go through the gate. What can she be up to? Shori yells to her.

She bows her head there in the street. She does this reflexively, so that she is bowing to no one, just bowing to the road in the direction of the town square. A thin, dirty dog hobbles by.

“Where are you going?” shouts Shori.

“To my sister’s, sir,” she says, addressing the dirt.

Shori remembers that he has given her permission to do this.

“You must tell me everything that is said.”

Shori realizes what he has ordered. Will she tell him of whatever it is that women discuss? Will she tell him about babies? About dresses? About shampoo?

“I know that your sister is a guerrilla sympathizer!” he shouts after her.

The maid bows in the street again. She thinks that her fate and the fate of the whole village rest in the hands of this halfwit. Shori glares at her. How dare she think such thoughts. Luckily, he is too important to mind what she is thinking.

Trinidad will have to work efficiently. She does not even know what kind of man this Shori is, or what exactly she will say to him. She wonders if what the American said — if every Filipino killed one Japanese, the war would be over — is true, since he was hallucinating and half dead anyway. And he didn’t kill any Japanese, but he sure as hell killed a whole houseful of Filipinos. All those Orosas dead. She remembered when the Japanese found out. They dragged the American into the street. The neighbors looked at each other’s faces — the eyes — to see who the collaborator was. That was the first time Trinidad saw Shori. That was the first time she saw the ring.

The American begged Shori to let the Orosas go. He was so skinny, so close to the grave, it didn’t seem worth killing him. The children had been joking about the American all week. “How did he get through the fence at Cabanatuan? He walked.” Which was some local variation on the old “He’s so skinny that when it’s raining, he doesn’t even get wet.” They explained away the fact that he hadn’t been shot with the same clever joke.

It wasn’t Shori’s sword that lopped off the American’s head. And Shori didn’t kill the Orosas, although he did order that they be taken away — all of them, even the baby. But Shori is in charge in this small town. Every man, woman, and child bows to him. Every horse, house, and field belongs to him. Every dog shits because Shori has wished it, every fly buzzes because Shori allows it. Trinidad knows all of this, just as she knows that today the house will be empty. But she needs to be patient.

So much of war is waiting.

This afternoon Mrs. Garcia is taking the bus with Jose to the neighboring town to visit her cousin Lourdes. She does this every Friday. Now that she has Trinidad to care for, keeping up the Friday trip gets harder and harder. But she is the only one who visits the old woman. Imagine. She herself an old woman, visiting another. All the men are gone. She’s lucky to have Jose around. He too would leave, crawl into the mountains, become a guerrilla, but he is too deformed to be of much use, even though he is clever. Jose is looking out the window. A group of Japanese soldiers are wading through a rice paddy, rifles ready. They flash by so quickly that Mrs. Garcia isn’t even sure she saw them.

“Did you see that?” asks Jose.

“Don’t let them see you looking.” She says this more as a constant reminder than in response to current danger.

“An American must have escaped.”

Mrs. Garcia did not want to leave Trinidad. She’s worried about the child, but this is the same reason she doesn’t want her on the bus. Who knows what she might say and who might hear it? When Trinidad first came to the province, she wouldn’t speak. Now she speaks all the time, crazy stuff. What do you expect? Intramuros had been emptied of everyone she knew, and there she was — little Trinidad, wandering around. No one knows where her parents are, or Miguel, or what happened to the house. Mrs. Garcia pushes a tear off her cheek with the back of her hand. She grimaces when she does this, as though dust has irritated her eyes. Yes, her stupid son probably was keeping a radio. All those years of law school down the drain.