Francisco Jose - Three Filipino Women

“That’s a lot better,” I said. “Don’t regard me — men — as your enemy although you will perhaps eventually do that. Some of us can fall in love, too, even with girls like you …”

“Oh?”

“Love is blind, or haven’t you heard?”

“That’s for the birds,” she said quickly. “I keep my head all the time.”

“Sometime in the future, you’ll slip. There are girls right in Camarin who fork over their earnings to boyfriends. They buy cars for their men while they ride in jeepneys.”

“That will never happen to me,” she said grimly. “All the money I will make will be for me. For me alone.”

“And the first is ten thousand.”

She laughed softly, that easy laughter which I would always remember. “Actually,” she explained, “it will only be five. Fifty percent will go to Didi.”

“At that rate,” I said, “it will have to be a rich Chinese sari-sari store owner who will deflower you. Only they can afford it.”

“Do you know one?”

I shook my head.

“And of course, you won’t give up ten thousand for one night of the wildest pleasure you have ever known,” she said. “Look, I have read several sex books, including that crazy Kama Sutra. ”

“Not on the first night,” I said. “You will be in pain.”

“But only the first time.”

“There will be no second time for me,” I said. “I am not a teenager anymore.”

“I will make you feel like one again.”

“Not for ten thousand. But if you are willing to have it in installments …”

She pouted again.

“Maybe, one of my foreign friends. One of these days, I’m certain …”

“I speak Spanish, French and, of course, English. A smattering of Visayan and Ilokano, too. Learned them when I was young …”

“Good to know about your gift for language,” I said.

I told her that the cult of virginity was fast disappearing as sociological surveys at the University of the Philippines and other schools had shown; that it is only the conservative male who still holds to it in the hope that his virgin wife will be more faithful and his ego satisfied.

“Was your wife a virgin when you married her?”

“Of course,” I said. Lydia and I had premarital relations but she was a virgin when I first took her.

“And what if she wasn’t?” Although the question was hypothetical, it was disturbing just the same.

When I visited Ermi again the following week, she already had a nickname. She was called Dies Mil —or ten thousand, and there were still no takers. She was already Camarin’s most popular girl and men were often there early so they could have her at their table, watch her, listen to her. I could not get her the second time — a balding, middle-aged man had tabled her the whole evening till closing time but was not prepared to part with ten thousand.

Ermi was brighter than I when it came to analyzing relationships. I had thought that in the end ours would be strengthened by the business that I had brought her. But it was I who brought her the man who paid her ten thousand. She never thanked me for it and looking back I think that she loathed me instead for having started her off.

In the mid-sixties, a “Great Leader” from a neighboring country came incognito to Manila for what seemed to be his last fling. He was suffering from gout, high blood pressure and all the ailments with which frenzied high living ravishes the aging body. I got a call that afternoon from his embassy; he had just arrived and he made it clear to his ambassador that he needed a young girl for the night. The ambassador was a dull, colorless bureaucrat who relied on his cultural attaché for this sort of expertise. I happened to know the attaché—one of the multinationals I represented had interests in his country’s massive oil resources and it was natural for me to ingratiate myself with him.

My introducing the Great Leader to Ermi pleased everyone. Two months afterwards, Ermi got a house in Forbes Park and when I saw her again, she was no longer being tabled at Camarin although she still dropped in and made appointments there. Now, she was a prominent item in Didi’s stable; she was on call for three thousand pesos a night and in the sixties, that was very good money.

By then, too, I was drawn to the Camarin more often. I deluded myself into thinking that I was really involved with research, amassing new insights from Didi and her girls. It was Ermi, of course, whom I really wanted to see before she stepped out for the night; it was she who, I hoped, would be able to have a little time at my table, crumbs before a starveling.

We were able to talk briefly on occasion and she attended to me, perhaps out of her initial gratitude for introducing her to the “Great Man.”

She agreed to go to the Luneta one Sunday afternoon and we met at the Hilton lobby then walked over to the park where there was a symphony concert. It was one of those translucent October afternoons, the sky was clean and blue, and the breeze from the sea was cool. She had on a light maroon dress and white high heeled shoes, and she walked with me rather self-consciously for almost everyone was in casual dress, in jeans, and here she was, strikingly handsome as always, making the plain dress so elegant, people looking at her. “I hope,” she said, nudging my arm, “they don’t think I am giving a fashion show.”

She liked the music, the overtures of several ballets, but we did not stay in the open air theatre long; we moved on to the Chinese garden where we found a stone bench to sit on, watching the people pass, the lovers entwined in each other’s arms under the trees in the gathering twilight.

Several people knew of her success by then although she was reticent about it. But we spoke of it anyhow. “Bring me more like him,” she said, laughing, “so I can have a dozen houses in Forbes Park.”

“And how is your house there?”

She was all seriousness again. “No addresses, no telephone numbers …”

“Ermi — still mistrusting men. Even me after all this time. I don’t even know your family name and Didi’s so loyal, she refuses to give it. Don’t I deserve some trust?”

She smiled, her even teeth flashing. “Yes, Roly,” she said, pressing my hand. “I think you deserve some trust. My family name is Rojo.”

How could anyone miss that? The Rojos were extremely wealthy, an old Ermita family. Their original wealth in land had since the end of World War II been diversified into banking, manufacturing …

“I know what you are thinking,” she added quickly. “Not that clan of Rojo. I am not even a poor cousin.”

“ Was the poor one,” I corrected her. “You are getting rich now.”

I was not going to be a judge of her morals. I was no missionary out to vanquish sin from the face of Manila. Still, I said, “When are you going to retire? You can do that now, you know. I hear that the Great Leader gave you blue chip stocks in those companies that have investments in his country.”

“Retire? There are still many good years ahead of me. Not while I can command a good price …”

I was shocked at the revelation of her vaulting ambition, her greed. I should have loathed her or, knowing what kind of a person she was, I should have realized the futility of any personal attachment, the impossibility of its maturing into something warm, human, enduring. By then, I had known a bit of the prostitute’s psychology, the ruthlessness which marked her relationship with men, but I ignored these.

The revelation came slowly and when it finally became clear like sunrise, it seared me — the knowledge that I cared for her, that I wanted her to leave her kind of life. I was not going to tell her how I felt …