Francisco Jose - Three Filipino Women

After our first weekend in Baguio, I noticed a change in my attitude towards the girls in Camarin. Although I still needed them to service my clients, I dropped Ermi from my list. I still went there and sat with one of the girls for drinks or some banter and though the urge was often strong, I started sublimating it with meditation, with my writing. I no longer brought any of the Camarin girls to my apartment. It was easy for me to understand why; though I never told her, it was my regard for Ermi that inhibited me. I just did not feel right anymore making it with any of them, and not because I had abstained from Ermi, either. Maybe, it was a form of loyalty, and considering Ermi’s work, it could easily be misconstrued as a perversity. I had never believed in man’s monogamous nature and had rather presumed that my sexual needs could never be leashed. Now, I understood how it could be done, without compulsion, not by religious sanctions, not by social constrictions but by that self-willed and strongest bond of all. The knowledge of what love could do gladdened me, surprised me. I was not too old to learn.

The Puesto opened the following year in November. Ermi leased a corner lot on Pasay Avenue, close to Makati. The restaurant was small compared to the plush establishments in the area. Fortunately, the adjoining lot was empty and she promptly rented it for parking. I helped her with suggestions, the decor, how to make good coffee so that people would go there for it and cakes as well. It did not specialize in any particular cuisine. What was offered was almost like home cooking and it could be French, Italian, Chinese, Spanish — whatever was available fresh from the Quezon City markets where she did the shopping herself.

There was nothing pretentious about the Puesto — the tiled front roof, the grilled door, the picture windows which were curtained in the lower portion so that one could have a view of the inside but not of the people eating. The chairs were comfortable, the napkins were of white cloth, the tablecloths in dark red. Ermi’s houseplants were all over the place — trailing lantanas, parlor ivy, orchids — hanging from the ceiling, in corners, lush and jungly in the doorway. They gave the Puesto its ambience. She hired a pretty hostess from the University of the Philippines while she herself sat in the booth near the cashier where she could not readily be seen by the customers but where she had a view of the kitchen around the corner, the small bar, and the counter for cakes and pastries. The baking was done right on the premises and the cooking which she often supervised was in a spotless kitchen that was half exposed to the customers so that they could see the food being prepared through glass panels. Even the comfort room was spotless. She had a passion for cleanliness as she, herself, took good care of her personal hygiene.

The inauguration of the restaurant was very quiet — just me and her “family” whom I met for the first time.

But even after having gone out with her several times, what did I really know about her? That she was born after the war but would not tell me her birthday. That her mother was in America, that her father was a Japanese soldier although there was hardly any trace of Japanese in her features except for her clean, creamy complexion which she could have gotten from her mother. She had a house in Forbes Park which she rented out. She was easily scared and could get hysterical. She had, she said, “executed” all the men who loved her after she had gotten what she wanted or after the affair had become sticky. I had nothing — just memories. She had not given me a copy of the pictures I took of her in Baguio although she showed them to me. It is not that I regretted giving her small things, a box of chocolates, a book of crossword puzzles, or records when I returned from Hong Kong.

I suspected that through the few times that we had been together, she had begun to confide in me. I had tried to learn more about her from Didi but Didi was an impregnable repository of secrets. She was now preparing to immigrate to the United States; she had tired of what she was doing in Camarin but more than that, she was beginning to reel with the onslaught of the malaise that had battered most of us, the dishonesty, the deceit that pervaded public life and business as well. “I gave you her phone number, Roly, something I have never done — and only because I know you love her. What you need to know you must get from her. Is her past really all that important since you love her?”

It was not; I took Ermi as she was.

We went to Baguio again. Now, I felt guilty, using up her time without her profitting from me. I owed her a lot now. I was no different from the traditional tenant farmer, forever indebted to his landlord, a serf who can no longer pay his debts in full no matter how hard he works.

Again, I held back. She was amazed at my self-control; she said no one would believe that we had shared a room just so we could talk. But that was what really happened.

By then, her restaurant was flourishing. I hoped that she had already stopped her kind of living but there were evenings when I dropped by the Puesto and she was not there. When I called up her house, she was not there either. I would then be torn with anxiety, anger even, wondering who had taken her out and to what hotel. She had told me to blot these from my mind and I had tried. God, I really tried but it was not possible.

We were at Mario’s that early evening, this restaurant along Session Road, and she had ordered spaghetti with meat sauce which she liked very much. She was feeling naughty. “Always remember,” she said half seriously, within earshot of the waiter who was showing me the dressings for the chef’s salad, “that I am collecting men, just as you are collecting memories.”

“Even now, you are playing with me,” I said.

She looked at me, the mischief gone from her eyes. “No, Roly,” she said. “I am not playing with you.”

“How long has it been?” I asked myself rather than her. “There is no waking hour that you are not in my mind — during the day, even when I am engrossed in my work, and at night when I am in bed. All of a sudden, you are there and when I close my eyes, I can see you.” There was another thought which riled but I did not want to plead or beg. “So, when my time comes, let me prepare the coffin at least …”

She looked down and was silent. Close to the window, by the street, a Filipino boy and two American girls were having fun and their laughter seemed to fill the whole restaurant. When Ermi raised her head again, she looked at me and in the flicker of that single candlelight, her face was all seriousness. “I think of you a lot,” she mumbled and then, as if disturbed by her confession, she started working the spaghetti into her fork and shook her head slowly as if she wanted to deny what she had just uttered.

It was more than I had asked or hoped for. It seemed as if in that tenuous instant, all the burdens that had weighed me down were finally lifted. In the many times that we had talked, she had always been this solid rock, an enigma, and there was so little of her thoughts that I could divine, the real feelings that moved her. Was she finally thawing to become the woman I coveted and not the Ermi who was sought after by everyone at Camarin? I was in a state of euphoria, eating my salad without really tasting it, when a man walked to our table.

“Ermi,” he greeted her, holding her shoulder, all attention on her as if I did not exist. “Fancy seeing you here.”

She turned to me. “This is Andy Meadows, Roly.”

Andy glanced at me and grinned. “We have met,” he said, winking. I stood up and shook his hand. He was at ease in the heavy army jacket he was wearing. More niceties, he would like to join us but a couple of his business associates were coming. When he finally left to take a table close to the window, Ermi said simply, “He has proposed to me …”