the zeppelin of burning dreams

NOISE

by Kilawinguwak

I was sitting outside the office of this publishing house a couple of weekends ago, waiting for my turn at a job interview. This office was once a five-storey townhouse building with whitewashed walls and old-school jalousie windows, some of which were these useless, dysfunctional pieces thanks to the accumulated dust, or pockmarks left by unknown airborne objects like rocks or haywire kamikaze birds. We &mdash myself and several other interviewees &mdash were in the townhouse's garage, seated on fragile monoblock chairs and trying to stay in the shade as much as we could, since heavy rain clouds were threading their way through the sky.

We were in an eerily quiet neighborhood. The building's air conditioning unit emitted an uncharacteristically hushed engine hum, like an amplified cricket's call. Few cars passed through the street, so save for the aircon's noise &mdash which soon blended into the background like a force of habit &mdash there was a uncomfortable void of sound.

This was a bit unsettling for me; I lived at the city center, nexus of vehicular traffic, street vendors, street hawkers, children at play and intermittent turf squabbles between hick backwater gangs peopled by maleducated teen-agers. Here in this unsteady vacuum, I felt like a plot element in a Twilight Zone episode.

Everybody at the publishing house &mdash from the staff to the maintenance people and down to the other applicants &mdash resembled somebody I knew from some place or another. Here was a woman who looked like a friend I'd been wanting to screw for ages; or there's a guy who was the spitting image of this person I knew in college. I even met this person who could be the identical twin of a well-known poet who had a fascination for really big hairdos. Except that this person was darker, and he slouched more.

I shifted in my seat a lot throughout the entire morning, trying to pay little attention to these oddments. It had been a bad morning, what with very little sleep coupled by a migraine; and then there was the cab ride to the publishing house's obscure location which had been a bit too expensive. I had to keep a very sharp lookout for an ATM machine all throughout the ride from my home.

Then there was the waiting time. The interview had been scheduled for nine in the morning, and here it was nearly noon and the only thing we had accomplished was this makeshift registration form made up of our names, the positions we were applying for, and contact numbers. The human resources team were still busy setting up the tools for the interview; I would later find out that of these tools, I'd be using a simple desktop computer and a Microsoft Word document, along with a short article from a magazine that I'd be asked to rewrite, with a given word limit and enough time to complete several other articles of equal length and watch an episode of Star Wars besides.

But back then, there I was in the waiting line, and the anticipation was nerve-wracking.

I kept myself busy; I fiddled with my resume, rearranged my seating positions and orchestrated several attempts to try and look impatient, furrowing my brows as I peered at the darkening skies through the garage's awning. I must have cleared my throat with phlegmy, hacking coughs a couple of times.

But really, I was at my wits' end back then. I couldn't imagine what in the world was taking so much time.

I began to fret after the first two hours. Bogus drops of rain began to pour just as I cursed, for the twelfth time that morning, all the bad luck I'd been having that day. Maybe some mystical force was blocking my way to a better lifestyle. I'd probably angered this deity or that saint, and this was his way of getting back at me, tantamount to dangling a piece of meat that would be just within reach if only I weren't held to the spot I was standing on by two-ton shoes carved out of rocks.

The babbling was even worse. I heard, through the thoughts racing in my head, the forced small-talk between some of the interviewees, as well as the stressed I'm-working-on-a-weekend-woohoo talk from the employees.

“Nice day for an interview eh?” said one of the graphics design applicants. He was speaking to the poet look-alike.

“It would've been, but I never expected the office to be this fucking far a commute,” replied the other guy. His loud polo shirt was damp at the back.

“Hot morning, stormy noontime. Somebody make yer mind up there, why don'cha?” complained one of the maintenance men. He threaded his way through the group of applicants with a stack of books hot from the press. Just outside the gate was their delivery van, engine idling, waiting for the day's first delivery. “Comin' thru!” he yelled.

The gate swung open with a loud crack from the deadbolt, and the loud creaking of its hinges gave the aircon's hum an alto accompaniment.

A pretty-looking girl from the group of applicants went up to the receptionist, who asked her to fill out an application form just like the ones we'd filled out earlier. “Oh no,” said the girl, “I was here yesterday. This is my second interview.”

The receptionist looked confused. “Er, can I have your resume? I'll need to double-check.”

“Can you believe this shit?” said the poet look-alike to the graphics design applicant in a hushed tone. “I mean, I'm from two cities away. The commute itself'd cost more than what I'd be earning.”

“Damn, that's fucked up,” agreed the graphics design applicant.

“Dude,” said a voice right beside me, “do you have the time?”

I jerked my head to where the voice came from. There was this stocky man who looked like this college friend of mine sitting there with a cigarette in his mouth. “The time for what?” I asked him, since I was a bit disoriented.

He shrugged, took a drag from his cigarette and blew smoke rings from the side of his mouth. “The time. I dunno.”

“Yes daddy daddy daddy,” said a high-pitched girl's voice from out of nowhere. “I remembered to bring everything I need. Yes, daddy. Yes daddy. Oh please, I can take care of myself. Bye. Yes. Good-bye.”

At the same time, one of the bosses went outside to talk to the guard. He talked to him about some shipment or other that was supposed to come in within the day. “I think they'd be delivering around seven or eight orders of the newsprint, so I want you to count them,” said the boss-man.

“What if they're missing an order?” asked the guard.

“Well, let me know. I'll just be inside; I need to oversee the layouting for the July issue of Personal Computers Unlimited.”

“ I don't know,” said the guard, “they might deliver it during lunchtime. You'll be out then.”

“Dude, do you have the time or not?” asked the cigarette person again.

I shook my head. “Man, I don't understand what it is you're asking me, exactly. The time for what? I mean, I'm just sitting here, waiting for the people inside to get things going. You know? I guess you could say that I had the time. I just don't know what it is you need my time for.”

If you listened closely, all these conversations were happening somewhat simultaneously, with time disparities between the beginning and end of this or that thread. I couldn't exactly follow them all, but the overall effect was like a treble to the aircon's overly loud cricket-call, punctuated from time to time by the gate's cacophonic creaking and tricycles passing through the street as the day wore on. The air was still; the tension was palpable, thick as a tightly-wound drumhead. Anytime now, it felt as if the tension could burst and then a babble of isolated events – or conversations &mdash would crash and then collapse into themselves, creating pockets of vacuum in the already silent environment.

I felt rather uneasy, sweating too much from the heavy and preppy clothes I was wearing, although you could also blame the long trek I had to undertake or even the unavoidable humidity before an impending shower, but the bottom line was that all these circumstances were making me dizzy and rather spastic. I think I reached a state of panic when all the conversations started to collapse into each other.

“Dude, what're you talking about?” asked the cigarette man.

Meanwhile, the girl with the high-pitched voice said, to nobody in particular, “I can't believe my dad! He just won't let me do things by myself!”

“I commuted here solo from the south,” said the poet look-alike.

“But I left my resume here yesterday.” There was a panicky tone to the pretty-looking girl's voice. “You must have it here somewhere.”

“Then talk to the receptionist,” said the boss man. “Tell her to make out a note for me. Just make sure of the number of orders they've delivered; that's the important thing.”

The graphics design applicant was grinning at the poet look-alike. “That's crap, man. I live in Antipolo. I had to trek my way here too.”

“Er,” I said uncertainly, “I'm talking about what you were asking?”

“Ah,” said the receptionist.

“Okay,” said the security guard.

The rain began to pitter-patter on the awning, startling everybody out of their conversations. The guard rushed back to the shelter of his guardhouse while the boss man leapt into the shade of the garage. When it saw that most everybody was out of range, the rain began to lay it on thick; thunderbolts, lightning zigzagging through the clouds, heavy rainfall, the works. In a few seconds, everybody could feel a shiver coming, and I could imagine the earth breathe a sigh of relief as the almighty piss of god caressed and comforted the heat away. I could've sworn that I saw rivulets of steam rising from the concrete.

“Dude,” said the cigarette man after staring at the rain for a couple of seconds, “I was asking you if you could tell me what time it was.”

“Oh,” I said. I was feeling better after seeing the rain and feeling its soothing coolness. It was probably going to be pretty humid again in twelve hours' time, and commuting back home would be a hellish ordeal during the downpour, but then and there, I was pretty comfortable. I whipped out my cellphone and checked the time display. It said that it was quarter to twelve. “It's nearly noon, dude.”

“Right. Thanks man.”

Our conversation brought the others back to their senses, and pretty soon, everybody was talking to each other &mdash or to nobody in particular, as with the girl with the high-pitched voice &mdash continuing their previous conversations, or talking about the sudden rain. The bossman went back into the office, and the receptionist, after asking the pretty-looking girl to wait for her while she went off to look for the missing resume, stepped into the cubicle room. Almost immediately after, she went back outside, told the group of applicants that the interviews were to begin shortly, and promptly retreated back into the cubicle room.

The cigarette man tossed his Marlboro to the ground and watched as the rain slowly drenched the embers and the roach. And me, I just sat there, watching the rain with a listless look until one of the maintenance men called out my name.

If you were to meet the mangtataho carting his wares up and down the streets of Santa Mesa, you'd notice that perhaps the one outstanding thing about him was that he only had one leg.

Given the chance, he'd tell you the story of how he'd lost his leg.  It doesn't surprise you that the story begins way back during the second world war, when the Japs had most of Manila under fire.  

He was hit by shrapnel from his left buttocks, down to his left leg, the spray ending abruptly just below the kneecap, like some sick twisted joke since the leg would be mere decoration on a war veteran's languishing corpse if it were only the upper leg that was rendered useless.

I mean, there's a separation there, somewhere.  Thigh and ankle,  the kneecap like a conjunction sitting there, like a queen.  Useless except where necessary.

And this taho vendor carted his wares about by attatching a unicycle on his stump.  "The spokes," he'd say with pride, "were made from the shrapnel embedded into my leg.  A total of three hundred shrapnel bits.  I had them melted into the wrought iron spindle that keeps my unicycle leg steady."

And he kept his business going with this awkward little contraption of his.  He was the superman of their baranggay, and he even guested on several important public events  by the local government.  True, he was a clown.  But he was a well-respected clown.

Until one day, when he committed himself to doing the one biggest act of heroism that ended up destroying his entire upper body, and ultimately, his life.

I don't really remember the details much, but then again, I never took too much time to look at the clown until after he'd finished the burning.  To think I was there when he began doing it, much like the self-destructive man from Richard Linklater's "Waking Life," except that he didn't want to completely destroy himself.  That mangtataho wanted to feel the pain all throughout, wanted to know just how many burns the human body could take before the brain started hemmorhaging from all the active, dying neurons.

It was called for weeks afterwards as one of the bravest artistic sensations in the city.  The mangtataho, whilst recuperating in the Philippine General Hospital for months afterwards, was a celebrity; people went to his room, disturbed his rest to revel in the deep-cut burn marks all throughout his torso, his good leg, the deep gashes in his back and the trail of circular burns throughout his arms, like stray lightning from the mess that was his body.  

He was a work of art, they said.  He was the nation's new hero.

The mangtataho laughed at this when I told him about it.  He was leaving the hospital then, moving to the country so that his family could take care of him (his unicycle had melted into a blob of shrapnel and metal, and was now grafted to his skin.  Metalworkers had formed a series of clamps on the metal plate that he could use to clamp peglegs and other such instruments of locomotion easily onto his leg.

"I didn't do it for fame or whatever," said the mangtataho, in the middle of laughing bouts.

I was helping him bring out his things from the hospital.  I'd read him a review by some national artist writer of the entire spectacle of his burning, and he'd cut me short with loud albeit pained guffaws when I read the line that praised him as if he were the second coming made flesh.

"Why did you do it?" I asked.

We were on the elevator.  He tapped his new wooden pegleg that had a rubber end to keep it firmly on the ground.  "This isn't even half as fun as my unicycle," he said.  "I'm going to miss that goddamned thing."

"Have another one made," I suggested.  "The labor and parts should be cheap, where you're going."

"You remember the whole thing, don't you?" he said.  "You were there, at that Dunkin' Donuts.   No sago on the taho, right?"

"Yeah," I said, grinning at the memory.

 

(to be continued)