Free Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco Page A

I heard the honking of a horn, the clicking of a turn signal. “Not here,” she said to the driver. “Enter at the Tamarind Street gate.”
    “New York is beautiful, Granma. Fifth Avenue is all lit up for Christmas and it’s not even December yet. I wish you were here. How’s life as governor?”
    “Hello, can you hear me? The line’s cutting out.”
    “Granma? Hello? I said, how’s the governorship?”
    “Great, actually. You would have enjoyed it. It would have made your grandfather so happy.”
    “Granma . . .”
    “And your father would have looked down from heaven and been so proud. Because you’d be a statesman, just like he was.”
    “Granma, please, don’t—”
    “It’s very fulfilling, you know. It keeps me awfully busy. Which is good. Especially in this season, when everyone wants something from you.”
    “I heard about the president’s latest scandal.”
    “Which one?”
    “The links to the bombings.”
    “Oh. That will pass.”
    “There are others?”
    “Each one is the same. They’re always trying to impeach him. Always suspecting him of being on the verge of declaring martial law. But their parliament of the streets is just mob rule.”
    “So the scandals aren’t true?”
    “What’s true?”
    “That he’s on the verge of declaring—?”
    “I meant, what’s true?”
    “Aw, Granma, can’t you do anything? Aren’t there people in government who . . . I don’t know. People like you.”
    “Oh, sweetheart. What can anyone do? That’s just the way things are. You really think you can change the world?”
    “I can be part of the change.”
    “What would you change?”
    “Everything.”
    “What would be different?”
    “I don’t know. It would just be better.”
    “I don’t think we can really change anything. It’s too difficult.”
    “Granma, please don’t say that.”
    “Anyway, I’m home already. Your grandfather’s home. I have to go before he sees me on the phone.”
    “You don’t
have
to tell him it was me.”
    “I better go. What time is it there in New York? You better get to bed.”
    “Bye, Granma.”
    “I love you, Miguelito.”
    “Love you, too.”
    *
    But Dominador is like a bull. He pushes Antonio off with his powerful arms. With a press of the button, the villain unsheathes his switchblade. “I’m going to stick this in your gut,” he growls, “and turn you on like a tap.” Our hero reaches to draw his trusty pistol, but doesn’t. It wouldn’t be fair. Dominador sneers. “Where’s your big gun?” he says. Antonio smiles. “Here in my pants,” he replies. “But I don’t take it out for ugly pigs like you.” He assumes a kung fu stance and motions Dominador closer. His opponent closes in, slicing the air between them.
    —from
Manila Noir
(page 57), by Crispin Salvador
    *
    I pass the night at a cheap pension near the Manila airport. My flight to Bacolod leaves early tomorrow.
    The traffic was too heavy to venture farther. I sat in the back of a taxi as it inched along a cordon of traffic cones, across the broad highway from a wall of fire swallowing blocks of shanties. Black shades of men and their hulking machines moved and shimmered against the backdrop of wrestling yellows and reds and oranges. Inplaces, spires of brilliant blue leaped and twirled and fell and shifted colors. The taxi driver and I sat transfixed, our faces pressed to the warm windows. “Two more blasts,” said the Bombo Radyo announcer, in his rapid-fire Tagalog, “at the duty-free store outside Ninoy Aquino International Airport have resulted in fires spreading to nearby residences. Let us hope, my friends, and let us pray, that the rains will aid the brave firefighters in their heroic task.”
    A couple of times when Crispin went on about his exile being heroic, I began to wonder. What was it really that kept him from returning to Manila? I even asked him once, and he said living abroad was harder. That it took more guts to be an international writer. But