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The Town of Sadness and Its Floods
By Jeffrey V. Tolentino
Joseph woke up, and felt his neck hurting. The rain has stopped. He straightened himself in his seat and looked around. Some of the passengers are still sleeping; he found the rest outside. He stood up, took his bag that was beside him and went out.
The moment he stepped down the bus warm sunlight struck his face. He welcomed the comfort and then unzipped and took his jacket off his shoulders. Unlike half his generation, he possessed the physique of a modern man. He has a conspicuously thick neck, and broad shoulders. Underneath his shirt, one can recognize powerful chests and a flat stomach. And at the age of nineteen, he hasn't stopped growing up yet.
He scanned the crowd around him. Most are having breakfast on improvised canteens organized beside the road. He went to one of the tables and ordered a cup of coffee from a woman as old as his mother. He paid five pesos for the coffee, although it may seem a high price he chose not to bargain. He reasoned it was not his place.
After he took a sip from his moderately warm cup of coffee, he questioned the woman about the condition of the road. She answered him in a somewhat jaded tone: It's still high. Reluctantly, he asked her about the weather, she answered tersely: It's gone.
A man passing from behind brushed his side. He recognized him instantly: the driver of the bus. The driver caught his benign stare, and understood. The driver looked up to heaven as if in praise and said to him: If God wills, we may be on the road again after this day. Joseph found himself massaging his neck after the driver left.
He spent half his morning standing beside a tree looking at his fellow men caught in this misfortune. Quite unbelievably, it looks to him that they are happy and content. Inside himself, he too felt a familiar but infrequent feeling of happiness: a break from routines.
While he was quietly celebrating the moment he caught sight of the woman from whom he bought his coffee. He considered her face, even with her wrinkled forehead and a streak or two of white hair she looked double her age, for one can easily reckon her real age. Something in her made her seem not the middle-aged-mother that she was. It was her eyes, it looked so old and tired.
The happy noises around him fell background in his intent examination. He took his eyes off her and scanned the crowd, after a while he found what he was looking for. A man was sitting on a tricycle just a few feet away from him. He was smoking a cigarette: an action reserved for thinking men. But after examining him he concluded that he wasn't thinking at all. He was feeling!
He went looking again for a particular face, and found her this time. The same face, the same emotion. For a complete quarter of an hour he kept looking, and finding them all. They were all the same. He straightened himself and found that his right leg was numb. He gave no further thought in it. He was totally consumed of what he had discovered:
I'm in the Town of Sadness!
My God, he thought, what brought them to this sad state? He barely conjured a believable answer when he heard his name being called.
"Joseph, Joseph."
Two young ladies he met at the bus approached him. After the usual greetings, one of them, Sarah, asked him if he wanted to go sightseeing with them. She mentioned that she had heard there are beautiful sceneries around and added that the flood will probably recede in a day or so.
"And we need a bodyguard," she finished. Joseph examined her, she was a very beautiful young lady. A tall one, and possesses an evenly textured white skin.
"I must warn you though, I got mugged once and I tried to learn karate but it didn't work out. Although, I was successful in a more productive and a much less violent form of self-defense," said he.
"What?" Mina asked, the smaller of the two ladies.
"I learned how to run a mile in five minutes."
They opted to visit the ocean first. It looks so calm and beautifully immense. They all agreed that it was a great panorama. At first Joseph was reluctant to take off his shoes when they were walking along the beach but he conceded. Mina told him it would be more memorable if memory can recall later how the sands felt under their feet. She was right, he felt a tickling sensation when he felt the thin sands. It was as though myriad ants are kissing his feet.
Their conversation flowed smoothly like the ocean waves. It was lively and pleasant. The winds brushed their hairs like runaway feathers. From time to time it would change its direction. Sometimes it would blow softly at their faces, then on their rights, at last on their backs. It was as if it was leading them.
The sounds of the waves are also soothing. Its rhythmic and incessant rushing and retreating made them feel like they were hearing a lullaby. They stopped after a while to make pictures in their minds and rest. The ladies sat on a huge rock while he walked towards the shoreline to wet his feet.
"Those islands are beautiful, don't you think?" Mina asked his friend. Of the two, she's the quiet one, in a such mysterious way. Sometimes Sarah would find her staring in space as if in stupor, yet everytime she was about to break her from her reverie Mina would look at her with her perceptive eyes and say: I was just thinking.
"Yes. If I came to marry a millionaire I would buy one of those and ask my children to bury me there," Sarah agreed.
"That would be a long shot now since I don't think he has millions."
The taller one patted her friend's shoulder and smiled. "He's very nice though, isn't he?"
"Yes. Still, I don't think you can buy an island even with that merit."
After a hurried lunch, Joseph's two new friends convinced him that they go visit one of the islands. They rented a banka and he asked a bangkero to take them to the closest one. Halfway to the island, he asked the bangkero:
"It must be very nice living here with all the beautiful places around? It's like living in paradise." The bangkero just shrugged his shoulders and grimly resigned his face. What is wrong with these people, Joseph asked himself.
When they reached the island he insisted on his companions that he pay the fare. He asked the bangkero how much and he received the bleakest answer ever.
"Tell you what," he said to the bangkero, "I have a full hundred. Why don't you pick us up before sunset and you can charge us both ways?"
The bangkero eyed him suspiciously, and they all fell quiet. Between two sets of eyes, trust hanged precariously like dead leaf on a branch. A moment later the bangkero went out to sea without leaving a word.
Joseph's two companions eyed him with apprehension. "I'm beginning not to trust these people," he told them.
"What made you say that?" Sarah asked him.
"Well--I don't know. I mean, look at their faces...haven't you noticed...it's like they lost their souls or something."
"Yes, I know what you mean," Mina concurred.
"That is not fair!" Sarah retorted. "These are hard times. It's understandable. A typhoon just hit them, look around, a lot of them will be sleeping under a roofless house tonight. You can't just expect them to parade happy faces while they go hungry. Most of them are just trying to make it through the day. Give them a break."
"I completely agree, but don't you think they should all try to appreciate the day first before they go through it? I mean, yes, look around. This is paradise! It's true, a lot of people would go hungry today--but whose fault is it?
"And I don't want to alarm you or anything but I heard a story some years ago. After a storm, the locals here convinced a bus that it was safe to go through the flood--like the one we have today. The bus stopped halfway to the other side. It appeared that the water was still high and it flooded the engine. When the passengers saw some fishermen coming their way they thought they were being saved." He paused for effect. "They weren't. The fishermen charged each passengers to get across."
At his revelation, his two companions started slapping his arms.
"Then why didn't you told us? We shouldn't have gone here!"
"Relax. Relax. We're not in trouble yet."
When their commotion abated and they all fell quiet, Mina traced the figure of the retreating bangkero.
"Isn't it ironic?" she said. "They live in a beautiful place like this, and they didn't even know it."
After a couple of minutes under the mild sun they learned to enjoy the scenery. They went swimming like children unafraid of dangers. They appreciated the beauty of the ocean and welcomed its warmth in their almost-naked bodies. For the moment, they chose completely to forget the world and all its problems.
At mid-afternoon they lay on the beach facing the bluest sky. Strange that it only occurs after storms; the more severe the storm, the bluer it becomes, as to life.
Before sunset the bangkero arrived to fetch them. As a nascent tradition between them and the bangkero, they made the journey back in silence. After Joseph paid him, the bangkero left without a word, leaving like a ghost, as if the day died with him.
They stood there, the three of them admiring the glorious sunset. They kept silent as if in presence of a king. Then Mina took a pen out from her bag and walk to a nearby tree. The rest followed her. Beside the tree there was a rock. She knelt down and on its smooth surface scribbled three words almost in tears: Admire the sunset.
As the red circle hides itself once again, they bowed their heads.
Someday, you will receive the honor that you deserve.
Inside the bus, Joseph had to control himself from the mounting revulsion inside him as he watches a crowd of men outside drown themselves in alcohol. A bit audible inside, he still can hear them complain in sibilant voices about their rotten life. What made you exemptions, he thought. What gave you the right to complain?
If you will only look and find the beauty around you. If you will only drown yourselves with its beauty instead of beers. How happy you would be. You don't have to look at it like a poet, or see it from a painter's point of view. Just look, it's there, it's free.
Live your days like a hopeful child. You should at least know that. Instead, you end your days with dirty feet and worn out clothes, then present your problems at God and ask angrily why your better deserves what he have, yet do nothing but complain.
He turned his head and saw her watching him. Her friend has already fallen asleep from exhaustion. From her quiet eyes he understood: Forget about them. Let's build ourselves better lives.