BINANGONAN TALES

PROLOGUE

It was a night of total darkness that brought Olegario Pineda his inevitable death.

The roof of his house and the winds of typhoon Rosing were performing the confused aria of two cats in the midst of orgasm. Olegario covered his ears, but the piercing shrieks went through his fingers, down to his bones, his teeth grinding in the mighty effort with which he tried not to shout. From time to time, the sky would shout invectives at him, preceded by blinding flashes of light.

Olegario was afraid, as he had always been in fear all his life. There were times when he would be afraid to sleep because he kept on imagining ants entering his ears and making him deaf. Some other times, he would lie on his bed, shivering as he could not ward off fears that there would be an earthquake which might cause his house to collapse and bury him under the rubble. At one point, a chest pain made him think he was having a heart attack. Luckily, he was already in the hospital when he suffered a real heart attack caused by the tension.

Olegario had always been in fear, as he was now. He was so afraid, indeed, that in that night of total darkness courtesy of a broken Meralco line, while the winds and the roofs and the sky were in their usual symphony of orgasm and rage, Olegario Pineda produced a Smith and Wesson from under his bed, and splattered his brains all over the bedsheet.

He killed himself, of course, in order to stop the fear of death from killing him.

CHAPTER 1

Binangonan lies in a misty edge of Laguna Lake, where once in the town's distant history, a colossal whirlpool swallowed the fishing yacht of Don Servando Enriquez. The obnoxious Don Servando, whose penchant for the metaphysical brought him to the farthest side of Susong Dalaga in order to see for himself (how he figured that, no one, not even his great-great-great grandson Don Servando Segundo, could tell) whether God really exists, preferred to go fishing alone.

During those nights of solitary fishing, the townspeople would hear the wild rumblings of his fart carried eastward by the warm habagat breeze. During those nights, the children, aged twelve and below, would be gathered around the plaza in front of the Church of Sta. Ursula because they would not stop crying, unable to ward off fears that the tikbalang had already awakened and that what they were hearing was the loud belching of its belly which was already yearning for children, unless Padre Luisito Salvacion, the parish priest, sprinkled them with holy water mixed with crushed garlic. During those nights, after Padre Luisito had complied to the children's wailing, the townsfolk would gather around the house of Mayor Isidro Cirajulo to petition the municipal government to confiscate Don Servando's yacht and thus prevent him from frightening the children with his pestilential fart. But during those nights, too, the good mayor would tell the townspeople to go away and let him have his sleep.

Thus, during those nights of Don Servando's solitary fishing, the vicious cycle that would start from Don Servando's fart that would frighten the children who would cry out so loud that they had to be taken to the Church of Sta. Ursula to be sprinkled with holy water mixed with crushed garlic and would end with Mayor Isidro's shooing away of the townsfolk in order for him to have his sleep would be repeated again and again every night for three generations until a colossal whirlpool got tired of it all and decided in haste to swallow the yacht, together with the already ancient and foul-bellied Don Servando.

From his childhood up to the last moments of his life, Don Servando Segundo Enriquez would hear the story retold again and again, sometimes from his father, sometimes from his grandfather, some other times from his great-grandfather, but mostly, from himself. He liked the story so much that when there was no one left to tell it to, as five decades of telling and re-telling had already exhausted the patience of the whole town and every one was no longer willing to listen, he would tell it to himself with such great zest that he sometimes convinced himself that it was the first time he would ever hear about it. Raised in Pilapila, which offered an aerial view of the lake, he would often look at the dark, mysterious waters that swallowed his great-great-great grandfather, hoping that, punished for centuries by the fart of Don Servando Enriquez, it would decide someday to spit out his namesake.

The reason for it was obvious. Before leaving the house on that fateful night, the old patriarch made a hurried promise to Lolita, his eighteen year-old daughter, that he would take her to the ballroom the very moment he came back. Lolita, who was fortunately endowed with so much physical beauty to make up for the intelligence that she was deprived of all her life, seated herself on the porch waiting for her father until her life ended in the sweet age of ninety-seven. Even in death, the immeasurable void between her ears managed to stay, and so she remained there on the porch, a most beautiful half-witted ghost, still waiting for Don Servando. Servando Segundo tried everything to make his great-great-grand-aunt go away, contacting spiritists and psychics all over the land, but the steadfast ghost would not budge, and thus continued to scare away potential customers of his hotel and restaurant. What Servando Segundo never realized, of course, was that he inherited her intellect, which led him to proceed with the construction of a hotel and restaurant that was doomed from the very start by her ghostly presence.

CHAPTER 2

Despite herself, Lolita decided, in a rare occasion of lucidity, that she would not die a virgin. A survivor of three hundred forty nine typhoons, five tornadoes, half a dozen earthquakes, a few hundred wild bees, as well as the scorching tropical afternoon sun and some other emissaries of nature that tormented her vigil on the porch, Lolita's resolve was so firm that she immediately grabbed the arm of the first man she saw that morning. His name was Ruel Cervo, a stone-cutter in the cement factory's quarry.

When Ruel's family moved to Binangonan when he was five, he instantly developed a great liking for Lolita, whose sweet, beautiful face created a spell that required at least nine continuous hours of inhaling camphor vapors before releasing his balintataw, his mind's eye, which saw her everywhere, even in his bowl of hot chocolate porridge or even in the great heap of his chocolate-colored shit. It was a quiet innocent love untainted by lust until he reached the age of thirteen, when he was old enough to realize the great magnitude of her breasts. When Lolita grabbed him that morning when he was on his way to the quarry carrying a pouch that contained his lunch of fried rice and boiled mongo beans, twenty five years after he saw her the first time sitting alone on that same solitary porch, he instantly knew that he would not only oblige, but would just be too willing to perform the wild routine that he had always dreamt of doing with her. And so, despite her age of more than half a century and despite her skin which was beginning to break and despite a few patterns of repulsive lines already showing on her face, he made love to her on the porch atop a bed of scattered fried rice and boiled mongo beans, with all the brute force and savagery that a stone-cutter of a cement factory could muster. Everyone who saw them that morning made the sign of the cross and prayed a few hundred prayers in order to appease the soul of Don Servando Enriquez, who would have turned in his aquatic grave over the scandalous sight of Ruel and his daughter.

At around noon a few hours after, a dark, violent cloud hovered around the whole town, threatening to devour it. It was the first time to rain in Binangonan after a couple of years or so. When the first few drops hit the scorching ground, they immediately fizzled into vapors. For a brief moment, the whole town suddenly smelled of fart.