Preludes
By Daryll
Delgado A man died singing. He had sung a total of three songs before he heaved his last breath and collaps"d o.r u chair. It happened at the Municipal Hall. The time was three in the afternoon-. The sun was high. Heat seeped into people's bones. Tuba warned their blood even more. Someone's ninth death anniversary was being celebrated. Another man's life in that party ended. It ended on a high note.
At that very moment, Nenita the wife, was at home, picking leaves for a medicinal brew. Earlier that day, Nenita had been lying on the sofa, slipping in and out of an afternoon sleep she should not have heeded, embracing Willy Revillame in her dreams. She had had n-o plans of taking a nap. She had just wanted to catch a glimpse of Willy after she sent off her grandson for the city, just before she resumed her cooking.
At the sala, she opened the window to let some breeze in. But the air was so dry. Outside it was very quiet. Everyone was at the Hall, to attend the ninth death anniversary of the juez. Most of them bore the judge a grudge, but they were all there anyway, eager to see what kind of feast his children had prepared. The children had all come home from America and Europe for this very important occasion in the dead man's journey. Nenita herself did not mind the judge really, even if she had always found him rather severe. It was the wife whom Nenita did not feel very comfortable with. There had been some very persistent rumors involving the judge's wife that Nenita did not care so much for.
As soon as Nenita was certain that her grandson had left, she positioned the electric fan in front of her, sat on the sof4 and turned on the TV to catch the last segment of her favorite show. The next thing she knew, Willy Revillame was pulling her into his arms, soothing her with words of condolences, before handing her some cash and offering his left cheek for a kiss. There was a huge applause from the studio audience, even if they were all weeping with Willie, shaking their heads in amazement.
Nenita forced herself out of the dream and the motion brought her entire body up and out of the sofa. She found herself standing in the middle of the sala, face-to-face with a teary-eyed Willy. Her heart was beating wildly. Her armpits were soaked in sweat. Her hair bun had come undone. She looked around guiltily, she thought she heard her husband swear at her. She felt her husband's presence in the living room with her, even if she knew he was at the death anniversary parry. She quickly turned off the TV and made her way to the kitchen.
She should not have taken that nap, Nenita berated herself. There was an urgent order for ten dozens of suman she had to deliver the next day, for the judge's daughters who were leaving right after the anniversary. There was already a pile of pandan leaves on the kitchen table, waiting to be washed and warmed, for wrapping the sweet sticky rice rolls with.
She had spent all night until early morning boiling the sticky rice and mixing it with anise, caramel and coconut milk, until her hands trembled and the veins swelled. By the time she was almost done, she had to prepare breakfast and brew a special tea concoction for her grandson who had spent all night drinking. Her grandson had very barely made it home-drunk as a fish, crying out a woman's name like a fool—early that morning.
Nenita then remembered that she also had to prepare the medicinal tea her husband needed to take with his dinner. She had yet to complete the five different kinds of leaves, Ampalaya, Banaba, Bnyabas, Dumero, Hierba Buena; the last one she purchases from a man who only comes to town on Thursdays. She was getting ready to pick Ampalaya and Bayabas leaves from her garden when she heard her husband's voice again his singing voice. She realized that the sound was coming all the way from the Hall. The sound was very faint, but more than perceptible, and certainly unmistakable to her.
It was the only sound she could hear when she stepped out of the house and started picking the leaves. Everything else around her was quiet and still .It seemed as though the entire town-the dogs, the frogs, and the birds included-had gone silent for this very rare event her husband singing again.
She had not heard her husband sing this way in a very long time, ever since he became ill-when the sugar and alcohol in his blood burned the sides of his heart, almost getting to the core of it. Since there he would get out of breath when he sang. And he also easily forgot the lyrics, especially to the Italian classics, and some of the Tagalog Kundiman he used to be very well known for.
Nenita herself never understood all the fuss about her husband's singing, and the fuss his brothers and sisters made when he stopped singing. She could not even understand half of the songs he sang. They were mostly in ltalian; Spanish, and Tagalog. He rarely sang Bisaya songs, the ones she could understand, and actually liked, even if she herself could not carry a tune to save her life. Thankfully, their grandson was there to indulge her husband in music talk. She was happier listening to the two of them talk and sing, and strum guitar strings, from the kitchen.
She used to feel slighted whenever her siblings-in-law recalled with such intense, exaggerated regret, the way their brilliant brother squandered his money and his talent and oh, all the wrong decisions he made along the way. Including, though they would never say directly, his decision to marry Nenita. They liked to remind their brothel, themselves, and anyone who cared to listen, of what their brother used to be what he could have been, whom he could have been married to. Nenita ceased to mind this, and them, a long time ago. She had forgiven all of them. They were all dead now save for one brother who lived in the city. She never stopped praying for their souls, but she was not very sorry that they died.
Nenita knew that her husband was happy the way he was. She never heard him complain. He had nothing to complain about. She took him back every time his affairs with other women turned sour. She took care of him when he started getting sick, when the part of his heart that was supposed to beat started merely murmuring and whistling. Thankfully, her friend, the herbalista, had just the right concoction for this ailment. Even the doctors were delighted with her husband's progress.
Nenita took her husband back again when, with the money her in-laws sent for his medication he went away to be with one of his women. People say her husband went to Manila with the judge's widow. Nenita never confirmed this. Nenita never asked- She just took her husband back. Nursed him back to health again. After that, tough, Nenita noticed that he spent more and more time alone, in the toilet. And when she asked if he needed help with anything, he would just mumble incoherently. So she let him be.
She could have prepared him then that other brew her herbalista friend had suggested at the time, the one that would make his balls shrink, give him hallucinations, make his blood boil until his veins popped. But she didn't, of course.
She did buy and continued to keep the packet of dried purple leaves said to be from a rare vine found only in Mt. Banahaw. She didn't even know where Mt. Banahaw was, only that it was up there in the North. She did know that she would never use the herbs, even if she wanted to keep, see, touch, and feel the soft lump of leaves in her palm, every now and then. She derived some sense of security, a very calming sense of power, in knowing that she had that little packet hidden in one of the kitchen drawers.
She listened more closely to her husband's singing. She closed her eyes and trapped her breath in her throat, the way she did when she listened to the beats and murmurs of her husband's heart at night. Listening to the air that carried her husband's voice this way, she almost caught the sound of his labored breathing, and his heart's irregular beating.
He was singing a popular Spanish song now about kissing someone for the last time. Nenita remembered being told by her husband that that was what it was about. Kiss me more, kiss me more, that was what the man wanted to tell the woman he loved. Nenita found that she could enjoy this one; the song was recognizable. She laughed lightly as she found herself swaying in slow, heavy movements, to the music of her husband's voice.
She started imagining herself as a young woman, dancing with this beautiful dark man who eventually became her husband. And then she heard him choke, heave a breath before he sang: Perderte. Long pause. Perderte. Another Pause. Despises. And then there was applause, in which Nenita joined, still laughing at her silliness.
After that, all was quiet again.
Nenita gathered the leaves and went back inside the house. Just as well, because it was starting to be very, intolerably, hot outside. Certainly hot enough to boil an old man's blood and pop his veins, she thought.
