Tree of Smoke (6 page)

“What is that? They’re saying something.”

“‘Chez,’” Sands told the German.

“What is that? Did you say ‘chez’? It means? What does it mean?”

“Their parents used to ask the GIs for matches. ‘Matches! Matches!’ Now they just shout, ‘Chez, chez, chez.’ They don’t know what it means. There aren’t any GIs around anymore, and if they want a match they say ‘posporo.’”

But the old women grappled after the children angrily, in a way he hadn’t seen before. “What is the matter with these people?” he asked the German.

“They need a better diet. The protein is too little.”

“Do you sense it? Something’s up.”

“It’s too little fish high up in the mountain. The protein is too little.”

“Ernest,” Skip said, leaning forward and talking to the driver, “is something going on in the village today?”

“Maybe something, I don’t know,” Ernest said. “I can ask around for you.” He came from Manila, and his English was excellent.

Major Eduardo Aguinaldo, in crisp fatigues, waited in the rear seat of a black Mercedes outside the Monte Mayon, a restaurant run by an Italian and his Filipino family. Pavese, the Italian, served whatever people would buy, which wasn’t much. For visitors Pavese made a quite delicious spaghetti Bolognese with a lot of goat’s liver in it. The major welcomed the German and insisted he call him “Eddie” and insisted he join them for lunch.

To Skip’s surprise, the German accepted. Their guest ate robustly, voluptuously. He wasn’t fat, but food seemed his passion. Skip hadn’t seen him so happy. He was a bearish, bearded character with thick brown rims for his glasses and skin that burned rather than tanned, and big soft lips that got wet when he talked.

“Let’s get some of Pavese’s espresso, because it’s full of life,” Aguinaldo said. “Skip was up all night. He’s tired.”

“Never! I’m never tired.”

“Were my men good to you?”

“Most respectful. Thanks.”

“But you didn’t locate any Huks.”

“Not unless they were hiding by the road and we never saw them.”

“What about the PC boys?”

“The PC?” These were the Philippine Constabulary. “The PC were fine. They kept pretty much to themselves.”

“They don’t care for the army’s assistance. I won’t say I can blame them. It’s not a war. These Huks are only renegades. They’ve been reduced to the status of bandits.”

“Correct.” But these excursions amounted to Sands’s only strategy for gaining points and landing a reassignment to Manila or, even better, to Saigon. Above all, these jungle patrols relieved him of the uneasy feeling that he’d undergone rigorous training, swung by ropes along the faces of cliffs, parachuted into thunderclouds, sweated while following recipes for highly explosive materials, clambered over barbed wire, traversed rushing streams in the dark of night, been interrogated for hours while tied to a chair, all in order to become a clerk, nothing more than a clerk. To compile. To sort. To accomplish what any spinster librarian could accomplish. “And what did you do last night?” he asked Eddie.

“Myself? I turned in early and read James Bond.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Perhaps we’ll go on patrol this evening. Will you come?” Aguinaldo asked the German. “It can be quite exhilarating.”

The German was confused. “What is the purpose?” he asked Sands.

“Our friend won’t be coming,” Sands told Eddie.

“I’m going farther down,” the German explained.

“Farther down?”

“To the train.”

“Oh. The station. Going to Manila,” Aguinaldo said. “A pity. Our little patrols can be bracing experiences.”—As if they came often under fire. Nothing of the kind had ever happened, as far as Skip knew. Eddie was boyish, but he liked to seem menacing.

Three weeks ago, in Manila, Sands had seen Eddie playing Henry Higgins in a production of
My Fair Lady
, and he couldn’t erase from his mind the picture of his friend the major overly rouged and powdered and strutting the boards in a smoking jacket; pausing; turning to a beautiful Filipino actress and saying, “Liza, where the devil are my slippers?” The audience of Filipino businessmen and their families had been swept to its feet, roaring. Sands too had been impressed.

“What is that thing you’re practicing with?” Sands asked the German.

“You mean the sumpit. Yes.”

“A blowgun?”

“Yes. From the Moro tribe.”

“Sumpit is a Tagalog word?”

“I think it’s very generally used,” Eddie said.

“It’s a word used everywhere in these islands,” the German agreed.

“And what’s it made of?”

“The construction, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Magnesium.”

“Magnesium. For goodness’ sake.”

“Quite sturdy. Quite weightless.”

“Who forged it for you?”

He’d asked just to make conversation, but was shocked to see a look pass between Eddie and the assassin. “Some private people in Manila,” the German said, and Sands let the topic die.

Following the meal they all three took espresso coffee in tiny cups. Before coming to this remote village, Sands had never tasted it.

“What’s going on today, Eddie?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Is it some sort of—I don’t know—some sort of sad anniversary? Like the day of some great leader’s death? Why does everybody seem so morose?”

“You mean tense.”

“Yeah. Tensely morose.”

“I believe they’ve been spooked, Skip. There’s a vampire about. A kind of vampire called aswang.”

The German said, “Vampire? You mean Dracula?”

“The aswang can turn into any person, assume any shape. You see instantly the trouble—it means anybody can be a vampire. When a rumor like this starts, it floods a village like cold poison. One night last week—last Wednesday, around eight o’clock—I saw a throng outside the market, beating an old woman and crying, ‘Aswang! Aswang!’”

“Beating her? An old woman?” Skip said. “Beating her with what?”

“With anything that came to hand. I couldn’t quite see. It was dark. It seemed to me she escaped around the corner. But later a storekeeper told me she changed into a parrot and flew away. The parrot bit a little baby, and the baby died in two hours. The priest cannot do anything. Even a priest is helpless.”

“These people are like demented children,” the German said.

After they’d eaten and their companion had continued in the staff car down the mountain toward the railway line for Manila, Skip said, “Do you know that guy?”

“No,” Eddie said. “Do you really think he’s German?”

“I think he’s foreign. And strange.”

“He met with the colonel, and now he’s leaving.”

“The colonel—when?”

“It’s significant that he hasn’t introduced himself.”

“Have you asked him his name?”

“No. What does he call himself?”

“I haven’t asked.”

“He never talked of paying. I’ll pay.” Eddie conferred with a plump Filipina whom Skip believed to be Mrs. Pavese, and came back saying, “Let me get fruit for tomorrow’s breakfast.”

Sands said, “I understand the mango and banana are good this time of year. All the tropical fruit.”

“Is that a joke?”

“Yes, it is.” They entered the market with its low patchwork tarpaulin roof and its atmosphere of rank butchery and vegetable putrefaction. Unbelievably deformed and crippled beggars scrambled after them, dragging themselves along the hard earthen floor. Little children approached too, but the beggars, on wheeled carts, or on leg stumps socked with coconut shells, or scar-faced and blind and toothless, lashed out at the children with canes or the butt ends of severed limbs and hissed and cursed. Aguinaldo drew his sidearm and pointed it at the roiling little pack and they reared backward in one body and gave up. He dickered briskly with an old lady selling papayas, and they got back into the street.

Eddie took Sands in his Mercedes back to the Del Monte House. Nothing had, as yet, transpired between them. Sands held back from asking if their meeting had a point. Eddie went inside with him, but not before he’d opened the car’s trunk and taken out a heavy oblong package of brown paper tied with string. “I have something for you. A going-away gift.” At his urging they sat again in the backseat—upholstered in leather and covered with a white bedsheet going gray.

Eddie held the package on his knees and unwrapped an M1 carbine of the paratrooper’s type, with a folding metal stock. Its barrel’s wooden foregrip had been refinished and etched with an intricate design. He handed over the weapon to Skip.

Sands turned it in his hands. Eddie moved a penlight over the engraving. “This is remarkable, Eddie. It’s fantastic work. I’m so grateful.”

“The sling is leather.”

“Yes. I can see that.”

“It’s quite good.”

“I’m honored and grateful.” Sands meant it sincerely.

“A couple of boys at the National Bureau of Investigation had a go at it. They’re wonderful gunsmiths.”

“Remarkable. But you call it a going-away gift. Who’s going away?”

“Then you’ve received no order as of yet?”

“No. Nothing. What is it?”

“Nothing.” The major smiled his affected Henry Higgins smile. “But perhaps you’ll get an assignment.”

“Don’t put me in the bush, Eddie, don’t put me in the rain! Don’t put me in a dripping tent!”

“Have I said anything? I’m as ignorant as you are. Have you spoken about it with the colonel?”

“I haven’t seen him for weeks. He’s in Washington.”

“He’s here.”

“You mean in Manila?”

“Here, in San Marcos. In fact, I’m sure he’s in the house.”

“In the house? For God’s sake. No. It’s a gag.”

“I understand he’s your family.”

“It’s a gag, right?”

“Not unless he’s the one making such a gag. I spoke to him by telephone this morning. He said he was calling from this house.”

“Huh. Huh.” Sands felt stupid to be making only syllables, but he was past words.

“You know him quite well?”

“As well as—huh. I don’t know. He trained me.”

“That means you don’t know him. It means he knows you.”

“Right, right.”

“Is it true the colonel is actually your relative? He’s your uncle or something?”

“Is that the rumor?”

“Perhaps I’m prying.”

“Yes, he’s my uncle. My father’s brother.”

“Fascinating.”

“Sorry, Eddie. I don’t like to admit it.”

“But he’s a great man.”

“It’s not that. I don’t like to trade on his name.”

“You should be proud of your family, Skip. Always be proud of your family.”

Sands went inside to make sure it was a mistake, but it was completely true. The colonel, his uncle, sat in the parlor having cocktails with Anders Pitchfork.

“I see you’re dressed for the evening,” the colonel said, referring to Skip’s barong, standing and offering his hand, which was strong and slightly wet and chilled from holding his drink. The colonel himself wore one of his Hawaiian-patterned shirts. He was both barrel-chested and potbellied, also bowlegged, also sunburned. He didn’t stand much taller than the Filipino major but seemed mountainous. He wore a silver flattop haircut on a head like an anvil. He was at the moment drunk and held upright by the power of his own history: football for Knute Rockne at Notre Dame, missions for the Flying Tigers in Burma, antiguerrilla operations here in this jungle with Edward Lansdale, and, more lately, in South Vietnam. In Burma in ’41 he’d spent months as a POW, and escaped. And he’d fought the Malay Tigers, and the Pathet Lao; he’d faced enemies on many Asian fronts. Skip loved him, but he was unhappy to see him.

“Eddie,” the colonel said, taking the major’s hand in both his own, moving the left hand up and gripping him above his elbow, massaging the biceps, “let’s get drunk.”

“Too early!”

“Too early? Darn—and too late for me to change course!”

“Too early! Just tea, please,” Eddie told the houseboy, and Skip asked for the same.

The colonel looked with curiosity at the package under Skip’s arm. “Fish for dinner?”

“Show him!” Eddie said, and Skip laid the M1 on the brass coffee table, nested in its open wrapping.

The colonel sat down and held the rifle across his knees just as Skip had done in the car moments ago, reading its intricate engravings with his fingers. “Fantastic work.” He smiled. But he looked at no one when he smiled. He reached beside him to the floor and handed Skip a brown paper grocery bag. “Trade you.”

“No, thanks,” Skip said.

“What’s in the sack?” Eddie asked.

“Courier pack from the ambassador,” the colonel said.

“Ah! Mysterious!”

As ever, the colonel drank from two glasses at once. He waved his empty chaser at the houseboy.

“Sebastian, are you all out of Bushmills?”

“Bushmills Irish whiskey coming up!” the young man said.

Pitchfork said, “The servants seem to know you.”

“I’m not a frequent visitor.”

“I think they’re in awe of you.”

“Maybe I’m a big tipper.” The colonel rose and went to the bucket on the sideboard to scoop ice into his glass with his fingers and stood looking out at the grounds with the air of somebody about to share a thought. They waited, but instead he sipped his drink.

Pitchfork said, “Colonel, are you a golfer?”

Eddie laughed. “If you tempt our colonel out there, he’ll decimate the landscape.”

“I stay out of the tropical sun,” the colonel said. He stared lovingly at the rear end of a maidservant as she set out the tea service on the low brass table. When the others all held something in their hands, he raised his glass: “To the last Huk. May he soon fill his grave.”

“The last Huk!” the others cried.

The colonel drank deeply, gasped, and said, “May the enemy be worthy of us.”

Pitchfork said, “Hear, hear!”

Skip carried the paper sack and the beautiful gun to his quarters and laid both on his bed, relieved to take a minute alone. The maid had opened the room to the day. Skip cranked shut the louvered windows and turned on his air conditioner.

He poured out the contents of the sack onto the bed: one dozen eight-ounce jars of rubber cement. Such was the stuff of his existence.