State of War: A Novel of Life in the Philippines by Ninotchka Rosca

Author:Ninotchka Rosca [Rosca, Ninotchka]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Cultural, Fiction, General, Historical, Philippines
ISBN: 9781494442224
Google: uXQcnwEACAAJ
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
Published: 2013-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

5

Hans convinced Mayang that the better part of valor was to let Carlos Lucas believe the child his. It was a simple matter to arrange. One evening, Mayang let the enigmatic smile slip across her lips and heard the hiss of her husband’s breath. “Next!” Carlos Lucas yelled, shocking the maids who had to scurry to and fro, removing the half-eaten fish, the meat broth, the vegetables, while the Don muttered “next, next, next . . No meal, it seemed, was finished as quickly. When he made the signal after dessert, touching Mayang’s right wrist with the tip of his forefinger, her discreet nod was enough to cause his soul to sprout wings. He heard the windows of the house singing and thought he was walking in his wife’s footsteps on a journey to the world’s edge. He never discovered he owed his adopted German brother two joys: his wife’s favors which, though grudgingly and sparsely given, sufficed to ease his love-besotted spirit; and his son, Luis Carlos, who entered the world too early and in silence.

The pregnancy dulled neither Hans’s nor Mayang’s appetites, though the latter grew shyer as her belly advanced. But Hans proved to be capable of such gentleness, such concern for her condition, that Mayang’s tears often spilled in the middle of their embrace, wetting the hand with which he stroked her shoulder and held her steady as she sat on his lap in the rocking chair. In the last months of her pregnancy, her belly was of such size, the skin stretched so tight, that her navel pouted. Hans thought she was carrying twins. He laid his ear against her hugeness and tried to catch the beating of the theoretical fetal hearts. Instead, to his consternation, he felt the child pummel the inner walls of his home, fighting the pressure of Hans’s head. He was so frightened that for a while, he wondered whether a gnome, not a child, inhabited Mayang’s womb.

As the weeks passed and Mayang’s confinement drew closer, hysteria assailed the two. It was, Hans thought, to be the moment of truth, the instant of the child’s birth; it would appear with hair the color of autumn, with eyes the color of a rain-washed sky, and with the stamp of a German scholar upon its brow. He hoped it was a girl, the better to conceal its heritage, but Mayang was adamant, saying the child was a boy and his name was Luis Carlos. She could not know that this threw Hans into a panic, for he had studied Mendel’s experiments and was convinced that a boy would be absolutely in his image.

“I’ll have to leave,” he said, already going through the motions of packing in his head. “Sail for China!” He imagined Carlos Lucas at the dinner table, screaming at his appearance: “Thief! Cerman ladron! You’re no better than an Italian. Return my money; return my wife; give me back my son!” He saw Carlos Lucas dismembering him with the aid of

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