The many faces of love
Para kay B is the first novel of scriptwriter par excellence Ricky Lee, published by the Writers’ Studio and launched in a grand bash last December. Subtitled “O kung paano dinevastate ng pag-ibig ang 4 out of 5 sa atin,” the novel deals with love and its wreckages. True to form, Lee conveys his insights in a manner that shatters the usual realistic narrative mode of Philippine literature in Filipino. For in the end, he lets the author of the novel within the novel question not just the nature of love, but the nature of narrative itself. Who, in the end, gives meaning to a story? It also mirrors the novel’s central point: who, in the end, benefits from love? And if love is so melodramatic and so sad, why do we even need it?
The answer is similar to what mountain-climbers say: we climb the mountain because it is there. We fall in love, or other people fall in love with us, because the feeling is here inside us; or there, inside the other person. Or, as happens with some characters in the novel, it is elsewhere, neither here nor there, not for one man or for one woman, but in the ambiguities that seem to characterize love itself.
The novel narrates five stories: that of Irene, Sandra, Erica, Ester and Bessie. In one of the most political chapters in the novel, the story of Irene is about a young girl who witnesses and falls in love with Jordan, the town pariah. Not only is he a blood relative of a Communist cadre, he also tangles with the bratty son of the mayor. Fr. Zuniga, the kind priest, adopts Jordan. The priest himself has a secret — a locket where he keeps a keepsake of the one he loves, a strand of hair or a slip of a picture of her whom he loves, despite his vow of celibacy.
Irene takes care of him, teaches him lessons from school. In turn, he promises to marry her. Such youthful ardor dies when he is forced to leave town. And they meet again, as in the best love stories, when he is already a well-dressed and grown man and she a woman still in love with his memory. He doesn’t seem to recognize her, but she manages to bring him to a hotel, has sex with him, in one mind-blowing episode that the actress Chanda Romero reads with such electric voltage during the launching that I told Chanda, later, that the very walls of the UP Alumni Center seemed to perspire from her reading of the erotic passages. So the first face of love is that it’s sometimes unrequited, or easily forgotten.
Story number two is about Sandra, who meets the Writer who spells out the book’s main insight: “Me quota ang pag-ibig. Sa bawat limang umiibig, isa lang ang magiging maligaya. Ang iba, iibig sa di sila iniibig. O iibig nang di natututo. O iibig sa wala. O di iibig kailanman.”
Ricky Lee is a master of prose, capturing for us in these clipped, terse lines the sharpness and cutting qualities of love — or its absence.
And such terseness is needed here, for the story of Sandra is the story of her forbidden love for her brother, Kuya Lupe. I am not the most squeamish person in the world, but I found my face twisting with eeeeeew when I began reading the passages of their lovemaking, in the closed world of the warehouse that seemed to mirror their love. It is a love possible only in the square, shut space where unnecessary stuff is stored. Lupe is banished away from the confines of home, his arm torn, forever to roam in the city with neither love nor family. So the next face of love is exile.
A fable-like quality hovers in the third story of Erika, who came from Maldiaga, a town that time itself seems to have forgotten. Maldiaga is a town whose inhabitants have forgotten how to love. It is reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Macondo, where the inhabitants slowly begin to forget, and the erasure of memory being the surest way to perpetuate one’s glorious past.
It takes one wicked character to recall for Erika the tumbling, turning qualities of love. “Saka naaalala ng matandang babae na nasa harap pala siya ng camera. Nagpatuloy. Kakabog ang dibdib mo, sabi niya, kikilig ang kalamnan mo, at kikirot ang puso mo. Kabog, kilig, kirot. Kapag naramdaman mo ang tatlong K habang kaharap ang isang lalaki, umiibig ka! Wala ka nang makikitang iba kundi siya. Gusto mong siya lang ang niyayakap maski ang init-init, siya lang ang hinahalikan maski ma-germs ang laway. Sa kanya mo lang gustong makipag-sex at magkaanak. Then you will feel complete. Hindi gaya ng mga tao dito sa Maldiaga na puro frigid!”
And like in a fable or fairy tale, Erika comes into good fortune, is adopted and becomes the host of a popular TV talk show. But still, she is incapable of falling in love. In this chapter, Ricky Lee goes to town satirizing the excesses and the plain, uh, weirdness of Philippine TV shows.
Story number four is another story in the closet, this time from the point of view of Ester, widow and mother, who wants everything in order.
“Ayaw ni Ester na ang anumang bagay ay sumobra sa dapat. Buong buhay iisa lamang ang patakaran niya: Never go out of bounds. There are certain boundaries para sa bawat tao at doon lang ang lugar mo. Kapag lumagpas ka, maaari ka nang makapanakit ng iba.”
This self-scrutiny and obsession with boundaries masks Ester’s repression, for she is in love with another woman named Sara. Note the characters given Biblical names in this chapter, which is also a hoot because of AJ, the gay son of Ester. Very 21st century bading, AJ is the epitome of this novel — him whose gender straddles categories, riddled with ambiguities.
To the mother’s query that there are different kinds of gay men, AJ says: “A, ibig sigurong sabihin ’yung me paminta, me efem, me pagurl, me tranny, me botomesa, me top, me beauconera, me bi. ’Yun ba, Mommy?” To which the mother innocently asks: “Ganyan (na]) ba kadami ang mga bakla?” And to which category does her dear son belong? “Sakop ko lahat!”
The fifth story belongs to Bessie, the B in the title of the novel. She has joined various causes — save the trees, protect the child, feed the whales – just to meet men. Men she could bed and then leave behind, shedding them like so many soiled and dirty clothes. But in her heart of hearts she is really an actress, and only the poor messenger Lucas appreciates this.
He becomes her driver, her personal assistant, his adoring fan. And with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy, he falls in love with her. But how to extract love from her for whom love is like a play with several disguises, many masks? He leaves, she looks for him — a pattern constantly repeated in the novel: love as home and exile, as departure and return, but mostly, departures.
The final chapter is called “Ang Totoong Kuwento sa Totoong Kuwento,” where the Writer of the novel (presumably Lucas) interrogates and debates the destinies of the characters of the novel — with the characters themselves. Lucas even tries to discern the motivation and the fate of Bessie, the character in the novel, as opposed to the Bessie, who has leapt from the pages of the novel and begun talking to him.
“At noon na-realize ni Lucas, tapos na siya kay Bessie. At tapos na rin siya sa kanyang mga kuwento. Pag-uwi ng bahay ay buburahin niya ang file at wala nang makakabasa pa ng mga iyon. Dahil hindi mo puwedeng mahalin ang isang tao nang hindi mo minamahal ang hilaga, silangan, timog at kanluran ng kanyang mga paniniwala. Kapag nagmahal ka’y dapat mong tanggapin bawat letra ng kanyang birth certificate. Kasama na doon ang libag, utot at bad breath. Pero me limit. . . . “
It reminds you of Woody Allen’s film, The Purple Rose of Cairo, where the characters on the screen suddenly turn, look at the audience, and talk to them.
But if you think this is just another postmodern text where the novel talks about the art of the novel all in the spirit of play, think again. This chapter is not just about ars ficcio, or the art of fiction. For Lucas, the writer, has shut his laptop and stopped writing those silly love stories, for his love has embraced a bigger body — the archipelago of his country.
“Sa halip, ang mga sinusulat niyang nobela ay laging tungkol (na) sa kanyang bansang lalo pang nagiging kawawa at naghihirap. Sa kanyang laptop ang realidad nang mabuhay sa Pilipinas ay nagagawa pa niyang lalong maging totoo, at ang kasalukuyan ay napagsasalita niya para sa hinaharap.”
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Para Kay B by Ricky Lee is available at National Book Store and Power Books. Comments can be sent to www.dantonremoto2010.blogspot.com.
