Remembering Nonoy

The last time we spoke on the phone, about a couple of months ago, I couldn’t understand much of what he said, as usual. Old age was turning me even harder of hearing, or his patented ngongo mumble-jumble had gotten worse. Probably both. But I sensed when he came up with a funny quip, which was at least every other line, so that soon he had me in stitches, as usual, however imagined its cause. And even if he had clearly been giving me the run-around on some collection matter.

Nonoy Marcelo one never even came close to forgiving: for lapses in diction, concentration, or obligation. He was as free a spirit of mischief as they come, giggling, snickering, mwa-ha-ha-hing his way through the maze of an antic cosmogony that was his and his alone. Even when he shared the cockamamie routes through it – and that generosity was his lifeblood – one suspected that the laughter it provoked was only incidental, if not elliptical, to the primary source that only he knew the secret to.

Perhaps that was why Nonoy often hunched and lurched forward, bent over in delirious glee, sometimes biting his knuckles till they turned white.

He knew others were having a laugh at what they only thought they had comprehended, when all along the laugh was on them, the world, the galaxy – rat packs and all.

Well, our beloved Pied Piper of Malabon – the comic genius of a cartoonist, the cosmic caricaturist, pulled another fast one a week ago.

He left us to take his place in that pantheon of a stand-up corner in the sky, where the laughs are wicked and eternal.

It was Bencab who had texted from Baguio that our friend Nonoy was bedridden at the Chinese General Hospital for a week already, reportedly in bad shape. It hadn’t been heart failure ("Malakas ang puso ni Nonoy," said Ben during the callback), but there were all sorts of other serio-comic intimations of mortality: diabetes, kidney stones, pneumonia, prostrate... Aw, shoot. Systems failure.

Conferred by phone with Pandy Aviado, Angie Stuart Santiago, Butch Perez, Sylvia Mayuga... No one was allowed to visit but Jorge Arago. Nonoy hadn’t even wanted to be brought to the hospital, and now kept threatening to strip off the suero and run off, except that he was too weak. He didn’t want any visitors to see him in that condition, or hear him howling in pain. .

Butch said Dr. Evelyn Horilleno said he might have to undergo a kidney operation. Thankfully, she had doctor-friends at the CGH. Pandy said all he knew was that Nonoy needed extended bed rest and detox. That could’ve been textual tongue-in-cheek. Jorge’s latest report, according to Angie, was that Nonoy’s condition had improved, by an inch. Sylvia said he needed a great dose of compassion.

It was to our shock the next morning, last Tuesday, to receive by text or voice call the terrible news that Nonoy was gone. Pandy confirmed it. He would meet with Nonoy’s son Da at the hospital to arrange for a quick cremation; such had been Nonoy’s expressed wish.

That entire day our cellphones hardly took a break. All the common friends seeking confirmation from one another, expressing shock and sadness, inquiring about a wake, a last rite, an eventual fund-raising exhibit – all this manifested a grand circle of memorious love and sympathy. The extended family was in grief once more, and the expressions of lament and support came thick and fast – from Santi Bose in Baguio, E.G. Hizon in Davao, Jimmy Abad on a UP workshop in Iloilo, Emily and Caloy Abrera, Ernie Enrique, Jo Peñaranda, Susan Lara, Celina Cristobal, Marne Kilates, Jimmy Fabregas, Pete Lacaba, Recah Trinidad...

Later in the day we learned that a fund drive had already started to help settle the hospital bills and arrange for some last rites. Sheila Coronel offered the PCIJ office as a depository for quick donations. Iskho Lopez gave his account number for the same exercise in communal trust and wagon-circling.

And in the evening we were all somewhat consoled to learn that Nonoy’s brothers had prevailed over Da to defer the cremation to Friday. It would give us the opportunity to check ourselves in on at least a two-night wake at the Floresco Funeral Homes on Gen. Luna, Bgy. Concepcion, Malabon.

And we could all shake our heads before laughing out loud over our respective recollections of Nonoy.

Erwin would probably hark back to the nights in Los Indios Bravos in Malate, circa late ’60s, when some pretender of a bully tried to intimidate the pint-sized cartoonist, and got pummelled furiously with twin dervish fists, precursing even FPJ.

Iskho would have his litany of favorite anecdotes. And Leah Makabenta would smile over the memory of a merry taxicab ride in search of Nonoy, at the turn of the ’80s. Rep. Imee Marcos might even show up and recall how she had introed Nonoy to Papa Ferdie at the Palace, and how he mumbled something strangely coherent that foreshadowed his "Ni Ha Ni Ho" columns in picaresque Taglish.

Pandy would recount how he had been at Nonoy’s pad in UP Bliss the day of Game 3, Ateneo vs. La Salle, and how they had watched it on TV, with Nonoy already cot-ridden, yet still cheering whenever either team scored. It was just like him to play the fence-sitter, or cot-rider, and chortle himself hoarse over the rivalries among mortals.

My own signature vision of Nonoy would be his sudden apparition outside the gate of an apartment in Teachers’ Village, Q.C., sometime in the late ’70s. Years later he would diss me to my face over how I hadn’t even asked him to come in and offered a cup of coffee; after all, he had just returned from exile in New York.

That would be followed by curious meetings in his Intramuros digs, where he’d pull me in quickly when I knocked on his door, and wild-eyed, utter an inimitable salute to paranoia over the next-door neighbor who might be watching, thinking we were dealing in contraband, or whom he feared might have heard of his erstwhile liaison dangereuse.

Huh? And the connection? But the connections were always simultaneously flimsy and thick with Nonoy, such was his imagination that rode supreme on whirling spokes of fancy, the same that caught common bites of reality and turned them into generational emblems, like the colegiala-speak he made popular: "Let’s make baka! Don’t be takot!" Or the "Boss Tsip" greeting that everyone appropriated as an honorific of gratuitousness. His life had to be managed, and for a good sweet while someone loyal and true did it for him, in those days in Intramuros. She even served as a go-between and messenger for the envelopmental drop-offs between us when he was unavailable, whether the currency exchange involved his commissioned art, yet another form of contraband, or cold cash in return for either or both. She knows who she is. She was back with him, caring for him anew, before the cult icon of zaniness gave up humor’s ghost last Tuesday.

Then there were the blitz afternoons at UP Bliss, where he had moved to in the ’90s, and where we’d search for a particular piece of work behind some pile or other of ... where? there! no, maybe here, on a corner of the floor under the lechon manok wrappings, or on that shelf, behind the guitar, but wait, Dylan’s back to acoustic, "dinig mo na ba ito, si Bob balik-dila, Naaay!"

And that was where, behind a humongous table laden with all sorts of sheets and photographs and magazines that collectively upheld the chaos theory of creation, he sheepishly tried to live down the video image, on latenight TV, of QC policemen come a-bustin’– with Nonoy circling defensively around the table like a... a... "dagang kosta na naghahanap ng de-numerong bahay," as Pandy or Ben or Santi would put it.

In the mid-’90s, midnights after a special edition of The Evening Paper had been put to bed, or when he had completed his outrageously pun-ny captions for the pseudo-pornographic Klik, Nonoy would join the staff at Max’s at Crossing for more lechon manok. And if we were on speaking terms, if he had somehow charmed his way back to friendship, as he always managed to, after giving Boss Tsip another cardiac finish of a late-night deadline by faxing in his editorial cartoon at the last minute, then we’d sit side by side and he’d pull out a piece of paper where he had drafted a caricature of our favorite peeve, Jawo, now turning 50, doing push-ups in his No. 7 jersey while huffing at a cake with all those candles.

"Magagamit natin ito! Mwa-ha-ha!"

And Jo and Bimboy Peñaranda and everyone else would slap their knees and shake their heads, tears in their eyes, over the ultimate craziness that this man constantly doled out as largesse.

His manic sense of mirth will stay with us for all time. He has lauded everyman, especially the Filipino in all his inadvertent disguises, by exposing the funnybone within every stereotype, or behind every motive, even as a stiff halo over a beleaguered if saintly head. Nonoy invented and reinvented a mousetrap for the "soul" like no other’s.

I propose therefore that he be rewarded his due, by this strong republic no less. And no less than the National Artist award should be conferred on him, as soon as possible – no more formal nominations to meet whatever deadline, no more discussions or argumentation.

Everyone would agree that Severino "Nonoy" Marcelo deserves it, had long deserved it, except that it wasn’t in his nature to seek it out. Like Groucho Marx, he would have disrespected any institution that deigned to ask him in, let alone honored him. Now that his back is turned, let’s surprise him. Even then, we can never have the last laugh.