WORM'S EYE

Almost Titanic (An embarrassing hick’s account)

Kurt Vonnegut, in his weird, lurid novel Galapagos quotes Joseph Conrad in an epigraph: "The ship, a fragment detached from the earth, went on lonely and swift like a small planet." It was the first time for me and my friend H, smug Luzon rats, to see the Visayas, let alone take a 21-hour ferry boat ride back to Manila. We come hoping to see just how equally smug Cebuanos could be, and we were not disappointed. (I have yet to meet a modest Cebuano.) With such an experience as this – going back home from Cebu on water - I felt constrained to be pompous and artsy, i.e., literary.

But, first, the actual journey. It's easy to understand why William Lines' Superferry (William Gothong and Aboitiz, Inc.) took the pains of convincing Sharon Cuneta to do a Darna for the TV ad, or that Ate Shawie would give her nod at all. Promoting Superferry, it turns out, is practically promoting a mall, and it takes no less than a megastar to do just that.

H and I take a first-class cabin which accommodates four passengers, but we are exultant that there‘s just the two of us. Immediately we appropriate one double-decker each for ourselves. Each bed is provided with curtains. A cursory check on the cabinets and we feel reassured by the availability of Day Glo-orange lifesavers.

Inside the cabin, a glass window looks out to the sea. We lose no time tinkering with our binoculars to spy like James Bond on anything that might murder us along the way - pirates, cargo ships, oil tankers, small ferries, little boats with lonesome fishermen, mountains, hills, islets that never appear on maps like that one dark volcanic protrusion in the middle of the sea, even seabirds.

We sail off Cebu at noon, blest with a cooperative sun and wind which act like good playmates, the ocean water their plaything. This game results in a vast desert of calm ripples and wavelets that wink at you with a certain naughtiness. In my mind’s ear, they are dancing to Handel's Water Music.

Inside the ship, the hours pass by like eternity, enough time for lots of ponderous thoughts, lots of moping. I choose to stare blankly at the sea – only to confront my flagging long-term memory. How's that again? "Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink." I think that’s a Herman Melville line, but I’m not so sure. Wherever it’s from, the line becomes momentarily an expression of boredom for me.

Then it becomes clear to me and H. We have to rush out of our cabin and see the rest of Superferry if we are to stay sane.

In the vessel, I get reminded of a lot of scenes from Irwin Shaw's Rich Man, Poor Man. (I am Rudolf Jordache, the rich guy talking down to poor-guy Dwyer at the sparkling docks). Surveying the smaller boats beyond the horizon, I also get reminded of, again, Herman Melville's Billy Budd, the quintessential story of innocent-man-on-trial, literally and figuratively on the dock, the strongest argument I’ve ever encountered against capital punishment. Alright, I’ll quit being pretentious here. Muro Ami is more like it.

From our perch, H and I descend the stairs and pass through the corridors lining the ship’s exterior. Along the way, we sidestep maintenance boys who are painting the vessel unceasingly. (In this mobile marine mall, rust, not robbers nor terrorists, is Public Enemy Number One.) We turn this way and that, crane our necks up and down, and what do we see floating on the seawaters down below but…people.

Dwarfed by the sheer size of the ferry, as it prepares for departure, are ten or so of the most disheveled-looking tribespeople we’ve ever seen. A family of Badjaos, we are told, who ride on puny-looking boats begging for coins. What have these people done to deserve such kind of fate? we wonder. In an attack of helplessness, guilt, sympathy and revulsion, H drops a coin in the direction of the Badjao woman tending to a baby. The woman thoughtlessly leaps to the water for the coin and emerges adroitly with one squinting metal in hand - and a baby wailing like an orphan.

We realize the crime we just did, so we leave in profound dismay. But I know the mental image of it all would disturb me for a very, very long time.

In the economy class we are greeted by the sight of a great multitude sharing the same cramped hall. The hall is equipped with nothing but the barest necessities - restrooms and ambulant vendors selling street foods (banana cue and chichiria). We can see Jack and Rose dancing with all the gypsies. It violates my inner Marxist that to this day and age, the gulf – or is it chasm – between the haves and have-nots remains ever-so-wide, even inside a freaking boat.

Two decks downstairs from the top is the tourist-class. The difference with first class is the absence of a door and the addition of two more double-decker beds. Hmm, there’s nothing very interesting, so we decide go up and rub elbows with people our character are most comfortable with -- the higher social strata. (Now, we are in a movie.)

Nothing prepared us for what we are about to see: A beauty salon with facial service, hair styling, the works. A conference room with a ping-pong table and dartboard. A movie hall showing Silaw, a local pito-pito movie. A video arcade. A fine-dining restaurant with videoke. An elegant, intimate coffee shop with an artwork depicting Cebu's Fuente Osmeña. There’s a stage for live acts, surrounded by an array of food booths and bar, like a little version of Ayala Center’s Streetlife.

There’s also a discotheque that charges P25 per. Outside, lining these establishments, are the cozy smoking lounges. If you walk carelessly further astern, you'd fall straight into a small swimming pool. (Not to worry, there's a railing to catch you just in time.)

Now this one is really scandalous. Perched on the side railings of the vessel, I witness how the route being taken on this part of the ocean has become a 'dumping ground' for garbage, a marine Smokey Mountain. I am an eyewitness to diapers, plastic bags and all manner of land-sourced rubbish floating like jellyfish. Whoever are responsible for this heinous crime should be punished by making them filter the ocean for every debris of their own uncaring - by hand!

We decide to go back to our cabin. We suddenly find two new occupants. They have chosen to upgrade their deck status, we are told. G is a young marine biologist from the University of San Carlos (he’s from Caljape, Bohol) and Z is a fiftyish white American who complains a lot. He grumbles that the cabin he has taken downstairs has three local girls griping about an old Kano sharing the same bunker with them, that’s why he went for an upgrade. "It's not much fun sleeping with the girls, either," the cad sour-grapes.

We learn that Z owns a house-and-lot in Cebu, and has a wife of ten years who bore him two kids. He says he’s about to leave for America, will stay there for about four or five months and then get back to the Philippines where he stays the rest of the year. He prattles on and on about this and that until it dawns on me that we are talking to a boy trapped in an old man’s body.

This is what I like about most Americans. They're garrulous, very frank, and all ("masatsat," G whispers), extremely vulgar in language and all, but deep down, they're good-natured fellows, unlike us Pinoys who are notorious liars and back-biters -- we always say one thing and mean another, afraid to say it like it is.

Z is wearing a crewneck and a pair of khaki pants and sandals, and tops his touristy attire with a local grass hat accented by a snakeskin belt. He blathers that he is in ‘suburban D.C.’ making money if he's not building little boats in the outskirts of Cebu Island. He says he finds this country outrageous, what with ten thousand girls begging him to bed like a swarm of bees to a bottle of honey. As he crushes his milk teeth into an apple, he says, "I guess it's not really me, it's my dollars.” Hahahaha!

Before I am tempted to point out to him that he’s being foolishly naïve (I deleted stupid. “And what do you think they wanted?”) he goes on frothing at the mouth. “It's amazing,” he says, “in America, girls avoid looking at me. Over there, I'm a poor man, but here, I can pretend I'm a rich guy." With a point of view promising to be as fresh as that, I can’t help but listen with intent.

His drivel runs the gamut -- establishments taking advantage of his being a foreigner (milking him dry is more like it), the "Eeerap" government, the "grinding poverty", the annoying bureaucratic procedures. (He hasn't learned the virtue of grease money around here after 10 darn years?).

But he hates Americans and American life just the same, something which I instantly warm up to. He describes life there as “stressful and brutal.” With the gravitas of a political commentator on TV (Randy David?), he chatters about "Reagan and his Star Wars bullshit, no different from Eeerap." And the worship of mammon. And liberal American women who scare him because they tend to "get even." Etc., etc.

"The rich people in the Philippines got wealthy at the expense of the poor. America got wealthy at the expense of the environment," he grandstands, "not to mention murdering all the Injuns."

"Most Americans I know, when I talk about the Philippines, they completely have no idea." Z then shifts the talk to movies, mentioning Apocalypse Now and The Matrix. He says that "science fictionists are really prophets." Now this boy-trapped-in-an-old-man's-body is beginning to have depth.

But H doesn't like a motor-mouth at all for a cabin mate, and so we avoid him discreetly by taking the flight of stairs leading to the state rooms and suites. A uniformed crew shows us around and, behold - well-appointed rooms with frames of delicate sketches of native flora you’d would want to cart away home, luxurious fabrics and upholstery, glossy travel magazines, TV and, hold your breath...a jacuzzi! Darn, this part is a hotel room.

We take a peek of the Sharon suite which is the best, I guess. I would have made myself comfortable had not the crew member shown me the door. At the adjoining coffee shop, we snub equally snobbish people sipping capuccino in silence.

We are walking around thinking over H's decision to "upgrade" accommodations when – what do you know - we bump again into the garrulous guy from hell. He’s like Converse shoes – he seems everywhere. This time, we really give him the floor - no, we give him a podium for his monologues. We find out the extent of his Philippine experience (Cebu, Camiguin, Siargao, Baler). We discover his knowledge of the sea and its fishes, that he has been a teacher of fine arts to "niggers" for three short, horrible years, that he sculpts and paints, reads books, etc. His prattle, though, is becoming more and more heavily spiked with "damn", goddamn", and "man" as the seconds wear on. My other qualm is that the trade winds are whipping towards my general direction, carrying with it ten thousand spittles from the motor-mouth. I have to rush to the bathroom for a vigorous facial scrub the first chance I get. The bathroom is furnished with shower and it is squeaky clean, although the water is quite stale. Then again, nobody’s saying it will be potable.

By dusk, I return all by myself to the glass window for some ruminative moments. I stare at a vast ocean with a topography of constantly alternating troughs and protuberances. The sun is bidding goodbye now with a gargantuan chiaroscuro work. I am reminded of those three-dimensional graphs I always encounter with unresolved puzzlement in the scientific journals I work on in the office.

I take the binoculars we brought with us and inspect a fast-moving ocean near the side of the ferry, only to see an ever-slowing one as I move my focus farther and farther out to the sea. One cannot help noticing those solitary fishermen who brave the depths and not be reminded of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, no matter how much one didn't understand the point of the story then. (It's a freaking allegory about life pala, that’s why.)

By dinner, what do we get but a smiling G and Z for company. They join us at a rattan table topped with faux marble. We sit on elegant, steel-reinforced, ecru-painted rattan chairs in a spacious hall lined with soft-lighted lamps, handsome, tuxedoed waiters flitting about. The whole setting is capped by a blind guy on the piano playing requests. What’s more, our neighboring table have four beautiful French-speaking teenagers taking pictures of themselves. (We brought no camera. Everything was totally unexpected, you see.)

In the middle of dinner, Z announces, "I shouldn't be saying this but I have a girlfriend in Cebu." I nearly choke on the buttered tanigue and Baguio vegetables. The hooligan isn't referring to his wife of ten years. He’s referring to another girl, a girl of 25 years, half his age! H and G can’t say a word but I can see their eyeballs crying “Pedophilia!” Z finds that there are no takers on the detailed account of his cheating, so he continues his comparative tirade on both American life and Philippine life. Maybe he’s expecting us to congratulate his virility?

(Meanwhile G only manages to keep saying, "Only in da Philippines. Only in da Philippines," which drives me looking around for a masking tape.)

All four of us part ways after dinner and repair to our respective whims. We can’t stand each other any longer, obviously: Z to his apples, oranges, pinipig crunch and books in the cabin; G to a can of Coke and chicharon in front of a TV near the concert lounge; H to stargazing, sandwich, soft drink, and text-messaging; and me to playing either the Snakes or Memory game. (It’s incredible, they are all eating after dinner.)

After my thumb gets tired, I proceed to the entertainment hall to watch a naughty live band perform. I like the female singer right away because she speaks Bisaya with nary a bit of inhibition. She is joined by a maniacal guitarist and another male singer in black turtleneck. Together they perform contemporary members, with Bohemian Rhapsody (by Queen) and Hotel California (by The Eagles) the most applauded, not counting the earthy, if not downright kinky jokes. They do many requested numbers, and thank God it’s not - hold on to your orange lifesavers - Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On.

Suddenly fearing a repeat of that 1917 disaster, H and I run up the steps toward the uppermost deck and check out the rescue rafts stored on top of the ferry. We find the number of rafts reassuring. Over here, we catch a glimpse of various incarnations of Leonardo di Caprios and Kate Winslets in various states of, you know.

Near midnight, I return alone inside the ferry and notice the ever-changing whims of the sea – only to involuntarily imitate Edvard Munch’s The Scream. I all but faint in horror. The vessel is being assailed by murderous trade winds that promise nightmares, and waves that froth with wrath. I look frantically for H and we check the map posted near the front desk to determine where in the world we are now. We are supposedly near either Romblon or Pan-ay Island, someone says calmly. My paranoia is embarrassing H. I just have to get inside quick, for it’s getting cold, I say by way of an excuse.

For a nightcap, we trouble the guy at the deserted cocktail bar to make H some coffee, and myself a mean vodka tonic. We mock-wobble our way to the cabin as though we have drunk too much, and we end up being mocked by the sea waves in return. I remember that, earlier in the day, I tried walking south as the ferry cruised north to Manila and understood at once the meaning of disorientation. It meant moving at the same speed and direction as the splashing waves and, at the same time, surging fast forward with the ferry – with your back to the north. I know I’ve stumbled into a new theory in physics.

By midnight, G is beside himself with curses. The reason? The rest of us his bunk-mates are snoring steadily on like the three tenors -- Pavarotti, Carreras and Domingo blending their voices for Nessum Dorma. In the aftermath of the concert, G wakes up sporting an extra pair of eyebags on top of his existing eyebags.

I prefer to wake up to Grieg's Morning humming in my ears, so I choose to look out to a window that reveals postcard-pretty clouds. I am reminded of the oblique style of one travel writer who uses the changes in the color of the clouds to catch the mood of the day. In this case, it would be "clouds stained salmon pink, tinged with magenta at the core, and edged with gold.” But what exactly is magenta?

I grab the binoculars to watch the Muro Ami vessels presumably on their respective voyage into a hazy promise. Soon the sun rises like a merciful god, prompting black, white, and black-and-white seabirds (gulls? terns? gannets? frigates?) to flap their wings for breakfast.

To my surprise, the bathroom has hot water, too. I take my time in taking a bath, without a trace of remorse, other bladders bursting notwithstanding.

Breakfast consists of coffee, rice, corned beef and fried egg. H and I are having an intellectual discussion on our way out of the dining hall when the muzak blares, "Manila, Manila, there's no place like Manila." (It’s The Hotdogs’ signature ska song.) I get rather riled up by the artlessness of it all, I mean, where's the subtlety and suggestion?

Oh there it is: A bay of the vilest gunk surrounding a colony of the most wretched state of squalor in the whole wide world – squatter shanties! - evicted today, rebuilt tomorrow. Behold the extensive damage the Lina Law has wrought. We are all punished for it.

Equally discernible onshore are huge metallic structures which look uncannily like those clunky, dinosaur-looking ATATs in Star Wars 3 (The Empire Strikes Back). A French boy – obviously too scandalized beyond words to nasalize, ‘Terrible’ - takes a photograph of the shanties, of all things to photograph. "Andito naman tayo, ah," somebody deadpans.

When the Superferry eventually docks at Manila Bay, it is about 9 AM. H and I part with G and Z with a firm handshake each. Z says, "Thank you. You were good roommates!" With equal gratitude, I reply, "Be careful of pickpockets," to which he again beams, "Oh, thanks for reminding me."

We lazily pull at our things. By the time we hit home ground, it is like going back to war - war with real life in our respective places. And then we remember the Cebu we left behind. Under our breath we mutter, “I could live there.”

But then the call of home is the call of life itself. Manila is where we have planted our roots, roots that grew so darn deep we have no choice but to clamber down the stairway, each heavy step a step of hesitation.

Critics constantly bitch about Titanic, dismissing it as a disaster movie when in fact, you get three movies rolled into one tight can of film: a love story, the conflict of social inequality and the disaster that is man's pride. Man versus nature, man versus man, man versus machine - you've got them all sewn up together seamlessly. I agree it's a conservative choice for Best Picture, though, for I was rooting then for Good Will Hunting.

3.3.2000
Tenses are revised and some scenes reworked 2.28.2004