In the black of the Pacific night, the huge moon that stabbed the moaning waves with its white rays, seemed a peep-hole cut out by some strange god, in a dark-blue paravan. Jeering excitedly, the god, with his albino eye and its popped, dark veins shed light in the deepest darkness of the silent ocean over a small island. A spec of dirt and sand that stuck out, like a barnacle on the back of a whale- white and slimy.
As if burdened by the rays of the moon, and by the light breeze that was gently blowing, the skinny palms that littered the beach in patches of parched vegetation seemed some ancient, forgotten pirates, decomposing a little more with each passing day in which they didn’t see redemption on the horizon. Past the shabby line of tropical trees, in the heart of the island, lay the only signs of habitation- a small clump of wooden huts with tin roofs and whining, sick, skeleton like dogs tied to posts, next to every entrance- a tumor of civilization in the middle of a tropical paradise.
Making the tin of the roofs vibrate with its each whisper, the wind blew warm, making the sweat run off the withered, brown bodies of the natives. Dark flies and huge mosquitoes owned each brewing furnace with windows and wooden walls. The cold stare of the moon could do nothing, as the ocean itself, once cool and soothing seemed to be boiling over. On the shore, sickly green froth was being spud by the waves, coloring the sand in ugly shades of warm wetness.
In the tropical inferno, George Armfeld was sweating heavily on the matters of his bed. Under him, the warm sweat was tarnishing the sheets and the room with a putrid smell. Next to him, a very well, over-cooked Mrs. Armfeld was snoring violently, threatening to blow off the roof of their house quicker than the next monsoon. On the ceiling, a lamp with a ventilator was squeaking sharply, reminding George the times when the bed-springs used to make the same noise. It had been 15 years since then…
In her white night-gown, his wife, a blob of human fat and sweat, seemed to be snoringly dissolving before his tired eyes. He wondered where her beautiful chin had gone, those lovely cheeks and the cute dimple. That cute dimple when she smiled… Her slender arms and beautiful long fingers, her swan-like neck. The sweet smell of her skin, the soft feel of her warm breasts and her slender thighs. Her tiny feet. Her beautiful waist, the line of her back. And the light in her eyes…
That Margaret was long gone. He was now married to a 75 year old wreck, that was slowly decomposing by his side-“for better and for worse”. Her white hair, that smelled of old people and moth-balls reminded him of the wood of the fishing boat wrecks that were left at the mercy of the Pacific sun, scorched and dried to dust.
But he had faired no better. He was 79. That’s all he remembered. All he wanted to remember, since time had shown him that the past is too painful to be recalled. And if his wife was a wreck, then he surely was even less. His scrawny legs, crooked back and bald head made him a grotesque caricature of the strong, handsome man that had married the breathtaking 19 year old Margaret, on a beautiful summer day, in a Presbyterian church, far away, in a different life, on a different planet.
Why did they come to the Philippines? He couldn’t remember, and she didn’t care. She never did. She just said: ‘Yes dear.’ In the first 5 years he liked it, in the next 10 he got used to it, the next 20 went by simply just because. After that he just stopped counting, and simply just started hating her- because she got old, because he got old, and because he felt nothing else.
They arrived in Manila in 1920. He started a business, she said :’Yes dear.’ He started cheating on her, she said nothing. He started beating her, she said nothing. And every day turned into a monotonous, perverted mating dance ritual, in which he went out of his rum factory, following a skinny, pot-bellied, flea bitten teenager-“You want woman mister? Come, come, I show you…” -into some shack, somewhere on the outskirts of Manila, where he did what he pleased with the daughters of fishermen and factory workers, more preoccupied of buying radios and Fords. He drank, he came home, where she said nothing. And he beat her, and she got older, and older, and he got older, and when he couldn’t cheat on her anymore, and when he couldn’t beat her anymore, he bought a small island off the coast of Mindanao.
Here, not giving a damn about the war, the silence of his wife, or his prostate, he went out every day, on his little motor-driven yacht, trying to find youth at the edge of the horizon.
As the moon started setting, descending back into the sea, hissing as its light was fading on the now gray sky, a little knock on the door made George take his eyes from the fan on the ceiling. Slowly getting out of bed, dressed in his short underpants and a sweaty, dirty undershirt, he opened the door. Outside, with a pack of dogs behind him, and huge swarm of black flies around his sticky, dark eyebrows, a boy, no more than 18 years old was silently waiting.
“What?”, asked George.
“You forget, senior? Change your mind, no wanna go, huh?”, asked the boy, shyly.
“No. Sure I wanna go. Wait here kid.”And quickly closing the door, he went to one corner of the room, to a shabby looking dresser, from where he took out a clean pair of pants, and a T-shirt. On a chair, next to the window that let in the dawning day, a pistol holster and his infantry helmet from when he was in the war. He never went anywhere without his gun and his helmet anymore. Finally, he took a rum bottle from the table- from his factory in Manila, now run by a nephew. “O’Keefe Rum”, after a buddy in the trenches. He promised the old Mick bastard they would go in the alcohol business after the war. Well, at least George had kept his end of the promise…O’Keefe, the crazy Irishman, lived on in every bottle George sucked dry. He had become a real booze-hound.
With his combat boots on his feet, the helmet on his head and the holster, hitting his thigh gently as he walked through the cottages, towards the beach, the old man and his scrawny companion seemed the specters of some Portuguese explorers, seeking riches and fame.
“Are you sure Tejo? Is this the day?”, asked the old man, excitedly.
“Si senior, as sure as the day is long. Mi papa used to say that only one day each year, the maidens of the sea appear on the reef. He go to see them too, but he never come back.” The boy fell silent, crossing himself.” On day after hottest night of the year, when the Ocean trembles and moans. It is them who moan senior, it is them who sweat and make the earth hot. Only the touch of a man will settle them, only once every year. And this man who can settle their desire, he become young forever.”
George’s eyes began to glow. From beneath the steel helmet, little beads of sweat started running down, falling on his lips, and making him lick them incessantly. On the beach, the palms were moaning, stretching and bending as night turned to day.
Walking along the shore line, the old man seemed to be lagging behind, the heat of the newborn day weighing him down as a boulder would a drowning man. His shabby helmet gave out a sickly, greenish shine, and his worn-out combat-boots sank deep into the hot sand. The soles of the old man’s feet were getting ever hotter, as he was clumsily putting one foot in front of the other, as if each step he made was left sticking in the sand. From a distance, it seemed as if an old crazy shaman, of much older days, was performing some sacred ritual, dancing with the frenzy of a religious drunkard on hot coals.
Then and again, the old man stopped. Each time he staggered, as a tree about to be felled would, going from one side to the other, a reed in the wind of old age. But the boy Tejo always stood by, helping. The old man said nothing. He knew he needed help, but his pride made him never ask for any, nor did it let him thank his young companion.
Tejo liked the old man. Because he gave him money, cigarettes, and rum, when he was too drunk to drink it himself. He found the American to be a very strange character. Somehow, George Armfeld reminded Tejo of his father…
Cabral Santa Maria Martinez, a Portuguese merchant sailor, came to the Philippines at the beginning of the 1900s, searching fortune on the South Seas. After a perilous journey, round the Horn of Africa, and a little armed adventure through the rainforests of Angola, Cabral Santa Maria grew, from a 18 year old boy, into a 19 year old killer. As many men that left the kingdom for the colonies, seeking fortune, Cabral Santa Maria lost something on his journeys- his soul. In the summer of 1902, after an enchanting spell in Zaire, poaching exotic animals for a Portuguese shipping company, a month sweating and trembling from malaria and another two shaking off a bad case of gonorrhea, Cabral was offered the chance of a lifetime- a ticket on board a steamer, headed for the Philippines.
He set foot on Mindanao in late December 1902, and he never left. The eyes of a beautiful native girl kept him there forever, letting him regain his soul. They got married, and she gave him a son, Tejo. Tejo didn’t remember his mother, he was too young when she died. All he had known about his father was the stories his crazy grandmother used to tell him, at night, in a cottage on the island.
Tejo’s grandmother claimed that his father was mad with pain. That he didn’t want the soul of her daughter to rest. One night, tormented by his pain and with his brains drenched in the fumes of alcohol, he unearthed the dead body of his wife, and, as he had seen deep in the darkness of Africa, he re-married her, spending their cursed wedding-night right in the grave.
He was found in the morning, next to the body of his dead wife. A grave digger found them. A priest was summoned, and an exorcism performed. Cabral Santa Maria screamed, laughed and cried, talking in strange tongues, grunting like a beast, as he had done, in the twilight of a full-mooned African night, next to a shaman, whose eyes glowed in the dark like that of a panther’s.
Cabral recovered in a week, but he never was the same. He started roaming the islands, searching for his dead wife, howling at the moon, sniffing the ground for her scent.
In a bar in Manila, where his wife’s mother worked, he used to sit half-conscious, crying, telling his mother-in-law how much he had loved her daughter. He said he knew where she could be found- on the reef, with other dead women, seeking to live again, forever young. Women that came out of the water, after the hottest night of the year, as he had seen on the bank of a river, among the mist of a stuffy African morning.
Cabral told the story every night, saying he was waiting for the hottest night to come. And each night the woman heard it, over and over, until she could forget it no more, not even after, one morning, her son-in-law was seen disappearing into the surf forever.
Left to mind Tejo, the woman grew older and madder by the day. And Tejo grew, not sleeping at night, because of the stories his grandmother was telling him. He still didn’t sleep, not even after the old woman passed away, maybe afraid that her voice would reach him in his dreams, from afar…
Tejo told George about the maidens that come from the water, because he felt the old man was going mad. Maybe it was because of his old age, or because of the hatred that filled the old man’s whole being. And he also told him because he thought that if he would, he could sleep at night. And so it was- a year since Tejo had told George the story, Tejo could sleep, while George stood awake each night, waiting for the hottest night to come.
Now, it had finally come, or so George thought. Tejo didn’t care, he chose one at random, and setting his mind to humor the old man with a thing he didn’t really believe in. Maybe it was pity that made Tejo act so, pity that the old man would die, without a chance at redemption. And in that morning, George seemed much younger, his eyes glittering with hope and youth, as he was now approaching the little lagoon in which his yacht was anchored.
The sun, slowly making its way up on the sky, was shining on the greenish blue water in which the embarkation was languidly floating, moving up and down, swaying like the thighs of a beautiful young woman. Bluish shades were caressing the hull of the yacht, meandering, faster, slower, as the waves were stirring the clear water of the ocean.
Tejo went into the water, splashing loudly, keeping a hand in front of his face, as the water was reflecting the ever stronger rays of the sun. Upon reaching the back of the boat, he climbed in, using a small ladder which led straight into the water. Walking along the deck, the bare feet of the boy made a strange splashing sound against the wood.
On the shore, the old man was watching excitedly. The boy made for the cabin, in which he stayed a mere minute, looking for something. From outside, the sounds of a frantic search could be heard. They finally stopped, the boy emerging victorious with a life-jacket in his hand. Upon reaching the prow, he threw the jacket over board, on the shore, where George was impatiently waiting. The jacket floated through the air gently, taking its time, as if trying to fly, but then clumsily falling at the feet of the old man.
George put the life-jacket on, and started for the water. As his skinny legs made contact with the warm water, his body started tingling all over. Fighting with the waves, the splash of the water on his shins struck his ears loudly, as if thunder was exploding in them. Thor seemed to be shouting in the old man’s ears.

…


The shell fire could be heard for miles round, reverberating against the Grey sky like the cry of an angry god in a huge, cold marble hall, somewhere at the beginning of eternity. Under the gray sky, the barren landscape of war stretched on forever, littered with scorched trees and freezing ruins.
Among the blown up remains of a Belgian town, the Western front left a deep groove in the earth. Trenches split the ground, here and there, among the increasing number of explosions. The god was shouting ever louder.
At one edge of what once used to be the garden of the van Buyten family, in a shallow, muddy trench, a machine gun was spitting out bullets, moaning as the heat of the burning gun-powder made the barrel expand.
Johnny O’Keefe and George Armfeld, all Grey and dirty from the gun-powder and all frozen up from the cold, were firing round after round towards the German lines.
“ Take that you Kraut bastards! Ha, ha, ha!!!”.
George was looking stunned at his buddy, who was yelling like a forlorn banshee at an enemy that never showed himself. George had never seen a Kraut up close, and Johnny had only seen a leg or an arm, here and there, then and again; but he could never say for sure it once belonged to a Kraut. He hated them nonetheless for making him leave his home in Ireland, and for making him witness the death of all his playmates, that died off one by one in a war that seemed to stretch on forever. But now, Johnny had a new buddy- a 40 year old American named George who had volunteered for the war.
Johnny was only 20, but his eyes were of someone much older, much older than George had ever seen, or could have imagined seeing.
In a state of total exaltation as he was firing his machinegun, Johnny was a terrifying sight: his whole body trembling as that of an epileptic’s having a seizure; his eyes going into the back of his head; his breath pacing and panting as that of the report of the bullets that were coming screaming out of the muzzle of the gun- a true zealot in the religion of vengeance.
George was terrified and in the same time awed by the ageless entity that had taken human shape in the moments it touched the trigger.
After another couple of seconds, the ammunition was depleted. It took Johnny some time to realize this. George touched him on the shoulder and Johnny turned to him violently:” What!?”
“ It’s okay Johnny. I have to change bandoleers now.”
The boy was looking with an air of confusion at the old man, his finger still squeezing the trigger. With a calm look on his face, George smiled at the boy and gently took his finger off the trigger.
Slowly recovering from his trance, Johnny started looking around, as if trying to get reacquainted with the world around him. The explosions could still be clearly heard. A tear ran across one of Johnny’s cheeks as he threw himself into George’s arms. He gripped the American tightly and started whispering in his ear:” D’you hear the explosions Georgie? It be the thunder god himself beatin’ the ground with his giant hammer. We gotta stay still until he passes or we end up like all my mates- blown to bits…”
“ Yeah, we’ll stand still…:”, muttered the scared American, holding his breath when he heard the shriek of a shell, and exhaling when the explosion made the ground moan, somewhere, far away from where they were standing.
“ Johnny?”
“Yeah…”
“ You okay?”
“ Yeah.”
“ Good, cause I have to go get more ammo. You stay here, I’ll be right back.”
“ George?”
“ Yeah?”
“ You and me Georgie boy… After the war, we start up a liquor factory. And we’ll be stinking rich, and I’ll be the godfather of your kids. Right?”
George smiled at the now innocent look on Johhny’s face:
“ Yeah. We’ll have a factory, and kids… Sure, why not?”
“ Good.” And Johnny finally settled down, and went to sleep on the muddy wet floor of the trench. Next to him, the barrel of the machine gun started hissing, as the rain which was beginning to fall, was cooling it down.
Goerge started making his way to the ammo dump, when he heard an explosion behind him.
On the place in the van Buyten’s garden where an old, huge linden used to be, now lay the shallow grave of Johnny O’Keefe, whom Thor had squashed with one of his mechanical lightning-bolts.
Everywhere around him, George could hear the splashing of the mud, as huge balls of fire sank into it, sending explosions, earth and dying men towards the heavens.

…

“Senior! Senior!…”. The boy had dragged the breathless body of the old man out of the water and was sitting right over him, blocking out the sun, panting, holding the bald head of the watery corpse. With his eyes and mouth wide open, George stood still, frozen, drowned in another time and another space. He saw just a small thin shadow over-head, its extremities shining bright gold, the burnt off wings of an angel of salvation. His ears were still thudding with the groan of gun fire he hadn’t heard for so many years.
Not knowing what to do, drenched in a desperation Tejo had never felt before, he started yelling for help, his screams dying away with the grains of sand- dissolved in the foamy mouth of the ocean. Nearby, on the beach, a bird distracted by the boy’s loud screeching turned its head. In the animal’s beak were the scrappy remains of a young sea-turtle that had never reached the hot and cold embraces of the sea that had been calling to him from above his shell, from above the ground, from beneath the reaches of life that now brought him onto the sharp beak of death.
As his last screams died out through the emotionless waves, evaporating with the splash of water that was clinging in desperation to the rocks, the boy fell silent and started crying. His hand still on the head of the bald man, stroking it gently- he had lost another father.
In the silence, the creaking of the boat seemed to be the start of a burial chant sang by the old, the forgotten, the ones that had never ever lived, except in a distant memory that touched the fringes of existence as the waves gently caressed the coast. Standing alone, the mourner, his arms now stretched wide towards the heavens, seemed the decrepit cross of an earthly coffin upon a floating grave.
All seemed lost, but as a gentle breeze began to blow the breath of life upon the scorching morning that now flooded the beach, the old man began to rise from his grave dug deep into memory to the present of his world, his lost dreams and his new found hopes. Gasping for air as a new born child, the man started coughing out the phlegm of seawater, eliminating the past in a giant spit of tissue and blood that someone else had placed there without his knowing.
“ You OK Senior!!! You have nothing! Praise the Lord! Santa Maria! You are OK!”. The boy was dancing excitedly around the old man in a fervor that only despair can cause upon letting salvation fix what it had tried to destroy. Clinging tightly, the boy was screaming in the old man’s ear, deafening him with the violent sound of happiness. With the confirmation that life triumphs over death.
“ Stop you little runt! Hey! Goddamit! What the… stop touching me you flee infested scab! Jeese! Can’t a guy take a nap without somebody thinking he croaked! I ain’t that old!” George got up, put his infantry helmet on and started life just where he remembered leaving it- at the mouth of a bottle.
Tejo was still glad, not offended, the cursing- a clear indication that all was back to normal, as he had wanted it, as he could never have it imagined being different. He went back to the prow and started the engine. As he turned his back on the old man, he couldn’t catch the tremble of a hand holding the now empty bottle.
“ Come on kid! Get this bucket movin’ ! I ain’t got all day!”

…