The Blue Afternoon

How different from his home, Manila, the low green odorous city on its lazy steamy estuary, clustered round the vast, crumbling, weedshagged walls of Intramuros. A dome, a spire here and there, peering above the trees and the plain of white tin and terracotta roofs. The heat, the damp, the crawling pace. Life moved at the speed of a caraboa cart, people said, one mile per day. And now here in Sampaloc he heard those loud white voices again, different accents but with the same bustling swaggering confidence. Here too commerce held sway. He felt a brief pang of nostalgia for the life he had known before the Americans came. The late start to the day, the city stewed in humid lethargy, the siesta, then the polite curiosity, the discreet and civil flirtations of the paseo… But he shook the mood off him as his more immediate needs reimposed themselves and he decided to enter an establishment called 'The Thichupwah Ice-Cream Parlor', one of the street's larger and more substantial buildings. On its second floor, above the awning, there was a crazy-looking wrought-iron balcony and through the open windows in some of the rooms Carriscant could see the flitting shapes of what he took to be women moving to and fro.

He pushed past the canvas awning and opened the door on to a large noisy room, blurry with smoke, filled with American servicemen, most of them in uniform. Many games of cards were in process and the unselfconscious shouts of bid and counter-bid almost drowned the noise of the large phonograph in the corner, playing 'My Kentucky Belle' for the few listless couples shuffling about the small wooden dance floor at the rear. Carriscant pushed and weaved his way through the tables to the bar where a large sign said 'American Beer.40 cents, Mex'. He ordered a Schlitz and glanced carefully and, he hoped, casually around him. Behind the bar a white woman with a pinched face never designed to be painted in the way it was asked him if he wanted to dance. She spoke English with an unlocatable foreign accent. Polish, for all he knew, Corsican, Walloon.

'With you?' he asked, not thinking. One of her front teeth was badly chipped, and the armpits of her thin cotton dress were dark with sweat.

'Any of the girls. I cost extra.' She smiled, showing a lot of gum, and gestured at the girls sitting on a bench by the dance floor waiting for partners. 'Fifty cents for a dance. Two dollars, Mexican, for a "dance" upstairs. The white girls cost five dollars.' She smiled at him again. 'I'm ten… You American?'

'Yes. Thank you.' He could barely pronounce the words.

He left the bar and made his way through the yelling gamblers towards the dance floor, beyond which, he saw, was a flight of stairs. Amongst the half dozen women not dancing were three white 'girls', two thin, one plump, all with u

He spoke English. 'Two dollars,' he said, gauchely, like an ignoramus, showing her the notes, 'upstairs.' In the moist heat of the room he could smell the coconut oil on her hair, sweet and spicy.

She took the money, folded it away somewhere gracefully, discreetly. 'You come me,' she said, 'we room five.' She set off immediately across the dance floor towards the stairway. A swaying couple cut directly across Carriscant's path and he had to pause and then negotiate their maladroit shuffle before he could follow his girl. His girl… 'You come me, we room five.' It was all so clear-cut, a matter of plain business dealing, no fuss, no pretensions. He was always struck by the simplicity of this exchange, its no-nonsense straightforwardness – money in return for the short loan of a body – on the few occasions he had resorted to it before. By the time he reached the foot of the stair, however, the girl had already ascended. And coming down, adjusting his belt, was Dr Saul Wieland.

'Well, if it isn't the esteemed Dr Carriscant,' Wieland said loudly, showing both rows of teeth in a yellow grin. 'That your little chicken I just patted on the keester?' Wieland was drunk, as usual.

'What are you talking about?' Carriscant held himself stiffly, arms by his side.

Wieland had reached the foot of the stairs, and lounged on the banister. He was a small man, in his fifties, with folds of jowl, like wattles, overlapping his stiff collar. He had a shaggy untrimmed moustache and an odd loose pouting mouth with wet lips.

'I won't tell Mommy. Relax.' He lolled forward and patted Carriscant's elbow, reassuringly.

Somehow Carriscant managed a contemptuous snuffle of a laugh. He reached forward and took hold of the handle of the door in front of him.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' Carriscant said. 'I'm here to attend my cook's mother. She has a hernia. Good evening to you.'

With that he snapped down the handle and swung the door open, stepping through confidently and closing it behind him. He heard Wieland say, with grotesque sarcasm, at the closed door, 'Oh, so sorry, I'm sure.' Carriscant did not pause further, in case Wieland should try to come after him. He walked down the corridor, past an opening that led to a cramped dark kitchen, and then out of a rear door that gave on to a long narrow high-walled yard. One side was lined with chicken coops and he could hear the soft clucking of the roosting hens and smell the nutty, brothy reek of their accumulated shit. He felt his way carefully to his left and squi

Carriscant had no desire to allow Wieland any further opportunities to glimpse him in the 'Ice-Cream Parlor' or to practise his scornful i

He woke up, his head canted against the rim of the wheel, the keening whine of a mosquito in his ear. He slapped it away and stood up, shakily, stiffly, stamping the circulation back into his legs. He could not believe he had slept like that… He moved to the light from the window and checked his pocket watch: 2.30 a.m. Music and chatter still emanated from the 'Ice-Cream Parlor' and peering in through a gap in the shutters he saw that the place was still crowded and, more irritating, that Wieland and his cronies were still engrossed in their gambling. This was absurd, he said to himself, now what was he supposed to do? To walk past Wieland at this time of the night would simply encourage more ribald speculation. He paced up and down the yard, thinking, disturbing the dozing poultry further. Wieland, at this rate, could be there until dawn. And A