TAMALES CON AMOR

 

 

It was the tamales that I remembered most of all. The spicy chili pork stuffed into the steamed masa wrapped in corn husk  crept back into my memory with the  insistence  of a classic  song from Mexico: “Me gusta tu, y nada mas que tu.”

 Rosa Alarcon had prepared it and a host of other Mexican dishes  that were originally intended  to be mere snacks but eventually acquired the heft of an early evening’s supper.

Aside from the tamales, there were the chili rellenos, whole green peppers from Hatch that were lovingly dipped in a tempura batter. Then there was the menudo, in and of itself a meal, quite different from the Philippine menudo because it was beef tripe and hominy grits swimming in a tomato- sauce infused sea of “caldo”, a soup. A slice of lime brought a tangy finish to this heavenly concoction, a true child of Mexico.  And then, for dessert, there were the tamales of a different sort made of corn masa which harbored the richness of almonds and honey, like the Greek baklava, but with corn dough.  

I remember that evening that we had wine and coffee. That afternoon snack rolled on into the evening and became supper.

 I did not come to Rosa Alarcon’s house to be fed though. I came at the invitation, a request really from the kindest and most unassuming couple who ever served the parish church of St. Xavier in El Paso, Texas. I am referring to Pepe and Juana, both retired teachers, but still serving the church, he as a sacristan, she as a lector.

 “Manny,” said Pepe, Juana smiling sweetly beside him,” we have a request to make of you.”

 “Oh?  What is it, Pepe?”

 "We have a friend, Rosa,” he said, “She lost her husband three months ago. She lives all alone by herself in a house in the hills above El Paso. May we ask you to spare some time to play the piano for her?  She's so sad."It’s Christmastime. We’d like to cheer her up.”

I wasted no time in saying “yes”. Playing the piano had always given me joy; to share that with another human being, especially one who was in bereavement of a lost partner, was a no-brainer. I needed to do it.

 When Rosa opened the door to her house, I saw a slight woman, about 60 years old, with a smile on her face and no trace of sadness that I thought I could detect outwardly.

 “Welcome, welcome,” she cheerfully piped up. Whatever sadness there was that lay in her at the loss of a lifelong partner I could perhaps sense in the deliberation that she greeted and kiss us on the cheeks. There was a softness that seemed easy yet thoughtful, like the touch of kitten’s whisker or the slight tremor of a butterfly’s wing.

 “Thank you for coming, Manny,” Rosa addressed me. “I hear you play the piano. My Yamaha has been feeling lonely. I’m sure you can do something about her.”

Juana gave me a smile, a sad twinkle in her eye.

 “Rosa hasn’t played her piano for quite some time,” she remarked.

“It makes me sad, let’s just put it that way,” said Rosa. “I had a ready audience, however badly I played.”

She did not follow that up with the obvious corollary: her audience had gone.

“And Eileen and Susan, how are they?” asked Pepe.

“They come to visit me sometimes with the kids,” Rosa replied. “It’s been hard for them too, but they have their own families now. But enough about them,” she cut to the quick. “I prepared merienda.”

And that was when she brought us to the table laid out with the repast she must have prepared for the better part of the day.

“You prepared all this?” exclaimed Juana. Pepe shook his head slightly, as if in disbelief. I looked on in gustatory anticipation. Mexican culture looked back at me in a medley of tamales, rellenos and menudos.

“You didn’t have to!”Juana continued with her obvious surprise.

“Oh but I wanted to!” said Rosa. “Takes my mind off things. I want Manny to taste my tamales.”

“That I shall,” I replied. “Thank you, Rosa. I’m sure they’re divine.”

 We ate and had a convivial conversation. And before you could say “Cielito Lindo”, it was time for me to play the piano.

 The piano in question was a black Yamaha upright. It was standard issue Yamaha, with a resonant soundboard and a full, excellent tone. The keys needed a little tuning, but the off-ness didn’t verge on the dissonant, so I had no problem with it. As I opened the lid and wiped the keys with the red felt cover, I noticed the small silver-framed pictures of Rosa and her late husband (I presumed), a picture of two girls dressed in white holding hands together in front of a communion pew, and two more pictures of what I presumed again was the grown-up version of one of those girls holding a baby in a christening gown while the man beside her who I presumed was her husband was holding perhaps two-year old girl.

“That’s Joe, my husband,” Rosa spoke to me. She must have seen me glance with curiosity at the framed photographs. “Those are my two girls. Susan is the one with the husband and two children. Eileen is in New York.”

 I did not press her for any more information regarding her family. I was ready to play.

When I was seated at the piano, the three of them seated at some remove on the comfortable sofa, I turned to Rosa and asked: “Is there any song you would want to hear, Rosa?”

She gave me a look that seemed on the verge of tears: “Can you play Noche de Ronda? That was Joe’s favorite. It was our theme song.”

I knew the song quite well. Being Latinos in sentiment and inclination if not in appearance, Filipinos of a certain age in my country knew and sang this song. The song was written by the same composer who composed “Granada” Agustin Lara.   It starts off like this:

 

Noche de Ronda
Que triste pasas
Que triste cruzas

Por mi balcón

Roughly translated it means:

Night of the guard’s watch,

How sadly you pass

How sadly you cross

By my balcony

 

The main verse starts with the “moon” and ends with “tears”, so you would be correct in  thinking it a sad, bittersweet song in ¾ time written by a Mexican composer, whose full Spanish appellation, if you must know, was Ángel Agustín María Carlos Fausto Mariano Alfonso del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Lara y Aguirre del Pino.

 I played the song. When I finished playing the last chord, I glanced at Rosa and saw that she was weeping. Pepe and Juana drew close to her, stroking her hand and shoulders.

Pepe gave me a quick look, and said: “I have a request, Manny. Can you play “The Entertainer’?

 I was happy to play the sprightly jazz-rag tune. I did not launch into it with mindless gusto, but with a tentative touch, starting slowly, and then gathering a little more speed where it needed to go. By the time I had played the last descending riff of the joyful music, I saw that Rosa had regained her composure, though I still caught the glisten in her eye.

 Songs mean many things to different people. What would seem sentimental claptrap to some is a fount of memories to others.  And so it was with Rosa. Who knows how many mariachis they had requested to play this song on special occasions, or how far back the origin of their romantic attachment to it went back? The years flew by quickly. One of them is gone, and she would follow him too, unless, in the mysterious byways of human nature, she finds another man to cling to. But at sixty, that would probably take some diligent motivation, if she had a mind to do it.

 I played more songs that night but then, inevitably the visitors had to leave.

“Will you have some café con leche before you go, Manny, Pepe, Juana?” asked Rosa hopefully, even pleadingly. Pepe and Juana demurred, but I said:” Sure, I will have that and some of the tamales de mandorlas.”

 Later, when we went outside of Rosa’s home, up in the hills above El Paso, we could see the plains below lit with many lights. In the desert air, there was no smog or humidity to obscure their brilliance. Somewhere in the darkness, there was a dividing line, a wall roughly following the course of the Rio Grande that here is a mere ditch, a wall separating El Paso, USA from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. But these cities of the plain, with its many lights, and a particularly brilliant configuration of lights shaped like a giant star on the south side of the Franklin Mountains would seem to be merely one entity enveloped in the same darkness and lights. A Noche de Ronda, in a manner of speaking.

 “How beautiful this evening is,” remarked Juana.

“I agree,” said Pepe. “Someone had the Star lit tonight.”

“Thank you Manny for a lovely evening,” Rosa said to me as she gave me a soft kiss on the cheek. “I hope we can have another evening like this someday.”

“I hope so too,” I replied sincerely.

There is always another time, is it? I thought. And then again…

Many years later, having been away from El Paso for a while, and happening to pass that way again, I once again saw Pepe and Juana.

“It’s October! We’re going to the Albuquerque International Balloon Festival”, Juana beamed.

“We always go every year,” added Pepe. “Are you going?”

“Maybe,” I said. Actually I had made my own plans to go, but I would be including a side trip to Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico. I had rented my own car and booked my own hotels. Pepe and Juana would insist that I go with them, but I didn’t want to inconvenience them with my company. It was their trip together, as man and wife still in love with each other, still serving in church, despite their advancing age, and now renting an apartment. They had sold their  longtime home where they had raised their kids till they were of age to have families of their own..

“It was too large for the two of us,” confided Juana. I agreed. I had been to their house.

“And Rosa, how is she?” I asked.

“She sold her house too and is now renting, ” replied Pepe. “She felt too lonely in that lovely house. Her kids don’t want to live there anymore.”

“And the piano?” I asked.

“She donated it to Goodwill,” said Juana. “She tried to play again, after your visit, but it was too hard for her. Too many memories, too many ghosts, she said.”

 I never saw Rosa again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE MOON

                 8:00 AM.

That’s what the clock face read when I looked at it with sleep-drowned eyes.

I had awakened with a start in the pitch-black darkness of my cabin, not because of a noise, but because there was none. The engines had stopped. The ship was dead in the water.

I waited for an announcement on the ship’s PA. Nothing.

I sat at the edge of the bed trying to clear my head. The air-conditioner was still on. The lights still worked. Except for the fact that the ship had stopped moving, everything seemed normal. Still, I felt a rising sense of dread, a premonition that something was wrong. I stood up, opened the door and peeked outside. Two or three other heads poked out of their respective doors.

“What’s going on?” I asked one of the heads. “I don’t know,” the head nearest me replied.

“I heard something but it was on the speakers on the corridor. Couldn’t make it out,” said another head further down the corridor.

Just then the ship’s alarm went on, but it wasn’t the usual seven short and one long blast. It was three short and one long. A voice materialized from the overhead speakers and said: “ Code Oscar, Code Oscar. Man overboard. Man overboard. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.”

I went back to my room and lay on bed.

Somebody had fallen overboard. Essentially this did not concern me, but all the same, I felt uneasy. Who fell, crew or passenger? Why and how?

Most of us on the M/V Glorianis had looked forward to this day for a reason. Tonight, a rare celestial phenomenon was about to occur. Predicted by astronomers years ago, tonight the western hemisphere would witness a total eclipse of the moon. Everybody would be out on deck to watch the full moon being obliterated by the shadow of the earth as it passed in front of the sun. It was a sight nobody wanted to miss. Anticipation hung heavily in the air in the days leading to this night. Now, with this accident, anticipation had given way to a sense of horror. Accident or not, no one wants to hear about anyone falling off any ship.

I bathed and dressed, ears cocked out for more announcements. Through the hull of the ship I could hear the sounds of motorboats starting and shuttling to and from points beyond and near the vessel. I decided to go up to the open deck to see what was going on. By this time, an hour had passed since the announcement. In that time, the ship  had  actually turned back to retrace it’s route. Tender boats were launched and a search had been made. Another hour passed, and then another. Finally the boats were called back in.

The captain’s voice came on the PA. It sounded sad and heavy.

“To all ship’s passengers and crew. As you know, at roughly 800 hours this morning, the bridge received notice that an individual had jumped off from the ship. We immediately stopped and turned the ship around and initiated a search and rescue for this individual. However, we failed to find any trace of him. So it is with great reluctance that I have decided to call off the search. We shall be continuing on to our next port of La Guaira, in Venezuela. For your information, the crewmember’s name was Salvatore. He was a cadet, 21 years of age from Genoa, in Italy. May God rest his soul.”

I stared at the Caribbean sea, so blue and so inviting in this halfway mark between Venezuela and Hispaniola. Brilliant sunlight played and sparkled on the water’s surface. Warm ocean breezes caressed the skin. The waves wore small frothy white caps that seemed to beckon and say: “Come on in, the water’s fine.”

All throughout the afternoon till sundown, the young cadet’s fate was on everybody’s lips.

“So sad, so sad.”

“And where was he from, again?” 

“From Genoa”.

“Is that in Switzerland”.

“No, Italy. The one in Switzerland is Geneva.” 

“Ah. Why do you think he jumped?”

“I don’t know.”

“ I heard somebody say that he was being escorted to the clinic. He escaped, took off his shoes and socks, piled them neatly on the floor, and dove from the front of the ship.”

 “Why was he being escorted to the clinic?”

“They said  he  had  been  acting  and  talking strangely since he left Genoa. They said he was hearing voices.”

“Maybe he was just being homesick.” “Suicide sounds extreme for me.”

“So sad.”

The whispered consolations and expressions of horror and regret faded into the gathering dusk.

The moon, large and yellow, rose up from the eastern edge of the sea. People gazed at it with expectant faces.

For my part, I dined at the officer’s mess on mushroom soup, steamed rice, beef bourgouignon, and wrapped it all up with a New York  cheesecake and coffee. Nobody spoke about the cadet. Afterwards  I went up to the pool deck. The hour when the moon would fade into black was at hand. All around me passengers and crew angled to get a good view of the moon. Many reclined on deck chairs, looking up at the night sky. There was no need to wear eye protection because there were no ultra-violet rays or solar flares to damage the retina.

At 9:00 PM, a dark shadow started to pass over the moon. A collective “Aaah” arose from the gathered crowd. After 20 minutes, the moon completely vanished from sight..  An  eerie,  penumbral  darkness  suddenly engulfed the ship and the ocean around it.

The people looked up at the dark spot in the sky where the moon used to be. They were silent, rapt in the magic of this disappearing act. Somewhere in China, or wherever they still believe that an eclipse is the result of a giant dragon swallowing up the moon or  the sun, bands of rural folks must be out banging pots and pans and setting off firecrackers to  force it to cough it out and restore the natural order of the universe.

As I continued looking up, waiting for the moon to re-appear, everything else that happened during that day became a distant, fading memory.