This is Nick Joaquin’s account of his telephone conversation with another brilliant Filipino writer, Gregorio Brillantes, who, bless him, arranged this meeting for my sake. I sit between them now, in the lanai of Joaquin’s house in San Juan, and I double over with laughter.
Then Nick growls at me. "Don’t loff," he shouts in my ear. "Aah’m maaad!"
I laugh harder.
There is no doorbell, but a few mild shakes of the green iron gate by Greg attract the quick attention of a boy of about 20, in shorts, who lets us in without question. A small brown dog, looking like a mix of chihuahua and dachshund, shiny and frisky, makes a fuss over our arrival. We are in the lanai – what was a garage, made into a living space – after just a few steps from the gate.
The house and its austere furnishings remind me of my childhood home in Pasig. The furniture is evidently ’60s, with spare and simple lines: wooden coffee table, small and without carving, L-shaped sala set and straight-backed armchairs re-covered in pale green leatherette, matching the pale-green walls.
The boy runs upstairs to call Nick, and I peek into the sala, where I find two more young men watching television from a small portable set perched atop a cabinet console TV, the kind I remember watching Heckle and Jeckle on – very 1960s, apparently no longer working, but fitting well with the rest of the furniture and the house. Beside it on a low table, like a dangling modifier, a metallic-silver karaoke stereo sticks out of the whole retro statement. The indoor sofa is covered with the same material in pale red. In the dining room is a large wooden table with no chairs.
Unable to get an invitation to come in from the men, I shift my attention to what are hanging all over the walls of the veranda. There are large faded pictures of the Virgin Mary by the entrance, an impasto abstract painting in dark colors on a side wall, a 1997 Land Bank calendar with Nick Joaquin in several happy poses; many more pictures, old posters and oil and pastel portraits of Nick Joaquin.
I am looking at a laminated Panorama cover that featured Lolita Rodriguez, Charito Solis and a much-younger Nick on the cover when Nick himself appears, dressed in a robe of pale green with pale bamboo prints. A silk handkerchief hangs from the sash around his thin waist.
"What iss this all abow?" he barks at Greg and me.
I smell my father’s pomade on his hair when I kiss him. "Darling," he says as he gives me a hug, "who are yew?"
It therefore does not bother me that Nick doesn’t remember me either, though we met and spent a night drinking together with Greg and Billy Lacaba, his literary agent and friend of long standing, ten months ago at the home of Mrs. Narita Gonzalez and later at the Sulo restaurant. I recall that night vividly, because in the middle of a conversation with Billy, he fell asleep, and my jaw dropped to the marble floors of the Sulo lobby. Billy and Greg paid no heed to it, and continued to drink and chat while Nick snored aloud beside us. About an hour later, Nick suddenly burst into boisterous song, hopelessly out of key but to the beat of the piano music, and I spilled my beer on my dress in fright.
The night before Nick interviewed the columnist and TV host Randy David about EDSA 3, Billy Lacaba faxed a list of things to expect from Joaquin. "One of them," Randy says, "was ‘Don’t be offended if he falls asleep’." Billy later explained to David that Nick fell asleep while interviewing Jovito Salonga and Billy thought it best to forewarn his interviewees thereafter. Randy says his interview lasted six hours, with what seemed to be cases and cases of beer, and he was afraid neither of them made sense halfway through. The article came out in Graphic magazine a few weeks later, which, according to Randy himself, was brilliantly and accurately written.
Greg complains. He wonders why there is no San Miguel beer.
"I drink this at home, I drink San Miguel elsewhere, to divide my culture," Nick says.
"Wala ka bang pulutan, Nick?" Greg says.
"Whoa!" Nick roars. The man is 84, and he has the vocal chords of a 20-year-old. "Where do ya think ya are, the Holiday Inn?" Within minutes, his attendant comes out with plates of tapa, hotdogs and toast bread.
"Come on, darling," he tells me in sing-song voice, "have some tapa – it’s geeewd. It’s real steak. I have it fow bwekfast."
Greg and Nick work together at the Graphic publications, Nick being the editor-in-chief and Greg, who is 15 years younger, the literary editor. They go a long way, back to the ’70s when they first became colleagues at the Free Press. On Christmas mornings, Nick, Greg and Greg’s wife Lourdes, a professor of Spanish at the UP, go to Mass together and have lunch at Nick’s home. Tonight, when the boy tells Nick, "Nandiyan na yung matanda, may kasamang babae," he thinks it is Lourdes with Greg, and, he says, he expected to have a casserole of callos awaiting him downstairs.
"Ano’ng sabi mo?" asks Greg, whose hearing aid couldn’t quite translate the slurred and heavily accented speech of Nick.
"Everything in your body is failing! Your eyes, your ears – you should die!" he tells Greg, his eyes twinkling with affection.
He was wearing a vintage green sweater and slim pants the color of silverfish. He refused to speak despite the pleas of many people, including Narita, NVM’s widow. I was beside Nick Joaquin all the while, staring in awe of the man, the celebrated genius, who was, to my horror, throwing a tantrum in public.
Greg Brillantes appealed to him. "Come on, Nick, just say a few words."
"Wha should I?" he barked.
"Just do this for NVM," continued Greg.
"Wha should I do anything for Ien Viyem?" People were tense, but no one more than I, standing as I was right beside him and Greg.
"Because, Nick," Greg said, his face serious, "he’s dead."
He writes on the book, "For dear Migs, Happy reading, Nick" – the most unassuming dedication I ever got from any writer.
"‘Candido’s Apocalypse’ (the first title in the collection) is the greatest Filipino short story ever written," Nick says. "Have you read it?" he asks me.
I haven’t – not yet – but I say yes, after which I quickly excuse myself to go to the toilet. He directs me upstairs.
The bathroom is as spare as the rest of the house, with chipped white tiles, the size and shape of which I no longer see on the market. There is a large mirror above the washbowl. On a shelf is a black comb beside two small plastic jars of Tancho pomade. I remember my father, who would have been 76, and I smile.
On my way back, I pass a room lined wall-to-wall with books. An easy chair in dark leather stands facing the side of the room that is beyond my view, beside it a small round table. It is tempting, but I mind my manners and keep out of the room.
No one had any success in making Nick speak for NVM that afternoon. Narita Gonzalez gave up, and sulked in the distance. Someone then thought of giving him a bottle of beer to brighten his mood, and, like magic, he loosened up. After his last swig, Billy Lacaba and Greg Brillantes escorted him to the stage, where the waiting crowd gave him a wild round of applause.
He stood at the podium for a moment – I was watching him from the side of the stage – and then fished out a folded piece of paper from his pants pocket. It was his speech, three pages long, written in eloquent, Joaquinesque prose, a moving tribute to the life and work of NVM , delivered beautifully in the fading light.
Nick suddenly remembers reading Butch Dalisay’s column in the Philippine Star that morning about Cole Porter songs. Butch had mentioned Nick in the article, saying he, Nick, has his own version of Porter’s You’re the Top.
"So you know Butch Dalisay, after all," I ask him.
"Oooof course I kneow him," he says.
"Did you read Dalisay’s articles on F. Sionil Jose?" Greg proceeds to ask.
"Ahh luv every word uv it," he says.
When Greg disappears for longer than usual on his trip to the toilet, Nick yells at him from downstairs. "He’s stealing my books. I wouldn’t put that beyond him," he tells me. In the same breath, he sends one of the boys to check if the man was all right. "I will kill him if he dies in my bathroom!" he roars.
We wait longer for Greg. Meanwhile, Nick sings to me his version of You’re the Top, and repeats it, slowly now, for me to take down for Butch Dalisay.
Greg returns with a bunch of books. "Wha did ahh tell yew?" Nick asks me, as he rises to take a leak a few feet away, drowning a potted plant.
Nick Joaquin looks very well at 84. There is hardly a wrinkle on his thin, tight face. "I don’t take myself seriously anymoe. I could go anytime now, and there will be nothing, nothing, nothing. So, who cares?"
At 8 p.m., he sends us away. "Go howm! Get outta here." It has been raining for the last hour, and Greg has had one bottle too many.
I kiss him, and he hugs me again. "Darling, it was such a pleasure to spend the evening with you," he says. "Don’t ride with this old man, Socorro. He is buh-lind." They shake hands.
I give Greg a grateful hug and walk over to my car, dizzy with beer and the affections of old men.
National Artist Nick Joaquin’s death last Wednesday, April 28, marks the passing of an era in Philippine literature. He was a poet, novelist, essayist and editor and as most friends remember, a loving old man who sang loud and drank hard.
This essay was written two years ago by Socorro "Migs" Villanueva – herself a Palanca, Graphic, and NVM Gonzalez prizewinner for fiction – for a graduate class in magazine writing at the University of the Philippines, where she is completing an MA in Creative Writing.