Scorpio nights

Yes, I mean the notorious 1985 film by Peque Gallaga, which is now regarded as a Filipino film classic. In the 1990s it was remade into a Korean movie entitled Summertime. Recently Rosauro Q. de la Cruz “novelized” his Scorpio Nights screenplay, which was based on a true story recounted by Rommel Bernardino, for the forthcoming Manila Envelope magazine. I translated the Tagalog novella into English.

Here’s an excerpt:

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Be extra careful today. Avoid fire and other objects that can scorch you. Danny wished he could speed up time. His three roommates were going home to Negros for the semestral break; they hadn’t shut up since last night, and they’d been horsing around all morning. Everyone excited about their vacation and chattering about the two bottles of gin they were going to drink on the boat, big deal.

Danny wasn’t going home. He didn’t miss Bacolod yet.

The taxi driver honked his horn. Like rats fleeing a ship, the roommates scuttled onto the narrow stairs to the ground floor. Danny reminded them to deliver his letter to his mother, the one where he explained/lied about why he was staying in Manila.

His roommates left instructions: “If a cop comes looking for me, tell him I don’t live here.” “We won’t tell you when we’re coming back so we can surprise you in the middle of something.”

They grappled for seats in the taxi. The annoyed driver shook his head and eased the car forward, honking the horn to disperse the Binondo kids playing on the narrow street, unaware that his passengers consisted of a student activist who fantasized about being on Marcos’s hit list, a junkie punk, and an aspiring playboy who hit on women in massage parlors.

And now Danny had Interior 4, Dona Consuelo Compound, Calle Industria, Binondo all to himself.

The compound had been a warehouse for steel girders used in the post-war reconstruction of Manila. The floors were bare cement and the walls were old sheets of plywood. The entrance was twelve feet high, to let in the trucks that delivered or picked up the girders. Now that the trucks had ceased to come, it was padlocked. The front door, like the entrance to a church, had a small side door which the residents used. The warehouse had been divided into three houses — “house” meant a room with a kitchen and a bedroom. No living room, no dining room, just a kitchen and a bedroom. The house on the right was rented by Eugene, a welder, and Kale, the gay man who was his girlfriend. When Kale was in the mood, he cooked and sold lunches; if he wasn’t, he sold bananas fried in brown sugar. These days bananas were all that Kale cooked. Two families occupied the other house, but you couldn’t tell exactly who the residents were — there was a constant parade of changing faces with no perceptible resemblance to each other. The bathroom was outside, beside the laundry area. Which, if no one was doing laundry, became a basketball court for the boys in the compound.

To the left of the big door was the house of the Security Guard and his beautiful wife. No one had the nerve to make friends with the Security Guard — they called him “Sekyu” because he was surly and had a gun. Which meant no one was brave enough to get to know the beautiful wife. On the second floor, the former office had been converted into the room Danny was renting. Next door was Mrs. Madie and her daughter Fely, a veterinary medicine student. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she wasn’t ugly either. Not bad, except that sometimes she asked him to catch stray cats for her school projects. That’s why the cats in Consuelo Compound were all silent — Fely had removed their vocal chords. When the cats mated, they probably used sign language. Fely was a little pushy, always wanting to go to the mall. Danny was avoiding her. Every time he went out of his room, he trod carefully on the stairs to keep them from creaking.

Danny’s room was directly above the house of Sekyu and his beautiful wife. He had been waiting for this chance for a long time.

He entered his room and padlocked the door. Quietly he crawled on the floor — the ceiling of Sekyu’s house — and peered into the space between the floorboards. Sekyu and his wife seemed to be looking for something under the bed. The woman had crawled under it so her butt was sticking out.

She emerged, holding a ring. Danny couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he saw the happiness on her face as she slipped the ring onto her finger. She must’ve dropped it and thought it was lost. The couple went to the kitchen, and he stopped watching them then. He knew what would happen next. They would have lunch, then Sekyu would leave. She would probably go out to do the laundry. He was not interested in their boring domestic routine. Even if he followed her outside, he would see nothing.

Besides, the neighbors would wonder why he was hanging around the laundry area. That was the thing about housing compounds like these — you had no secrets. Everyone was watching everyone else. They acted like they didn’t notice anything, like they didn’t care, when they knew exactly what he was doing, what he was thinking.

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