MARYA MAKILING
Short story by Percival Campoamor Cruz
Early riser old man Tandang Berong limped toward the vegetable and fruit patch at the back of his humble house. It was before dawn and soon her daughter would be back. It was a daily early morning ritual. He would wake up early, the daughter would come home from work, and they would have breakfast together.
He sat in a reclining chair made of balete wood and savored the fragrance of the dama de noche which sweet fragrance wafted in the air only at night. He could hear from afar the soft crackle of dried leaves being stepped on and thought it was already her daughter coming. She would bring food for him.
Yesterday, he ate some bananas from the backyard tree and picked out some tomatoes and a few pieces of kalamansi from the vegetable patch and made a concoction of juice for himself. He had to be on his own for the most part, although he knew his daughter could be depended on for help, when the chore became more difficult.
Tandang Berong used to be the master of his own jungle kingdom in the mountain. Now he was old and blind. His survival depended on his only companion in life, daughter Marya.
He fought the Japanese as a guerrilla in the very mountain where he presently lived. Japan had dreamt of extending the Empire of the Rising Sun all over Asia. Kamikazes attacked Pearl Harbor by surprise and provoked the Americans into an expansive war that saw Asia burning and devastated, including the Philippines. Tandang Berong and his group of one-thousand men were farmers turned soldiers in defense of the Philippines’ freedom. They were called Berong's Guerrillas.
Mount Makiling, the Philippines’ Mount Parnassus, was never dishonored by the Japanese, thanks to the fierce defense set up by Tandang Berong and his men. Makiling was a majestic mountain-volcano visible to the naked eye from the vantage point of the big city of Manila. From afar it looked like a sleeping maiden whose long hair flowed on verdant fields across the plain. It was a sleeping giant, indeed, an inactive volcano that was quiet in its outward appearance but whose interiors were cauldrons of super hot lava and steam. It spewed hot spring water into the outlying towns whose inhabitants thought it wise to build pools and spas and make the hot mineral water a treat and a business for visitors to enjoy; thus, one of the towns at the foot of Mount Makiling was called, Los Banos, The Baths.
Philippine national hero Jose Rizal edified Mount Makiling, like Parnassus in Greece, as the home of the goddesses who gave poets and artists the inspiration to be creative. Rizal lived not too far away from Los Banos, in a town called Calamba. It was probably upon the invocation of the Makiling goddess that Rizal was able to write his poems and monumental novel, “Noli Me Tangere”.
Rizal and the people who lived around the base of Mount Makiling knew the legend very well – that there was a beautiful maiden who lived in the revered mountain and her name was Maria. Hunters who tried to explore the mountain and kill animals became lost and they were led back on the right track by a beautiful young woman. It was believed Maria protected the mountain and the animals that roamed around its fields and ravines. She made sure the forest and the waters were immaculate and sweet. Long, long time ago before protection of the environment became a worldwide aspiration, Maria Makiling, as she was fondly called by Filipinos, was already living as nature’s best friend.
General McArthur and the American forces came to the Philippines and threw out the Japanese. The liberated Philippines began rebuilding and the government compensated the guerrillas. It was not an equitable compensation though; for instance, many of the farmers were not given back their lands. Tandang Berong and his men decided to keep their arms and continue fighting for justice, this time against the very government that they had defended.
They were soon branded as communists and Mount Makiling became a bloody war zone between the government soldiers and Tandang Berong’s hold-outs. Tandang Berong’s men were either killed, one by one, or lured to the big city by the prospect of a better life. In the end, there was only Tandang Berong and his daughter.
The government knew what had happened to Tandang Berong. He became a defeated man, a broken man, destitute and blind. Out of compassion the government just left him alone. However, the anti-government underground movement went on in the cities and villages.
Marya, Tandang Berong’s daughter, worked as an entertainer in one of the cocktail lounges at the foot of the mountain. She told her father she was working as a cashier in a resort hotel, but she lied; she took on the demeaning job of a hostess; that was why she was out to work at night. But she had a purpose for taking on the job.
When she found the opportunity, Marya took long walks around the mountain, which she knew so well. The deer and the birds and other animals followed her or gathered around her to listen to her stories. She cuddled them and gave them water. Was she the reincarnation of the goddess spoken of by Rizal or was she the same person, ageless and destined to live forever?
She gathered food and cooked for her old father. She washed his clothes in the spring running by their house. She held his hand and guided him around the mountain whenever he wanted to take long walks. Sometimes, she sat down beside him to read the latest news.
Marya was a beautiful young woman who gave up the prospect of a good life in order to take care of her father and the mountain. She had met men of high education and good means who had offered her marriage, but she turned them all down. Tandang Berong lost his wife, Marya’s mother, during the height of the armed resistance against the government. She got shot and died in an encounter with the government soldiers. Marya had vowed never to leave her father alone.
The heights of Mount Makiling were a place of honor, a place for everything that was endearing - peace, beauty, honesty and nobility. It was a sanctuary that survived the onslaught of progress and all the evils that came with it.
Life at the foothills was competitive. People had to struggle daily and fight for jobs, food, space, and survival itself. Money was available to the fit and the strong; the clever and the hardened; those who had values to offer; in the case of Marya, the values were her youth, beauty, and idealism.
She was so pure and beautiful and yet she needed to comingle with people of questionable character. The manager at the cocktail lounge where she worked had asked her not to discriminate. Every character who passed through the cocktail lounge’s doorway was a valuable customer who needed to be cajoled and given good service.
One of the workers at the cocktail lounge was Dante. He was a bouncer, a bodyguard. He took care of calming down or throwing out rowdy customers. He led a double life: That of a bouncer and that of a spy for the underground rebels. In fact, he was No. 5 on the most-wanted list of the military.
He passed on information to his comrades that enabled them to know the leadership and the movements of government troops. Just recently he fed information that led to the ambush and killing of a top general. Two comrades riding on motorcycles shot the general while he was driving in his car. The general, an intelligence officer, was known for torturing jailed suspected communists.
Unknown to their co-workers, Marya and Dante were sweethearts. They watched out for each other. At the end of work, at the break of dawn, Dante always trailed Marya on her way home, making sure she made it safely to her father’s abode on the mountain.
In a rich country made poor by corruption in the government, idealists took up the cudgel for the poor and powerless people. The ideological divide was frequently discussed in the media. Politicians and their families waged lives and fortune to be elected into office. Once entrenched in office they had to pay themselves back. They became political dynasties that sucked up the nation’s wealth, managed public funds in self-serving ways; and they hanged on to power for decades by way of cheating in elections and maintaining private armies, and helping themselves to the nation’s coffers. It took radical measures on the part of the idealists to effect change because elections and media exposes were not effective enough; like going underground, engaging the police and soldiers in battles, and plotting and executing assassinations.
The generals, corrupt themselves, took pleasure in having enemies, particularly dissidents who rebelled against the government. The more battles there were to fight, the more funds there were for the generals to manipulate.
Dante’s brother was a student in the university who the military arrested, tortured, and killed. He was a student leader who participated in many of the uneven battles on the streets between unarmed students and armed police and soldiers. Dante joined the underground people’s army to avenge the death of his brother.
Marya was the daughter of militant parents. Outwardly she was the picture of calm and beauty. Inside her being, Marya was a hardened warrior-princess who wanted revenge for the death of her mother and the countless soldiers of his father who had been killed by the government military.
It did not take long for the military to cast suspicion on the characters of Marya and Dante. They became the objects of surveillance. One early morning when the couple was heading for Marya’s home, Dante sensed that they were being followed.
Marya knew the forest very well. She led Dante to a safe cluster of bushes and waited for their pursuers there. When the shadows of a band of seven soldiers became visible, Dante aimed his AK47 at the shadows and started shooting. Then the couple ran up to the mountain house where Marya lived. Now they needed to leave immediately and take Tandang Berong along with them.
Tandang Berong had expected that Marya would be home, like in the past, worry-free, and bringing goods for him. It was a different circumstance this time.
“Mang Berong, we have to go,” Dante hurriedly broke out the news. “The soldiers will be here soon to kill all of us.”
Marya in the meantime, picked up a few things in the house and got his father ready for the flight.
“Go, my dear son. Go Marya. I will stay.” The old man spoke.
“My days will soon be over. I choose to die in this mountain. You’re both young and just starting out, you both deserve a future. You have places to see, things to do. Go, now and worry not for me. You don’t need an old man to slow you down. I won’t make it, anyway. I’m better off here.” The old man continued.
Daughter and father, committed to each other forever, were seeing the end of a noble bond. A tragic life made beautiful by the majesty of the mountain was coming to a denouement; or was it a mountain of tragedy made beautiful by the majesty of the daughter-father’s noble life? As the impasse was going on between the daughter who needed to live on for reasons embedded in her heart and the father who knew he had reached the climax of a valiant existence, a quick rumbling sound was heard, and the surroundings was suddenly enveloped by a thick cover of dust or smoke. Marya, Tandang Berong and Dante vanished when the cover settled down.
Did the soldiers roll by in tanks and snatch the three uncertain individuals?
Did an earthquake or avalanche just occur?
Did a horde of animals materialize at the scene and spirit away the important personages? Did the animals want to rescue their caregivers and take them to a sanctuary deep in the heart of the forest where the beloved characters could have a safe and well-provided existence. The startling event occurred so lightning fast that in a few moments the solitary house in the mountain stood quiet and eerie in the dark.
Maria, the priestess of the forest, the nymph of Mount Makiling in the person of Marya, vanished. . . to appear, perhaps, in another generation. The legend of Maria Makiling lived on.
Short story by Percival Campoamor Cruz
Early riser old man Tandang Berong limped toward the vegetable and fruit patch at the back of his humble house. It was before dawn and soon her daughter would be back. It was a daily early morning ritual. He would wake up early, the daughter would come home from work, and they would have breakfast together.
He sat in a reclining chair made of balete wood and savored the fragrance of the dama de noche which sweet fragrance wafted in the air only at night. He could hear from afar the soft crackle of dried leaves being stepped on and thought it was already her daughter coming. She would bring food for him.
Yesterday, he ate some bananas from the backyard tree and picked out some tomatoes and a few pieces of kalamansi from the vegetable patch and made a concoction of juice for himself. He had to be on his own for the most part, although he knew his daughter could be depended on for help, when the chore became more difficult.
Tandang Berong used to be the master of his own jungle kingdom in the mountain. Now he was old and blind. His survival depended on his only companion in life, daughter Marya.
He fought the Japanese as a guerrilla in the very mountain where he presently lived. Japan had dreamt of extending the Empire of the Rising Sun all over Asia. Kamikazes attacked Pearl Harbor by surprise and provoked the Americans into an expansive war that saw Asia burning and devastated, including the Philippines. Tandang Berong and his group of one-thousand men were farmers turned soldiers in defense of the Philippines’ freedom. They were called Berong's Guerrillas.
Mount Makiling, the Philippines’ Mount Parnassus, was never dishonored by the Japanese, thanks to the fierce defense set up by Tandang Berong and his men. Makiling was a majestic mountain-volcano visible to the naked eye from the vantage point of the big city of Manila. From afar it looked like a sleeping maiden whose long hair flowed on verdant fields across the plain. It was a sleeping giant, indeed, an inactive volcano that was quiet in its outward appearance but whose interiors were cauldrons of super hot lava and steam. It spewed hot spring water into the outlying towns whose inhabitants thought it wise to build pools and spas and make the hot mineral water a treat and a business for visitors to enjoy; thus, one of the towns at the foot of Mount Makiling was called, Los Banos, The Baths.
Philippine national hero Jose Rizal edified Mount Makiling, like Parnassus in Greece, as the home of the goddesses who gave poets and artists the inspiration to be creative. Rizal lived not too far away from Los Banos, in a town called Calamba. It was probably upon the invocation of the Makiling goddess that Rizal was able to write his poems and monumental novel, “Noli Me Tangere”.
Rizal and the people who lived around the base of Mount Makiling knew the legend very well – that there was a beautiful maiden who lived in the revered mountain and her name was Maria. Hunters who tried to explore the mountain and kill animals became lost and they were led back on the right track by a beautiful young woman. It was believed Maria protected the mountain and the animals that roamed around its fields and ravines. She made sure the forest and the waters were immaculate and sweet. Long, long time ago before protection of the environment became a worldwide aspiration, Maria Makiling, as she was fondly called by Filipinos, was already living as nature’s best friend.
General McArthur and the American forces came to the Philippines and threw out the Japanese. The liberated Philippines began rebuilding and the government compensated the guerrillas. It was not an equitable compensation though; for instance, many of the farmers were not given back their lands. Tandang Berong and his men decided to keep their arms and continue fighting for justice, this time against the very government that they had defended.
They were soon branded as communists and Mount Makiling became a bloody war zone between the government soldiers and Tandang Berong’s hold-outs. Tandang Berong’s men were either killed, one by one, or lured to the big city by the prospect of a better life. In the end, there was only Tandang Berong and his daughter.
The government knew what had happened to Tandang Berong. He became a defeated man, a broken man, destitute and blind. Out of compassion the government just left him alone. However, the anti-government underground movement went on in the cities and villages.
Marya, Tandang Berong’s daughter, worked as an entertainer in one of the cocktail lounges at the foot of the mountain. She told her father she was working as a cashier in a resort hotel, but she lied; she took on the demeaning job of a hostess; that was why she was out to work at night. But she had a purpose for taking on the job.
When she found the opportunity, Marya took long walks around the mountain, which she knew so well. The deer and the birds and other animals followed her or gathered around her to listen to her stories. She cuddled them and gave them water. Was she the reincarnation of the goddess spoken of by Rizal or was she the same person, ageless and destined to live forever?
She gathered food and cooked for her old father. She washed his clothes in the spring running by their house. She held his hand and guided him around the mountain whenever he wanted to take long walks. Sometimes, she sat down beside him to read the latest news.
Marya was a beautiful young woman who gave up the prospect of a good life in order to take care of her father and the mountain. She had met men of high education and good means who had offered her marriage, but she turned them all down. Tandang Berong lost his wife, Marya’s mother, during the height of the armed resistance against the government. She got shot and died in an encounter with the government soldiers. Marya had vowed never to leave her father alone.
The heights of Mount Makiling were a place of honor, a place for everything that was endearing - peace, beauty, honesty and nobility. It was a sanctuary that survived the onslaught of progress and all the evils that came with it.
Life at the foothills was competitive. People had to struggle daily and fight for jobs, food, space, and survival itself. Money was available to the fit and the strong; the clever and the hardened; those who had values to offer; in the case of Marya, the values were her youth, beauty, and idealism.
She was so pure and beautiful and yet she needed to comingle with people of questionable character. The manager at the cocktail lounge where she worked had asked her not to discriminate. Every character who passed through the cocktail lounge’s doorway was a valuable customer who needed to be cajoled and given good service.
One of the workers at the cocktail lounge was Dante. He was a bouncer, a bodyguard. He took care of calming down or throwing out rowdy customers. He led a double life: That of a bouncer and that of a spy for the underground rebels. In fact, he was No. 5 on the most-wanted list of the military.
He passed on information to his comrades that enabled them to know the leadership and the movements of government troops. Just recently he fed information that led to the ambush and killing of a top general. Two comrades riding on motorcycles shot the general while he was driving in his car. The general, an intelligence officer, was known for torturing jailed suspected communists.
Unknown to their co-workers, Marya and Dante were sweethearts. They watched out for each other. At the end of work, at the break of dawn, Dante always trailed Marya on her way home, making sure she made it safely to her father’s abode on the mountain.
In a rich country made poor by corruption in the government, idealists took up the cudgel for the poor and powerless people. The ideological divide was frequently discussed in the media. Politicians and their families waged lives and fortune to be elected into office. Once entrenched in office they had to pay themselves back. They became political dynasties that sucked up the nation’s wealth, managed public funds in self-serving ways; and they hanged on to power for decades by way of cheating in elections and maintaining private armies, and helping themselves to the nation’s coffers. It took radical measures on the part of the idealists to effect change because elections and media exposes were not effective enough; like going underground, engaging the police and soldiers in battles, and plotting and executing assassinations.
The generals, corrupt themselves, took pleasure in having enemies, particularly dissidents who rebelled against the government. The more battles there were to fight, the more funds there were for the generals to manipulate.
Dante’s brother was a student in the university who the military arrested, tortured, and killed. He was a student leader who participated in many of the uneven battles on the streets between unarmed students and armed police and soldiers. Dante joined the underground people’s army to avenge the death of his brother.
Marya was the daughter of militant parents. Outwardly she was the picture of calm and beauty. Inside her being, Marya was a hardened warrior-princess who wanted revenge for the death of her mother and the countless soldiers of his father who had been killed by the government military.
It did not take long for the military to cast suspicion on the characters of Marya and Dante. They became the objects of surveillance. One early morning when the couple was heading for Marya’s home, Dante sensed that they were being followed.
Marya knew the forest very well. She led Dante to a safe cluster of bushes and waited for their pursuers there. When the shadows of a band of seven soldiers became visible, Dante aimed his AK47 at the shadows and started shooting. Then the couple ran up to the mountain house where Marya lived. Now they needed to leave immediately and take Tandang Berong along with them.
Tandang Berong had expected that Marya would be home, like in the past, worry-free, and bringing goods for him. It was a different circumstance this time.
“Mang Berong, we have to go,” Dante hurriedly broke out the news. “The soldiers will be here soon to kill all of us.”
Marya in the meantime, picked up a few things in the house and got his father ready for the flight.
“Go, my dear son. Go Marya. I will stay.” The old man spoke.
“My days will soon be over. I choose to die in this mountain. You’re both young and just starting out, you both deserve a future. You have places to see, things to do. Go, now and worry not for me. You don’t need an old man to slow you down. I won’t make it, anyway. I’m better off here.” The old man continued.
Daughter and father, committed to each other forever, were seeing the end of a noble bond. A tragic life made beautiful by the majesty of the mountain was coming to a denouement; or was it a mountain of tragedy made beautiful by the majesty of the daughter-father’s noble life? As the impasse was going on between the daughter who needed to live on for reasons embedded in her heart and the father who knew he had reached the climax of a valiant existence, a quick rumbling sound was heard, and the surroundings was suddenly enveloped by a thick cover of dust or smoke. Marya, Tandang Berong and Dante vanished when the cover settled down.
Did the soldiers roll by in tanks and snatch the three uncertain individuals?
Did an earthquake or avalanche just occur?
Did a horde of animals materialize at the scene and spirit away the important personages? Did the animals want to rescue their caregivers and take them to a sanctuary deep in the heart of the forest where the beloved characters could have a safe and well-provided existence. The startling event occurred so lightning fast that in a few moments the solitary house in the mountain stood quiet and eerie in the dark.
Maria, the priestess of the forest, the nymph of Mount Makiling in the person of Marya, vanished. . . to appear, perhaps, in another generation. The legend of Maria Makiling lived on.
OLD MAN OF THE MOUND
Short story by Percival Campoamor Cruz
Where did the elves (duwende) and the old men of the mound (nuno sa punso) come from? Were they creatures made by God akin to men? Were men and the creatures of the underground created at the same time? Were men small creatures at the beginning and then grew bigger in time? Or were the duwendes and the nunos big at the beginning and they shrunk? Why were there duwendes and nunos in the world? Perplexing questions, indeed, that could explain the mysteries of the universe if only they could be answered.
Elves were tiny young creatures the size of the human hand. Old men of the mound were tiny, as well, but older elves just as the name implied. Both lived under the ground. Their living places were marked by mounds, thus, the term old men of the mound (nuno sa punso).
If you asked a scholar, he would say that the mound was soil that kicked up from the diggings of ants and termites; but if you asked a Filipino, educated or not, the mound was the dwelling of the little ones. The mound was an object of reverence.
The male nuno wore long, white beards. While elves were playful, the nuno had a serious disposition and could be easily upset. Both could make themselves visible to children, particularly after six at night and during the day, between noon and three. Parents forbade their children from playing in the backyard at these hours.
The inhabitants of the mound became very upset when the mound was stepped on or run over. They became even more upset when irreverent people intentionally spat or pissed at the mound.
The little creatures got even with intruders by spitting in return and when the spit hit a person, that person became sick. The retaliation was quite equitable. Kick the mound and the foot became swollen. Spit at the mound and the mouth became sore. Urinate at the mound and there would be a urinary problem. Ordinary doctors could not treat the maladies brought about by the duwende or the nuno. Only faith healers (arbularyos) could apply a remedy.
One of the remedies was to bring food and wine to the mound coupled with an apology.
For a reason nobody knew, the nuno was attracted to fat females, human beings, or animals alike.
Human beings learned from experience. When they walked across a place that they suspected there were mounds belonging to the duwende and the nuno, they asked for permission to pass – “Tabi, tabi po, apo” – which meant, “Please move aside, old man; may I have permission to pass?”
Life in the underground replicated life above ground. The duwendes and the nunos worked using ants and termites as their beasts of burden. The women sewed clothes and cooked. The men gathered food as well as wood for the fireplace. They were good carpenters and mechanics. They built houses and pieces of furniture, small motors and gadgets. The community, or colony, knew how to enjoy. They had feasts and traditions, holidays and sports, dances and concerts, social drinking, and mirth.
Lately, Bakol always wore an unhappy face. By the way, nunos lived up to two-hundred years. Bakol who was one-hundred years was, therefore, in his middle age. Many of his kind had been kidnapped. He was feeling bad and angry that one of those kidnapped was his beloved, Tale.
Every minute his wish was to go out and find Tale. He did not care where fate would take him.
Tandang Puten, the colony elder, had already spoken to Bakol. Get on with your life was Tandang Puten’s advice to the distraught being. And Bakol always said he could not forget Tale and he could not move on without her.
The colony was celebrating the arrival of spring. Everyone showed up at the town center in their best colorful clothes to be part of the merriest of all celebrations. Everyone was participating in the dancing and eating and drinking. Suddenly the roof of the mound broke open and everyone got blinded by the glare of the sun. Then fell a net trap and in a quick moment when the net was pulled up about a thousand duwendes and nunos were caught up inside, trapped, kidnapped, and taken away.
One eventful night, Bakol decided to walk out of the mound. Outside, he could feel the breeze cool his face and skin, a sensation he could not feel inside the stuffy mound. He could see the full moon above and its moonshine provided light to the surrounding field. Not too far from the mound, he could see a house, the house of Raul.
Raul was a human being who became a friend to the mound dwellers. He played a lot in the backyard when he was just a toddler and, through school-age years, was a regular playmate of the elves. He grew up into a young man knowing a lot about the duwende and the nuno. He respected them and treated them like his own family.
Bakol wandered close to the house of Raul. He heard Raul talking to someone on the phone and he heard that he was leaving soon for China.
“I will handle the situation, Sir. I’ll make sure they cooperate. In the meantime, have patience. Keep the colony well-fed and healthy. . .”
Bakol’s hair stood on end. He heard Raul mention “the colony”. He kept his ears close to the wall and listened to the rest of the conversation. In the end, he thought of what was going on: Raul had betrayed the colony. Raul was going to leave for China, where Bakol’s fellow elves were taken. He promised that the colony would cooperate in the accomplishment of a mission.
Bakol decided to keep an eye on Raul. When he left for China, he would go along. He would hide himself inside Raul’s suitcase. Wherever Raul was going, Bakol knew that he was going, too, to find Tale.
And the trip to China came about.
China had, by then, become a world power. Out of the city of Xichang, also known as, Base 27, China had sent several manned space missions into space and to the moon. Now it was time to send a mission to Mars. Chinese astronauts, called taikonauts, manned the earlier missions. This time China was sending a colony of little beings to Mars. The idea was to send a one-way mission and begin to populate Mars.
The smaller the spacecraft, the smaller the passengers, the cheaper and more efficient the mission would be. To use the least possible space and fuel when traveling to Mars and yet load all the food, water, oxygen, and equipment needed to execute the mission and sustain life at the destination planet, smallness was a prerequisite.
According to Fraser Cain, a science writer, the spacecraft followed what was called the Hohmann Transfer Orbits. These were curved paths that took advantage of the orbital velocity of planets to reach the destination. When traveling to Mars, a spaceship already had the orbital velocity of going around Earth. It then fired its rockets to put it onto a transfer orbit with Mars as the final destination. Approaching Mars, it either fired its rockets again, or use a process called aerobraking to use the Martian atmosphere to slow it down. Earth and Mars had to be in the right positions in their orbits for this method to work, and the launch window came around only once every 25 months. This method used relatively little fuel. How long did it take to get to Mars using this method? About 214 days.
Getting to Mars was becoming overly important because the earth’s resources were dwindling, and the living conditions caused by nuclear radiation and environmental pollution were getting worse. Mars was the future, the new source of energy and materials, the future home of men should Earth vanish or become inhabitable.
But why send the duwende and the nuno from the Philippines? And why send them against their will? Unfortunately, these creatures of the subsoil had no rights. Space missions had experimented with monkeys, dogs, mice, reptiles, insects – they all had been sent out on missions to space and beyond. Many of them never came back. Unfortunately, the creatures of the subsoil had freedom and rights no better than those of animals.
At the opportune time, Bakol showed himself up to Raul. Although surprised and embarrassed, Raul immediately took him to the colony.
The tiny creatures were in a frenzy when they saw Bakol. They saw in him a hope. They knew that Bakol was strong and intelligent. They could be saved. And after so many weeks of separation and anxiety, Bakol and Tale got reunited.
Bakol worked hard to earn the confidence of the duwende and nuno. He patiently explained to them how noble the mission was. Agreed, the project execution was bad, but then, there were opportunities, he told them. Considering everything, the place they were being flown to, could be a much better place than where they came from. “The important thing is that we are all together in this. We live or die together,” Bakol put it in one succinct statement.
At last, Bakol’s kind reached an agreement. Yes, they would cooperate and go along with the mission.
“We have one condition only,” Bakol told Raul and Raul’s Chinese masters, “pull out the ones who are alone, send them back to their homes to be with their loved ones again. As to the rest of us who are with our loved ones here and now, we will all go.”
Finally, as all the kinks got ironed out and the mission now had the consent of the elves (by then called mininauts), China went public and announced the first “manned” mission to Mars. Aboard the Chinese spacecraft named “Nuno 1” were 500 duwende and nuno, males and females, from Pundaquit, Zambales in the Philippines.
When the mission took off, there was a televised coverage, and the whole world saw the Chinese and Philippine flags emblazoned on the skin of the spacecraft.
Bakol proudly whispered to Tale as soon as the spacecraft got aloft, “Tale, we will be the Adam and Eve of our generation.”
Short story by Percival Campoamor Cruz
Where did the elves (duwende) and the old men of the mound (nuno sa punso) come from? Were they creatures made by God akin to men? Were men and the creatures of the underground created at the same time? Were men small creatures at the beginning and then grew bigger in time? Or were the duwendes and the nunos big at the beginning and they shrunk? Why were there duwendes and nunos in the world? Perplexing questions, indeed, that could explain the mysteries of the universe if only they could be answered.
Elves were tiny young creatures the size of the human hand. Old men of the mound were tiny, as well, but older elves just as the name implied. Both lived under the ground. Their living places were marked by mounds, thus, the term old men of the mound (nuno sa punso).
If you asked a scholar, he would say that the mound was soil that kicked up from the diggings of ants and termites; but if you asked a Filipino, educated or not, the mound was the dwelling of the little ones. The mound was an object of reverence.
The male nuno wore long, white beards. While elves were playful, the nuno had a serious disposition and could be easily upset. Both could make themselves visible to children, particularly after six at night and during the day, between noon and three. Parents forbade their children from playing in the backyard at these hours.
The inhabitants of the mound became very upset when the mound was stepped on or run over. They became even more upset when irreverent people intentionally spat or pissed at the mound.
The little creatures got even with intruders by spitting in return and when the spit hit a person, that person became sick. The retaliation was quite equitable. Kick the mound and the foot became swollen. Spit at the mound and the mouth became sore. Urinate at the mound and there would be a urinary problem. Ordinary doctors could not treat the maladies brought about by the duwende or the nuno. Only faith healers (arbularyos) could apply a remedy.
One of the remedies was to bring food and wine to the mound coupled with an apology.
For a reason nobody knew, the nuno was attracted to fat females, human beings, or animals alike.
Human beings learned from experience. When they walked across a place that they suspected there were mounds belonging to the duwende and the nuno, they asked for permission to pass – “Tabi, tabi po, apo” – which meant, “Please move aside, old man; may I have permission to pass?”
Life in the underground replicated life above ground. The duwendes and the nunos worked using ants and termites as their beasts of burden. The women sewed clothes and cooked. The men gathered food as well as wood for the fireplace. They were good carpenters and mechanics. They built houses and pieces of furniture, small motors and gadgets. The community, or colony, knew how to enjoy. They had feasts and traditions, holidays and sports, dances and concerts, social drinking, and mirth.
Lately, Bakol always wore an unhappy face. By the way, nunos lived up to two-hundred years. Bakol who was one-hundred years was, therefore, in his middle age. Many of his kind had been kidnapped. He was feeling bad and angry that one of those kidnapped was his beloved, Tale.
Every minute his wish was to go out and find Tale. He did not care where fate would take him.
Tandang Puten, the colony elder, had already spoken to Bakol. Get on with your life was Tandang Puten’s advice to the distraught being. And Bakol always said he could not forget Tale and he could not move on without her.
The colony was celebrating the arrival of spring. Everyone showed up at the town center in their best colorful clothes to be part of the merriest of all celebrations. Everyone was participating in the dancing and eating and drinking. Suddenly the roof of the mound broke open and everyone got blinded by the glare of the sun. Then fell a net trap and in a quick moment when the net was pulled up about a thousand duwendes and nunos were caught up inside, trapped, kidnapped, and taken away.
One eventful night, Bakol decided to walk out of the mound. Outside, he could feel the breeze cool his face and skin, a sensation he could not feel inside the stuffy mound. He could see the full moon above and its moonshine provided light to the surrounding field. Not too far from the mound, he could see a house, the house of Raul.
Raul was a human being who became a friend to the mound dwellers. He played a lot in the backyard when he was just a toddler and, through school-age years, was a regular playmate of the elves. He grew up into a young man knowing a lot about the duwende and the nuno. He respected them and treated them like his own family.
Bakol wandered close to the house of Raul. He heard Raul talking to someone on the phone and he heard that he was leaving soon for China.
“I will handle the situation, Sir. I’ll make sure they cooperate. In the meantime, have patience. Keep the colony well-fed and healthy. . .”
Bakol’s hair stood on end. He heard Raul mention “the colony”. He kept his ears close to the wall and listened to the rest of the conversation. In the end, he thought of what was going on: Raul had betrayed the colony. Raul was going to leave for China, where Bakol’s fellow elves were taken. He promised that the colony would cooperate in the accomplishment of a mission.
Bakol decided to keep an eye on Raul. When he left for China, he would go along. He would hide himself inside Raul’s suitcase. Wherever Raul was going, Bakol knew that he was going, too, to find Tale.
And the trip to China came about.
China had, by then, become a world power. Out of the city of Xichang, also known as, Base 27, China had sent several manned space missions into space and to the moon. Now it was time to send a mission to Mars. Chinese astronauts, called taikonauts, manned the earlier missions. This time China was sending a colony of little beings to Mars. The idea was to send a one-way mission and begin to populate Mars.
The smaller the spacecraft, the smaller the passengers, the cheaper and more efficient the mission would be. To use the least possible space and fuel when traveling to Mars and yet load all the food, water, oxygen, and equipment needed to execute the mission and sustain life at the destination planet, smallness was a prerequisite.
According to Fraser Cain, a science writer, the spacecraft followed what was called the Hohmann Transfer Orbits. These were curved paths that took advantage of the orbital velocity of planets to reach the destination. When traveling to Mars, a spaceship already had the orbital velocity of going around Earth. It then fired its rockets to put it onto a transfer orbit with Mars as the final destination. Approaching Mars, it either fired its rockets again, or use a process called aerobraking to use the Martian atmosphere to slow it down. Earth and Mars had to be in the right positions in their orbits for this method to work, and the launch window came around only once every 25 months. This method used relatively little fuel. How long did it take to get to Mars using this method? About 214 days.
Getting to Mars was becoming overly important because the earth’s resources were dwindling, and the living conditions caused by nuclear radiation and environmental pollution were getting worse. Mars was the future, the new source of energy and materials, the future home of men should Earth vanish or become inhabitable.
But why send the duwende and the nuno from the Philippines? And why send them against their will? Unfortunately, these creatures of the subsoil had no rights. Space missions had experimented with monkeys, dogs, mice, reptiles, insects – they all had been sent out on missions to space and beyond. Many of them never came back. Unfortunately, the creatures of the subsoil had freedom and rights no better than those of animals.
At the opportune time, Bakol showed himself up to Raul. Although surprised and embarrassed, Raul immediately took him to the colony.
The tiny creatures were in a frenzy when they saw Bakol. They saw in him a hope. They knew that Bakol was strong and intelligent. They could be saved. And after so many weeks of separation and anxiety, Bakol and Tale got reunited.
Bakol worked hard to earn the confidence of the duwende and nuno. He patiently explained to them how noble the mission was. Agreed, the project execution was bad, but then, there were opportunities, he told them. Considering everything, the place they were being flown to, could be a much better place than where they came from. “The important thing is that we are all together in this. We live or die together,” Bakol put it in one succinct statement.
At last, Bakol’s kind reached an agreement. Yes, they would cooperate and go along with the mission.
“We have one condition only,” Bakol told Raul and Raul’s Chinese masters, “pull out the ones who are alone, send them back to their homes to be with their loved ones again. As to the rest of us who are with our loved ones here and now, we will all go.”
Finally, as all the kinks got ironed out and the mission now had the consent of the elves (by then called mininauts), China went public and announced the first “manned” mission to Mars. Aboard the Chinese spacecraft named “Nuno 1” were 500 duwende and nuno, males and females, from Pundaquit, Zambales in the Philippines.
When the mission took off, there was a televised coverage, and the whole world saw the Chinese and Philippine flags emblazoned on the skin of the spacecraft.
Bakol proudly whispered to Tale as soon as the spacecraft got aloft, “Tale, we will be the Adam and Eve of our generation.”
The Enchantress
By Percival Campoamor Cruz
1.
He came to interview the self-proclaimed restorer of lost libido, this bespectacled young man who just got a writing job for an Asian newspaper. Madam Yin had earlier talked to his publisher for an advertising deal. She was offered an editorial write-up, gratis.
She was no doctor nor psychiatrist. She was an enchantress.
She told the publisher, Mr. Celerio, “Me no believe in pills. Like Viagra. Ha, ha, ha. . .”
She seemed to be either Chinese or Vietnamese, or maybe a Filipino with Chinese blood. Her English was not that good.
“Ya know, in my country, someone invented Viagra in cream, not pill. Ha, ha, ha . . . The user dips his pointer finger in the cream and swabs it on his organ. Very effective. Problem was the finger gets stiff, too. Ha, ha, ha . . . for hours.”
Mr. Celerio carefully eyed the lady in front of him. She was fortyish, had black, shiny, long hair; smooth, flawless skin like porcelain. She had a wonderful smell, like she bathed herself in some strange tropical flower. Mr. Celerio, now in his sixties, was reminded of the ilang-ilang, the rare flower in his native land that exuded a gentle, mesmerizing scent.
“I make men come back to life, Mr. Celerio,” she said.
The publisher was not comfortable with the direction of the conversation. The soft-spoken, unexcitable man did not know how to react but he was able to say, “Ah, eh, yes, yes. I can see that Madam Yin.”
Mr. Celerio saw a flashback rush in his mind. There was a time in his youth that he was pursuing older women. He was around thirty then and, for some reasons, he developed an obsession for women in their forties or fifties. He did go to bed with a number of them and, every time he did, it was an exhilarating experience, just like climbing Mount Matutum, a rugged mountain in the Philippines.
“I make men come back to life, Mr. Celerio; no Viagra pill, no cream, just technique, just waking up the dull senses. . . technique to see, smell, hear, touch, even taste passion, in a way that stimulates the erotic part of the brain.”
He was in the early geriatric phase in his life. He had been managing a mild case of diabetes and hypertension. Yes, he noticed a decline in his bed activities, but he had no worries. He need not take remedial measures. He wanted the her to get straight to the business.
“Madam Yin,” he boldly intervened, “what is it that the newspaper can do for you?”
“Mr. Celerio, I need to promote my center, my healing center. How about going exchange deal?”
“What do you mean?”
“Advertise my center. I pay you with my services.”
Mr. Celerio rolled his eyes. “Ya need healing, Mr. Celerio, don’t you?” The woman was fishing for a positive answer.
She was really very attractive and enchanting. Her lips looked supple and inviting. Her teeth were so white and healthy he was sure her breath smelled fresh and fragrant. Mr. Celerio had been surveying her body. He had concluded early on that this woman was a dynamite, a package of a thousand-and-one pleasures.
His wife was going to arrive at the office soon. Mr. Celerio quickened the pace of the supposed-to-be business meeting.
He promised to help.
“Madam Yin, let’s not talk long-term. For now, I’ll grant you a write-up, for free. Prepare some photos that I can publish. We'll write an article. I’ll send a writer to your center for an interview. How about that?”
“I am truly delighted, Mr. Celerio,” and she gave him a meaningful wink. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time, gotta go.”
Madam Yin took off not before leaving a small vial of perfume on Mr. Celerio’s palm. “The fragrance will always remind you of me,” she whispered.
Mr. Celerio was led to a dimly-lit room by two nymphets. They were wearing soft-to-the-touch silken cheongsams, those Chinese costumes that have slits on the sides of the skirts and expose the legs and a good part of the thighs. The fragrance that wafted in the room smelled like the perfume in the vial.
One of the girls helped him take off his clothes and shoes. She helped him put on a silken robe. He was then asked to sit in a comfortable reclining chair and then served tea. The other girl prepared the tub so Mr. Celerio could have a bath.
In the meantime, he could hear a soothing, very soft percussive music coming out of the radio, like the soft clanging of bamboos. The two girls fetched him from the chair and walked him to the tub. They both took off their clothes and then began bathing him.
One of the girls said, “Mr. Celerio, don’t be naughty now. We’re not having an orgy here. Three’s a crowd.” And both girls giggled.
Mr. Celerio was being transformed at that moment, so-to-speak, from a meek lamb to a raging bull. It was embarrassing but he could not help it. The two girls could see his manhood become rigid.
After the bath, he was delivered to a queen-size bed. He was asked to lie down and wait.
It seemed like hours. Mr. Celerio already was salivating, burning in excitement. Finally, Madam Yin came into the room accompanied by that alluring, now familiar fragrance.
In her soothing, captivating voice she said, “The healing begins.”
She asked him to turn over, to relax, sleep even. Or just be at the brink of consciousness. And she began rubbing his head, his neck, then his arms, his back, his legs. And then she focused on his lower back and rear end.
Madam Yin was softly chanting an unintelligible mantra. Mr. Celerio could not relax. On the contrary, his manly senses were getting out-of-control. Yet he needed to show good demeanor and go along with the healing session.
He wanted to get up and grab Madam Yin, the torturer, and throw her in the bed. He wanted to hold her face and suck her lips, caress her breasts and put himself on top of her body.
Is that the response Madam Yin was expecting from him? He thought. Or should he wait for an invitation? He demurred.
He was asked to turn over face up. Madam Yin asked him to keep his eyes closed, to continue to relax. “How can I relax?” He said to himself. Madam Yin could see that his manhood was tense.
She caressed his face, touched his lips with her soft finger, rubbed his chest, his thighs and feet. She purposely avoided touching the center of his manhood. He was getting crazy.
He was under an extreme anticipation of a maddening love-making with Madam Yin. Then suddenly, Madam Yin said, “We’re done for today!” And she turned the bright lights on.
He saw Madam Yin completely naked but her breasts and groin were covered in some kind of plastic chastity shackles.
“This is insane!” He growled.
Mr. Celerio’s wife had been caressing him all night. She was looking for intimacy. He was just imagining, dreaming. He peered at the image of the woman beside him. It was his wife he saw, the grandmother of his grandkids, not Madam Yin.
2.
The following morning, Mr. Celerio sent his young writer to Madam Yin’s healing center.
The writer was escorted by two young ladies in cheongsams to a dimly-lit room so he could experience the healing.
Daniel, the young writer who was assigned to interview Madam Yin, knew very little about the subject-matter he was to write about. What he was to learn that day could be shocking for someone who had never had an intimate relationship with the opposite gender.
Yes, he was mature enough to understand the feelings that take over a man’s mind and body, feelings that make him seek fulfillment, the urges that emanate from below a man’s navel and around the groin. He went to school and took up biology. He understood the biological needs of animals and how they are fulfilled. However, actual experience with a woman, he had not yet had the benefit of experiencing. Much less did he have an understanding that men or women could have problems with performing the demands of sexuality.
Madam Yin’s nymphets ushered him into an enclosed space that looked like an audio-visual room. He sat in front of a wall screen that, after a short while waiting, started showing pictures. There was a sound track to the presentation that evoked different emotions.
After the presentation, Madam Yin came in and introduced herself. She was wearing a white clinical robe similar to a doctor’s attire. However, it had long slits on the sides that revealed her tantalizing legs and a good part of her thighs.
Daniel thought that Madam Yin was stunning, delectable. Her skin was so smooth he thought that just touching that skin could give him fulfillment.
She began just like a lecturer, “Mr. Daniel, a close-up camera was focused on your eyes, watching how your eyes behaved when you were viewing different pictures. I can tell by the results that you are a strong, healthy individual, mind and body, in so far as sexuality is concerned. You showed very little interest when you were being shown pictures of ducks and goats; however, you showed excitement when you were looking at pictures of girls playing beach volleyball and wearing scanty bikinis.”
“Thank, you m’am.”
“However, I will tell you, every man is different. There are men whose sexuality is dead, zero, zilch. They don’t react to any of these pictures. And let me tell you this, some men get excited looking at ducks and goats. Ha-ha-ha. Funny but true. . . So, anyway, this test gives us an idea what to work on. Let’s tour the center.”
He was first shown what she called therapy rooms. Unaware that the rooms had peeping holes or, in some cases, one-way mirrors, patients inside performed exercises, in privacy they thought, meant to bring back libido, or improve libido.
He was asked to look at what was going on in one of the rooms. He saw an elderly man, completely naked, holding a duck, and making out with the animal. He backed off and told Madam Yin he did not want to look.
“It’s gross! I don’t want to see this.” He complained.
“Mr. Daniel, just be clinical about it. Consider this an education.”
He hesitated but Daniel had to look again through the convenient peep holes. There was another person in the room, one of those girls in cheongsams. She appeared to be assisting the man. She had the duck’s neck in her hand and just as the man was getting close to a climax, she chopped off the duck’s head with a sharp knife. It took only one blow. As a result of losing its head, the duck wiggled and convulsed violently; and the man, in the meantime, looked like he was experiencing the most intense of pleasures, thanks to the effects of the duck’s rigor mortis.
“That is really bad!” Daniel sighed, shaking his head.
“So, sorry Daniel, but we have to do what we have to do. We have discovered in this center that of all animals, ducks have the closest resemblance and functions to a woman’s sex organ.”
In another room, Daniel saw a man dipped in a tub of water full of suds. The tub looked like one of those antique bath tubs that have four bear paw legs. Three naked nymphets were assisting the man. One was holding his left arm and the other the right arm. Obviously, the man was excited. His manhood was erect and the head part of it was showing above the suds. The third nymphet pulled out something out of a glass jar. She put the thing on top of the man’s part that was above water. It was a wingless fly she put on there and as the confused fly walked around the tip of the man’s part, the man was feeling a tingling sensation that was extremely pleasurable. He yelled screams of delight. “Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh . . . Enough, enough. You’re killing me!” He struggled to be free but the girls held on to his arms tightly.
Daniel told Madam Yin he had seen enough.
She replied, “Mr. Daniel, loss of libido is not curable by medicines or creams. It’s a brain problem and we cannot operate on the brain. We have techniques, we have devices, borne out of years of research and experimentation that took us to the deepest secret places in the Orient, that wake up a man’s dead libido. That’s what we do here. I hope you understand. You have to be very careful in writing the article. You don’t want to tell everything in the article. You don’t want to make people anxious. You don’t want to spill the surprises.”
As they were walking down the hall, Daniel noticed a sign on the door of one of the rooms. It said, “Vending Machines”. He wanted to have a Coke.
“Look through the mirror before you go in, Mr. Daniel,” Madame Yin warned. He peered through the window that had the one-way mirror and saw a machine.
“Mr. Daniel, believe it or not, some men prefer to make love with a machine.”
The machine worked pretty much like the soft drinks machine. The patient drops some coins and one of the latches on the face of the vending machine opens. The patient chooses which latch he wants to open. Whatever he chooses, a latch opens and a part of a woman’s body pops out of a square hole. Then the patient can play with the exposed body part. The choices include: Lips, Boobs, Vagina, Navel, Knees, Legs.
“Out of this world! Madam Yin, I should compliment you. You’re a genius!”
“Thank you, Mr. Daniel. Why buy the whole cow when you can just buy the milk?”
“Wait,” Daniel said when he saw in the next room another machine.
Madame Yin then explained what the machine was about.
“This, Mr. Daniel, is where a man who is tired of his wife can dump his woman in exchange for coins.”
They both laughed. Then Madam Yin followed up, “No. Joke only, Mr. Daniel. That's your soft drink machine”
“Let me get the photos that Mr. Celerio wants to publish with the article,” and Madam Yin excused herself momentarily.
Two nymphets ushered Daniel into a private, dimly-lit room and he was asked to relax. There were cold beverages on the coffee table. He picked up one glass and sipped what seemed to be some kind of tropical fruit juice.
In the next few minutes, he felt a surge of vitality and euphoria he had never experienced in his young life.
Then Madam Yin came in and standing before Daniel, she took off her robes.
She pulled him out of the chair and took him to the bed. She unbuttoned his shirt and helped him take off that shirt and the pants.
Then Madam Yin went on top of him and kissed him on the lips. She whispered to his ear, "I'm a cougar!"
He hugged her and then made his hands feel the smoothness of Madam Yin’s body.
Ordinarily, he would have come already.
But in the next hour he was able to respond to Madam Yin’s every passionate gesture with the powers of a grown man, a man strong and virile and lasting.
Madame Yin proved herself to be a real doctor, an enchantress, if one may say.
She’s from the Orient and obviously a single woman. Who knows her origins? Who knows her life story?
People come to America under all kinds of ruses in order to obtain a visa.
Maybe Madam Yin needed to reinvent herself. Maybe she was an innocent, simple, farm maiden who transformed herself into a worldly, self-proclaimed libido healer, in order to start a new life in America.
But that’s another story.
By Percival Campoamor Cruz
1.
He came to interview the self-proclaimed restorer of lost libido, this bespectacled young man who just got a writing job for an Asian newspaper. Madam Yin had earlier talked to his publisher for an advertising deal. She was offered an editorial write-up, gratis.
She was no doctor nor psychiatrist. She was an enchantress.
She told the publisher, Mr. Celerio, “Me no believe in pills. Like Viagra. Ha, ha, ha. . .”
She seemed to be either Chinese or Vietnamese, or maybe a Filipino with Chinese blood. Her English was not that good.
“Ya know, in my country, someone invented Viagra in cream, not pill. Ha, ha, ha . . . The user dips his pointer finger in the cream and swabs it on his organ. Very effective. Problem was the finger gets stiff, too. Ha, ha, ha . . . for hours.”
Mr. Celerio carefully eyed the lady in front of him. She was fortyish, had black, shiny, long hair; smooth, flawless skin like porcelain. She had a wonderful smell, like she bathed herself in some strange tropical flower. Mr. Celerio, now in his sixties, was reminded of the ilang-ilang, the rare flower in his native land that exuded a gentle, mesmerizing scent.
“I make men come back to life, Mr. Celerio,” she said.
The publisher was not comfortable with the direction of the conversation. The soft-spoken, unexcitable man did not know how to react but he was able to say, “Ah, eh, yes, yes. I can see that Madam Yin.”
Mr. Celerio saw a flashback rush in his mind. There was a time in his youth that he was pursuing older women. He was around thirty then and, for some reasons, he developed an obsession for women in their forties or fifties. He did go to bed with a number of them and, every time he did, it was an exhilarating experience, just like climbing Mount Matutum, a rugged mountain in the Philippines.
“I make men come back to life, Mr. Celerio; no Viagra pill, no cream, just technique, just waking up the dull senses. . . technique to see, smell, hear, touch, even taste passion, in a way that stimulates the erotic part of the brain.”
He was in the early geriatric phase in his life. He had been managing a mild case of diabetes and hypertension. Yes, he noticed a decline in his bed activities, but he had no worries. He need not take remedial measures. He wanted the her to get straight to the business.
“Madam Yin,” he boldly intervened, “what is it that the newspaper can do for you?”
“Mr. Celerio, I need to promote my center, my healing center. How about going exchange deal?”
“What do you mean?”
“Advertise my center. I pay you with my services.”
Mr. Celerio rolled his eyes. “Ya need healing, Mr. Celerio, don’t you?” The woman was fishing for a positive answer.
She was really very attractive and enchanting. Her lips looked supple and inviting. Her teeth were so white and healthy he was sure her breath smelled fresh and fragrant. Mr. Celerio had been surveying her body. He had concluded early on that this woman was a dynamite, a package of a thousand-and-one pleasures.
His wife was going to arrive at the office soon. Mr. Celerio quickened the pace of the supposed-to-be business meeting.
He promised to help.
“Madam Yin, let’s not talk long-term. For now, I’ll grant you a write-up, for free. Prepare some photos that I can publish. We'll write an article. I’ll send a writer to your center for an interview. How about that?”
“I am truly delighted, Mr. Celerio,” and she gave him a meaningful wink. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time, gotta go.”
Madam Yin took off not before leaving a small vial of perfume on Mr. Celerio’s palm. “The fragrance will always remind you of me,” she whispered.
Mr. Celerio was led to a dimly-lit room by two nymphets. They were wearing soft-to-the-touch silken cheongsams, those Chinese costumes that have slits on the sides of the skirts and expose the legs and a good part of the thighs. The fragrance that wafted in the room smelled like the perfume in the vial.
One of the girls helped him take off his clothes and shoes. She helped him put on a silken robe. He was then asked to sit in a comfortable reclining chair and then served tea. The other girl prepared the tub so Mr. Celerio could have a bath.
In the meantime, he could hear a soothing, very soft percussive music coming out of the radio, like the soft clanging of bamboos. The two girls fetched him from the chair and walked him to the tub. They both took off their clothes and then began bathing him.
One of the girls said, “Mr. Celerio, don’t be naughty now. We’re not having an orgy here. Three’s a crowd.” And both girls giggled.
Mr. Celerio was being transformed at that moment, so-to-speak, from a meek lamb to a raging bull. It was embarrassing but he could not help it. The two girls could see his manhood become rigid.
After the bath, he was delivered to a queen-size bed. He was asked to lie down and wait.
It seemed like hours. Mr. Celerio already was salivating, burning in excitement. Finally, Madam Yin came into the room accompanied by that alluring, now familiar fragrance.
In her soothing, captivating voice she said, “The healing begins.”
She asked him to turn over, to relax, sleep even. Or just be at the brink of consciousness. And she began rubbing his head, his neck, then his arms, his back, his legs. And then she focused on his lower back and rear end.
Madam Yin was softly chanting an unintelligible mantra. Mr. Celerio could not relax. On the contrary, his manly senses were getting out-of-control. Yet he needed to show good demeanor and go along with the healing session.
He wanted to get up and grab Madam Yin, the torturer, and throw her in the bed. He wanted to hold her face and suck her lips, caress her breasts and put himself on top of her body.
Is that the response Madam Yin was expecting from him? He thought. Or should he wait for an invitation? He demurred.
He was asked to turn over face up. Madam Yin asked him to keep his eyes closed, to continue to relax. “How can I relax?” He said to himself. Madam Yin could see that his manhood was tense.
She caressed his face, touched his lips with her soft finger, rubbed his chest, his thighs and feet. She purposely avoided touching the center of his manhood. He was getting crazy.
He was under an extreme anticipation of a maddening love-making with Madam Yin. Then suddenly, Madam Yin said, “We’re done for today!” And she turned the bright lights on.
He saw Madam Yin completely naked but her breasts and groin were covered in some kind of plastic chastity shackles.
“This is insane!” He growled.
Mr. Celerio’s wife had been caressing him all night. She was looking for intimacy. He was just imagining, dreaming. He peered at the image of the woman beside him. It was his wife he saw, the grandmother of his grandkids, not Madam Yin.
2.
The following morning, Mr. Celerio sent his young writer to Madam Yin’s healing center.
The writer was escorted by two young ladies in cheongsams to a dimly-lit room so he could experience the healing.
Daniel, the young writer who was assigned to interview Madam Yin, knew very little about the subject-matter he was to write about. What he was to learn that day could be shocking for someone who had never had an intimate relationship with the opposite gender.
Yes, he was mature enough to understand the feelings that take over a man’s mind and body, feelings that make him seek fulfillment, the urges that emanate from below a man’s navel and around the groin. He went to school and took up biology. He understood the biological needs of animals and how they are fulfilled. However, actual experience with a woman, he had not yet had the benefit of experiencing. Much less did he have an understanding that men or women could have problems with performing the demands of sexuality.
Madam Yin’s nymphets ushered him into an enclosed space that looked like an audio-visual room. He sat in front of a wall screen that, after a short while waiting, started showing pictures. There was a sound track to the presentation that evoked different emotions.
After the presentation, Madam Yin came in and introduced herself. She was wearing a white clinical robe similar to a doctor’s attire. However, it had long slits on the sides that revealed her tantalizing legs and a good part of her thighs.
Daniel thought that Madam Yin was stunning, delectable. Her skin was so smooth he thought that just touching that skin could give him fulfillment.
She began just like a lecturer, “Mr. Daniel, a close-up camera was focused on your eyes, watching how your eyes behaved when you were viewing different pictures. I can tell by the results that you are a strong, healthy individual, mind and body, in so far as sexuality is concerned. You showed very little interest when you were being shown pictures of ducks and goats; however, you showed excitement when you were looking at pictures of girls playing beach volleyball and wearing scanty bikinis.”
“Thank, you m’am.”
“However, I will tell you, every man is different. There are men whose sexuality is dead, zero, zilch. They don’t react to any of these pictures. And let me tell you this, some men get excited looking at ducks and goats. Ha-ha-ha. Funny but true. . . So, anyway, this test gives us an idea what to work on. Let’s tour the center.”
He was first shown what she called therapy rooms. Unaware that the rooms had peeping holes or, in some cases, one-way mirrors, patients inside performed exercises, in privacy they thought, meant to bring back libido, or improve libido.
He was asked to look at what was going on in one of the rooms. He saw an elderly man, completely naked, holding a duck, and making out with the animal. He backed off and told Madam Yin he did not want to look.
“It’s gross! I don’t want to see this.” He complained.
“Mr. Daniel, just be clinical about it. Consider this an education.”
He hesitated but Daniel had to look again through the convenient peep holes. There was another person in the room, one of those girls in cheongsams. She appeared to be assisting the man. She had the duck’s neck in her hand and just as the man was getting close to a climax, she chopped off the duck’s head with a sharp knife. It took only one blow. As a result of losing its head, the duck wiggled and convulsed violently; and the man, in the meantime, looked like he was experiencing the most intense of pleasures, thanks to the effects of the duck’s rigor mortis.
“That is really bad!” Daniel sighed, shaking his head.
“So, sorry Daniel, but we have to do what we have to do. We have discovered in this center that of all animals, ducks have the closest resemblance and functions to a woman’s sex organ.”
In another room, Daniel saw a man dipped in a tub of water full of suds. The tub looked like one of those antique bath tubs that have four bear paw legs. Three naked nymphets were assisting the man. One was holding his left arm and the other the right arm. Obviously, the man was excited. His manhood was erect and the head part of it was showing above the suds. The third nymphet pulled out something out of a glass jar. She put the thing on top of the man’s part that was above water. It was a wingless fly she put on there and as the confused fly walked around the tip of the man’s part, the man was feeling a tingling sensation that was extremely pleasurable. He yelled screams of delight. “Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh . . . Enough, enough. You’re killing me!” He struggled to be free but the girls held on to his arms tightly.
Daniel told Madam Yin he had seen enough.
She replied, “Mr. Daniel, loss of libido is not curable by medicines or creams. It’s a brain problem and we cannot operate on the brain. We have techniques, we have devices, borne out of years of research and experimentation that took us to the deepest secret places in the Orient, that wake up a man’s dead libido. That’s what we do here. I hope you understand. You have to be very careful in writing the article. You don’t want to tell everything in the article. You don’t want to make people anxious. You don’t want to spill the surprises.”
As they were walking down the hall, Daniel noticed a sign on the door of one of the rooms. It said, “Vending Machines”. He wanted to have a Coke.
“Look through the mirror before you go in, Mr. Daniel,” Madame Yin warned. He peered through the window that had the one-way mirror and saw a machine.
“Mr. Daniel, believe it or not, some men prefer to make love with a machine.”
The machine worked pretty much like the soft drinks machine. The patient drops some coins and one of the latches on the face of the vending machine opens. The patient chooses which latch he wants to open. Whatever he chooses, a latch opens and a part of a woman’s body pops out of a square hole. Then the patient can play with the exposed body part. The choices include: Lips, Boobs, Vagina, Navel, Knees, Legs.
“Out of this world! Madam Yin, I should compliment you. You’re a genius!”
“Thank you, Mr. Daniel. Why buy the whole cow when you can just buy the milk?”
“Wait,” Daniel said when he saw in the next room another machine.
Madame Yin then explained what the machine was about.
“This, Mr. Daniel, is where a man who is tired of his wife can dump his woman in exchange for coins.”
They both laughed. Then Madam Yin followed up, “No. Joke only, Mr. Daniel. That's your soft drink machine”
“Let me get the photos that Mr. Celerio wants to publish with the article,” and Madam Yin excused herself momentarily.
Two nymphets ushered Daniel into a private, dimly-lit room and he was asked to relax. There were cold beverages on the coffee table. He picked up one glass and sipped what seemed to be some kind of tropical fruit juice.
In the next few minutes, he felt a surge of vitality and euphoria he had never experienced in his young life.
Then Madam Yin came in and standing before Daniel, she took off her robes.
She pulled him out of the chair and took him to the bed. She unbuttoned his shirt and helped him take off that shirt and the pants.
Then Madam Yin went on top of him and kissed him on the lips. She whispered to his ear, "I'm a cougar!"
He hugged her and then made his hands feel the smoothness of Madam Yin’s body.
Ordinarily, he would have come already.
But in the next hour he was able to respond to Madam Yin’s every passionate gesture with the powers of a grown man, a man strong and virile and lasting.
Madame Yin proved herself to be a real doctor, an enchantress, if one may say.
She’s from the Orient and obviously a single woman. Who knows her origins? Who knows her life story?
People come to America under all kinds of ruses in order to obtain a visa.
Maybe Madam Yin needed to reinvent herself. Maybe she was an innocent, simple, farm maiden who transformed herself into a worldly, self-proclaimed libido healer, in order to start a new life in America.
But that’s another story.