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| Sunday, 6 February 2005 |
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Telling Tales A Bad Dream I was impatient to leave the place immediately and yet, the bus was not coming. As if to reduce my stress, Luz started to tell a story. She said, "You know why I wanted to come to this island with you guys? I dreamt a few weeks ago of being in a beautiful sea with dark blue water over which glittering stars danced. That's why I wanted to bring you all here for the vacation.
It was our vacation time and it was the tradition in the school that the whole class would go some place to spend a few days. Luz was very insistent that we went to an island off Panpanga, which was around four hours by bus from Manila. The island was only five hundred metres from the mainland and yet, the port that connected the island with the mainland was around ten kilometres in which the old canoes operated with low speed motor engines and would take nearly one hour. Part of the island which was not more than five hundred acres, was owned and maintained as a private vacation spot by a friend of Luz and in the other part, there were three families that ran a farm of cocks for cockfighting. There were several other neighbouring islands and inhabitants of these, used the same port of the mainland. Trip Only four people finally joined the trip while the other eight excused themselves with some reason or another and a part from chatting and enjoying fresh fish and the relaxing ambience, there was nothing much to the stay in the island, which did not have a beach. I often wondered why Luz wanted to bring us to this type of island, when there were so many nice places to spend the vacation. She had a liking for me and I thought it was because of her experience with, people from my country whom she had met in several international meetings of students. However, I felt uneasy when she wanted to have more time with me while in the island and I tactfully avoided being alone with her. Everytime we sat for a meal, Luz brought me the plate and served me. First I thought that she did so because I was a foreigner. It became clear to me that she had a crush on me when I saw her reactions to me while going with Rena to inspect the rocks along the edge of the island that both of us took some interest in since they appeared to be formed by volcanic larva. I liked Luz as an authentic and loving person but I kept a distance, because of a streak of strangness in her that I could not figure out. Her dream told me that she was not having a crush on me but was deeply in love with me. For sometime, she was probably looking for a moment to be alone with me and have an intimate chat. It was possible that she felt her dream was coming true, when she dreamt of the dark blue sea and the sparkling stars on it. And I wondered if she carefully planned to get only a few classmates for the trip. She brought only her most trusted friend and the other girl who had done several class projects with me came because of me. When I realised at the bus stand, that we were only four, I wanted to cancel the trip but Luz insisted that we went since she had paid for the food and the place in advance. But, now her dream seemed to have perished, as the girl who had shared lot of interests with me had become closer to me. Problems That afternoon, when we started off from the island to go back to Manila, we stated with problems, Luz wanted to sit next to me in the narrow canoe and I carefully sat at the rear end while the girls sat in the middle. Luz was angry and she said "You are avoiding us" and I replied, "No, I am trying to balance the boat." The canoe was overcrowded with ten people and a lot of goods and the engine wouldn't start. The boatman pulled the start cable over twenty times and with few hammerings on the engine, we started off. I suggested to Luz that we take another boat or go the next day. Luz could not change the arrangement. The boatman chose to take us to the deep sea when we could have sailed closer to the land like the other canoes. I did not like it. I was burning under the hot afternoon sun. Rena gave me her umbrella. Then, Luz suddenly appeared to be fainting and asked for the umbrella, I gave it to her. We were on the halfway mark and faraway from the land, when the engine broke down. We appeared to be at least one kilometre away from the other canoes sailing closer to land. The boatman and his child, pulled the starter cable many times in vain, and then started to hammer the engine with an iron rod. Half an hour passed and we were drifting into the deep sea. We could hardly see the canoes that were closed to land. When I saw one, a little clearly, I told the boatman. "Please wave your hands or something and call out for help." He ignored and continued to hammer the engine. I told Luz, "Please Luz, ask the man to ask for help." Luz, probably out of fear of antagonising the boatman, kept silent. I noticed that the sea wasn't blue but dark and the canoe I was sitting appeared to be a tiny peace of wood that could easily overturn with a push by a shark or a rough wave, I asked the boatman for an oar, so I could push the canoe toward land or prevent it drifting farther. There was no oar, not even a piece of wood. We had left the island around one o'clock and it was now three. The land appeared to be a tiny strip over the water. The boatman was still pulling the starter cable and hammering the engine with the iron rod. He did not know how to repair it. Deep Sea Soon it would be dark and we would be floating farther and farther into the deep sea. No one would see us or come to rescue us. The boatman began to curse Aswan or the devil casting an angry look at me. I knew that I would be the scapegoat, since they would easily identify a dark stranger with the devil. Rena understood the situation and sat next to me probably to temper the boatman's rising anger towards me, which seemed to have been conceived as the cause for the problem. Around four o'clock, a canoe appeared a little closer to us and the boatman this time started to wave his hands. But the canoe passed without any attention to us. Another appeared in the same area and the boatman waved his hands again but in vain. There was no sign of a canoe again. I was so disappointed. If the boatman asked for help immediately, or we had oars, we could have moved to safety. Now there did not seem to be anyone to ask for help. We did not have a cellular phone or any means of contacting anybody. In another hour's time, the sun would be setting and we would only see the stars in the sky. Neither the girls nor I could swim, Rena said, "No matter what happens I am with you. We will hold onto this piece of wood as long as we can. If the worst happens, we are together. If not, you are free" and she smiled. It was five and a little canoe appeared in the scene. It seemed to go in the direction of the island and then, changed course towards us. It was a twelve year boy who had been waiting for his father to come to the port and he started to go back to the island when his father did not come. He was looking out to see his father's boat was in trouble. The brave young lad took a route closer to the deep sea and if not for him, I wouldn't know where I would be. As Luz was narrating her dream, I realised that her dream was true and Luz could not understand her dream because she was blinded by love. I wondered whether the streak of strangeness in her was an indication of her fate and whether we were going to share that fate. Now I felt very frightened of her, even to travel with her in the same bus. And the irony was, at the moment of crisis, Rena came closer to me and the gap between Luz and me became unbridgeable. Probably she still did not understand my feelings at the four and half hour ordeal in the sea or even the situation of all of us at sea. She must have been dreaming and by telling me her dream at this moment, she wanted to tell me "My dream is you." by P. M. Fernando |
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I knew I would have some beautiful experiences. I was terrified to hear
of her dream. When she moved away, I asked Rena standing next to me,
"Did you hear what she said: It looks like we came to share in her
fate. Didn't we see the dark blue sea? We could have seen the stars
too."
