Trinity
I had this dream the night I dreamed about The Guests.
I was walking on the bridge near the Chinese Catholic Chapel when I finally saw the wooden house, doors wide open. Its roof was level to the stained windows of the chapel, neither because the house was too small nor because the chapel was huge, but because the base of the house was several feet below where the base of the chapel rest. Near the chapel’s entrance was a makeshift earthen short flight of stairs, maybe, not more than 10 flights down. The last step landed on a flat hardened-clay door mat right at the entrance of the house.
It looked like I was looking for the house. Having had by-passed the chapel, I proceeded to going down the mud stairs. On entering through the antique wooden door, I saw my childhood neighbor (in Buhi) lying on a wooden bed topped with a buri mat, a large infant sleeping beside her. “How could this baby turn out to be fair-skinned when you’re so brown?” I teased her. She answered back, tittering, “I was raped!” Then we laughed out loud.
The baby’s deep slumber was interrupted by our laughter. Deep because he looked dead before we had waken him up with our laughter. Pestered, the baby flashed a flushed and angry face. He was about to cry when I decided to lift him. To my surprise, he was so heavy that lifting him seemed like lifting a log that’s tied to a massive boulder. In short, I couldn’t take his weight.
“How old is he?” I asked my friend.
“One day. His name is Osmium,” she said.
My eyes met with my friend’s eyes and we burst into laughter for the second time. She held her stomach, lying there, while laughing her hearts out.
“Osmium is the heaviest element,” I volunteered. “Very appropriate. Since when did you learn chemistry?”
My friend was struggling to gather words to answer my question when another baby, an infant who’s a dead ringer of Osmium, emerged from the curtained door. Maybe the door was there all the time. He ran toward me and took my hand. “I’m his twin,” he said. “Let’s go out. I have something to show you.” Then he led me to the bridge’s direction.
Standing on the bridge, we adored the carefully paved bed of white and gray pebbles under the bridge's shadow. Suddenly, the image of a sleeping baby inside a stone crib blocked my line of sight. The crib was lying there in the midst of the long intricately piled bed of pebbles below, the shape of a giant snake sans head and tail and passing through the bridge underneath. The baby beside me saw the baby in the stone crib, too. Then he recited a strange chant. The chant sounded something like “Kawawa naman, kawawa naman, …” It was vague. He was beside me but his voice, eerie but angelic, seemed to be coming from a distance. If I say, angelic but eerie, I guess, it’s different.
Shortly, while the chant was still there providing the score and mingling with the now moist air, I saw my friend, now barefoot, tread toward the stone crib. In no time, she took the baby out of the crib. Then she turned her head to our direction and yelled, “It’s going to rain.”
And it rained.
We all ran for shelter. I and the baby beside me, who now stopped singing, had sought refuge from the nearby chapel. My friend, with the baby from the stone crib locked in her arms, ran toward the house, but she couldn’t find the door.
A strange woman with a child in her arms, who now lost any resemblance whatsoever to my friend, drenched, and knocking hard on the door-less house, was the last vivid image I saw in the dream.
I was walking on the bridge near the Chinese Catholic Chapel when I finally saw the wooden house, doors wide open. Its roof was level to the stained windows of the chapel, neither because the house was too small nor because the chapel was huge, but because the base of the house was several feet below where the base of the chapel rest. Near the chapel’s entrance was a makeshift earthen short flight of stairs, maybe, not more than 10 flights down. The last step landed on a flat hardened-clay door mat right at the entrance of the house.
It looked like I was looking for the house. Having had by-passed the chapel, I proceeded to going down the mud stairs. On entering through the antique wooden door, I saw my childhood neighbor (in Buhi) lying on a wooden bed topped with a buri mat, a large infant sleeping beside her. “How could this baby turn out to be fair-skinned when you’re so brown?” I teased her. She answered back, tittering, “I was raped!” Then we laughed out loud.
The baby’s deep slumber was interrupted by our laughter. Deep because he looked dead before we had waken him up with our laughter. Pestered, the baby flashed a flushed and angry face. He was about to cry when I decided to lift him. To my surprise, he was so heavy that lifting him seemed like lifting a log that’s tied to a massive boulder. In short, I couldn’t take his weight.
“How old is he?” I asked my friend.
“One day. His name is Osmium,” she said.
My eyes met with my friend’s eyes and we burst into laughter for the second time. She held her stomach, lying there, while laughing her hearts out.
“Osmium is the heaviest element,” I volunteered. “Very appropriate. Since when did you learn chemistry?”
My friend was struggling to gather words to answer my question when another baby, an infant who’s a dead ringer of Osmium, emerged from the curtained door. Maybe the door was there all the time. He ran toward me and took my hand. “I’m his twin,” he said. “Let’s go out. I have something to show you.” Then he led me to the bridge’s direction.
Standing on the bridge, we adored the carefully paved bed of white and gray pebbles under the bridge's shadow. Suddenly, the image of a sleeping baby inside a stone crib blocked my line of sight. The crib was lying there in the midst of the long intricately piled bed of pebbles below, the shape of a giant snake sans head and tail and passing through the bridge underneath. The baby beside me saw the baby in the stone crib, too. Then he recited a strange chant. The chant sounded something like “Kawawa naman, kawawa naman, …” It was vague. He was beside me but his voice, eerie but angelic, seemed to be coming from a distance. If I say, angelic but eerie, I guess, it’s different.
Shortly, while the chant was still there providing the score and mingling with the now moist air, I saw my friend, now barefoot, tread toward the stone crib. In no time, she took the baby out of the crib. Then she turned her head to our direction and yelled, “It’s going to rain.”
And it rained.
We all ran for shelter. I and the baby beside me, who now stopped singing, had sought refuge from the nearby chapel. My friend, with the baby from the stone crib locked in her arms, ran toward the house, but she couldn’t find the door.
A strange woman with a child in her arms, who now lost any resemblance whatsoever to my friend, drenched, and knocking hard on the door-less house, was the last vivid image I saw in the dream.
-o-
I know the bridge, the chapel, and the exact place where they are located - somewhere in Tabaco City in Albay, where I studied high school. In reality, a rubbish-laden creek flows under the bridge. In the dream, a bed of pebbles substitute for the dirty water.
There’s no wooden house beside the chapel.
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