Lull a bye!

By Jing Villamil

 

MORE than thirty Filipino seafarers remain missing in chilly waters off southwestern Japan after their Panamanian cargo ship capsized amidst the onslaught of Typhoon Maysak the first week of September.

Truthfully, there is no getting over the faces of anxiety, anger, grief. The kind they go through: the families of seafarers missing, presumably drowned, forever lost at sea. Their father, husband, lover, son, brother deserve a more decent ending. Not the mindless battering of the waves. Nor the anonymous mounds on the islands where crossed twigs or rocks mark their hapless, quiet landing.

But then, there are no better caretakers of the mounds than the islanders. Of which this writer is one, in spirit and in the silence of great distance.

In countless of past summer mornings, I was one of them islanders. They do not waste precious time for yawning, stretching, stationary jogging. They jump from the bed. They rush out barefoot from the house. They cross the graveled road, run through a strip of grass, and voila! The beach is there, the widest frontyard of all!

These are what naked soles are for, to crunch on shells, pebbles and sand. To climb up the piles of huge green rocks, almost a hillock. No, it is not moss or lichen warping green colors to the rocks. The rocks are really colored green, tumbling naturally artfully from the mountains to its foot, to the river flowing thick but sluggard to the wading waters. These rocks had been there since time began for the forefathers. And more than its beauty and its history, it is much valued for its present-day function: it is the only place in the immediate area where celfone calls can be clearly conducted.

There, more than ten years ago, on its green rocky top, the islanders shielded the eyes from the brightening rays of the morning sun. There, butt up, was the former Princess of the Stars! There was no modesty in her; she burrowed her head in shame and dread. Her sins – hundreds, thousands of them! Listed and unlisted passengers – peering through holes, cracks. With unseeing eyes, their flesh bloated, then seasalt-dried.

But years even before the Princess, the islanders remember another liner that had grounded almost at the same spot. It took a little more than twenty-four hours to save and transfer the passengers, their luggage and the ship cargo. The ship floated two more days for repairs. At night, the ship would light up festively and music would waft over to the shores. The islanders and their guests would keep bonfires burning all night to keep the machinists company across the waters.

They are kind-hearted, these islanders here and almost everywhere in the world. Along shore communities, are chapels of coconut trunks, better still of cement blocks built by rich beach-owners, or by overseas contract workers. Or seafarers.

These islanders would not have recoiled from the rotting flesh or smell. These bodies were once precious lives, much beloved!

And there, on a crest a little above the waves rushing-in curling-out, the drowned shall rest. The sands for blanket, the skies for roof. There, somewhere in an island off the Pacific, in a not so lonely, not so cruel a place, over and above the mounds: hanging-amihan and hanging-habagat stir and trade breezes for a song, a lull-a-bye.

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