By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

THERE is something magical in our lives, stories narrated by our grandparents and our parents, before Santa Claus came to our consciousness. As children, my grandfather Laki Ilot, often told his experiences with the magical as a natural part of everyday life. He would tell us about women bathing by the well, as we played with the flowing water, as if they truly existed in the present time, although they vanish at will. I heard this same story five decades ago from a doctor who visited our house in the province, resting among the trees after dinner. She was stunned, pointing in the direction of the well my father installed when we moved to Palacpalac. The words escaped her mouth, recovering them minutes later.

“There’s a woman bathing by the well.”

I’ve never seen this woman. I can’t fathom why women are seen bathing in my grandfather’s property where we recovered skeletons and rifles and mess kits. Shouldn’t we see dead soldiers instead? But it is likely that she saw her, because other visitors saw her as well. Or is it the same women they see? In high school up to college, what I heard coming from the lomboy tree (Java plum or Philippine blackberry) was a more aggressive presence, of wood being sawed towards midnight. My mother had the same explanation for me, every time I heard this sound.

“Diay pugot laeng dayta. Maturog kan, sumardeng madamdama nu mabannog.” (That’s just the pugot (the decapitated one). Sleep, he will stop later when he’s tired.)

I remember these accounts as I watched the movie One Hundred Years of Solitude, a novel I read in college, by Gabriel García Márquez  about “the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founded the fictitious town of Macondo“, where Prudencio Aguilar, a man he killed back when they were in Colombia, appeared at various occasions, and became a prominent presence at the end of the movie.

Magic, like miracles, exist. What surprises me is that given our experiences, the Philippines have very few books written in the magical realist style. Only Nick Joaquin comes to mind. Magical realism refers to the style of writing that includes magical and supernatural events narrated with the real. In Philippine cinema, the magical intersects with the real mostly in horror films. I have yet to see this delicate intertwining of the real and the magical in an imaginative, mind-stimulating retelling in books preferably with some historical context, worthy to be transformed into a movie. Like Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits. Or Gabriel García Márquez‘s One Hundred Years of Solitude.

 

Women by the well

by the well, where mysteries dwell
where the depth swallows all secrets
the moon dances into the water
made from tears

in the embrace of darkness
women caress their bodies gently,
as if to soothe, or wash away
pain, but remain

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