Street Vendors
The sun, long depleted of its vigour, at last drew its uppermost edge down behind the buildings on the opposite side of Esperanza Street, its final glow outlining them thinly against the descending dusk. From the gate, I watched the street turn to velvet and everything become rich, convivial. In a line stretching from the brow of the hill down to the jetty, the lamps came on in clusters, their yellow light seeping through the smoke that layered upwards from the braziers. Into this haze, the night flowers had already started to release their scent. Behind me, the house lay quiet. It was time to close the gate for the evening but I lingered there thinking, as I often did, about how the falling light smoothing over the boundaries of the street endowed the scene almost with the illusion of freedom. I didn’t want to go back inside just yet, and of course today there was no one to mind if the gate closed a few minutes late: Aunt Mary was still in Manila with her mother and America had already retired. Still, I hesitated, if only for a moment, before slipping out onto the sidewalk.
Johnny Five Course sat by his stall reading a book. Even from a distance I recognised the cover: Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Aunt Mary kept a copy in the sala for the amusement of the boarding-house guests. Books of quotations and anecdotes were the only things Johnny liked to read.
Johnny’s food cart was easily the most colourful stall on the street, and consequently was a magnet for foreigners. Johnny’s sign said in English: Five Corse Meals. Two Set Menues, Complimentry Tea and Coffee. Eat-In. Take-Out. Today, as nearly every day, menu ‘A’ was pinakbet, lumpia, pork and egg noodles, coconut curd and tea or coffee. Menu ‘B’ was pinakbet, lumpia, pork and egg fried rice, coconut curd and tea or coffee. There were no chairs and Eat-In meant sitting on the low wall behind the frangipani tree, the food laid out on a banana leaf in front of you. For Take-Out, Johnny served the pinakbet in a polystyrene cup and the rest wrapped up in waxed paper packets enclosed in another banana leaf. From the roof of the cart, a hurricane lamp cast its gauzy light over a row of open pickle jars and bottles of soy and fish sauce. A ring of flies circled lazily over the jars. Others clung to strips of fly-paper strung like forgotten Christmas decorations along the cart’s awning. All the while a small table fan taped to one of the posts arced uselessly from left to right and back again.
Johnny glanced up as I emerged onto the street. He looked pleased to see me and my heart fell; it meant he had news. He beckoned me over with his book. He looked different and he waited, smiling, while I appraised him. His hair had been teased into a quiff like the prow of a boat. I didn’t say anything. He closed the Bartlett’s and stood up, laying the book down on his stool. He smoothed his quiff with the palms of both hands like he was diving into a pool. ‘Hey Joe, how are you doing?’ he said. I wondered what response might result in the shortest conversation.
Johnny was full of schemes to make it out of Esperanza Street, out of Puerto, out of the Philippines. He was going places: ‘The Mississippi River, man,’ he’d say. He loved that name, stretched it out a long way. ‘The Meesseesseepee Reever.’ His dreaming made me feel empty. The week before he’d said to me, ‘Maybe I’ll do an MBA stateside.’ I didn’t know what an MBA was but I didn’t admit to it. Most of Johnny’s outside information came from Jaynie, his sister, who ran the Beauty Queen hair salon near the market hall. Jaynie and her colleague, Lady Jessica, whose real name was Jesiah, were the eyes and ears of Esperanza and their clientele included the ladies from higher up the hill who could afford to send their children to college in Europe or the States and still had money to fritter on manicures and hair perms.
Johnny lived with Jaynie and his father in a two-room apartment in Greenhills just behind the Espiritista chapel. They had their own tiny kitchen but shared an outside bathroom with four other families. Johnny got up every day before dawn to go to market and he’d rolled out his stall and was cooking over the butane gas stove before Jaynie was even up. He ate all his meals at the stall and when he got home he washed and slept and got up before dawn to do it all over again.
‘So now you’re Elvis?’ I said, pointing at last to his hair.
‘You think it suits me?’
I didn’t, but I said, ‘Sure.’
Johnny looked pleased for a second. Then he said, ‘It’s crazy about the Pope, eh?’
‘What about the Pope?’
He stared at me. ‘You work too hard,’ he said. He thrust his chin in the direction of Primo’s store, where a group of men and women had gathered at the doorway. Through the windows I could just make out the fitful, bluish light of Primo’s countertop TV. As if afraid I might be lured away by it, Johnny said quickly, ‘So how are the boys? Benny, Dub?’ Listing them as if I might be uncertain which boys he was referring to.
‘Fine.’
‘Eat my dust!’ Johnny had taken to this phrase, having seen it on the back of one of Dub’s t-shirts. Dub was fast becoming legendary around Esperanza. ‘Get the same shirt for America. She moves quick for an old lady.’
‘She’s a devil in an old lady’s body.’
‘Jessica describes herself as a woman in a man’s body,’ he said, which stalled the conversation as both of us tried to imagine it. I looked away again in the direction of Primo’s store. ‘Still going strong,’ Johnny said cheerfully, waving at Abnor who sat as always at his tea-stall in front of the store. For some time now Johnny had had his eye on Abnor’s pitch, which was a short distance from the Espiritistas and the Redemptorist church. Perhaps he imagined himself ready to nourish the congregations as they emerged from communing with the dead, or meditating on moderation and self-restraint, the money burning in their pockets. Abnor waved back. I raised my arm to wave too and Abnor patted the stool next to him in invitation. Johnny wasn’t quite ready to let me go. ‘Salon might have to close,’ he said.
‘Jaynie’s place?’ I was surprised. Like his and Abnor’s stalls, it was part of the fabric of the street.
‘That bastard Eddie don’t want to renew the lease.’
‘Isn’t his wife in there every week?’
Johnny pushed his jaw forward, lowered his eyelids and, holding his arms out as if he were a politician delivering a speech, said in an exaggerated mimicry, ‘Change is inevitable.’ I didn’t know if he was pretending to be Eddie. I stared at him blankly. ‘Forget it,’ he muttered.
I looked back at the Bougainvillea. ‘Aunt Mary likes the gate closed by now,’ I said.
Johnny picked up his ladle and pushed the pinakbet roughly round the pan. ‘There are no tyrants where there are no slaves, man,’ he said. ‘Rizal.’ I was pretty sure Rizal hadn’t said man but I didn’t correct him. Johnny picked up his book again and for a moment I thought he might be about to assail me with another quote, but he shrugged and sat down.