‘Father Mulrooney came straight to me when he heard,’ Pastor Levi said.
‘To speak to Cesar,’ Mulrooney said to Aunt Mary.
‘Cesar was cagey. But I got it out of him eventually.’
‘They submitted the application months ago,’ Mulrooney said, ‘but it was buried. Displayed publicly all right, but in English and on some village official’s door.’
‘He came to discuss it with me a few days ago,’ said Aunt Mary. ‘Bobby and I had friends in government. Engineer Reyes and Joey Robello were part of Bobby’s poker crowd. And the Robellos are related to me by marriage. I suppose those men might not normally have been in Mr Casama’s circle.’ She glanced at Mulrooney and added carefully, ‘Of course, a man like Mr Casama hardly needs my support.’
‘Yes, yes, Joey Robello, Engineer Reyes,’ said Mulrooney darkly. I shot a complicit smile at America, but she stared back coolly. She knew I’d never met either of those men even if, like everyone else, I’d heard their names. Joey Robello, a judge like his father and grandfather before him, had his eye on a seat in the Senate and Engineer Reyes had been elected to the District Council three times, though it was unclear who exactly had voted him in. There was a story about Engineer Reyes known to everyone in Esperanza. Fresh out of university and ambitious with his father’s money, he had tried to dig a basement under his father’s house, planning to turn it into a games room — I remember Abnor repeating the words over and over with obvious amusement: a room just for games. The basement was barely excavated when it flooded and though it was drained and the work restarted, it kept on flooding. Finally, the foreman explained to him that there was an underground spring, which eventually led to the sea, running beneath the street; the same water that was tapped further along its course by the pump in the market hall. Reyes, known then simply as Frankie Reyes, was furious. Why hadn’t the man thought to tell him before? The foreman explained that he’d assumed Reyes had known all along, he was, after all, an engineer. Work ceased and, after some wrangling, the men were finally paid, though less than they’d originally been promised: a mistake on Reyes’ part for the whole of Esperanza quickly heard the story. From then on he was always addressed as Engineer Reyes, though he never practised as one.
‘They’re all in league with each other,’ said Mulrooney. ‘Busy lining each other’s pockets.’ I thought I heard in his voice a note of defeat, or perhaps if not defeat, then doubt, as if the odds against Esperanza were approaching some critical threshold. But Esperanza Street was used to change, I thought. Like anywhere, it had been formed in layers, each one built upon the last by the generations of people that had lived and died here, though until now the process of its changing had been like the gradual shaping of a shoreline over centuries. ‘Of course he’s arguing that it will bring money into the local economy,’ Mulrooney said, ‘implying that everyone stands to benefit.’
‘Did he mention the full extent of it?’ asked Pastor Levi, and he watched me closely as he listed street after street in Greenhills, including, finally, my father’s. For a moment I thought it sounded too ridiculous and I couldn’t believe that anyone would allow it. Then Levi added, ‘Cesar said they plan to build a multi-storey car park over the north half of the cemetery.’
America grabbed my hand, squeezed it hard and I gaped back at her. If our dead, my mother among them, were not to be allowed their rest, I thought, then there was little hope for the living.
The Best Coffee on the Island
The Coffee Shak was my favourite place on Esperanza; it felt like somewhere things could happen. It was also Esperanza Street’s famous place, being listed in foreign guidebooks. I passed by it most days, but once a week, if the Bougainvillea had foreign guests, I got to go inside to pick up ground coffee. In its present form the Shak was relatively new to the street, but it had been around in other incarnations for years, starting life as an unnamed, brightly painted vendor’s cart — a wooden contraption on wheels with room for a small motor underneath to run the grinder and a big steel urn bolted onto the counter. When Aunt Mary’s stepsister Cora first met Ignacio Sanesteban he was running a shop selling machine parts on Esperanza Street, but he didn’t have much of a head for it and was, as she often recounted, bleeding money. She took charge and turned his shop into the Shak, the only place for miles around where tourists and expats, tired of being served cups of lukewarm water with sachets of instant coffee, could relax with the real stuff. It was immediately popular.
Cora took to grinding the day’s beans fresh in front of the first customer every morning. It was this ritual that earned her a place in the guidebooks, framed pages of which decorated the pillar nearest the door, alongside a large, framed photograph of the old cart.
Inside, the air was thick with the smell of coffee and vanilla and it was as heavy to breathe as that on the street, barely stirred by the ceiling fans that churned overhead. A sign on the door said ‘air conditioned’ but the cooler was always just being fixed. Cora usually kept the door wedged open instead which made no difference except that the scent of freshly brewed coffee hung in the air outside.
Ignacio Sanesteban was straightening the tables and putting out the fresh flowers that his wife insisted upon. He looked up as I walked in. Ignacio was a big man with a sleepy voice and heavy-lidded eyes that gave him an air of languor or conceit, though he possessed neither. He rose at four every morning to bake the pastries that drew regulars from as far afield as Cabugon or Pasay, including Eddie Casama, who sent his driver down at least once a week.
I looked round the Shak to see what was new. Every wall and pillar was busy with paintings, mostly Cora’s own. Some were really good, as good as you might see in any gallery. A few were framed, most were stretched between bamboo canes, the canvases ragged at the edges. There was one of Abnor sitting at his tea-stall in a bleached early-morning light, the kind you’d get on a day when it might become too hot to move later. Foreigners were always trying to buy it and Cora invariably refused.
From the back of the Shak, the sound of the Eagles started up from an old Wurlitzer that stood by the kitchen door casting its colours in a fan over the wall.
Ignacio slipped back behind the counter. He smiled at me, pushing a dish towards me across the glass. It was full of coins, tips from customers. I sifted through it, picked out a few. Ignacio started to tip beans into the grinder. I walked through to the back, towards the Wurlitzer.
In the furthest booth, next to the jukebox, sat Cora. She wasn’t alone. Benny was with her, his back to me. I hadn’t seen him for days. He’d stayed in his room, emerging only to eat and sometimes not even that, so that America or Aunt Mary would send me up with a tray, which he’d make me leave at the door. I hadn’t been worried; he often immersed himself in his drawing, filling page after page at his desk, reappearing suddenly to raid the Frigidaire or pilfer food straight out of America’s pans before gathering up garlic bulbs and bunched banana leaves for a still life. It seemed quite natural now that I should see him here, surrounded by so many paintings, even a few of his own. He didn’t look pleased to see me. ‘Joseph,’ he said, with a slight formality.
On the table in front of him his sketchbook lay open, loose pages spilling out, each containing a series of frames like a komik book. The images were bold, arresting. I leaned forward to take a look but he angled the pages away from me. I moved over to the Wurlitzer. Cora said, ‘Tell him I’m wise to him. He never did like the Eagles.’