The Puzzle Box
Cebu 1920
Episode 9
The cargo holds and open deck of the wooden ferry was already cramped with varied merchandise predominantly jute sacks full of copra and bales of dried tobacco when the ship's quartermaster along with the pudgy purser made the rounds tallying the passengers with a handheld countermeter. All the while, the ship's First Officer was shooing and reminding all non-passengers through a megaphone that the ship would be leaving soon, 'Puera Visita, Visita Puera', he announced. There was a frenzied last minute haggling for food provision between the passengers and the ambulant vendors on the leeside of the ship, to the consternation of the captain who kept trying to correct the list of the vessel with ballast water to appease the frowning Coast Guard inspector from whom the required 'clearance to sail' permit will be obtained. There was a slight shudder below deck as the engine was fired and being started with the resultant black smoke jetting and spouting forth out of the tall soot-covered funnel aftship. A full minute had passed before the last line that restrained the vessel to the port was cast, just after the moment when last Coast Guard personnel set his foot off the ship's gangplank and disembarked. Apathetically turning around as if to bade an illusory goodluck, the Coast Guard lackey mockingly did a half-salute. Full to the brim with passengers and cargo, the timeworn surplus tramper blew her booming ship horn three times and set sail.
Tomas had heard and witnessed everything that was happening all around him but he was never bothered a bit. In fact he did not even understood what they were saying at all. He did not even know who Tomas Chiu was but he was certainly sure that it was his stamped picture in the landing permit that he was always keeping, a piece of paper issued by an Immigration officer when he disembarked from the huge freighter that brought him to this land a couple of years ago. He grew up bearing the name Chan Pek Chen, in reverence to his long line of esteemed descendants and just like his forefathers before him proudly bore the precedence. As for Tomas, the only time he remembered the name being mentioned was when the Immigration officer, whom he misconstrued as a policeman, asked him what he thought was something related to his former friend Mah Su, from the Tu clan. To his relief nobody called him as such, except for his adoptive mother who had a hard time pronouncing his real name and, teasingly, her sister Mah Re Ah who was once a fiancee of an enlisted military man.
It was a gut-wrenchinge decision to leave his sister behind in the care of their adoptive mother for he knew that she had already suffered enough from their plight of desperation though justifiably not out of destitution. 'Farewell, my dearest sister', he silently muttered as he waved goodbye to a lone figure amongst the well wishing crowd oblivious to the tears trickling down from his distressed eyes. He never had an inkling that it would be their last goodbye.
The uneventful voyage lasted a couple of days and he spent most of the time in his capsulized bunk, contemplating his impending predicament in a place he knew nothing about. The only thing he was sure of is the knowledge that there were a lot of his kind, young Chinese would-be enterpreneurs that preceeded him trying their luck on the island he was bound to and he somehow knew that he will never be abandoned by them. After all, he was a Fujianese by birth, from the fiercely Nationalist Chan clan high above the renowned Guan Dong mountains. That, he suppose, was enough introduction for anybody to consider.
Two days later, the booming sound of the ship's whistle jolted him up from his bunk and there amidst the swarm of flatboats, bancas and grass-roofed bateaus, the imposing Customs building of the vibrant city of Cebu came into view.
Against all odds, the floating coffin had managed to arrive.
The young boy was still following him for the last thirty minutes since he asked him for the direction of the city's reknowned Chinatown, an obiquitous community of his kind that can be found in any major thoroughfare that advances commerce and proffered trade for profit and power politics. There was a sort of inexplicable familiarity with the boy's demeanor that captured his attention when the latter came by his side as they both took a shelter from a passing cloudburst in an awning of a Chinese eatery. 'The food here is the best in the whole of Chinatown', the young waif began. 'And I'm hungry too' he added pleading. Tomas had not eaten anything since the previous night, a forced habit he involuntarily adopted during his food stamp days in the army. It was also strange that he was not offended by the boys audacity and, inspite of having not enough money to sustain himself for the next few days, willfully allowed himself to be dragged inside the establishment. Maybe he was just confused as to how the young lad learned how to speaks his native language fluently or knew about the Gods of Summer pendant that he was wearing inconspicuously under his shirt. There was no denying that he was also hungry, literally.
Nonchalantly, a middle aged corpulent Chinese lady server came by and upon handing the menu suddenly froze midway. She quizzically began to look at him sternly in the eye and asked if his name might be Chan Pek. She hurriedly left half-running when her intuition was proven to be right and frantically summoned someone from the kitchen to come immediately outside. An old woman, wearing the traditional black mourning jacket of the Fujian highlands slowly came to materialize from a bead-curtained door holding a cane in one hand a small box wrapped in a black velveteen cloth in the other. Ushered gently by a maidservant to the baffled Chan Pek's table, the old woman sat down, looked at him straight in the eye, smiled and sighed. It took a full minute before she opened her eyes again and she began to speak. 'I have been waiting ninety eight years for this day to come and the Gods had not failed me'.'My name is Rang Be from the highlands of Guan Dong and I was named after my great-great grandmother, as was every first born daughter of the Li clan'. 'There are five hundred years worth of stories that I have to share but my days are already numbered and sadly I am the last surviving descendant of the household'. 'I also knew everything about the necklace that you are wearing because there is only one of its kind and that necklace was supposed to be mine'.
Chan Pek stayed and washed the dishes for a couple of years with the kindly old widow until she died in her sleep, with the puzzle box his to keep.
