Good Friday, Karfreitag. Day of suffering, prelude to resurrection, day of judgment, epilogue of life. Good Friday?
We were on Break off a set of mids, in Town by 0730, drunk before 1000 and off to see the flagellants. Blood has always sickened me slightly, but I felt it was something I should see, or Morning convinced me it was something I should see.
They were at the edge of Town in a small and, as far as we knew, nameless barrio. Those flagellants who, during ordinary years, made their homes in Angeles made a point of arriving back home on Good Friday; they were joined by a few weekend worshippers. A year spent dragging a heavy ironwood cross around, across Luzon, had built a scum-brown callous on their shoulders, down across the blades. Pain, spiritual anguish, and living on the charity of their brothers had seeped away the flesh of their faces, swelled the bones of their bodies, mottled their eyes. And here they lay their crosses down, not on a significant, bald hill, but among scattered nipa huts, on a dry, dusty street thick with stray dogs, rooting pigs, occasional chickens, and watched by the vaguely religious, the curious, and the sick. The Lord, their Father, refused them even the relief of a single cloud to intercede with the dry, parched heat of the sun, refused a single drop of rain, even the tiniest breeze. But the sky was split asunder all the day by passing jets tearing their angry tails of thunder behind them. The three, for this year there were only three though Morning said there had been twice as many as the year before, arrived slowly, singly, denied even the friendship of suffering, stopped at the end of the snaking path marking their trail. The path, if followed backwards, would lead you across the plain, through the heat, into the jungles thick with steam where the sun sucked the very moisture from the leaves, and through the jungle to the mountains thrust up in the earth's time of agony, up trails which hung to the steep slopes with the uneasiness of mists. Up and across the highlands, past men with filed and betal-stained teeth who buried their dead sitting in clay beehive huts, past the missionaries who were telling these same men about Jesus' suffering, but these same men laughed at those foolish devils carrying about wood not even good for fires, laughed, and sometimes killed them, and the missionaries too, but always with a laugh. But these had made it, and except where the monsoon or the casual passing of other men erased their marks, you could follow them backwards. As they came and eased their burdens to the ground, their backs bent in habit, they took up branches and whips and, with the same patience and calm with which they lugged their crosses, began to beat themselves without pause for food or drink; striking the sinful flesh until welts, then blood, rose from their skin. An occasional onlooker would join the devotion, until his sins were washed away too.
And above, jets tolled the sky.
"Such peace, man, on their faces," Morning said as we watched, a basket of beer at our feet, shame in our eyes. "Wonder if it's the pain, something in the pain?"
"Inflicting or enduring?" I asked, but he didn't answer.
We watched and drank ourselves into a bright haze; watched until blood splattered in the dust at our feet. A single bright drop, as small as a tick, nestled in the sun-blond hairs on my arm. Almost without a word, we left. The word: Jesus Christ.
Before Haddad's party, we attended the middle-class Good Friday: all the suffering endured by statues. A long march of wax and wooden and plastic Christs, wooden pain, plastic blood, and little boys in white robes. Though the streets were thick with bodies, the only sound was breath, shuffle of feet, click of beads, a silence of shame more than reverence. Those other three, fools, yes, still out in the darkness, still bent under their own blows, wailing sinful flesh with enfeebled arms and enhanced determination, the blood syrupy and thick with flies against their wounds.
Haddad's party, had it been the end, would have been the perfect climax to this odd day. We ate a good dinner prepared by Toni the sad queer, good filets and beer in the old master bedroom on the second floor, but Haddad had hired sad, naked whores to serve in high heels and long white gloves. He expected the last course to be love among greasy plates patched with parsley, but the girls were so ashamed of their nakedness – for what he paid them to do this, we could have fucked them in the dark ten times, and had enough change to get back to Base – that they lost any appeal they might have had. What he'd meant to be old-fashioned revelry became a quiet mean drunk. Not all his fault, though, I'm sure. The religious violence twisted all our faces like a cheap mirror.
Toni had to flitter about the table seeking compliments, snatching feels, his soft hands patting shoulders, his tired voice pleading for good opinion. Surly as we were, we weren't even polite. "Okay, if you like shit," Quinn said. "You should love it," Morning said, and Quinn answered, "I'd rather eat shit than cocks," then they both stood up. But I, with my love for the dramatic moment, hurled a beer bottle between them and it exploded on the wall behind. I told them to sit, and they did. God knows why; ordinarily I couldn't get either one of them to do anything. Maybe they thought I was going to kill them; they might have been right. But the winds blew again, quickly.
Toni squeezed Novotny's arm once too often, too lovingly. He stood up and hit Toni full in the face with such a painfully happy smile, I had to answer it. But Morning came around the table swinging, and there was a brief moment of fists glancing from hard faces and skulls, bouncing off shoulders and tensed arms; but only a brief moment, then I plunged between them like a fullback making his own hole. Morning fell against the table, scrambled, then the table collapsed. He fell among broken dishes and spilled drinks on the floor. Novotny had stumbled over Toni's inert body, and fallen also. As I turned, I grabbed a heavy oak chair from under Peterson, and said with a smile:
"You boys stay down, or I'll bust you wide open. Either one, or both. No matter."
Novotny was willing; he was already ashamed. Morning was less willing, but no less ashamed, so he stood up, shook his head, made a vague gesture with his arms, then walked quickly out. He had a glob of mustard hanging from one haunch, beer sloshing in one shoe, and baked potato in his hair. A ruined exit.
I held the chair cocked, and felt for an instant the crushing need to demolish something, but paused in soldierly soberness, and lowered the chair. "Fuck it," Haddad said. I threw the chair through the French doors which led to the small balcony. A great lovely crash as doors and glass and chair plunged to the ground outside. Haddad was smiling when I looked at him.
"Is it deductible?" I asked.
"The fucking world is deductible, Krummel," he answered, then threw his chair toward the open windows. It hung in the drapes, but he ran over, grinning as if he had just cut costs ten percent, rubbing his hands like a Jewish pawnbroker, and tore down the drapes, wadded them in the chair, then heaved the mess away from him. The troops were right behind him.
In a mad flurry of laughter, everything in the room flew out the window in less than a minute: table, chairs, table cloth filled with stale food and dishes, a brocaded settee, a rattan couch. It made no sense, but it was great fun. Collins grabbed what steak knives he could, then tried to stick them into the papaya tree. Quinn tried to throw a still inert Toni out, but reason prevailed, for a moment. Later we discovered that he had rolled Toni up in the carpet and heaved him into the papaya tree. Only his feelings were hurt. He never came around us after Good Friday.