The Expedition by Pocholo Goitia (Philippines)

Before it could start Italo insisted he had to find Cassandra Gemini. I agreed. We both agreed this decision came too late.

He just had to. To solace her before he leaves, show sympathy for her plight, whatever it was. Nobody understood it, but who understands anyone? In terms of designing one’s life there is an abundance of orientations to choose from. There are too many impetuses and movie references, and interpretations of cloud formations. And Italo had spent a lifetime making his orientations as far flung from anybody else’s as he could. There was no way for him to understand Cassandra Gemini. But at least once in his life, Italo had to be a sibling to her of some sort or another.

Mama was not worried for Cassandra Gemini. If she was it didn’t show. Also Dada—it didn’t show—who was so used to his daughter leaving for years at a time, on amazing adventures for which he and Mama cared little. Cassandra Gemini, understandably, took this for a terminal lack of affection.

Italo had a hypothesis. Cassandra Gemini didn’t like going home to either Dada’s or Mama’s because nobody would listen to her amazing tales of adventure anymore. Not even her brothers, who all love her, although I suspect she underestimates to what extent. He told me this.

I am not one for listening. I keep to myself in my room. One day Cassandra Gemini peeked through my window. She did it timidly, which in hindsight, makes this affair very painful to relate. She used to be plucky. I told her to leave me alone for at least two more hours. I needed time to get through my stupors of depression. That was not the last time I saw her, but it was the last time I heard her voice. Days later she left.

Italo on the other hand was too busy preparing for his unanticipated and unremarkable expedition, he had no time for anything.

He had hired a staff to do the PR work, to build media interest, public sympathy, and solicitations for sponsorship. But there were the supplies, recruitment of the expedition team, the navigation, the backup routes, the amassing of  DVDs to ward off boredom, the hoarding of vitamin C supplements to fight scurvy (though unremarkable in nature, it is well known that most people come back from these voyages toothless), and the vigilant communications with the crew of the Lazy Susan, who were known to be brave but erratic, fickle, and very distracted from anything attached to the ground. Besides, they never replied to texts.

They claimed their phones shut down whenever they received messages. Just email us, they said. Italo knew this was bullshit. They’ve never had internet access and they never will have internet access. It was against their principles. But he would be damned if they don’t arrive on the arranged date. The press already on standby, it would be embarrassing. Italo sent snail mail to their usual ports and prayed to no god in particular that they show up.

They never replied.

*

Mama used to brag about Cassandra Gemini’s amazing adventures to her friends. They were impressed at both the amazingness of the adventures and at Mama’s willingness to let her only daughter go foraying unprotected around the world, which they called a “subtly misogynist place, that, for all its proclamations still wanted nothing but to ravage emancipated females.”

They said, What if she’s impregnated by a vagabond? Or worse, by a European Liberal? Everyone knows Liberals aren’t as affluent or as pious as any sort of Conservative.

At first Mama brushed away their worries. But her friends, who were pushing seventy, and afflicted by the chronic repetition of the aged, were reliable if not persistent in reminding her of this concern.

Mama once suggested Cassandra Gemini marry, or at least procure an engagement, to “secure her womanhood.” Mama only let it slip into the conversation in passing, well aware that if she imposed anything on her daughter, she would throw a fit and run off again on another great adventure.

Cassandra Gemini laughed off the suggestion. Mama was by then also a burgeoning septuagenarian. She had contracted yet another burden of the old (and, more perceivably, of the young as well)—irrational determination.

One night she snuck a high dosage of flunitrazepam into Cassandra Gemini’s soup. Later, as Cassandra Gemini slept, Mama smuggled her to the Chinese hospital and had her fallopian tubes severed. The doctors assured her the process was reversible.

Dada also used to love Cassandra Gemini’s tales of amazing adventure and would tell all of his friends about them, but only until she was a certain age.

You see, being a great adventurer was one of the things parents appreciated in children. But they hoped, without knowing it at first that they grow out of it to pursue more lucrative careers, for example, as Customs officials.

Cassandra Gemini would hear none of it. She hates Customs officials. I can’t say I blame her. Years ago, as she was reentering the country, they confiscated a litter of Hungarian Huskies she had just rescued from a diabolical plot. The pups were to be deep fried into delicious meatballs on sticks by a veteran Taiwanese restaurateur.

The Customs officials left her with one pup, which she brought home and named Attila. This was after one of her most amazing adventures. She was twelve, and Dada and Mama were still proud of their daughter.

*

Attila became a cherished member of the family. With all their children either grown up or living in a manner we would have liked to think of as independent, Mama and Dada enjoyed coddling Attila.

On weekdays, he stayed at Mama’s, where he learned how to play Mahjong and how to map out the plots of afternoon soap operas so accurately that after the first three episodes of a new series, he could predict the fate of all the characters who have appeared thus far. He more than once pitched a number of script ideas to television producers. They were excellent ideas—even snobbish, high-brow Italo commented as such—but Attila was always turned down. They said his plots were too original.

On weekends Attila stayed at Dada’s. Dada was an ex-WWII guerrilla. He grilled Attila on survival in the wild. Now Attila could walk into any jungle with nothing but a Philips screwdriver and live for months in self-fashioned luxury.

I overheard Dada tell Attila his secret fear: all of his children—with the exception maybe of Cassandra Gemini—would die if left alone in the mountains.

Dada blamed his fear on the Y2K bug, which turned out to be a sham. Before the Y2K scare, Dada said, he was sure the world would never again plunge into that sort of darkness. Turns out, replied Attila, it would plunge into a different sort. They toasted to this remark. These were great days.

Cassandra Gemini took a years-long break from her amazing adventures and nurtured a friendly rivalry with Mama over mothering Attila. The two women, who never agreed on anything, grew closer. Cassandra Gemini brought home cakes for Attila. She purchased them from Goldilock’s or Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.

Without malice, Mama would say she could bake better with arms tied behind her back. It was a well known fact that she could. Mama took the opportunity to offer her daughter lessons on baking with both arms tied behind the back. Cassandra Gemini would eventually accept the lessons, claiming to do so because she wanted to be a better homemaker for Attila. She hated it when her cheeks got burned, but Mama said burns are the merit badges of great cooks. Soon they were comparing facial scars, the way men would show off tattoos.

Italo taught Attila how to read the poetry of Walt Whitman, and how to tell if an animated feature was produced by Disney or by one of its rivals, without looking at the opening or closing credits. Once a week they sat down to French and Chilean wine, and spent hours discussing the nature of what some critics have referred to as the Disney Renaissance.

Italo took the standard critic’s view—the Renaissance started with “Little Mermaid,” and ended, arguably, with “Tarzan.”

Attila believed the Renaissance started with “Bambi” and “Pinocchio,” then it went into hiatus when paper prices became too high to produce animation of such quality, forcing Disney to cut back and produce what were comparatively B-films, until the eighties, when computers made it unnecessary to use copious amounts of paper. It picked up, he said, with the underrated “Great Mouse Detective,” but—and here’s where they agreed—reached a glorious zenith with “Beauty and the Beast,” after which expectations became too high to sustain for long.  Italo was surprised and impressed—Attila was  too young to feel any nostalgia for “Bambi” and “Pinocchio.” Attila assured him the analysis was completely objective, nary a hint of something so sophomoric as nostalgia. Besides, Attila added, everyone knows all dogs are old souls. Italo corrected him by saying it’s everyone knows all dogs go to heaven. Touché! They both laughed.

At some point discussion would flow smoothly into topics such as the origin of religion, then to the pederasty of early civilized cultures, building up momentum, jumping centuries to scrape at the likes of Hegel and Nietzsche, then to recent Philippine political history, then to their mutual hatred of the Japanese (planted in all of us by Dada’s zealous war stories and bigotry) and sympathy for Communist militants (which was also a result of Dada’s bigotry, though in this case it had adverse effects). Come dawn, we’d wake up to heated discussions about the filmography of Carlo Caparas, of whom Attila was an avid fan, but whom Italo called a master hack. That Italo—who had no palette for anything of local fare besides politics—was engaged in such talk amazed us all.

*

I was the only one with less-than-superb relations with Attila. We kept civil during our final years together, but the tension, though hidden, was obvious.

Attila asked me for advice regarding the most sensitive subject: the female of the species (we try not to say bitches, even if the word is perfectly appropriate in this case). He was having trouble with a pretty Labrador Retriever who lived across the street. Her name was Paris.

No matter how much Attila tried to engage Paris in conversation, she seemed distracted and uninterested. Sometimes she drifted away from him while he was in midsentence. Most of the time she drifted to a group of other male dogs who were, as he put it, the strong silent types, with whom she shared similar interests.

Attila, being an Hungarian Husky, was bigger and possibly stronger than most of the other dogs. Their tails clearly hid between their legs whenever he approached—usually to engage them in conversation. But Attila was by then an avid reader of twentieth-century nonviolence and of third-wave and post-feminism. He had no desire to gain Paris’ affection by dominating her other suitors.

Eventually the other dogs caught scent of his pacifism and wordlessly threatened him with maulings enforced by pack numbers. Even as they snapped at his face, even nipping him once just enough to draw blood, Attila held on bravely to satyagraha. We held a press conference. He said his was nonviolent resistance against the prevalent but supposedly outdated means of mate-selection of any species. It did not impress Paris.

Attila lamented over this for months. He continued his futile courtship. It remained futile. This eroded him. He stopped getting up at 6:00 am every morning to practice his daily routine of reading and Tai Chi exercises before breakfast. He was no longer exuberant in his weekly conversations with Italo. He took to watching TV for whole days, without commenting on anything.

Attila approached me because he was familiar with my years of dealing with  depression. I was flattered.

He asked me: Is yours about a girl too? I said, Yes, to an extent. He asked me, How do I survive it?  I thought about it.

I said, Think of this as the deep breath before making a decision.

The next day he knocked on my door again. I wish to be neutered, he said.

His explanation was simple. Without the ability to procreate, his lust for Paris will falter. He will regain control. Without energy wasted on sperm production and physical desire, he will grow strong, mentally and physically. He will reach the peak of Canine ability. He will be able to pursue his Manifest Destiny, without distractions.

I asked him, What is this Manifest Destiny you speak of? He said, I am yet unsure, but rest assured, it will be Magnificent.

I asked him, Is this what you want? He said, Yes. He hesitated.

I asked him, Is this what you want? No.

I asked him, What is it you want? He paused. He said, Paris. And we took some time to think.

Go out and get her, I said. Attila said, you’re quoting a song.

Yes I am, I said. Go out and get her.

To get Paris, Attila had to engage her in her interests, not lure her into his. This might come eventually, but early in the game, it is irrelevant and counterproductive.

We observed Paris and the other dogs for a week. As we took notes, Attila was seething in inner pain. I was, on the contrary, cheerful to be out of my room, doing someone a service.

The following week I prepared a large roll of beef morcon. I left it sweltering in the sun for some time, so it had a pungent smell. Attila sighed. Is this really necessary? I said, you’ve seen the other dogs.

Attila started sniffing the edge of the morcon. He said it smelled like a disaster. I said, put some nose into it.

We practiced daily for eight weeks. The morcon’s stink became unbearable, but Attila soon learned to ignore it. I said that isn’t enough. Learn to love the morcon.

Sometimes I stood above the morcon waiving a feather duster at Attila’s face. The more he dug into the morcon, the more forceful the slaps with the feather duster. Attila grew to relish the sensation of the feather duster slapping his cheeks. He refused to practice without it.

When the time came to try the real thing, Attila was an expert butt sniffer. He approached Paris with confidence, and sniffed her butt without prior courtesies, just the way we knew she liked it. Attila was amazing. The other dogs backed away. Paris’ response was immediate.

That afternoon they did it multiple times in the appetite and squalor that is their species’ heritage. That night Attila dreamed of a future with a litter of puppies and pleasant talks before bedtime.

Things would have been a little easier had Attila not stepped outside so early the next day for Tai Chi. He saw Paris getting her brains fucked out by the terrier who’d just moved next door. Her tongue was dangling. She was drooling all over the pavement. There was a brightness in her eyes.

Though he insisted he didn’t associate me with his hurting, I can’t recall Attila ever looking me in the eye after that.

*

Attila still wrote regularly years after he ran off, though he left no return address.

The first letter offered his apologies. He wrote, “I have no deeper affections than for my family, but I must decline my urgent considerations to be with you again. Insipid as my motivation may be, I am sure I would have hanged myself did I stay longer.”

His later postage came in volumes. They were all addressed to his adoptive mother, Cassandra Gemini, who had again taken to bouts of amazing adventuring. I snuck into her room once while she was off on an amazing adventure. I found the stash, but the letters were written in what was likely Basque-speak. It was an obscure language only the two were familiar with, and to find a means of translation would be near impossible with my resources.

I petitioned for Mama’s help. But with Attila gone she was caught at last by the wanderlust hidden in her genes, but that she suppressed all her life. In a less stylized fashion than her prodigal daughter’s, Mama went on an Odyssey of her own. She packed some bare necessities and visited an old friend. They played mahjong and Mama spent the night. Instead of going home the following morning, Mama went to look for another friend, and this went on. She had many friends and many sets of glory days to reminisce.

Eventually she came back.  But when she did she seemed to have no memory of Attila ever coming into our lives. She also didn’t seem to have any memory of ever having a daughter. Whenever we brought up Cassandra Gemini, she would smile and say, I liked that girl, how is she these days? Then she’d pack up the next day and go around visiting with her friends again for months. We learned to stop mentioning Cassandra Gemini in her presence.

Dada on the other hand had made a project out of all of our other brothers. Excluding Cassandra Gemini, because she was never around; Italo, who was too busy preparing for the unremarkable expedition; and myself, because I didn’t want to leave my room for too long, he gathered his whole brood of dozens, armed each with a screwdriver, and marched them to the foot of Mount Pinatubo—land appropriated by the government for military exercises. They set up camp and played survival games. They never came back.

The Aeta communities that shared the landscape filed complaints against their increasingly aggressive activities. But Dada shared blood bonds with top army officials, the complaints were ignored.

One evening I saw low-flying helicopter footage of them on the news. They were wearing animal skins and their faces were smeared with war paint. They were shooting arrows at the helicopter, and one struck the camera’s lens. In the few seconds of imageless footage that followed, I could decipher war cries, insane, feral screams over the battery of the chopper’s engine. Our great days were over.

*

Italo had ex-assassins and private detectives in his staff. He sent them to find Cassandra Gemini.

We assumed finding Cassandra Gemini means finding Attila as well. His team’s first task was to look for a means of translating the letters written in Basque.

It wasn’t easy, but they found the scion of an old Spanish family from Zamboanga. She was rusty, but still had trace knowledge of her grandfather’s Basque. She didn’t come cheap. She worked at a call center, and her knack for languages made her eligible for large paychecks. Italo had to let go of two members of his staff to match the salary she requested.

Upon translation, she found out the letters were, as well as being in Basque, written in code. Two more staff members had to go, and they brought in a code breaker from the military. They worked nights, in a room beside mine. Their chatter was loud, and their cigarettes stank through the walls. I had difficulty sleeping.

I complained to Italo. He made me feel guilty. Don’t you want to find your sister? I did. He said I should switch rooms. The room beside mine was the only one with airconditioning, and he can’t have the conyo translator working in a hot room. I couldn’t switch rooms. I just couldn’t.

One afternoon, I was watching soap operas with Mama. The plot was engaging. Mama told me this was the best soap opera she’s ever watched. It was three episodes and running. It didn’t follow the usual patterns. And yet it was familiar.

The plot was original.

Italo burst into the room. He said they deciphered the first twenty of Cassandra Gemini’s letters, and he was sending an away team to Brazil. Mama said, that’s nice dear, and she got up to pack for another round of visiting with friends. I got up to pack as well. First to the television station across town, then to god knows where. I didn’t plan on coming back for a while.

On my way out I told Italo, I don’t plan on coming back for a while. He paused. He looked like he was about to say something, but couldn’t. Looks like Mama is leaving again, I said. The house is yours, for now, even my room. Italo looked like he was about to cry. I said, I’ll be back before you leave for the unremarkable expedition. I promise.

Promise?

Promise.

*

Unlike Cassandra Gemini, who’s had many amazing adventures throughout her life, I’ve only had one.

It started in ABS-CBN, where I interrogated the producers of the most critically acclaimed soap opera since Valiente. I wanted to know who wrote their scripts. They said check the credits. I said Anne Rice is a pseudonym and they know it. Who is it!? They kept mum. I tried to beat it out of them. They overpowered me and broke my ankle. They were all adept Brazilian-style Judoka.

Next I bribed them with rolls of beef morcon I prepared myself.  They said it was the best beef morcon they’ve ever tasted. I said the secret was to leave it in the sun for a few days. They said the writer never introduced himself, but his scripts are always set on the return addresses of his packages. I asked for copies of the three episodes and of the return addresses of their packages. Will I send them some more beef morcon for Christmas? I said, Yes. Do I promise? I did.

The first episode was set in Panay Island. The return address led me to a small compound in Roxas City, Capiz. The neighbors were very accommodating. One of them was an old woman with an eye patch. The main character of the soap opera wore an eye patch! She said there was a young couple who used to live in apartment B. The wife was very beautiful, but the husband was a little hairy. He was friendly though. She liked to tell him about her life as part of a traveling carnival. The soap opera’s heroine used to travel with a carnival!

At first I only spoke in English. I spoke it with an accent. She asked me if I was from another country. I said I came from Manila, and I was scared to speak in Tagalog, because I heard somewhere it offended Ilonggos. She smiled and said something patriotic. I gave her a roll of morcon. She gave me a hand-woven eyepatch. She said it is useful if you like to keep the inside of your house dark. Coming in from the sunlight, you just use the eye previously covered up and see everything clearly at once. It was almost like being a cat. I tried it out in her apartment. I was very impressed.

The next episode was set in Batanes. Storm season, so there was some difficulty arranging transportation to the island. Good thing there was a group of American tourists who didn’t fear drowning, as long as it was for a good cause—photographs of an exotic locale, for their Facebooks. They hired a crazy toothless boatman with rubber dentures. And wouldn’t you know it, the soap’s leading man wore rubber dentures.

I asked him if he had seen a couple fitting the description. He said they were the most passionate couple he had ever met. Didn’t mind showing public displays of affection. I was not so much bothered by this revelation than by the manner of the boatman’s telling. He was rubbing his right nipple.

We almost drowned on the way there, but Batanes was beautiful. I wished I had brought a camera. The Americans were all packing digital SLRs. One of them had a spare, and he said I could have it. I said it was too much. He said he’s rich and American, a Republican even. Nothing’s too much.

The third episode was set in Ifugao province. The people there were warned by a soothsayer to guard against the coming of an evil lowlander with a patch over one eye and who carried a slightly used Nikon D80. The soothsayer was in fact a white Anglican missionary who liked his mushrooms. He said despite what the lowlander was packing, he had unforgivable photography skills. Furthermore, he claimed it was the evil lowlander’s destiny to deflower a daughter of the chieftain.

Upon getting there, I was surrounded and asked to take a picture of anything. I held up my camera and took a picture of myself. They inspected my photo and decided my skills were indeed unforgivable. Furthermore, they said deflowering a chieftain’s daughter was a crime—I should be ashamed of myself— but they’d look past it if I stayed away from the chieftain’s daughter in question, and if I quit photography altogether.

One of them, a middle-aged lady, asked if I was willing to trade my D80 for her D40. She made a living photographing tourists and selling the pictures to her people, so they’d have something to laugh at on uneventful days. I just gave her the camera. She told me about a couple who traveled through those parts that matched the description I gave. They were sent away by the Anglican priest for performing lewd acts in public. The soap opera’s villain was a priest, though I guess the network or Attila left out the Anglican part.

The chieftain’s daughter slipped me her cellphone number as I was leaving. I made a note that this wouldn’t be my last amazing adventure. I’m still not so good at it. For one thing I didn’t ask for copies of all the episodes of the soap’s current season, which I just realized must have been taped in advance. Stupid stupid.

But no matter. The date of Italo’s unremarkable expedition was drawing near.

*

The rendezvous with the Lazy Susan was at the bank of a great river, at the foot of a great mountain.

Italo was there with his crew, and so were the press. It was a good turnout: A tabloid journalist and two independent bloggers.

Italo looked pale and thin. He embraced me when I approached. Here we are, he said, struck by this river. I asked him if Mama came home.

I was all alone, Pocholo, for the first time in my life, that big empty house.

I reprimanded him slightly for revealing my name to the reader. It’s supposed to be a secret! He said he was sorry. His emotions got the better of him.

I said he wasn’t all alone, he had his staff.

They’re idiots, he said. He couldn’t find Cassandra Gemini.

I said he wasn’t all alone. I said something corny, it lifted his spirits.

When the Lazy Susan emerged as a speck in the blue distance there was applause and cheering from all present. It was such a slow vessel that it took forty more minutes to arrive. We got tired of clapping and sat down to play cards. We managed three rounds of crazy eights. The tabloid journalist won every game.

When the ship arrived, we found that with the usual crew of dolphins and tigers, elephants and reindeer, were Cassandra Gemini and Attila. They’ve been married six months. The nuptial was facilitated by the Captain of the Lazy Susan, a hedgehog named Billy. The reunion set us in such high spirits that when Italo offered I come with them, I couldn’t decline. Caught in the moment, Billy asked everyone to come. After checking their schedules, everyone agreed!

Here we were. We looked at each other’s faces. Attila had grown blind studying fractal geometry. Cassandra Gemini wore a necklace of dried human scalps. We’ve all changed. Our lives have brought us to the point that meeting, after this, would be highly unlikely. I realized this would be the last thing we would do together. I petitioned for Italo to proclaim the expedition a remarkable one. He said his legal team will be on it.

And so began the expedition. Its mission: To record and interpret as many cloud formations over strategic locations all over the world. Italo said this is just one of many ways to map out traces of the evolving androgenized nature of divinity. We had five years, all of us have set appointments afterwards.

The first year was hideously unremarkable, thank god for the DVDs. But the second one picked up. We found clouds that resembled a Mother and Child by Amorsolo. Another formation brought Cassandra Gemini to tears—it portrayed the aftermath of a village massacre by an unscrupulous band of rouge military. We could almost hear the wailing of the raped and mutilated survivors. Another looked a lot like that annoying talking rabbit from “Bambi.”

We met a dragon while hovering over the South Pacific. It accosted me for calling it a Chinese dragon without getting to know it first. It was an Australian citizen. We’re very excited for what’s next. This is only the beginning.

#

Pocholo Goitia is a writer and office lackey from Quezon City, Philippines. These days he is so busy with work it’s absurd, but he’s nevertheless struggling to put together his first collection of fiction to be tentatively titled Expedition.