Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Yap: Taxi
By Januar E. Yap
Meanwhile
HE is the type that overextends an arm, forms his hand into an accurate scoop and pulls the car clutch. He power steers, but not so much on the steering wheel itself, he just exaggerates the movement, as though the next curb is the curve down Lombard St., world’s “crookedest,” they say. Although I say Pelaez St. is still the most serpentine of all, the soused up nocturnal denizen from the KTV can attest to that.
At every turn, the dandy feels his collar slides into improper place, so he fixes it, like a Johnny Bravo on wheels or an Elvis reincarnate giving a quick turn and croons, “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog.” He flicks an invisible fly off his arm, and looks out again into the road. Occasionally, he checks the mirror to see if some delicate strand had strayed loose from his slick do. He clucks his tongue, gives a grin to check his teeth on the mirror, and then again, looks out into the stretch down Mango Ave.
On radio, this one: “Hel-loo, asa ta mag-eyeball, pangga?”/ “Sa buwan, pangga.”/ “Pag-sure oi!”
Our dandy on wheels gives a hearty laugh. He says he had tried calling the program once, went through the whole getting-to-know-you ritual and eventually arranged a date with a feeble-voiced girl.
“I’m telling you,” he says in Cebuano, “those with good voice don’t have the face. Mine, the one I eye-balled? Man, one hell of the shrimp. You can throw the head, and enjoy the rest.” And he gives his hearty laugh again. The Cebuano idiom that sprang forth from the eskinita didn’t work that much with him, the guy can’t deliver a good joke.
At this point, dark clouds begin to swarm over us and, in no time, pour forth all the worries in the world.
“Ha! Atlas!” his face beams. “Sakto ang Pag-asa.” He laughs, makes an exaggerated maneuver again on the wheel, checks his hair on the mirror, soft-touches the side, and stopped for the red light.
I smiled. I felt, all of a sudden, I should go back to the bookstore and buy Patrick Suskind’s “Das Parfum” and Alan Lightman’s “Einstein’s Dreams,” books I come home to each time I hear about weather forecast. I don’t know, it’s a mystery, to quote a Shakespeare play.
“The Perfume” is a novel about a scent-less freak named Jean-Baptiste Grenouille who grows up to be a perfumer in 16th century France. His olfactory talent is so keen that he can tell from which forest a chunk of wood, which has now become your table, comes from. Yes, that acute. But no spoilers, please.
Einstein’s is a travel companion, of course. If we can live in one of those Time concepts in the book, we wouldn’t have to find ourselves so deep in some, pardon the term, ontological labyrinth.
But back to our Johnny Bravo. His face suddenly goes dark, opens a compartment, fumbles inside and reaches out something: his driver’s license, except that the poor thing had been cut to pieces.
He said his taxi operator went into a strange fit of the Edward Scissorhands kind. He must’ve been short in paying rent sometimes, but it’s no reason to mistake his license as some crazy mozzarella.
Your boss is cubist, I could have said. “Tell the media about that,” I suggested.
I said pull over, and told him he could go upstairs to tell the story to a bunch of journalists.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (May 28, 2008 issue)
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