The Spy in the Sandwich

Sunday, August 09, 2020

8:00 AM | The War

From the diary of the late journalist and novelist Teodoro M. Locsin, made available to us through the ongoing Philippine Diary Project of Manuel L. Quezon III, we read the following wartime missive, which I believe can give us a reference of sorts to our current pandemic reality:

“The war holds your problems in grateful suspension. You almost dread the coming of peace which will once more precipitate them. For the moment, they have lost their urgency. That trouble with your family, the uncompleted novel, the hopeless passion for a girl who does not love you, which had formerly so troubled you, must now stand humbly at the door while you occupy yourself with matters more pressing, of life and death. That fine emotional balance, that delicate synchronization of all your parts, that rich fulfillment you thought was so necessary to your happiness have ceased to concern you, for the reason that happiness has become, for the duration, superfluous. No longer necessary. The war has given you a breathing spell.

“The war has given me what I never had before: time to read as much as I like. I had several books I bought and never found the leisure to read. I had given them up as money lost. During the last three weeks, I was able, between alarms and all-clears, to finish reading them all. The war has been an unexpected dividend. “It has changed, though, the character of my reading. I have a collection of detective novels still unread. I used to enjoy few things more than to run through their gory pages at the end of the day. Now I cannot read them. Their dismay over the killing of one, two or three people seems to me rather petty. Now. “Now I find comfort and relish in the pages of the philosophers whose conclusions may be briefly stated: Nothing matters.

“The war has also affected our drinking habits. Those who drank as a matter of habit are drinking more than ever. They drank for relief, as a means of escape from the intolerable self. Now they drink to escape, simply, the war.

“Those who drank on occasion have, on the other hand, stopped drinking altogether. They drank as others read books, listen to music, collect paintings or go to the movies, to relieve boredom. The war has taken boredom away. Bombers coming over in perfect formation, glistening with death, are the equivalent of a good stiff drink. Bombs rushing through the air overhead are an all-night revel.”

Reading those words from the doldrum days of World War II in the Philippines, it’s striking how much of what passed for the mundane in those years—when people were not running away from bombs or atrocities, or when they were not scavenging desperately around for something to eat—could very well be descriptors for our very own experiences these days: the dreadful [but also strangely grateful] suspension from everyday cares which now cease to matter in the light of more visceral horrors, the boredom demanding all sorts of satiation, the changed habits either for the better or for the worse…

Truth to tell, when the lockdown began and all our lives were put to a long pause without the knowledge we have now of all the deep cuts resulting from the pandemic, a part of me was somehow grateful for the interruption. I thought the “time off” without a clear end would finally carve out enough time to finish projects and assorted what-nots—but I didn’t count on the heavy psychological toll, the paralysis of unending days, the gravity of the uncertainties compounded by the fact that the enemy we feared [and still fear] is invisible and insidious. Eventually, all the best-laid pandemic plans imploded—and in retrospect, as they should actually. Because this long pause wasn’t a vacation or a reprieve from the busy schedule; this was a needful time for the world to stop and mourn for all that we’ve lost, and are still losing.

And so every day, as we struggled with new protocols and the unending scroll of bad news, our fears widened to accommodate even more trepidations. For example, I’d go grocery shopping for the one day in the week I’d allow myself exit from my confines—and when I’d come home, I’d be so convinced I had contracted the virus one way or another I’d actually run up a temperature or have some difficulty breathing, my old friend Hypochondria causing psychosomatic symptoms so believable [at least to myself] I was convinced again and again of death knocking on my door. But who has not seen that video of Jomar Tanyag in Saudi Arabia, alone in his room in a villa for OFWs, pleading for the help that would not come while struggling to breathe? “Hirap na hirap na po ako,” he’d gasp between coughs and wheezes. It was difficult to watch him articulate his distress. And to know that he died soon after, never receiving the help he needed. That video, taken with a shaky cellphone camera, was more visceral than any horror movie—because it was real.

For me, there has been no let-up from the ongoing nightmare even if I’ve pretended accommodation to the greater freedoms of the GCQ since July. Just last week, a friend of mine—the playwright Em Mendez—died from COVID-19 in Manila, which made my fears suddenly so intimate. He was a joy to be around, and he was a very talented writer and teacher, with years of potential productive work still ahead of him. But now he’s gone. He was only 38.

This keeps me in check, and disallows me from ever thinking I could be complacent and go for a return to my old movements, my old haunts and habits, my old mindset.

There are too many casualties already for us to ignore the seriousness of what we’re facing, which also includes the crunch of a shrinking economy. If Jollibee can be affected and has to close hundreds of branches because of the direness of the pandemic, how much more the majority of us in the rank-and-file or in small enterprises?

All of which has made me think of a paradigm that allows me a measure of understanding: that perhaps this is our Great War, our postmodern version of the struggles our parents or grandparents faced in the first half of the 1940s—except that their enemies then had the distinction of faces and insignia that were readily seen and recognized.

Ours, however, remain faceless and invisible—and a cipher.

The boredom of the restless lulls sounds the same.

The casualties are also in the millions.

And there are the wounds: for the infected, something physical and ravaging; and for the rest of us still in the clear something deep and psychic, like a slowly fermenting PTSD.

Labels: coronavirus, life