CHAPTER 12 Manila
To escape from the unseen occupant of the next room, who had kept up a tuneless whistling throughout this Saturday evening, I had descended to the Hotel Lobby where a lift attendant was spitting into one of the ornate, brass, sand-filled ashtrays. My letter writing there was interrupted by a Filipino youth who introduced both himself and his Scandinavian friend to me. The Filipino had apparently lived a crowded and interesting life, which included four years at Sydney University, seven years in Honolulu, ten in New York and a boyhood in Manila. Either he was older than he looked, or his arithmetic was faulty. He was fluent in Japanese, having lived in Tokyo several years, he told me, his chromium-edged teeth flashing as he chattered.
Fortunately, he then left with his dour, lanky Scandinavian friend, who was departing from the Airport towards midnight. They made a strangely assorted pair.
The following morning at nine, my 'phone rang. It was the Filipino:
"You remember our interesting talk last night, sir, about my knowledge of Japanese?" "Oh, yes!" I said.
"I thought I might come to your room and talk about your country, with you."
"Oh, no!" I said. "I'm just on my way down."
As I waited for the lift, I suddenly wondered how he knew my room number. But, of course! My key had been at my side, on a piece of perspex almost long enough to use as a walking-stick, designed to prevent forgetful guests from leaving with their room-keys. Considerable thought has been applied to this problem. A straight length is not the complete answer because it can be slipped into a trouser-pocket, and providing the occupant of the trousers does not sit down, he may overlook it. One hotel attaches the key to a large cross, like the arms of a kite, hammered crudely from angle-iron. Another variant is the key on a ball and chain, which would tear its way through a pocket and smash the guest's toes. Old ladies may be seen staggering under this burden until relieved of it by a courteous male guest.
However, although the young Filipino must have seen my room-number as the key lay at my side, I was certainly not happy about the fact that he had memorised it. He was sitting facing the lift. I went to get a newspaper and decided that as a polite gesture, I would let him talk for five minutes and then leave him. He actually lasted less than a minute. The conversation went like this:
"I took my friend to the Airport. I had taken him around Manila because sometimes I work for tourist bureau, because I am only one who speak Japanese."
"Oh, yes?"
"I am very glad to see you again. I thought a lot about you since last evening," - he turned to look me soulfully in the eyes, - "in fact I dreamt about you!"
I departed hastily; the Whistler was preferable. Between the Whistler and the poor air-conditioning, I had spent two bad nights and I asked the Front-Desk to send someone to look at the air-conditioner, as it did not seem right that I should lie sweating through the night. The man who came put his hand in front of the current of air and asserted that all was in order. I denied it.
"Moving air always feels cooler than stationery air", I said. "This contraption is just a fan and a humidifier; the cooling part doesn't work."
We parted amicably but without having reached agreement, and so I had myself transferred to another room. The air-conditioner was just the same, but at least I had got rid of the Whistler, and as I started to tackle the air-conditioner with my pen-knife, I found myself whistling happily. The principle of the thing seemed clear enough. A device like the radiator of a car, received cold water from a central point outside, supplying all rooms. Air from my room was drawn past the radiator, cooled by it, and blown out from the top of the apparatus. The warmed water inside the radiator returned through external pipes to the central plant outside, which replaced it with cooled water.
I found that the radiator had become so choked with dust that the air was by-passing it and therefore no cooling was taking place. I worked busily for an hour, grimy and sweating, but cool air was now blowing into the room. As I replaced the covers, there was a crackle and a blue flash. I had allowed the thermostat to short-circuit against a metal panel.
The air-conditioner was now silent, and so was I as I completed the reassembly of the apparatus. Now it was really hot in the room. I wondered what the Hotel's reaction would be if I had to say that, oddly enough, the air-conditioner in this room was not working. A thought occurred to me and I switched on a reading-lamp. No light: Of course - just a fuse! After taking a shower I rang for the room-boy.
"The lights in here don't work," I said, "I think the fuse must have gone."
Within minutes, lights and air-conditioner were working and I looked forward to a good night's sleep - the first for three nights.
Although tired, I stayed up until midnight because of the slamming and banging of doors which takes place until most of the guests have either gone to bed or gone out. After I have been dragged back from the borderland of sleep half a dozen times within an hour, I lose the ability to fall asleep. But shortly after midnight I was fast asleep and soon after three I was wide awake, brought back unwillingly and unhappily to consciousness by a salvo of door-slamming from my new neighbours.
I tried to pretend that I was not really awake and that I was not quivering with rage, since in this pretence lay my only hope of resuming my sleep. But then their radio was turned on and the party came to life. It was a noisy party; there seemed to be five or six present, and they had undoubtedly drunk plenty before their return to the hotel. There was a lot of squealing from the girls, and some rearrangement of beds and furniture was taking place.
A complaint by 'phone to the Front-Desk produced no improvement and so I dressed and went down to do battle - with the Front-Desk boy. I did not feel called upon to tackle half a dozen noisy drunks in a city where the carrying of guns, coshes and daggers is far too prevalent.
"What," I asked, "is going on? How many people are occupying that room?"
"Only two, sir," he said, "I expect they have guests".
"Guests.' At three in the morning! What sort of establishment is this? Now will you please get that party wound up and the guests returned to the streets so that I can sleep".
I went into the all-night cafe and drank tea and read until I felt sleepy again. But there was no more sleep for me that night. True, they had turned down the radio slightly and were a little more restrained, but this meant only that I was having to listen more intently. At six in the morning, no doubt feeling that the night was over, they turned the radio up again.
The Management obligingly transferred me to yet another room. It was an interesting fact that each room was better than the previous one, which suggests that it pays to complain. If I had stayed a little longer, I could undoubtedly have worked my way up to the Presidential Suite.
An American, long resident in Manila, had been detailed to look after me and assumed that I would want to make a round of night-clubs and strip-joints. I declined with thanks. On this tour I had already been taken to one strip show which was staged behind locked doors for a private audience and I considered that my education was completed. As a form of entertainment, it seemed very limited and I could have summed up my attitude by paraphrasing a remark of Dr. Johnson's: "Sir, when you have seen one naked woman, you have seen all naked women - let us go to hear Kendall Taylor." For I had caught up with this famous pianist and I invited my American friend to join me at the recital that evening. I could not persuade him; all his life, he had understood that "long-haired" music, as he described it, was not for him, and that this was something to be profoundly thankful for. His early conditioning had saved him from the need to listen to any "long-haired" music and make up his own mind.
Later, when he was sharing coffee with me in my room, I gave him a short harmonica recital consisting of "My Old Kentucky Home" - which goes well on this plaintive instrument - and the "Ode to Joy" theme from Beethoven's "Choral" Symphony.
I played this twice without alarming him by naming it, and he said: "Gee! That's catchy - what is it?" I told him and congratulated him on joining the "long-haired" ranks. This was a trifle underhand but we were on friendly terms by then, and this small blow was struck not against one sort of music or for another, but against the "tyranny of the closed mind".
During the day he helped me find the disused theatre where tickets were on sale. For a moment I wondered if the ticket buying was designed as a test to eliminate all who were not really keen to attend the recital, for we sweated our way twice around the building before we found a little anonymous door leading up rickety stairs to an office where at last I bought my ticket.
The recital itself was held in the very attractive Philamlife Auditorium, cool, clean, and decorated with friezes of the spirited wood-carvings for which the Philippines are renowned. It was a fine setting in which to hear a great pianist play a programme which he had obviously selected with me in mind.
With a Dutchman from my hotel, whom I had met during the interval, I walked back - a walk punctuated-by taxis pulling up to offer us "Blue" movies and the range of night attractions which have made Manila notorious. In the hotel, he retired to his room and I to the Coffee Shop for tea. This hotel's idea of making tea was to dip a tea-bag into warm water, but I was educating them to the idea that for me, it had to be boiling water.
Kendall Taylor arrived, dress-coat over his arm, with a small group of his recital organisers. I could have told them that they had taken the wrong table. They had entered during a quiet minute while the juke-box drew breath. Now, at Kendall Taylor, fresh from his communion with Beethoven, Bach, Schubert and Scarlatti, the juke-box brayed forth obscenely.
On the pianist's impassive face, no sign of suffering appeared. "'A very gallant gentleman,"' I muttered as I escaped from the bedlam.
Smuggling is a major industry of the Philippines, and posters are displayed appealing to the public to shun it, as harmful to the Nation's economy and integrity. Local cigarette manufacturers, grinding a private axe, ask smokers not to purchase smuggled American brands, but to buy the local makes, which are as cheap, though apparently less popular. It is, of course, very difficult to prevent smuggling in a nation composed of thirty million people, inhabiting over seven thousand islands.
Manila is a modern, Western city, located in the Orient. Despite four centuries of Spanish rule, relics of this period are surprisingly few, though the names, appearance and religion of the people provide ample evidence.
The mossy ruins of Fort Santiago and the old city walls convey an air of slightly melancholy peace. An ant hill from which the ants have gone, is a dusty horror; a deserted beehive looks tragic and futile, but cities are improved by the departure of their makers, though always bearing scars.
The guide-books make special mention of Manila Bay which, to be blunt about it, is just a bay, and months later when showing colour-slides to a captive audience, I had some difficulty in distinguishing between Singapore Harbour, Manila and Bombay, nor so far as the audience was concerned did it seem necessary.