The Theft
I have this rotten feeling that my life is getting shorter by 10 minutes every day of my stay in the Philippines since I got here in the first week of December 2012. And it’s diminishing faster than my phone load can with every digit I dial and messages I write to people who care to know how life is treating me, and Walter in a place that is supposed to be home-home-sweet home, I fondly call Bukid-non, not to be confused with the Bukidnon in Mindanao in the Southern Philippines. Note the hyphen in mine. Where my house stands was once a ricefield, which is a bukid in Tagalog. And the suffix “non” is the Tagalog slang for “noon” (then or before), hence Bukid-non—once a parcel of agricultural land.
Greta, Princess, and Tucci were extraordinarily quiet that night after the thieves broke into Walter’s bedroom the other night at my Bukid-non home, taking his signature-messenger bag that many people—including my friends in Vienna who should know better—think was filthy because of the patina it was supposed to get in the long run. It is an expensive brand, and the dirtier it gets, the more attractive it becomes, so I dare to say that “filthy” might as well be its selling point. I know many cannot agree, but how about tattered jeans and women’s stockings with a run?
In Walter’s ‘filthy’ bag were his passport, driver’s license, cellphone, ATM card, and credit cards, all crucial to his daily life and travel. Losing these meant facing not only financial setbacks but also the stress of replacing vital identification and documents, disrupting his routines and plans.
Princess, Greta, and Tucci are Walter’s bitches. They share one bed, and Walter doesn’t mind a bit. The bitches were edgy that night and would not heed Walter’s hush, but stern voice commanding them to stay still. They bark incessantly; they could probably sense the presence of an intruder—or intruders—trying to break into their master’s bedroom. Walter leaves his French windows wide open day and night because it is not easy to tell which key belongs to which door. My cousin, who appointed herself the house caretaker, tied them into one bundle, and we have like a hundred of them. Leaving the doors and windows open encourages thieves to help themselves to whatever they can take.
It was around 3 a.m. when the loud barkings of the three little stooges woke me up. I went down to the living room and found several stones the size of chicken eggs scattered all over the floor. The bitches, I thought to myself. You see, they have this habit of taking inside the house little treasures they find in my backyard, like tortured-to-death or half-dead frogs, shoes from our doorsteps, bones, etc.
The sliding French windows in the living room are left constantly open even at night, so the dogs can easily go in and out of the house. The likewise sliding iron doors are padlocked for security reasons. It was only much later that it occurred to me that the intruders hurled stones into my living room to distract the dogs from searching where they could be hiding. The Sherlock Holmes in me concluded that we had more than one stranger working in pairs — one covering the front yard, the other the back door, ready to strike once Walter and his dogs leave the bedroom.
Two Barangay Tanod (village patrol officers) doing their rounds during the night were at the gates of my property at 7:30 a.m. Not that they heard of the break-in at my home; they came with an envelope for me, soliciting a money donation for their annual Christmas party. One of them is a pedicab driver during the day, so you should not wonder how the whole town came to know about the nightmare. People at the local pharmacy were talking about it when I went later that day, looking for a glucose meter and insulin pens for Walter. I knew the answer would be “Sorry, sir, but we don’t have.”
Pushing our luck further, we went to Bambang Street in the Santa Cruz District, Manila. It was in the ’70s when I had been last in Bambang, when friends and I would scavenge the line of stores that sell imported Levi’s or Wrangler jeans and Hang-Ten shirts—prized fashion stuff of my generation, overly-conscious of brand-fashion to care that the pair of jeans we got for a song was actually from relief good that never reached the intended destinations—the charity organizations.
It was in one of the shops specializing in medical supplies that Walter found his life-saver—the replaceable insulin pens and glucose meter. They weren’t brand new, but Walter didn’t care—gut genug, precisely what he needed.
We were previously in Makati—another Metro Manila district—to apply for a new passport at the Austrian Embassy when my town’s police investigator asked me via text to come to his office. They have recovered the stolen items, and Walter, in his excitement, exclaimed loudly, “YES!” I called the police officer to confirm whether the passport was among the items recovered. If they did, it would spare us the agony of driving once again through the traffic-congested streets of Metro Manila. If we could avoid this, then we might—but only might—live for a little bit longer.
The police investigator couldn’t tell much, but would get back to me once his staff who found them report to work that day. I didn’t hear from the investigating officer again that day. Meanwhile, it was too late to go to the Embassy. Definitely, I will never live longer, even for a little bit.
December 26, 2012