I slowly swam back through layers of consciousness, and I became aware of a particular sound – the kind of disturbing silence in which you know at once that something, although you cannot put your finger on it, was dreadfully wrong. My eyes snapped open and I blinked drowsily once, twice and I blearily stared at…nothing.
The buzzing, eerie silence continued unabated. What was that sound which was making me uncomfortable? It was familiar and at the same time, it was not.
I rolled over and sat up somewhat unsteadily. Looking at the dim surroundings my gaze jumped erratically around the darkened room. It flitted from the stationary electric fan (it was not whirring merrily away) to the night light (it was only dark glass glinting) to the shaded windows – which showed the very faint outline of unmoving plants through the wooden blinds.
My last memory was that of the sturdy alarm clock’s hands pointing to 4 a.m. and after that I drew a blank. Or maybe that was a dream which I could not remember in its entirety.
The irritating, prickly trickle of liquid between my shoulder blades encouraged me to move. Standing up unsteadily, I put a trembling hand to touch my face, and it came away wet. I could not see but only feel the slight dampness of my palm even as I stared at it. I carefully skirted the dim shapes in the grayish blur in order to reach the table where I know information I needed would be given…or else…
I reached out to where I thought the phone would be. A moment passed before I could remember the number I was to call. A busy tone rewarded my first try, but then finally, a feminine voice answered and I jumped into speech.
“Hello Ms. ____, good morning! This is Cat of ____. I just woke up and it was hot. Is there no electricity? Do we have a rotating brown-out for today?” I asked as I groped blindly for a woven native fan I kept near the phone.
“Hello po Miss Cat! There’s no electricity but not because of any scheduled shutdown.….what happened…excuse ha?,” and she turned away to answer somebody else who came into her office as I waited somewhat impatiently and continued my search for the elusive abanico to fan my overheated face.
Coming back to the phone, she continued on “The transformer at the front of ________ building near our corner exploded. Earlier this morning, somebody jumped from _______ . SUICIDE! Yes, that was what they said. The body landed and the next thing we know…BOOM!”
“WHAT!…. What floor?! Omigosh…What time?!” I did a little exploding of my own and gasped in astonishment.
“Well, they are not saying anything else. Confidential and under investigation. But it was probably an hour or so ago.”
“How about Meralco? Do you know the time frame as to when it could be fixed?” The logical, work-conscious part of my mind pushed me past my shocked daze because I usually had double the emails on a Friday.
“….Unfortunately we don’t know when Meralco will be able to fix it,” she added in a mournful tone.
“So….he or she is dead…whatever floor it was…and the body hitting the power lines that’s why the transformer was affected,” my voice trailed off as I stated the obvious in disjointed sentences.
I thanked her and automatically put down the phone. I let go of the woven fan that I had gripped and forgotten to use during the conversation. More beads of salt-laced sweat trailed lazily down my forehead and back.
Walking this time towards the weak daylight showing through the gauzy curtain of my balcony door, I stopped and gazed up. Up towards the various windows dotting the pale-painted walls of the opposite building facing my current home.
This was my neighboring building in which one person on a Friday morning had jumped from in order to make a grim appointment with Death and leave the living world behind.
As I contemplated the next building, I fancifully thought that the windows all looked eerily like empty and unforgiving dark eyes set in an pockmarked canvas of an uncaring face. Unmindful and unmoved by the lives of countless ordinary people dealing with their seemingly unsolvable problems, the mounting peer and work pressure, push and pull of their relationships, the ‘aloneness’ of living in the midst a metropolis of more than a million people….the…
A faint sound interrupted my morose musing.
I canted my head and listened intently, then peered into the unrelenting darkness at a particular spot in the room.
The growing sound that I heard this time was familiar. It’s absence earlier was what had torn me away from my much-needed respite.
The electric fan had just come back to life and was now merrily whirring a gust of wind throughout the gloomy room.
October 16, 2009 (Friday), Makati City, Philippines.
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