Yvette Tan’s Waking the Dead and Other Horror Stories, (published in 2009 by Anvil Publishing, Inc.) presents a Quiapo that has become home to creatures from a place called “the Other County.” These are diwatas, enkantadas, capres, tikbalangs, and other fantastic beings. 1 In this version of Quiapo, the Pasig river is not polluted; it is a wondrous body of water, flowing clear and sparkling blue.
The first story in the anthology, “The Child Abandoned,” 2 explains how this came to be. The narrator refers to the transformation as “The Change” and points to Teresa, known as “The Child Abandoned,” as the main cause. The tale opens with an olfactory description of the setting,
They say that a person knows that she’s reached Quiapo by the way it smells. My grandmother–my Lola–described the scent as tentative, as if the air itself is constantly waiting for something to happen. The scent of it underlies everything in this city, be it the rich, barbeque odor of isaw cooking in the dingiest of area, to the clean, sweet scent of the Pasig river- the Ilog Pasig-itself. (Tan, “The Child” 1)
TERESA talks to the Ilog Pasig: An accompanying illustration to “The Child Abandoned.”
Save for the wondrous addition to its inhabitants and a cleaner version of the Pasig river, Quiapo essentially remains the same. According to the narrator:
Lola used to say that essentially, the Quiapo then was very similar to the Quiapo now. People lived in squalor, squashed door to door in little rooms that could barely accommodate the city’s ever-growing population. Some of them would take shelter in one of the many abandoned buildings that sat in what was then still a district; ghosts of a more prosperous past that stared blindly at crooked streets and crooked lives of the decline that had followed in its wake. Everyone was human back then, something that my Lola missed sometimes. True, she had many friends who migrated from the Other Country, but she couldn’t help wanting what she grew up with, I guess.
And like today, you could find anything in Quiapo. The district was filled with little streets that wove in and out of each other and whose sidewalks were lined with vendors that sold everything from herbal remedies to bicycle screws. Shopkeepers hawked pirated CDs, and they say that the DVDs in Quiapo were the cheapest in the market. Yes, you could find anything here back then, as you still can now. You just have to know where to look and who to look for. You also had to know how to bargain, and how to keep your wallet from being stolen. I guess some things never change. (2-3)
The procession of the Black Nazarene is also mentioned,
She also said that every year, there would be a fiesta devoted to the Black Nazarene. It happened around the first month of the year, I think. Men would fill the streets in waves, with everyone wanting to carry the statue of the Black Nazarene or at least touch it, with the hope of being blessed. Sometimes, people would get crushed in the mob, but death was a small price to pay for the favors of the Savior. (3)
The narrator’s recollections would later reveal how the statue was destroyed by a rogue wave from the river. A large storm struck on the night before the Feast of the Black Nazarene and the child Teresa, oblivious to the heavy rain and enthralled by the river, climbed out of a window and disappeared. In the morning, the rain slowed to a drizzle and people filled the streets of Quiapo to participate in the procession. However, as the statue was carried near the river, the rain grew stronger and a large wave rose up, took the Black Nazarene from the crowd, and broke it into pieces. This prompted “The Change,” a miraculous event that made the river come back to life. Yet, this was discovered to be at the cost of Teresa’s life. She had taken the river’s sickness into her lifeless body and was found entangled among the reeds.
In “Sidhi,” the closing story of the anthology, a person named Jan describes Quiapo sometime after “The Change.” Jan is consort to a man named Noah, known as “The Dreamer,” who can bring people to ecstatic trances with his mind. The couple’s excursions into nighttime Quiapo still depicts a dissolute atmosphere of consumerism, notwithstanding the miracle done to the river and the arrival of otherworldly creatures:
We walked out onto a neon-lit street, signs in garish pink and lurid orange and shocking green advertising bars, restaurants, and stores that stayed open all night. It’s hard to imagine that in the morning, these same sidewalks are filled with vendors hawking everything from fake watches that told fake time to pirated movie chips of questionable quality to human fetuses for those whose love lives needed an aphrodisiatic boost. (Tan, “Sidhi” 131)
A DRINK offered: An accompanying illustration to “Sidhi”
Creatures from “the Other County” now occupy the city, staying within the vicinity of the now clean river, awaiting the return of Teresa who has since been made a saint and whose feast day invites a multitude of people to Quiapo. The narrator describes this phenomenon as such,
People come from all over the world to see the fiesta, which encompasses the whole of the city. For one night, what is usually one of the most dangerous and dissolute cities in the Philippines becomes the most visited place in the country. Masses are held in the Quiapo church as revelers dance in the streets in celebration of the saint’s drowning.
What used to be a religious celebration has become a night of partying, with drugs and booze flowing as freely as the saint’s blessings. (131-132)
Paolo Chikiamco classifies Tan’s debut collection as Speculative Fiction and interviews her about her stories. She reveals having seen the Nazarene procession only on TV. A sample exchange explains the choice of Quiapo as a setting for some of her tales:
Chikiamco: You bookend the anthology with two stories set in a fictional Quiapo. Have you lived there yourself? What is it about Quiapo you find most fascinating?
Tan: I have a love-hate relationship with Quiapo. I hate going there but I love being there. I love the history that simmers beneath it, how it used to be the heart of Manila. It’s like a beauty queen who’s lost her looks. There’s so much to see there, a beauty that everyone dismisses because of its exterior. Incidentally, someone pointed out recently that the apartment in “Sidhi” looks a lot like a real apartment building somewhere in Malate, which I had not seen until last year but that I had always imagined living in since I heard about it in high school. When I finally saw the place, I had to agree, and I also understood why it called out to me all those years ago, decades before I would set foot in it.
TheBlackSquid, reviewing Tan’s anthology, notes the theme of salvation in the two connected stories. The legend of Sta. Teresa in “The Child Abandoned” “treated the concept of salvation as an internal overhaul of destructive actions and habits, using the filthy Pasig River as a metaphor. That in the flushing out the trash and the destruction of long-held dogmas and beliefs … the world will become a more exciting place filled with wonder and awe.” He connects this with Noah’s messiah-like status in “Sidhi,” remarking on his trances as merely offering “temporary Salvation to those who can find him.”
Despite the “speculative” bent of the setting in her writing, Tan sketches an eerily familiar environment of religious fervor and fanaticism in her “horror” stories. There is a constant struggle between opposites: of decay and purification; of hedonism and dissatisfaction; of peace and discord – supposedly an alternative vision of Quiapo, but still hewing closely to its reputation.
Ian Rosales Casocot says that despite the terrifying human and supernatural malevolence of the stories in the collection, what is ultimately underlined is the human element at the core: love – and the aching, terrifying longing that comes with it.
THE COVER of Yvette Tan’s Anthology, published by Anvil in 2009. The illustrations and cover design are by Andrew Drilon and the book is designed by Ani V. Habulan.
NOTES
1. These are beings from Philippine mythology. Diwatas and enkantadas are fairy-like creatures. In “The Child Abandoned,” the narrator describes the former as “fragile” and the latter as “green-haired.” Capres (or kapres) are hairy giants with “ever-burning cigars,” and Tikbalangs have “horses’ heads and human bodies” (Tan, The Child 11).
2. “The Child Abandoned” was previously published in Philippine Speculative Fiction II, edited by Dean Francis Alfar and published by Kestrel in 2006. In the book, the author is listed as Yvette Natalie U. Tan.
WORKS CITED
Casocot, Ian Rosales. “Dark Heart.” Blogspot, 10 Jul. 2011, www.eatingthesun.blogspot.com/2011/07/dark-heart.html. Accessed 12 Nov. 2017.
Chikiamco, Paolo. “10 Questions on 10 Stories: Yvette Tan.” Rocketkapre.com., 11 Sep. 2009, www.rocketkapre.com/2009/10-questions-for-10-stories-an-interview-with-yvette-tan. Accessed 12 Nov. 2017.
Tan, Yvette. “The Child Abandoned.” Waking the Dead and Other Horror Stories. Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2009, pp. 1–12.
-----. “Sidhi.” Waking the Dead and Other Horror Stories. Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2009, pp. 129–149.
TheBlackSquid. "Review of Yvette Tan's Waking the Dead." Within the Cypress Forest, Wordpress, 3 Mar. 2014, www.theblacksquid.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/review-of-yvette-tans-waking-the-dead. Accessed 12 Nov. 2017.
An Alternative Quiapo in Yvette Tan’s Waking the Dead Horror Collection
Eric Gerard H. Nebran | October 29, 2017
