Decades ago, when we were living in a rented house in Malate, Manila, having been uprooted from Ermita by the war, my mother decided that my sister and I should learn to play the piano, like all good card-carrying members of the nouveau poor ilustrado class.

Our teacher was a cheerful, plump mestiza whom we called Tita Nena, and who lived in the suburban town of San Juan, Rizal (now San Juan City in Metro Manila).

In between sips of coffee and giggles, Tita Nena would chat with my mother and grandmother in Spanish. The piano teacher was being paired off with an uncle who also lived in San Juan, an engineer. On the other hand, the piano teacher’s bachelor brother (I think his name was Tony) was being romantically linked with a young aunt, still single.

Crying

A river filled with water hyacinths ran through San Juan and that part of Manila, near Santa Mesa.

In that neighborhood in San Juan I remember crying over a Spanish-language film titled “Marcelino Pan y Vino.” It was about a little boy who brought bread and wine (stolen from the priest’s sacristy) to the stricken (unseen) Christ on the cross. In the end, the Lord claimed the life of Marcelino.

Suddenly I was in San Juan, riding a bus, and the piano teacher’s brother was there, too. Then he got down, and I was wondering if I should get down too. Were we going to the same destination?

And if the bus turned around, granting there was a route back, would it lead to  N. Domingo, that part of San Juan where my uncle and Tita Nena lived near each other?

Suddenly the vision—rather the dream—faded. For that is what it was, a dream. I often cannot explain my dreams; they don’t make much sense.

It was just another instance when images from the past—nothing unforgettable, nothing really memorable—returned to visit me in my “mature” years, in shapes both recognizable and strange.