The Music Child & the Mahjong Queen

By Alfred A. Yuson

An earlier manuscript titled The Music Child was shortlisted for the Man Asia Literary Prize in 2008. Alfred A. Yuson’s previous novels are Great Philippine Jungle Energy Cafe and Voyeurs & Savages.

Again, this third novel explores the marvels skirting the boundaries of realism, or goes much farther beyond after establishing adequate suspension of disbelief. Genres are blurred in the crafting of long fiction that is both poetry and prophecy. This the author does with visionary whimsy.

In this narrative, the central protagonist’s wondrous voice is stilled time and again by the deaths of his loved ones. Bereft of song, the boy finally learns to speak, then learns to turn the words of others into music on paper. The processes of mimicry and extrapolation result in an extended poetic suite that invents legends as well as a mythical conflict involving the imperialism of languages.

The music child’s extraordinary talents are matched by those of the young mahjong queen who can’t be beaten in the game since the angels of her youth speak through her fingers.

Around them, foreign friends and relations representing former colonizers provide a framework of discovery, while themselves dancing to the historic chorus of destiny in the magical East.

The music child and the mahjong queen endear themselves to one another through the palpable vocabulary of flowers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9786214201259

Book preview

W hen I first heard of the hair-string fiddlers from Fil, I thought it was just another one of his blustery inventions. But then the odd and curious never seem to be in short supply in these islands. Quickly have I learned to keep the brow down upon getting wind of possibly interesting copy.

I was in Southern Philippines for a follow-up story on muro-ami fishing, after having sent a report on the Manila end of the ecologically ruinous operations.

In Manila for less than a fortnight, I quickly managed to get interviews with a couple of legislators involved in the committee on natural resources that was investigating the controversy, as well as representatives of the Frebel Fishing Corporation that had landed on the hot seat. Easy enough to get into these high offices when one represents Western media.

It all proved to be a breeze, so that I didn’t have to extend my stay at the Bayview Hotel. The contacts my editor furnished before I left San Francisco all came across.

Muro-ami was a dying issue as far as the local papers went. Officials had upheld the ban on boy divers pounding the reefs with iron balls to drive fish into giant nets. All that the greedy operators could do was take it on the chin and shrug. For the nonce, anyway.

But for the Examiner back home, any triumph of environmental concern would always rate a banner story in the features section. That’s what my editor assured me as soon as I faxed Part One of the projected series.

It was 1995, after all, the middle of the last decade of the millennium. Ecology couldn’t die as a cause this early, not in the world’s leading democracy. And where better to flush out tales of horror than in Third World countries run by petty politicians?

Out East, as conventional wisdom went, corruption was traditional and endemic. Officials elected or appointed were known to look the other way upon regular receipt of what the tabloids and television news often trumpeted, more cheekily than righteously, as KICKBACK!

Oh, the Manila press was free-wheeling all right, we had all heard about that — until some of its members also gained access to another kind of circuit.

Envelopmental journalism, quipped one of my fresh contacts, someone who had served long years as a desk editor. He retired to set up a karaoke bar in the Malate district close to the bay. The only place he gave interviews, he said, and don’t worry, the drinks are on the house, just come over and sing.

"The muro-ami operations down South, they’re always good for a seasonal story," the man rasped on the second night I dropped in at Hobbit House, this time for a thank-you and a farewell drink. He kept nodding and grinning over his whisky glass that had just been filled halfway by a midget waiter whose shoulders barely cleared our table.

Wheezing and rolling up his eyes, the grizzled host cleared his throat before taking another sip. But they’ll be off and running anew in a few months. Mark my words.

It wasn’t exactly the voice of cynicism, rather of a tired acceptance of the status quo. I knew that, but held back on a rejoinder. I may have nodded rather imperceptibly as I brought up my own beer mug.

A slinky lady by the bar had taken over the microphone and started belting My Way. Flushed beet-red above his shirt and tie, a balding fellow sidled up to her, oozing encouragement, pudgy hand quickly resting on her waist. He groaned close to her ear, muttering some of the lyrics well in advance, loud enough for everyone to hear.

She smiled at the foreigner, paused a beat, pursed her lips, and pointed her pout towards the white screen where a bouncing dot was implacable in its hopping motion.

For what is a woe-man, what has she got … The alteration had a particularly raucous group hooting in mock derision, this as the singer winked craftily at her prompter.

He’s Dutch, the bar owner said. "He goes Dutch on everyone but the ladies, heh heh. I remember when he covered the muro-ami, too, just about a decade ago. Now he shuttles here from Hong Kong, fishing up a coup story twice-thrice a year."

Another wheeze. Another sip.

Keep up your series and you’ll soon be an old Asia hand like that fellow. We call him Ajax, ‘cause he looks like the guy in the cleanser ad, hairless. The watch-your-car boys out on the street greet him as Mr. Clean, but that’s another brand. They also call him Kojak.

What a fun city. Leads could come out of your ears here, all of them unsolicited — which was just fine. No wonder they called us parachute journalists. All we had to do was touch ground and bundle up the nylon. The friendly terrain took care of the rest.

Mr. Jim Turino, ex-editor, raised his glass at eye level and waited. I clinked my beer mug against it. He lifted the offering well above our heads.

To old Asia hands, once and future kings!

He was pleased with that toast, and celebrated it with an extended quaff punctuated by an Aaaahh!

Macallan, 15 years. Single malt. The finest whisky. Spelled without an E, mind you.

CEBU CITY WAS a smaller Manila, just as dense, dustier, hotter, more humid, except at the seafront where I found the usual spot of calm amid the chaos, sitting alone with cold San Miguel beer in a small restaurant with an al fresco section.

The day I flew in, I hired a jeepney, or rather, had Fil hire a jeepney to drive us down to the southernmost tip of the elongated island. There the impoverished barrios, as the small villages were called, were known to be utterly dependent on Frebel. We sought out the boy divers who were now all out of work.

Fil provided the free translation as I explained to their fathers and the village chiefs that I wasn’t taking any sides. It was strictly a human interest story for a U.S. newspaper.

The good old Polaroid helped me along, until I brought out the Nikkormat for more professional images this side of posterity.

Indeed awash in human interest were the boys’ accounts of their lives at sea — packed by the hundreds in a cargo boat for months on end, diving daily with only makeshift goggles for protection, tugging diligently at the scare lines underwater to ensure a profitable catch of all kinds of reef denizens, all at the expense of battered corals.

Short-term gains for everyone, of course. But the perilous work earned the families some credit in the barrio store.

When occasionally a boy of 13 or 15 didn’t surface, attacked by sharks, or worse, the bends, then so sorry. One life less at sea, one mouth less to feed in the poor southern tip of the island. The victim’s kin need not mourn over the body. If recovered at all, it was buried in some anonymous far-off isle where luckless divers were destined to spend their eternal summers under a few feet of sand and some tropical shade.

The interview tapes would have to be transcribed for the next night or so. A simple chore then, a few hours of holing out in a hotel room. I’d pare down Fil’s translations of the boys’ stories. Adding not much more than a brief intro, I’d let the barrio kids speak for themselves. The cause of ecology would best be served by the voice of the innocents.

Before that tedious work with the earphones, there was languorous time enough to idle at a resto by the quay.

THE SAN MIG isn’t quite as chilled as I’d prefer. But my thirst for local color is no sooner provoked than quenched here in this apparent hotbed of cargo cults.

A tuna’s jaw is paraded between the rows of wooden tables before it’s plunked down upon a grill resting on red-hot coals. The instant hiss wafts the call of the sea. Surge of smoke dies back into imminent succulence.

I slide a fork under a cluster of fresh green seaweed swimming in sugarcane vinegar. There it is again, siren song of brine, tart picture of boys diving a hundred feet to pummel the magnificent corals. It’s a life. For an American enervated by the afternoon heat, the philosophy of sea breeze seems the only recourse.

Violins with strings made of human hair, Fil had said. Up north, in some obscure settlement no tourists had yet heard of, far from the gleaming white sands of the bewitching coastline.

What is it with these people, I ask myself, that makes light of the uncommon, serves it as fodder to bland guests of feigned interest?

Fil said they saved the tresses of the tribe’s departed, twined it ‘round for weeks in a vat filled with tree sap, and pulled on the thickness to create a certain pitch. Then they strung up the instruments, not really violins, he stressed, but similar, without a waist, and no frets, just a small round hole where the bow caressed the belly.

He said he wasn’t sure what the bowstring was made of, perhaps some fiber drawn from jungle vine. He hadn’t seen the instrument himself, had never heard the tribesmen play. But he had gotten word of how they had performed in some barrio in the hinterland, where they were chanced upon by a musicologist who taught in one of the city’s universities. The professor had asked the musicians to perform an evening concert for the upcoming fiesta in the big city.

That wouldn’t be until a month. I could go north with Fil as soon as I faxed the follow-up piece on the aborted rape of tropical reefs, thus answer to another disquieting call of human interest.

This could be bigger game, worthy of Ripley’s.

The tuna’s jaw is flopped over. Again its juices drip on the live coals and send whiffs of smoke to ride the sea wind. Incredibly mouth-watering it is, a hint of Pacific heaven, and certainly worth more than I bargained for when I agreed to go East for the Examiner.

Fil arrives in a tricycle. He is all heigh-ho and bluster — a lean, wiry man with a grin wider than the tuna’s in its grilling throes. He comes lunging towards my table on the balls of his feet.

Okay, Pardner! We go tomorrow by bus. Leave at nine. Three, four hours’ trip. Then we get jeepney from small town. If none, we walk. Only a few hours. Right, Pardner? Ahh, Fil needs beer. Beer and tuna to make Fil and Pardner strong for long trip tomorrow.

AS FIL HAD warned, the bus ride proved to be an exercise in inertia. We stopped at every barrio to pick up old women and young pigs, baskets of corn and cassava, a couple of soldiers in fatigues with their M-16s swinging awkwardly to threaten everyone as we creaked and groaned along the winding dirt road.

Soon there was no sight of sea. The rainforest closed in on us, and the implacable jungle stench seemed to quiet even the trussed-up piglets.

Fil and I got off five hours later, way past noon, and walked straight to a small store to pick up some sardine cans. We opened one, dipped some stale buns into the blood-red sauce, and washed it all down with warm Coke.

Between bites and sips, Fil spoke to the pregnant woman tending the store. She sent off a scrawny kid who came back with a fat guy in a greasy undershirt. I could imagine the kind of vintage jeepney the fellow must be keeping from the random constellation of oil stains across his beerbelly, and the way he looked up at the sky and scratched his head as Fil plied him with questions.

In another hour we sputtered off, taking a narrow, overgrown trail up a hill before descending into a small valley. Fording a stream, I asked for a quick stop to fill our empty Coke bottles with cold mountain