Saving Ray
Saving Ray
Still more fiction from The Scanga-Ra Chronicles
By Cesare Syjuco
Published in: Manila Arts Bulletin, November 1985
Ray Albano lay dying on a hospital bed. He was white and shrivelled. He was very near death. All at once, his friends came to see him. There were more of them than even Ray had imagined. They filled the corridors and the stairwell and the nurses’ station. There was no stopping them.
“Don’t die,” they said to him in one voice raised to sustain him. “We have come here with our children to be with you.”
Ray’s friends reached out together to touch him. They held him up to the light to where he could see their faces. They warmed him with their breath and helped him to his feet.
Ray smiled and bundled his belongings. He was going home.
“We shall never leave you. We shall never leave you ever again,” his friends said in unison.
Ray Albano lay dying on a hospital bed. He was white and shrivelled. He was very near death. The duty nurse did not see his midnight visitor. The duty nurse did not see her slip quietly into Ray’s room.
It was his Muse. She of the full lips and the aquiline nose. She of the lithe step and the healing hands.
She reached out to touch his brow, waking him from sleep.
“I did not hear you enter,” Ray told his Muse.
She smiled at him knowingly. “I wanted to surprise you,” she said.
She touched him again to soothe him, saying, “Come now. It is very late.”
Ray moved slowly to his feet, uncertain if his legs would hold him upright. Suddenly, his fever had gone.
“We shall always be together. We shall always be together from now on,” said his Muse as she took his hand.
Ray Albano lay dying on a hospital bed. He was white and shrivelled. He was very near death. Without warning, his room was filled with the voices of the children he never had.
“Who are you?” Ray asked them as they danced in a circle around his bed. “Why have you come to torment me?”
The children chided him in song. “Don’t you know? We are your children. We are the children you never had.”
Ray clenched his fists in anger. “Leave me be! I am dying. I am dying alone,” he told them.
The children he never had were very, very still. His sadness had overwhelmed them.
“But you will never know us,” the children said to him. “You will never know us if you die now.”
Ray understood only too well. He made a great effort to sit himself up on his bed. He reached out to the children.
“Come to me,” he called to them in a whisper.
“Foolish, foolish children,” said Ray, holding them close. “It was never that simple. Never that simple…”
Ray Albano lay dead on a hospital bed. He had given himself up. He had embraced his death as it came to claim him.
His friends filled the corridors. His Muse sat by his bedside. The children he never had were very, very still.
“We will never forget,” his friends said.
“I shall never forget,” his Muse said.
His children held him close, bearing him out into the night.
RAY SHINING
I think of Ray on rainy evenings
pouring paint from Hudson tins
shimmering like the pavement
swathed in colors I would not use
to paint himself some quaint
new horror saying, "but look
at that red!" "You don't get red
that dead in any other hue."
I think of Ray on quiet afternoons
tearing tinsel hidden in his drawer
when no one's there to hear him
playing chance and form against
themselves
and pasting patterns where they count
the least. Paper fighter,
that was Ray alright. His brain
shimmering like his tinsel.
I think of Ray on whitewashed mornings
playing jedi knight with his camera,
excited by light the kind we like
to take for granted, saying, "hold still!"
"Hold still, or better yet, jump about
a bit." "That's it!" His laughter
shimmering like the windows.
— JEAN MARIE SYJUCO
* * *
Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Saving Ray” (page 1 of 1), Manila Arts Bulletin, November 1985
