We are very anxious to go there some day and try to get a few snap-shots, as a reminder of the scenes, though nothing could reproduce the colour. It is difficult to get enough light, as C—— is very busy just now, and does not get home before six. Eight to twelve and two to six—good long hours for office-work in the tropics! Still, we manage sometimes to get out before the daylight has quite gone, as the days are getting longer, but then it is, of course, too late to take the camera. That, by-the-bye, is another illusion dispelled, for I am sure I have always read and heard that the sun in these latitudes sinks suddenly at the same moment all the year round. I have already told you that I have watched in vain for this phenomenon. I don’t know what happens in other places, but since the sun has come North here, the sunset has gradually changed to quite half an hour later than it was in December. In fact, it may be even later than that, for I can read on the balcony for a long time after tea before the light fades. Of course the twilight is brief compared to the length of time it lingers on at home, and I suppose it is sudden if it is compared to a long summer evening in England, but then you can think of our longest twilight as a flash if you compare it with Greenland!
About a month ago the basement of the empty house next door was taken by a typical Eurasian family—such a crew! beginning with an old father who goes about in a vest, slack, dirty trousers, and blue socks; an old mother, vastly fat, in petticoat, chemise, and slippers; some sons and daughters of all ages, and their husbands and wives and children, and two native servants. The basement they occupy consists of three large rooms. From our side windows we look right down into their windows, and get many astounding glimpses of their vie intime, including fearful revelations of déshabillé, which are the delight of C——’s life.
This family, who are quite well known in Iloilo Filipino and Mestizo society, and turn out great swells at the band, sleep about on petates (mats) on the floor, in native fashion, and some of their notions of sanitation are indescribable. The old father has a fearful voice, a loud, not-human bellow of insanity, which echoes in our rooms sometimes and quite frightens me, and C—— says I should be still more alarmed if I could understand the awful expressions he is using. They are always having horrid rows amongst themselves, all in slatternly rags in their filthy rooms—in the streets they are well-dressed and well-behaved, in true Eurasian fashion, all the world over. The sons are in various employments, which would keep the whole family in comfort, if not in decency, but one need hardly say that it all goes in Monte and buying diamond rings.
About a week ago, just as we had finished breakfast, there was a terrible hullabaloo coming from the dovecote next door, and we said to each other that they must be having a worse row than usual; when we heard yells and loud voices, and the old man bellowing out even worse words than the awful things he shouts out when he wants salt, or a cigarette, or a sock. We rushed to the side of the house looking on their windows, but a hand was pulling the shutters together, and the screams and yells and oaths were terrible. So we ran out on to the balcony in time to see one of the sons-in-law shoot out of the house, as from a cannon, yelling “Policia! Policia!” and go running up the street to the police station at the corner. A crowd began to collect at once in the street, while heads appeared at every window, and the pandemonium in the house became deafening.
Then, suddenly, a young woman in two garments ran out sobbing, with her hair down; followed a minute later by the fat old woman in her chemise and petticoat, wringing her hands and moaning, and running up and down, till someone caught hold of her and led her away to a house up the street. Then Juanita, the little native servant, with her hair streaming, rushed out with the baby in her arms; and the little girl of six came running in to the people below us, terrified and white and blubbering. Then another daughter—with a white, handsome face like a Bouguereau Madonna—hurried out, and after her a woman carrying clothes, whereupon a polite native clerk stepped across from an office and conducted her to the shelter of a friendly house.
All this time the bellowing and voices in the house went on undiminished, till the son-in-law arrived with a trim blue linen-clad native policeman. They went into the house together and shut the shutters and closed the door, and the noise died down, and the crowd outside melted away!
Nothing more happened all that day, and no human eye saw the policeman come out again. But next day we noticed that the old man was living with the natives under us; and C—— made some enquiries, whereupon they said, “The old man is mad,” adding quite casually that he stuck a knife into someone, so his family chucked him out.
Well, so he lived there for a few days, with the windows of the house next door all shuttered so that he should not be able to see in, and every now and then he roared out “Ramon y Ju—a—ni—ta—aa!” or “Juanita y Raaaaa—mooooon!” always the names of both servants, when the two natives would go trembling to him, with the children for him to play with!
This went on till yesterday, when there was an afternoon of shouting and cursing and futile advice, and the street blocked with carabao-carts, and natives swarming in and out of the house carrying furniture upside down, and trying to force it into the carts broadside on. We hear the reason and result of all this is that the old man has moved, some say to Manila, others, to the next street. I think the poor trembling old fat wife must have gone too, as I have not seen her about again since then. The house next door has its windows open on this side again, and there seem to be more people than ever lying about there—they never do anything—and Juanita-a-a-a still takes the babies out in a large wicker washing-basket mounted on squeaking wheels; and the young men and women look great swells at the bandstand on Sundays and Thursdays.
I mentioned the way these people slept on the floor. That is a curious Filipino habit, but I daresay it is very nice and cool, and the floor can’t be any harder than the Filipino bed. The servants sleep about on mats, generally in the hall of the house, but ours refuse to sleep in this house, as they say it is haunted by the spirit of a young Spaniard who died here when it was occupied by the Spanish Consulate. So they spread their mats on the Azotea, and if I wake up thirsty and go out into the hall for a glass of water, I see them through the open door, lying asleep on their mats in the moonlight, looking like pictures of the corpse on the battlefield, out of the Graphic, and rather weird and uncanny, with their clothes very white in the moonlight, and their dark hands and faces and dark bare feet; but on damp or cold (or what we call cold!) nights they look still more uncanny, rolled in blankets, and looking like mummies.