A.D. Capili, a Filipino philosopher and writer, traded the tropical islands of the Philippines for the cobblestone streets of Brussels to delve deeper into the world of philosophy and literature. Today, he shares his passion for knowledge as a teacher of philosophy, history, ethics, and political science at a European School. His writings, ranging from academic articles and reviews to poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, have been published in publications as Little Fish, DoubleSpeak, The Brussels Review, Pena, and Masticadores.
The first time Marcus laid eyes on Ina’s ghost-white face he knew he wanted her.
It happened one Sunday afternoon, in front of the iron-studded doors of St. Peter’s church.
Marcus, tall, dark, and wearing a freshly-ironed blue button down shirt, had already entered the gothic church ten minutes before the start of mass. He was about to sit on one of those heavy walnut-varnished oak pews in the middle, where a few other Filipino students were already huddled together, chattering in their puffy jackets, their heads popping up and swivelling every now and then. But before settling in with the familiar crowd, Marcus felt his phone’s vibration in his pants pocket. It was a text from Fidel, urging him to come to the church entrance. He had something to show him.
Marcus recognized Fidel’s pomaded hair and hunched back. He was holding up his phone towards the small square on the other side of the street. Is he recording?
“What’s up?” Marcus announced his arrival.
Fidel replied nothing else but, “look”, then pointed with his pursed lips.
Marcus looked ahead and followed the direction in which Fidel’s phone and lips were pointed.
“So that’s her”, Marcus asked rhetorically.
“Well, fits the description”.
Ina was sitting at a garishly painted outdoor café table, her face partially lit by the waning September sun filtering through the yellow-orange leaves of an ash tree. She was talking to two young, casually-dressed white men. She wore a blood-red spaghetti strap tank top, paired with a polka dot skirt, under which she folded her long sallow legs. Isn’t she cold in those? She was grasping the long stem of a cocktail glass. The men she was chatting with clutched and fingered perspiring mugs of beer, their faces showing too much teeth, their eyes fully trained on her.
Marcus looked at his watch. It was one minute to five. The mass was just about to start. He took a long look and turned back towards the altar.
“I’ll forward it to you,” Fidel mumbled to him as they walked down the center aisle.
“Forward what?” Marcus asked, as he made a slight bow and crossed himself.
“The video you’ll be watching a thousand times,” Fidel teased.
“Gago,” Marcus retorted with a soft chuckle as they sidled along the pew to take their seats among their friends.
Organ keys were pressed. Everyone rose to their feet and the dirge-like procession hymn clamored throughout the church.
As the priest read the Gospel, Marcus stared at the crucifix, his eyes drifting from the tortured face to the extremities of the wooden Christ. They eventually rested on the blackened wound on the nailed feet, out of which streaks of red paint oozed.
“But early in the morning he arrived again in the temple area, and all the people started coming to him, and he sat down and taught them.”
That red is familiar. Marcus was seized by a suspicion that he had seen Ina before—in Stapleton’s, the Irish pub where he sometimes went with his Brazilian friend Julio who liked to chat up the raven-haired bargirls. Marcus did not know then who she was, but she sat there, in one of the booths, wearing the very same outfit as today. She was also with two white men. Marcus was not sure if they were the same guys—but he now recalled Ina French-kissing one of them. Through the gaps between the booth’s swinging doors, Marcus saw a bit of her tongue as she pulled away and smoothed her clothes to take a sip of her pint of red ale.
“They said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger,” the priest continued reading from the lectionary.
The priest’s sermon opened with questions about human and godly judgement. But Marcus could not concentrate on his words. He needed to know more about this girl. Being the current favorite topic of conversation at Filipino gatherings, he had already heard bits and pieces about Ina before seeing her in the flesh. There were murmurs about her living outside of the city, in the woods, and that she always walked to and from her home. Some speculated she was either half-American or half-Irish, but nobody could really tell from her accent. There was consensus that she was new in town, that she moved some months ago from Ghent or Antwerp. Many said it was good that she stayed away from the student community: no good would come out of contact with her. She was a flirt who never had any respect for long-standing relationships or family. Others said with authority (they heard it from a former friend of Ina’s) that she was from somewhere in Bicol, in the Philippines. They wondered out loud how her white parents ended up in that region — probably in one of those remote seaside villages, where people still walked around barefoot, climbed coconut trees with a machete held flat between their gritted teeth, and lived in bamboo huts. Isn’t that the land infamous for night-time creatures that attack pregnant women and solitary men, but shapeshift back to appear like normal people during the day? Marcus did not know what to believe—but all this mystery only aroused his curiosity about Ina.
Towards the end of the homily, the priest asked the faithful to pray for the Flemish student who had been reported missing. There arose murmurs in the rows of Filipino students.
After bread and wine turned into divine body and blood, the exchange of peace, and the singing of the Lamb of God, Marcus stepped into the aisle to join the communion line. Kris, an ex-nun and theology student—and one of the older figures in the student community—queued up immediately behind him.
She pulled at his right shirt sleeve, turned her lizard-like face up towards him, and hissed, “Fidel just told me about you and that Ina. Tsk tsk tsk. Be careful with that one, Marcus”.
Marcus responded sheepishly, “Ow, don’t believe everything Fidel says. Anyway, there’s nothing to worry about. Nothing happened”.
“Nothing yet. You see she doesn’t even come to mass. Probably afraid of the cross and holy water, you know,”Kris jested.
Then more seriously, she added, “You don’t want to end up missing, too. . . Besides, you need to remember you’re the association president now”.
“I see”, were the only words Marcus could summon to reply to Kris’ cryptic words.
He now stood face to face with the priest holding a gilded ciborium. To the cleric’s “Body of Christ”, Marcus solemnly responded “Amen” and stuck his tongue out, upon which a small, round, and sanctified wafer was placed. He felt the priest’s thumb touch his tongue. Marcus closed his mouth, sucked his palate, and crossed himself before the contorted figure hanging above the altar.
Well, Fidel was right about one thing. Marcus did watch that video of Ina countless times, mostly at night, before he closed his eyes to dream of her pale flesh, high nose, and freckled face. A large part of his consciousness told him that he should forget about her. He should heed the warnings of people like Kris. As he repeatedly watched the same video, however, Marcus became increasingly convinced that towards the end, Ina looked in his direction; she turned her head towards the camera for a couple of seconds, as though acknowledging that he was looking at her. If she was at least aware of me, that could lead to friendship, and then who knows . . .
It has been a week since the sighting at the church, but Marcus has not seen Ina again anywhere. Strange, he thought, given that they studied in that type of town where you bumped into somebody you knew most days. Marcus has also gone out almost every night—contrary to habit—but consistent with the hope of seeing her again. As president of the Filipino students’ association, Marcus had even scrambled to organize a student gathering on the previous Friday. Not knowing exactly how to reach Ina, Marcus cc’d all university emails he could find with that name and its variations in them. He also insisted that all the student-members bring their friends, including non-Filipinos, to share in the music and plentiful food at the party. They had all the classics like braised pork belly, chicken and ginger soup, vermicelli noodles with egg and shrimp, pig blood stew—and even rarer fare like barbecued chicken intestines, heads, and feet. Some people brought guitars and a karaoke machine . Nearly all Filipino students Marcus knew came to the party, ate heartily, and sang ballads about heartache and unrequited love—except for Ina.
More days passed. Marcus almost managed to put the throbbing idea of Ina out of his mind. He was helped in this by the classes he needed to attend that semester, the long, dense texts he had to read for his courses, and the countless conversations with classmates over coffee and beer that often turned to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Camus. Marcus threw himself at his studies; after all, at the start of his life as a graduate student in Belgium, he had set himself the goal of achieving that elusive distinction of graduating summa cum laude. Might as well focus on philosophy, he tried to console himself.
Then, one drizzly Monday afternoon, without warning and momentarily oblivious of the disappointments of the previous weeks, Marcus was given a vision of Ina.
He had just exited the black gates of the Institute of Philosophy, and was pushing his bike down the street, walking along with a few classmates—all of them still excitedly debating the Kolnai excerpt they analysed in their Phenomenology of Disgust class. As Tomas, a bearded and heavy-drinking Lithuanian student was screaming into Marcus’ left ear, “seeing life in what is dead is infinitely revolting—that’s like finding the barely alive body of that missing Flemish guy!”, Marcus glimpsed, out of the corner of his right eye, a long figure standing in front of the Faculty of Criminology. Isn’t that Ina? She wore an open bordeaux coat and held an umbrella.
Marcus made up a believable enough excuse and told his friends they should walk ahead to Amadeus, the café frequented by philosophy folk.
The moment he looked back at the standing figure, she was talking to a blonde man wearing an alpaca coat. She handed the umbrella to him. He held it up to cover both of them. They then turned to walk side by side towards the city center.
Marcus debated with himself for a minute, but ultimately decided to follow them. He put on the hood of his jacket, pushed his bike casually, and maintained some distance. Isn’t it weird to be doing this? But all he needed was a chance to talk to her.
After crossing a cobbled-stone square, Ina and her companion stopped in front of a towering brick building. This must be where he lives. The umbrella was folded and shook. Ina and the man entered. Panicked, Marcus haphazardly propped his bike against the nearest lamppost, crossed the street, and jogged. He pushed open the door, but was too late to catch up with them—the second, inner door just closed shut. Marcus had to think fast. He rushed outside, crossed the street again—but was stopped in his tracks by a black and purple mass of feathers streaked with brownish red. He looked down on the pigeon carcass and saw the bent head, the half-closed eye, the dark hole below the chest out of which a smaller creature could have clawed its way. Marcus was mesmerised for a moment and had to will himself to look away, turn around, step a few paces back, and scan the brick building for signs of life. Nothing moved. He looked across the square and spotted a traditional brown café.
That drizzly afternoon Marcus stayed for hours at the café, alternating between coffee and beer, pretending to read and write on his laptop, all the while eyeing the building. The lights of the square eventually came on. Ina never left the building. But before abandoning his watch, Marcus crafted a plan to increase the likelihood of running into her. Being in that same area everyday would surely give him a chance to see her. After that night, Marcus made sure to pass by the Faculty of Criminology and that brick building everyday on his way to the Institute of Philosophy, to the grocery, and to his rented room. Two weeks went by without any desirable result. Marcus was gradually coming around to admitting the futility of it all—until it finally happened.
Marcus stopped by a grocery in the center of town before heading home. He forgot to bring an extra shopping bag so had to stuff the milk, capellini, ground beef, and chicken hearts in his small backpack, while he had to hold the rest in his arms. Just as he stepped away from the cashier, a red bell pepper slipped through his arms, tumbled and rolled on the floor. Marcus bent down to pick it up—but before he could, a pale white hand plucked it off the ground.
“Don’t lose it,” Ina counselled Marcus, her cherry lips curling into a smile, as she stuffed the vegetable into the crook of his arm. Her left hand held a piece of reddish-brown meat packed in cling film and styrofoam.
“Thanks—Ina, right?”
“And you’re Marcus. I got your emails”.
“Good. I hope you join us next time. You know, get to know some people”.
“Yes, I already know many of the Filipino students here,” said Ina without a change in her tone, slightly shifting the top of her coat with her free hand.
“This Saturday night, we’ll have another gathering. Around seven-thirty, eight. You should come”, Marcus lied as he noticed scratches on Ina’s long neck.
“I don’t know”.
“There won’t be mass. My philosophy friends will be there too. Plenty of non-Filipinos—that is, if you don’t speak Tagalog. And there’ll be so much food. There will even be balut and blood stew and soft icecream. I bet you miss them”.
“I really don’t know”.
“—And it will be right outside the city. Close to where you live”. Marcus wanted to pull the words back as soon as they slithered out of his mouth.
“Maybe. I’ll think about it?”
“That sounds like a yes to me”.
Marcus had enough time to make everything he told Ina become reality. He thought of the perfect pretext to hold the gathering: Filipino students often traveled on All Souls and All Saints — so why not come together before the November diaspora? He convinced a friend living in a large apartment to host the party, implored people to contribute various dishes to the potluck dinner, and ordered some specialties from Brussels. He invited the entire Filipino student community and a number of his “safe” philosophy friends. Marcus hoped for a large crowd so that Ina would go relatively unnoticed at the party. Surely there would be enough food, people, music, and travel plans to occupy them.
That Saturday evening, Marcus picked a couch in the spacious apartment that allowed him to both socialise and watch over the door. He drank vermouth and joked and laughed with other people as he jiggled his knee, glanced at his watch, and scanned the door. He caught the scents of the dishes people were enjoying—chopped pig face, goat meat casserole, barbecued blood. . . His stomach grumbled, but at the moment he could not contemplate food. It has already been forty minutes since the first guests arrived.
In the meantime, the conversation of the people around Marcus turned to local news. Edmund, an engineering student who was learning Dutch, shared the details of an article they read in class: local police reported that they collected the remains of the missing Flemish student. The naked corpse was found in the woods outside the city. The local farmers who discovered the remains described it in gruesome detail: the belly was savaged open, the insides were gone. It must have been a wild animal, a lost and desperate wolf or wildcat.
The silence that fell upon the small group around Marcus was broken by Kris: “If it was an animal, why was he naked, huh?” The others nodded.
“I bet it was a viscera-sucker that got him”, Kris added knowingly.
“A what?” a student asked in a high-pitched American accent.
“Ah you’re too young to know. It is a creature that lives in the Philippine countryside, in remote areas, in provinces like Bicol and Capiz. It’s shrewd. It appears as a fair-skinned woman during the day, living among ordinary folk in the barrio, but transforms into a flying creature that hunts for foetuses and intestines at night”.
“You can’t be serious”.
“I am deadly serious. And you know who among us avoids church, seduces boys, and lives in the woods?” Kris asked in a hushed voice.
Marcus felt warm. He mustered his courage to mumble, “Kris, you can stop now”.
“Mr. President to the rescue.” Kris licked her lips.
Before Marcus could blurt out anything in reply, the apartment door swung open. Ina stepped in. She wore the same bordeaux coat and a high-collared blouse. As the first to witness this apparition, Marcus jumped to his feet and sprinted over to receive her. They exchanged hellos and Marcus led Ina to the drinks table. Then he brought her to his philosophy friends, huddled in another corner of the apartment, holding their own symposium.
Marcus basked in his good fortune. For a glorious moment he held Ina’s auburn air, her pale face, her slender neck in his gaze—then he felt a hand pulling him away.
It was Fidel. “Look at what you did”.
“It’s a start”. Marcus put his arm around his friend’s shoulders. They moved slowly towards the middle of the living room.
“Tsk tsk tsk”. Fidel smiled weakly and shook his head.
Then the sound of glass crashing on the floor. Followed by commotion at the drinks table. At the periphery of his vision, Marcus saw a blur that streaked towards the door. Then it slammed shut.
“What happened?” Marcus asked nobody in particular.
“Nothing, really,” Kris responded, shattering glass at her feet.
“What did you do?”
“I simply told her we don’t want her kind here”.
“You said what?”
“I simply told her to kindly stay away”.
Before he could retort, Fidel took Marcus by the shoulders, turned him around, and led him away. “Look man, maybe it’s better to let it go.”
Marcus held his tongue.
“I know you like this girl. But you don’t even know her. Imagine if even just half of what people have been saying were true. . .”
Blood crept up Marcus’ face. He stormed out of the apartment and rushed down the stairs.
There was no sign of Ina anywhere in or around the building. Marcus even popped into a nearby café, in case she had thought of blowing off steam with a drink. She probably decided to walk home. She could not have gotten far. Marcus hopped on his bike and pedalled west, away from the city, in the direction of the woods.
Marcus did not know exactly where Ina lived. But if the rumors were true, then Marcus only had to take a nearby road. It ran on the side of a sprawling park and an old neighborhood populated by grand villas that always looked unoccupied. Farther away, the road cut through small parcels of farmland and dense woods.
The darkness was deeper now, punctured only by faint street lights separated by long stretches of sidewalks in disrepair. The roads, houses, and fields were all deserted. Marcus was drenched in sweat when he caught sight of her. She walked slowly down the unpaved right side of the road, still far enough to sense his presence.
As Marcus contemplated what to do, voices converged in his head. His desire demanded that he get close as fast as possible. A part of his consciousness, however, counselled not to startle her. Wouldn’t she think you’re a creep? The darkness and the cold that enveloped him signalled caution. What if they’re all true? Marcus abandoned his bike and started to follow Ina on foot.
Like outcasts seeking shelter, they trekked wordlessly through the Flemish countryside. They walked past low hedges, ancient trees, a corn farm, a dilapidated church, a cemetery, and narrow footpaths that disappeared into the woods. Marcus hugged himself. He maintained both visual contact and distance between him and Ina.
Without warning, Ina turned abruptly to the left and flew like a bat across the street. Once she was on the other side, she slowed down. She then walked up a short flight of low steps. They led to the door of a white, castle-looking villa that stood off the road.
Marcus stopped. He spotted a broad tree a few meters ahead. He tiptoed his way to hide behind it. He focused his eyes on the villa, its grey roof and spires all but invisible in the darkness. He slowed down his breathing. He heard the wild beating of his heart.
Ina stood squarely in front of the villa door. The light of the moon partially illuminated her figure. She seemed to have inserted a key. Turned it. Pushed the door open. The villa’s interior was black. Suddenly, Ina spun around. She faced the tree behind which Marcus lurked. She stared straight at him. She seemed to be mouthing words. Then she turned slowly around. As she stepped into the villa, she began to take off her coat. In a moment, the darkness swallowed her whole.
Marcus’ heart now throbbed in his throat. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and kept absolutely still behind the tree. The hushed voices of Kris and Fidel bounced around in his consciousness. Tsk tsk tsk. He recalled the dead pigeon, its half-open eye, the gaping hole in its carcass. He pictured the eviscerated corpse of the Flemish youth, stripped naked and consumed in the woods. Then the stigmata of Christ flashed in his mind. Marcus forced his eyes open to stare at the open door.
There was no sign of life.
Marcus strained his ears to listen.
There was only the hum of the black night now — and hunger.
As he kept his gaze on the villa door, Marcus saw nothing else but vivid visions of Ina’s pale flesh, her bruised neck, her long white legs unfolding before his eyes.
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