Ghosts of Manila Read Free Page B

itself; at the time he never wondered why. The very idea of a ‘national character’ was too nebulous and reductive for serious scholarship, but one might legitimately sidle up to it by calling the subject Transcultural Psychopathology. After all, every culture had its own peculiar vulnerabilities, no less than each individual, and these might be quite revealing. Accordingly he had reviewed the literature, beginning with the mediaeval dancing manias and children’s crusades, through the epidemic religious hysterias such as the ‘Jumpers’ and ‘Barkers’ in the Eastern US to the nuns in a German convent who believed themselves possessed by, or changed into, cats. He knew, too, of more specific and exotic disorders. There was pibloktoq in which Eskimos – mainly women – lapsed into a fit of crying and speaking in tongues before sprinting away naked across the ice. There was latah in Malaysia which also usually afflicted middle-aged women, a trance state featuring zombielike obedience which could be precipitated by the sound of a bicycle bell or the mere mention of a name. And there was Windigo psychosis among the Cree and Ojibwa Indians, when the sufferer became nauseated by ordinary food and could only be satisfied by cannibalism.
    Lastly, there was amok. John Prideaux had read his van Loon, his van Wulfften-Palthe, Yap, Caudill & Lin, Hirst & Woolley and much else. To these authorities amok was a standardised, culturally-acceptableform of emotional release, a disorder which, though temporary, often involved indiscriminate slaughter and for that reason equally often proved terminal to the patient. But such descriptions left him feeling they had stopped short. Had their authors been uneasier, less pedestrian, might they not have perceived an emblematic dimension to amok ?The classic summary of its three stages (a period of brooding followed by homicidal frenzy and ending in exhausted amnesia) could equally well define extended periods of military service and combat duty, for instance. Come to that, it could apply to whole lives lived under any kind of unremitting stress. Was it too fanciful to imagine an entire society composed of individuals who, without knowing it, acted out from cradle to grave the symptoms of a chronic amok attack, slowed down by a factor of thousands? (If any of his examiners could say an unhesitating Yes at this point, Prideaux recklessly felt, they should stop reading at once and turn with relief to a more regular script.)
    Finally, he knew that anthropology theses should be tricked out to look and sound ‘objective’ in a way that aspired to the scientific. It was even rather touching. Such a thing might just be feasible in a laboratory experiment involving transgenic mice, but despite the best intentions fieldwork was still conducted by people, and people were culturally-dependent constructs. To deal with people was to deal with fiction. Thus he figured in his own narrative as ‘Prideaux’, who by telling his own tale came in the end to sound disconcertingly like a character. Wishing (before he disappeared entirely) to observe what remaining norms he could, he thought it only proper to acknowledge his dramatis personae, all of whom he had interviewed extensively, thanking them sincerely for their often extreme patience and help. In alphabetical order they were:
    Vic Agusan
    Ysabella Bastiaan
    Fr. Policarpio Bernabe
    Insp. Gregorio Dingca, WPDC, City of Manila
    Crispa Gapat
    Fr. Nicomedes Herrera
    ‘Capt. Melchior’
    Sharon Polick
    Epifania Tugos
    Sen. Benigno Vicente
    It was Ysabella Bastiaan who stepped into his thesis the instant she exited the portals of Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Manila. Jet-lagged and wilting in the early morning heat within yards of leaving the air-conditioned concourse, she allowed herself to be taken over by white shirts and brown arms pulling her towards one taxi or another. We note that a curious passivity can overtake people after a long flight