SOMETHING LIKE RIPE MANGOES

During the previous regime sugar was immensely profitable for friends of the president, less so to the unaffiliated and uncorrupted among the planters.
A few years before the president was forced out, there were hardly any among the planters who had remained unaffiliated.
Most could not afford such independence.
A few, having both invested their profits outside of the sugar industry as well as smuggled their funds out of the country, could let the fields lie fallow. Yes, it meant that the local workers were no longer employed and had to pursue a livelihood elsewhere. But it also prevented official rapacity, interference, taxation, and accusations of smuggling to avoid the excise.

Non-production also meant non-involvement in the industry-wide schemes of re-grading sugar cargoes for diversion from the export market, which permitted certain traders enormous profits.

The switch from sugar to corn syrup in the United States' food industry severely reduced American demand. The result was that sugar from this particular area had to compete on the world market, at far lower price. But the government needed the foreign currency, so the trade was to be maintained.
This necessarily affected remuneration for the workers.
Famines and labour disputes were not uncommon.
Neither was the single most effective tool for dealing with either of those problems: police massacre.

Historically sugar has always been a matter of intrigue, bloodshed, and starvation.
Wherever sugar was grown there was slavery, peonage, a transplanted population, political unrest, and not infrequently, brutal repression directed at the lowest levels of society by those on top.
Sugar growing areas are desperately poor, and often aflame.

Remarkably, the provincial capital had a surfeit of beautiful old buildings, stately mansions from the colonial era, grand churches, and interesting museums, restaurants, and boutiques.
Wealth was concentrated here - layered, steeped, soaked, packed, and pounded into the very fabric of the city.
Which was, of course, largely insulated from the heat of the fields.


A VERY LOVELY TOWN

The owners of Bakery-Restaurant Mataoman were, like so many merchants, of Chinese extraction, even though they had a Spanish surname and every member of the clan sported a fine Catholic given name. They had been there far longer than the Lanlang, and there was indeed an admixture of outside blood.
That, probably, explained the small hacienda that they still owned even though no cane had been grown there for decades, as well as their profound knowledge of fine baking and confectionary.
They made absolutely the best Brazo de Mercedes. Everybody said so.
As well as stellar ensemada.

Their nicknames betrayed their actual origin. Seven of them were called 'Ching'. There was also a Chingching, a Chaching, a Hungco, a Ping, and a Beh-Beh (妹妹). Plus Auntie Paloma, who was often called 'Dovie'.
Despite managing a flourishing pastry shop with several branches, none of the family members was fat. Apparently being surrounded by sugar, butter, and coconut grease all the time inoculated one against indulgence.

They were thinking of turning the hacienda into a tourist resort, now that the rebels were no longer common in that area (though still present in the hills), but they were worried about the cost. It would take both an accumulation of funds, as well as much official co-operation - and that last carried a very steep price.
The former president's barkada might have lost their leader, but they themselves still ruled.
In fact very little had changed. Chinese had been discouraged from certain fields of business before the president had declared martial law following the "terrorist" bombing that his own agents had plotted back in 1971, Chinese had been unofficially discriminated against during the subsequent decade and a half, and Chinese would still be disfavoured for as long as the hot sun rose over green fields.
Even with their cultivatedly native façade, the family just wasn't mestizo enough to pull it off without the carefully closed eyes and wide-open palms of local officialdom.

[Actually, the bombing has since then also been blamed on the old Communist Party, as well as on the violent offshoot that started the armed struggle. And not just by loyalists of the president, who had seized upon it as a pretext for a crack-down on all opposition.
There was plenty of implausible deniability for everyone.]

One day Auntie Paloma, Beh-Beh, Hwan, and I went off to look at the hacienda. The caretaker had been informed of our visit, and his wife the housekeeper would provide meals.


YOU HAVE CHARMING MANGOES

I didn't know what to expect. I had heard about the presses, and how they had been sabotaged in the early years, about how the rollers had been taken by the Japanese to be melted down. Plus damage done to the giant masonry vats, and the burning of the sheds during the fifties.
What I saw, however, made it hard to believe that this had ever been a working sugar plantation.
Trees.
Mango trees. The house was entirely surrounded by mango trees spaced wide apart. When Auntie Paloma was born, they had already stopped producing sugar here, and they planted mango trees for each member of the family. Hers were thirty two years old now, and had born fruit for twenty years. Some trees produced incredibly sweet golden mangoes, others only yielded green exemplars.
Those were the ones you really wanted to eat.
Unripe mango, green and firm fleshed, without that soggy fibrous quality near the stone.
Absolutely divine with fermented shrimp paste.
You can eat yourself sick on them.

Not surprisingly, we had mangoes at lunch. And later in the afternoon. And at dinner. Oh yes, there was other food - pancit with stirfried vegetables and fish sauce, chicken cooked in soy and sugar, and bittermelon. But above all, mangoes.
When you visited the hacienda, you ate mangoes.

Hwan and I slept in one bedroom, Auntie Paloma and Beh-Beh slept at the other end of the house on a different floor. Each room was provided with a mosquito coil, lit half an hour before we tucked in for the night. When Beh-Beh went upstairs she cheerfully remarked that those things (mosquito coils) were very unhealthy - too much exposure rots your brain. Auntie Paloma didn't hear her say that, and smilingly imparted much the same information when she retired. As Hwan was turning in, he told me in all seriousness not to sit too close to the burning coil - "breathing it much leaves holes, like islands, in your grey matter".
When he started snoring I moved it off the desk to the small table near his bed, so that I could continue writing by the oil lamp on the desk.
Keeping mosquitoes away isn't really so difficult - just smoke a cigar.
A corona will chase them away for nearly three-quarters of an hour.


NO HEAVY BREATHING!

The next morning Auntie Paloma and Hwan had already gone off to inspect storage barns at the other end of the property when I went in to the sala for breakfast. The housekeeper provided me with a dish of rice with two fried eggs, and a cup of cocoa.
Plus a plate of sliced ripe mangoes.
The rice was not very good. The eggs were okay. The mangoes were soft and golden.
And I really would have preferred coffee instead of cocoa.
I noticed that Beh-Beh across the table had a huge plate of green mangoes and a saucer of fish paste.
She explained that if auntie Paloma were still present, she couldn't do this - green mangoes weren't good for you, and the combination was horrible for teenage girls. But it was just so tooting good!
I would have loved to have some of her green mango, but the housekeeper sat in a chair facing the table, sternly overseeing our breakfast and making sure that contact was at a minimum.
It wasn't right that a young missy would be alone with a large mukang puteh, and she was absolutely determined that no hanky OR panky would take place. Not on her watch.

Beh-beh was slowly and lovingly mouthing pieces of unripe mango dripping bago'ong.
I was trying to eat juicy golden fruit without dripping or drooling all over.
Beh-beh looked like an utterly proper young lady, and was very demure.
I looked like a fully matured degenerate with a sticky chin.
The housekeeper looked like a fierce dragon.
It was far too warm in that room.
No aircon - I was sweating.
But Beh-beh was cool.
Mmm, firm fruit!
Very nice.


SECRET STIMULANTS

When we got back to the city a few days later, I reported on that breakfast to Ching (the fifth one of seven Chings).
I described in detail how I had been staring at Beh-Beh's lovely forehead, partly obscured by a flop of dark hair, as with downward mien she put a piece of green mango into her mouth, careful not to spill any of the smelly fish paste on her blouse. Her delicate fingers expertly holding her food - thumb, index finger, and middle finger only, the ring finger and the pinky spread away.
And how she looked totally blissed out and preoccupied by the strong startling flavour.
While I got ripe mango smeared across my chin and drank sticky cocoa.
Which is not nearly as wonderful.

With great distress and not a little shadenfreude he exclaimed "that isn't right, you should've told me earlier!"
Told you what?
"That you preferred coffee! We have pounds and pounds of Peets!"
Peet's is a Bay Area purveyor of truly excellent beans. How did he come to have 'pounds' of Peets?
"My uncle works for the national airline. He brings in a couple of bags every week."

"YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME!"

In addition to having the best Brazo de Mercedes, they also had the best coffee on the island.
How they did that was said to be a typical Chinese commercial secret.
New Guinea, Sumatra Mandheling, and Sulawesi.
Oh, and primo Columbian, of course.
For the Daly City types.
Plus ensemada.



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