BY VIRGINIA JASMIN PASALO
Four women and a Funeral
“Narciso had died, God rest his soul. He was buried today. He had three wives, existing ones. The one who did not exist as of yesterday, was the legal wife. That makes it four.The first wife Molly, left him when she found out that her niece, Bertha, who stayed with them in the house was carrying Narciso’s first child. Molly was barren, and at the same time a working professional which made it worse because Narciso found fault in her career as much as he found fault in her biological inadequacies.”
That was the first paragraph of a short story I wrote for The Clique Magazine in February 1994, entitled Four Women and a Funeral (a not-so-true story). It is about Narciso as it is about the four women in his life that in reality, included a friend of mine, not his wife.
Four is a fascinating number as it is the composition of some of the representations of life. The wind and compass directions (North, South, East, West), for one. In the Biblical books of Ezekiel and Revelations, it represents four living creatures, exalted angelic beings stationed around the throne of God. Chapter 6 of the Book of Revelations speak of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, symbolic figures representing divine judgment and the harbingers of the end times, each embodying specific catastrophic forces.
In a geopolitical context, the Quartet of Chaos refers to China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea (CRINK), which on a western perspective, represent the four main adversaries identified in the U.S. National Defense Strategy, supporting each other across diplomatic, informational, military and economic fronts, perceived as potentially destabilizing the broader global order which is currently dominated by the United States.
The Quartet of Chaos also refers to a group of people determined to having fun and causing mischief. But this is not the reason why I suddenly thought of the women in the Senate majority, which deserves another term, intrinsic to their behavior as a collective political republic.
In the Senate majority, the four women republics I am referring to are Senators Loren Legarda, Pia Cayetano, Imee Marcos and Camille Villar. In the last elections, I voted for Loren Legarda and Pia Cayetano (but never his brother in any election, the Ambassador of Jesus Christ). I made a promise that I will vote for all deserving women before I voted for a male, believing that gender equality must exist in all political spaces. I voted for the two despite my doubts about them, as they were very quiet about the oppression of women under former President Duterte. I firmly believed then that women, being women, have this intrinsic quality for good governance and possess integrity.
I was proven wrong. Integrity and good governance got lost in the reality of political survival. They were lost in the protection of filial relationships. They were sidelined in the insatiable hunger for power and wealth. They got buried in the abyss of consciousness. It is struggling to avoid a funeral.
“Integrity had died, God rest her soul. She was buried today. She was survived by four women republics morphing into the dominant structure of the male-dominated Senate majority. One of them cried, without tears, but demanded sympathy from the Senate minority and the general public. She lamented, “We were under attack. We were so afraid, we thought we could be dead, but not one among you said, “How are you?”
That would be the beginning paragraph of another short story with the same title “Four Women and a Funeral”.