The Night Bus

I travel each week to Manila from Naga. In most of these trips, I always manage to have the single seat of the Peñafrancia Bus Q or X, which is one of the most sophisticated buses in the archipelago.

Changes, however, in my schedule leave me with no recourse but to take any seat available. One of these seats is the one right behind the driver. The bus that I take, I realized, has very powerful headlights. A good 3 meters in front of the bus gets lighted and the glare of the oncoming buses can startle and keep you awake.

There is no use fighting this truth about night buses. While the rest of the small community inside the bus is lulled by the slight brakes and the bumps and the curves, I sit there, nearly upright, with my blanket up to my chin, gazing at the moon. In the dark and without much of the electrical lights that rouse cities, the moon asserts its own strength. This is the moon for young men on the way home from carousing. This is the moon for lovers going home, walking down the road that never seems to end. This is the moon of poets. Like Conrad Aiken who wrote in his poem "How to Accompany the Moon without Walking" about the harbor moon, the old wharf moon, the shipyard moon, "the ropewalk moon that spins in turpentine,/sail-loft invaded with a pour of silver twine".

That is not my moon. My moon is the farmhouse moon. It lights upon solitary huts where a father and a mother lie on one mat with four or six children, hungry for the night. They will all wake when the moon is still up there, a bit pallid but strong enough to light up the path for the little feet as they rush to the stream. I want to think the moon will be silver enough to catch the fish for breakfast, and polish the back of the carabao sluggish outside the house.

Then I am back in the bus, on the road. I see stores selling pineapples and atis, sometimes a bunch of guavas. The storekeeper is awake waiting for the merchandize to attract night buses.

Behind these fruit stands are the homes that keep their lights on. They are the original 24-hour stores. They assure us of human presence. When the tires of the bus tire, then these homes are there welcoming and open at 2 or 3 in the morning. The coffee in these homes is good, nurtured by the notion that in this territory there are no strangers. On rainy days, the smoke that rises out of the kettle is as warm as first love. On your lucky night, a bunch of fireflies will crown trees with such incandescence you will believe in the sweetness of life again.

Sometimes, I fall asleep. But a quick brake comes and I am staring at an old dog crossing the street leisurely. This is, after all their domain and they can cross the street anytime, at any hour.