looked sorrier than ever. We ran over the polystyrene boxes which had once contained the chicken dinners, past the sculpture garden, past where people were jumping up and down on the armoured cars, and up onto the platform from where we had watched Marcos on the balcony. Everyone stamped on the planks and I was amazed the whole structure didn’t collapse. We came to a side entrance and as we crowded in I felt a hand reach into my back pocket. I pulled the hand out and slapped it. The thief scurried away. I t was absolutely possible to believe that, instead o fjoining the revolution, Enrile and Ramos had hijacked it. And everyone was clearly still in the habit o f believing in the genius o f Marcos, however much they hated him. I t seemed to me that in every room / saw, practically on every available surface, there was a signed photograph o f Nancy Reagan. But this can hardly be literally true. I couldn’t believe I would be able to find the actual Marcos apartments, and I knew there was no point in asking. We went up some servants’ stairs, at the foot of which I remember seeing an opened crate with two large green jade plates. They were so large as to be vulgar. On the first floor a door opened, and we found ourselves in the great hall where the press conferences had been held. This was the one bit of the palace the crowd would recognize, as it had so often watched Marcos being televised from here. People rah and sat on his throne and began giving mock press-conferences, issuing orders in his deep voice, falling about with laughter or just gaping at the splendour of the room. It was all fully lit. Nobody had bothered, as. they left, to turn out the lights. I remembered that the first time I had been here, the day after the election, Imelda had slipped in and sat at the side. She must have come from that direction, I went to investigate. And now, for a short while, I was away from the crowd with just one other person, a shy and absolutely thunderstruck Filipino. We had found our way, we realized, into the Marcoses’ private rooms. There was a library, and my companion gazed in wonder at the leather-bound volumes while I admired the collection of art books all carefully cataloged and with their numbers on the seines. This was the reference library for Imelda’s worldwide collection of treasures. She must have thumbed through them thinking: I ’d like one of them, or I ’ve got a couple of them in New York, or That’s in our London house. And then there was the Blue Drawing Room with its twin portraits of the Marcoses, where I simply remember standing with my companion and saying, “ It’s beautiful, isn’t it.” It wasn’t that it was beautiful. It looked as if it had been purchased at Harrods. It was just that, after all the crowds and the riots, we had landed up in this peaceful, luxurious den. My companion had never seen anything like it. He didn’t take anything. He hardly dared touch the furnishings and trinkets. We both simply could not believe that we were there and the Marcoses weren’t. I wish I could remember it all better For instance, it seemed to me that in every room I saw, practically on every available surface, there was a signed photograph of Nancy Reagan. But this can hardly be literally true. It just felt as if there was a lot of Nancy in evidence. Another of the rooms had a grand piano. I sat down. “Can you play?” said my companion. “ A little,” I exaggerated. I can play Bach’s Prelude in C, and this is what I proceeded to do, but my companion had obviously hoped for something more racy. The keys were stiff. I wondered if the piano was brand new. A soldier came in, carrying a rifle, “ Please cooperate,” he said. The soldier looked just as overawed by the place as we were. We cooperated. When I returned down the service stairs, I noticed that the green jade plates had gone, but there was still some Evian water to be had. I was very thirsty, as it happened. But the revolution had asked me to cooperate. So I did. Outside, the awe had communicated itself to several members of the crowd. They stood by the fountain looking down at the coloured lights beneath the water, not saying anything. I went to the parapet and looked across the river. I thought: somebody’s still fighting; there are still some loyal troops. Then I thought: that’s crazy—they can’t have started fighting now. I realized that I was back in Saigon yet again. There indeed there had been fighting on the other side of the river. But here it was fireworks. The whole city was celebrating. That Morning-After Feeling Q ^ ^ i t t i n g at our table was a politician who had supported the Aquino campaign and who was now fuming: there had been no consu ltation with the UNIDO members of parliament about the formation of the new cabinet. He himself, he said, had told the Aquino supporters that he did not want a job. But they would find that they needed the cooperation of the parliament to establish the legitimacy of their new government. Parliament had proclaimed Marcos president. Parliament would therefore have to unproclaim him before Cory could be de jure as well as de facto head of state. She could have a revolutionary, de facto government if she wanted. But in that case her power was dependent on the military. She would be vu lne rab le . The po lit ic ian was haunted by the fear that corrupt figures would again be put in key positions, and that the whole thing would turn out to have been some kind or sordid switch. The television announcers were congratulating the nation on the success of People’s Power. But all three of us at the table were wondering how real People’s Power was. The previous night, Enrile had made a most extraordinary speech on the television. It had come in the form of a crude amateur video. It looked, in a way, like the plea of some kidnap victim, as if he were being forced to speak at gun-point. And what he had said was so strange that now, the morning after, I wondered whether I had dreamed it. So far I’d not met anyone else who had seen the broadcast. Enrile had begun, as far as I remember, by saying that Marcos was now in exile, and that he, Enrile, was sorry. He had not intended things to turn out this way. But he wanted to thank the President (he still called him the President) for not attacking the rebel soldiers when they first went to Camp Aguinaldo. At that time (and here I am referring to a partial text of the speech) “The military under his control, or the portion of the military under his control, had the firepower to inflict heavy damage on us.” But 8 Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1987
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