Framing a horrific novel
Once you come across the line—“The scent of her perfume came through, that one he particularly disliked, a hollow mimicry of unknown flowers.”—you quickly realize you’re reading fiction of unusual to uncanny quality. No, it won’t be about romance or anything remotely erotic. The early intrigue forewarns acceptance that the “he” involved is no male lover, but a mystifying version of a dog.
Scents and smells pervade the descriptive starting chapters of Iro: A Story in Blood by Angelo R. Lacuesta, published by Milflores. The olfactory design of elite private territory bordered by dark forest overwhelms geography, terrain, heritage, and all the principal inhabitants that are paraded as major characters.
The fictive community is the municipality of Kidapalong in the province of Cuambong “in their neck of Mindanao off Davao.” Here the Mallaris have ruled the roost as rice barons spawning a dynasty of politicians who have trucked with Spanish colonizers, revolutionaries, the Americans, Japanese occupiers, and various other protagonists as overlords on both the regional and national levels—through cycles of NPA rebellion, concerns over Moro uprisings, coastal smugglers, Martial Law, changes of command in the military and police.
Except for a blip when they lost a mayoralty for a term, the Mallaris have conducted themselves adroitly as hacendero patrons while engaging in religious tradition and allowing the folkloric mindset that governs curious lower mythology; read familiars.
Eschewing political blood feuds, they believe that honesty and integrity outweigh national politics. “What made for longer traction were the mudslinging and the swift exchange of lawsuits, especially when a celebrity politician was involved.” Obeisance to practicality has kept them in power. Meanwhile, “The townsfolk confused NPAs for ospreys squatting in the forest canopies and took military movement at night as tikbalang. Taking down one of them ‘not like us’ would clear any doubt.”
Don Alfonso Mallari, Don Ramon Mallari, Doña Alicia, their sons Tembong and Gov Roland, Doña Katrina, and son Boyet are joined by Marta, also of the community if upgraded from the poor section of town when she parlays her extensive beauty-pageant experience into marriage with Mayor Boyet.
Underlings but not in terms of character treatment include close-in driver-bodyguards Adaza and Alundasan, chief muscleman Captain Larroza, and Nay Wen, who heads the service staff via age and rank. Her wisdom suggests that missing heirloom earrings may have been taken by some mischievous dwarf—white or black. Marta brings in her “glam team” from Manila, Clem and Marian, while the Lascanos of neighboring Lipuyan are occasional political rivals.
Marta achieves centrality with her fresh ideas and sharp instincts. Added to Hacienda Mallari, Balay Mallari, and the failed start-up that is Mallari Garden Resort are the Mallari Foundation, Mallari Museum, and La Katrina, the most exclusive residential cluster as tribute to Boyet’s mother, who passes early.
“On her first visit to Balay on Boyet’s arm, her mother-in-law had sized her up by smell
like she was a fruit or a fish in the market. Maybe she was smelling her for knockoff perfume and that special variant of ambition that beauty-pageant contestants had.”
But Marta’s own mother, who has long migrated abroad, counter-punches. “Her mother had quickly advised her to claim it: be the provinciana, but own the doña.”
With her digital smarts, from FB to IG and TikTok, she builds up a following on social media. She conceives of investment opportunities, such as of a township centered on a “two-hectare open field where the Hacienda’s two historical treasures would remain standing: Balay Mallari, a living ancestral heritage house and the unofficial heart of the provincial government, and the granary, symbol of bounty, resistance, and resilience.”
While she may be “recalling Song Hye Kyo in her Fendi,” Marta also ups the level of matronage and command. Meanwhile, more page-happy than her husband—meaning more interesting—are his father Gov Roland, Adaza, and Capt. Larroza.
Characterization is a strong suit throughout, as is a cyclical structure built on episodes that loop around generations. The eventual horror that mystifyingly takes over is thus effectively couched in a welter of realistic and familiar narrative arcs. Subsumed are politics, historical layers since 1781, superstition, financial and managerial expertise, real estate development, engineering, glam lifestyles, fashion maven-ship, and digital knowhow. The author is obviously armed with expertise on these matters—as a spun web of Filipino culture that frames a horrifying “story in blood.”
Every character inhales unmistakable motifs that saturate the scene-setting, from the scents of food being prepared in the kitchen to slop filling up a pet’s bowl, cogon grass, and new grass (“the seashore paspalum from Cebu”). “Roland smelled the familiar residue of construction work, the faint odors of bare cement, wood varnish, and fresh chemicals.”
Spaced far apart as episodes are the first instances of a canine menace in the woods before these eventually peak. For the townsfolk, they are perpetrated by what is “not like us.” They speak of “the mantiyanak (that is) supposed to be some mournful old woman who carried a dead unborn child in her womb who resorted to ripping people apart out of spite.”
Marta and Gov Roland scoff at this, while others who have similarly seen evidence of the victims, including videos, simply say, “Iro man na.” It’s a dog. The incidents gain frequency.
“They were spread out all over Kidapalong and Lipayan, their genitals and their intestines dug out of their groins and their bellies. The first murder a month ago, the second set a week later, and the last cluster just days apart. But there was nothing to gain from another rash of political killings.”
Excellent story-telling rushes to a riveting climax when Marta tracks the creature all by herself. The suspense tightens by the cadenced minute, until she loses her gun and is ironically left with her phone’s video button as her only weapon.
“They locked eyes as they crouched before each other. Its nostrils flared, their edges serrating themselves as they widened. Of course it was smelling her, the universal language of creatures, of predator and prey.”
Some gender pronouns seem confused—unless they’re jigsaw-placed with intent. And certain earlier characters like Adita just disappear—to be replaced much later by an equally young maid named Perla, before a Brenda and an Ate Tess and a Kiana are brought in, very late. It’s a muscular world, but women are on top of the situation.