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AMANDA GOMEIn Pursuit of Anin"Do you know where you can buy ..." The huddle of girls behind the counter fallstrangely silent, their brilliant, white mouths disappearing into the indifferent huesof brown skin and black night."... milkfish!" The aggression in my voice embarrasses me. "You know milk fish.It's on every bloody tourist brochure in the Philippines."I stop. I'd foreseen this. Yet it's my own ill humour that really annoys me. That'sall they can hear; the emotion in my voice."Anin!" I call sharply. She is a few shop fronts behind drifting in that vague wayof hers. I watch her tum. She is puzzled by my tone but used to it. She floats backand stepping up to the counter, peers at the hunks of chop suey. They are as deadand dry as a still life."Aha." She stares slowly around. "Milkfish ..." She grins broadly at what sheis about to do. "This shape." Her hands are swimming through the air. The stupefiedgirls break into laughter and reform."Over there Missi!" They drive us across the road with their cries when Aninmight already have forgotten.Milkfish. Were we going to reenact the drama here too? It annoyed me, my owninability to communicate. In my own country I was considered eloquent, articulate.Yet here in Manila, even within the arms of my own language, I was renderedspeechless by the stiffness of my body ... its refusal to relax into the shapes thatsignal ease, friendship ... trust.I tum to thank them. They are laughing at me. I quell a rise of panic. Laughingat what? Probably the wasp-waist woollen pants, black, matadorian, a statementof fashion I belligerently wore from Tokyo. Here they are shapeless, expressionlessamongst the exclamations of pert rounded bottoms ... blue jeaned. Maybe theyare sneering at Anin's broad Australian bottom. Can they tell her hair is dyed?I spin back ... but their smiles contain no hint of malice. Maybe they're not aimedat me. Maybe they are as deceptive as a Japanese bow ... automatic, arresting,only waiting a return. I begin to weave my way slowly through the streets, alwayskeeping Anin in sight, thinking deeply. Shouldn't they hate us - Westerners? We,who for hundreds of years have trampled their soil and spat at their speech? We,with our pockets full of silver and our extra dollops of fat? Now and again I passa sign scrawled across the wall. "OUT U.S. BASES." What does this mean? IS ita beginning or a tired habit? Because it's here in the back streets that the Westernculture parades. It pulsates through the music, is fried in the food: it flavours theair.No. Not these people. Not the people of the streets anyway. They don't blameus. They almost see us as saviours. I wave at them."You come tomorrow. We wait for you."WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989 19