Cora’s Requiem

Murder most foul.

That early evening of February 10, Corazon Zaldivar was stabbed 13 times after she opened her door to two men whose supposed business, as a neighbor heard them, was to deliver a letter from lawyer Aster Piollo.

Cora’s landlady next door went out to check when she heard Cora shout for help, only to be confronted by the barrel of a gun.   Shaken, she went back inside her house and begged her husband not to go out because of the gun.

Other neighbors got wind of the situation. They, too, were gripped by fear over its real danger to their own lives.  They were equally stunned and helpless as they suffered the sounds of Cora’s anguished cries for help and shrieks of pain.

One may imagine those agonizing moments of the woman, alone with her terror, helpless and defenseless against the resolute force of the male attacker and his physical strength.

Then Cora fell silent.  That said it all.

A man came out of Cora’s place and ran.  Some neighbors attempted a chase, but shouts of warning about a gun held by the killer’s lookout stopped them cold.  The two men escaped on a yellow motorcycle that had no plate number.

Not one of Cora’s neighbors can categorically say that they saw or remembered the faces of those two men.  The area has only one lamppost, located a good distance from Cora’s place at that.  It must be said that the neighborhood is home to decent folks leading simple, average lives.  No one keeps a gun or has any reason to keep one.  If they did, they would have had a fighting chance to help Cora and deter those two men.

Cora is dead. Evil has prevailed. The evidently well planned, premeditated murder succeeded.  Her lawyer and employer of late somehow managed to handle all the arrangements––from the autopsy to embalming and the coffin––through phone calls.  She, too, hunkered down in shock.  She knew by then that the assailants had used her name to compel Cora to open her door.  What price, lawyering?

Thirteen.  Cora lost her life to 13 stab wounds.  Thirteen, for a woman defenseless and alone.  Some of the wounds showed the knife went deep and was twisted, showing the intent to make death final and definite, as sure as it is irreversible.

Her neighbors coped with the tragedy of the pitiful Tagala they’ve come to appreciate and care about by uniting, giving mutual moral support, and chipping in financial contributions.  Her landlord’s family did the legwork for the funeral arrangements.  Other neighbors took turns at her wake.  They asked for police protection, and got it.

For reasons known only to him, Cora’s ex-common-law husband made not one visit to pay his last respects to her remains, as human decency obliges. Did he also fear for his life?  Who can say?  He didn’t report for work the following Monday.  Neither did the children report to school.

DSWD workers visited them, informed the children of their mother’s fate, and took time to persuade the father to give them the chance to visit their mother before her remains are brought home to Manila.  Four nights after their mother was killed, the children, also protected by the police, were able to spend a night at her wake.  They were at the airport to send her remains off the next day.

It is said that there was a broadcast news item that same day about the father’s complaint to the PNP that the DSWD failed to return his children.
Cora had gone home.  To her own Ithaca, all right, but unlike Odysseus after his own odyssey, she’s gone home dead.  Alive, her plight brought out the best in her neighbors and newfound friends.   Her death? gruesome, horrid? brought them terrors heretofore unknown.  No one feels safe. Ordinary, average lives have been skewered.

These people, these Tagbilaranons, may suffer longer the echoes of Cora’s anguished cries.  They may heal.  Or they may not.  They may one day find some meaning in her death.  Or they may not.  One thing is certain: a killer and his accomplice are on the loose.

(11 Marrch 2007)