My Crab Mentality

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MY CRAB MENTALITY by Jose Y. Dalisay Jr. I love crabs. That goes as well for shrimps, prawns, lobsters, clams, and nearly anything that's lived in the ocean. May they find eternal repose in my guts. My passion for seafood began, I suppose, in childhood when we had almost nothing but galunggong -the old "GG"-morning, noon and night: daing na GG, piniritong GG, sinigang na GG, tinapang GG, inihaw na GG, binurong GG , etc. It was cheap, it was available, and sometimes it was red-eyed. Now and then we got some relief, in the form of canned sardines and cuttlefish, the latter pickled in brine that I always understood to be sabaw . The sardines came in large oval tins that made great toy cars the minute you licked them dry; you punched holes in the sides with a nail, drove a tingting through (leading your mother to wonder about the progressive depilation of her walis ), and attached four tansans for wheels. But we were talking about food values, weren't we? Oh, yes, sardines. "Ligo" should rate right up there with "xerox" for generic excellence (hmm, is that an oxymoron or what?). It was the only sardine brand we knew, aside from the occasional "Tome," which we had on special days. On truly special days, there was Libby's Corned Beef and Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup. Everything great and wonderful came in cans. I know I'm digressing, but bear with me for a while, because I intend to build up dramatically towards my real subject, which is crabs. Back to cans: do you know what "Ligo" means? Have a little respect for what you eat, folks, and read the label. It means "Liberty Gold"-at least it did, originally. "Ligo" retained its special place in my undergraduate heart. In the early 70s, when there was always some rally or other to go to in the afternoon-which meant we had to fortify ourselves with a decent lunch-my fellow Maoists and I repaired to the rear of Vinzons Hall in Diliman, climbed over the wall, and crossed the street to what everyone called the "Balara Hilton. It was a ramshackle carinderia with wire-mesh windows, and its blue-plate special was a can of Ligo, opened by the chef and sauted right before your very eyes in the finest traditions of Hong Kong's seafood restaurants. All this was dumped into a bowl to go with a plate of steaming rice, for P2.50. Sorry, no Visa or Master Card. During my first visit to the US in 1980, I walked a mile across cornfields, past white picket fences, to find an Asian food store in the middle of the freezing Midwest, there to load myself up with-you guessed it-Ligo. I had a small cache of the same in my luggage when I flew to Scotland last September (I was through with walking and foraging, I said to myself). Am I glad that 747 didn't blow up; the whole cabin would've smelled like anchovies. Those of you who don't understand this Pinoy passion for canned sardines have to know that, in many corners of this archipelago, Ligo's as good as gold. Don't be miffed when a farmer or fisherman in the boonies opens a can for you, his special guest from the Big City, instead of broiling you some of that luscious tuna he's feeding his dogs. He's offering you the most highlyprized item on the rural menu, short of corned beef: that's right, canned sardines. You and I would prefer fresh seafood, of course-if we could afford it. Sometimes, I think that my whole working life's been a struggle to finally afford fresh seafood-GG, biya and tulya excluded, thank you. Seafood's one of the great blessings of this country, as any trip to the fish market will tell you. Coupled with penury, it also makes for one of our lousiest ironies. Now, I won't be cute and say I'm still that poor. Thanks to the credit card, I'm indentured to Citibank for life. But much of that debt's gone to living out my fantasies, such as dining out at places which take credit cards. You know, of course, that you're getting ripped off twice over, by the meal and by the interest rate. I always think, "Hell, I could've cooked that at home at a fifth
of the cost!" (Details of my shady past as a onetime Chinese fast-food cook will have to wait for another Barfly .) So why didn't I? Because, aside from the thrill of eating at someone else's place and then paying with a stroke of a ballpen, the old GG mindset hasn't really left me, I guess. Whenever Beng and I cruise the seafood stalls at Farmers Market, I drool all over the slabs of marlin and the mounds of giant prawn, and-yes!-the tubs of big, fat and mean-eyed crabs. And then I look at the prices-about P210/kilo these days for those sumptuous Shivas, about two of them to the kilo, vs. about P48/kilo for GG -and I freeze in guilt and shame. A hundred-peso crab? That's criminal! Well, crime finally got the better of me the other day. I saved a hundred bucks by successfully evading one inaanak over Christmas, marched down to Farmers with Beng, and, after exercising all the delicacy and restrained lechery of a beauty-contest judge, I picked out my hapless victim. He was all of 600 grams, and he looked like he was a baby when Admiral Dewey's Olympia steamed over his head. I paid the vendor, who stuffed him in a plastic bag, and I drove home with my dinner on the floor, wondering if I had a pot large enough for murder. I was hoping, meanwhile, that he would die with a quiet little crab-groan; our apartment has a nopet policy. As it turned out, I had a deep frying pan. I set the crab on the kitchen counter while I went about my preparations, lacing the boiling water with salt and with such condiments as I thought would penetrate his skull. "Dinner for two coming up," I announced to Beng. "I think I'll have a problem with this one," she said. "It's alive." Yegads, indeed it was. Its massive claws were tied with string, but its eyes twitched and stared like daggers into my soul. "Well, Beng," I reasoned, looking away, "so were hotdogs, at some point." Besides, I seriously doubted if crabs had pain receptors in their brains-sort of read that in some National Geographic , I thought. "Enjoy yourself," she said, chopping up some dead mushrooms. So what was I to do? Fortunately, I remembered what the Indian hunters did before spearing buffalo: they prayed to its spirit and begged its forgiveness. So I prayed to the crab. "Be assured," I said, "that no one loves you more than I do." And I dropped it into the pan and shut the lid. Sic transit.

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