Antonio Gargazulio-Duarte, also fondly known as Bongbong to family and friends, had been in America for less than two years and was going mad.
The story’s opening line does what an opening line is often expected to do do. It conveys some very important information that that clarifies the obvious mystery and confusion inherent in the title. It would be quite easily to assume the “Bongbong” of the title is a flower considering its contextual relationship to blossoming. Instead, the opening line immediately gets the most significant information across right away.
“I can no longer tolerate contradiction. This country is full of contradiction. I have to leave before I go crazy.”
The opening paragraph ends just two sentences later with this confession by Bongbong to a friend named Frisquito. What the reader is given here, then, is a less in literary efficiency. A mere handful of sentences and the reader has been equipped with the necessities of fiction: an explanation of the great mystery in the title (or, at least, part of the mystery), the anxiety Bongbong is experiencing, and an explanation of the cause of that anxiety. And as a bonus, the explanation for Bongbong’s problems with America is not only accurate, but sensible.
Bongbong stood in the middle of a Market Street intersection, slowly going mad. He imagined street cars melting and running over him, grinding his flesh and bones into one hideous, bloody mess. He saw the scurrying Chinese women, no more than four feet tall, run amok and beat him to death with their shopping bags, which were filled to the brim with slipper, silver-scaled fish.
Just before this description, the narrative includes a letter from Bongbong to Frisquito which ends with the words, “I’m glad I never took acid.” However, what is being described here could very well be interpreted as the perceptual dislocation of a someone experiencing the effects of having taken acid. Or, alternatively, the narrator might well be advising the reader to take things literally. Not that the street cars are melting, of course, but Bongbong actually is standing in the middle of an intersection going mad. The story is strange and surreal and those looking for the easy answer at the end which explains everything will be disappointed. Clues are planted, but the metaphorical detective does not arrive to gather all the suspects together and identify what is responsible for Bongbong’s state of mind. That job is left to the reader.
