IMELDA MARCOS - dictator's wife, shoe-collector, former Philippine senator, mother of the year, and possibly the most famous person in the world to be granted a passport by the South Pacific nation of Tonga - is surprisingly accessible to the media. I rang up her former press secretary a couple of weeks ago because I was going to be in Manila and thought it worth a try. Within minutes I was speaking to Dr Ileana Maramag, who is writing Imelda's biography and who asked for a list of questions.
Nobody ever consults these lists during interviews, but protocol must be observed. So I faxed over some anodyne queries (how important is your faith to you?) - thinking that really incisive ones (what's it like running a dictatorship?) might be counterproductive - and Dr Maramag said 'fine'. In fact, so keen was Imelda to be interviewed that when I arrived at her flat on Sunday afternoon, Dr Maramag told me they'd been on standby all Saturday afternoon. I had a sudden vision of Imelda - coiffed and corseted - perched on one of the uncomfortable chairs in that room stuffed with Marcos memorabilia, waiting, waiting, waiting ...
A minute later, she appeared. So the first thing I can say with any authority about her is that she's punctual. This is also pretty much the last thing I can say about her with any authority because I spent the next two and a half hours trying to work out if she was a sane woman pretending to be barking mad or an insane woman doing a terrific job of passing herself off as normal. We sat under what she told me was a Pissaro (and later she pointed out the Picasso, the Bonnard, the Fragonards, all in suspiciously dazzling gilt frames) and I found myself looking from Imelda to the paintings and back thinking the same baffled thought: are you real? Anyway, it was a cherishable performance from a woman who turned 70 on July 2. The keynote was that of suffering piety, interspersed with occasional outbursts at the unfairness of it all. But even these furious moments were slightly skewed, as if Imelda hadn't quite grasped the greater (indeed guilt-framed) picture. Once I asked her about her shopping sprees in New York, for example, and she looked outraged. 'When I was in New York I did not go shopping,' she cried, indignantly. 'The shops would come to us! That was a ridiculous story. My jewellery was given to me by Marcos. I hardly had to buy anything!' As for the shoes - 'I don't love shoes. It's funny ... In fact, my favourites were canvas espadrilles for six dollars. I was promoting shoes here. But I don't mind. They went to my closets and what did they find - shoes not skeletons, thank God.' Later, she produced a photograph of a man standing on a New York street under a billboard advertising a company called Manhattan Mini Storage. The ad featured a pile of shoe boxes and the caption: There's A Little Imelda In All Of Us. Imelda gazed at the photo fondly and gave a girlish laugh, softly repeating, 'There's a little Imelda in all of us.' There may not have been skeletons in her closet but there are certainly an unknown number buried in the foundations of the Film Center, the roof of which collapsed during construction in 1981. This is the story everyone in Manila tells you about Imelda: that such was her desperation to have an international film festival with its own grand theatre, that she would not let work be halted and the builders were entombed where they fell. The building is still there, an ugly, unfinished, concrete husk which is rumoured to be haunted.
'This is a cover-up story by Cory, I wasn't even in town,' sighed the former first lady. (It is a strange but observable fact that Corazon Aquino, who managed to oust the Marcos family in 1986 through 'people power', is always 'Cory' to Imelda, whereas her husband Ferdinand is only ever referred to as 'Marcos'.) 'I was in Rome for the installation of a cardinal. It's not true they were all buried, there were three dead, I think. I was criticised for choosing the best contractor for the Cultural Center and people said I had to have other contractors bidding for the Film Center, and the lowest one got it. So of course it collapsed.' She looked momentarily aggrieved. It is hard to drag an ungrateful, impoverished nation into a better appreciation of the arts, especially when Imelda herself wanted nothing to do with her husband's political ambitions. The way she tells it she was a Julie Andrews figure, plucked from the paradise of Leyte province by a playboy - evidently more noble and patriotic and charismatic than even the Edelweiss-yodelling Christopher Plummer - called Marcos.
'I really grew up in an almost cloistered life, a beautiful childhood, full of music, full of love, full of beauty,' she breathed, reverently. This sort of tone is dreadfully infectious and before I knew what was happening I found myself asking if she'd ever thought of becoming a nun. 'No,' said Imelda, with a beatific smile. 'I felt I'd reach faster to the heavens when there were no walls or ceilings around me to obstruct my prayers and offerings.' Eleven days after being introduced to Marcos in 1954, they were married. 'Destiny seemed to converge and pushed me there. He was terrifically in love with me, he couldn't sleep or eat, looking at me. Funny, I was not a very ambitious girl. I wanted a little house with a fence by the sea but my dreams became puny with reality. Little did I think' - dreamily, imagining her younger self when she was the most powerful woman in the Philippines - 'that I would live in Malacanang Palace and see all these wonderful places.' I felt it was time to bring the conversation back to brutal reality, so I told her I'd travelled up to Ilocos Norte province (where her son Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos Jnr is governor) three years ago to visit Marcos' body in Batac. 'Ahh,' Imelda exhaled, and assumed a suffering expression. 'Well, he still looks well, doesn't it?' Actually, I'd thought he looked so utterly waxen that I couldn't believe he'd ever drawn breath, but the little museum alongside (shop mannikins dressed up in Marcos' clothing and photos of Imelda looking gracious) was a kitsch gem. At the moment, Marcos is being held in a holding pattern up there in Batac, hostage to the vagaries of air-conditioning and formalin, until he eventually lands in the Heroes' Cemetery in Manila, a subject about which there is much bitter debate in the Philippines. 'It will be done,' stated Imelda. 'It's a matter of timing.' That the rest of the nation might hesitate to call her husband heroic is a matter for scornful outrage. 'Talk about dictatorship! He was the greatest democrat ever! Cory was the dictator. Cory, with all her prayers, golly. Just to show you the comparison and who was the thief: Marcos spent 420 billion pesos (HK$84 billion) in 20-plus years. Cory's budget was one trillion, 650 billion pesos in six years. Ramos spent 570 billion in one year. And we, the Marcoses, were thieves!' Well, I said, I suppose it depends on where the money went ... 'It went on the infrastructure - millions and millions on housing for the poor.' Imelda paused, brooding, and added, with heavy meaning, 'None lately.' Then she jumped to her pink-stiletto-shod feet, and fetched some papers. 'May I show you the IMF report which helped us win in New York?' This was an Imelda-speak reference to a class-action lawsuit in Hawaii, filed by 9,539 Filipinos claiming compensation for human-rights abuses; in April, the Marcos family finally agreed to pay them US$150 million (HK$1.17 billion) which it is currently trying to extract from a frozen Swiss bank account containing US$590 million. But for Imelda, victory lay in a contentious clause which states that the Marcoses have never been convicted of human-rights' violations anywhere in the world.
'It says in the report that in 1985, there is an entry of 771 million (US) dollars, which came into the country but did not pass through the regular banking system. Someone brought that money in,' she said, and caught my eye expectantly. I was rather confused by this talk of millions and trillions so I stared blankly back until she said, 'Marcos. This is all too clear. The question is not where did the money go, the question is where did it come from?' Where did he get it from? 'Trading in precious metals. As late as 1957, gold was $35 (US) dollars an ounce.' What a good memory you have, I said (I'd been struck by this several times, she repeats figures obsessively) and Imelda replied, 'It's a matter of survival, otherwise I'd be hanged.' Really? 'Well, behind bars. Look at Noriega. We were once great friends of America, we institutionalised the very spirit of the Founding Fathers.' Hmmm, I said, and asked about the allegations (legion) of torture.