Entry #7
This story, of the Gentleman from La Mancha, comes back to me in parts. Mamá played Dulc. I could have been three. Very pretty, in the green dress. She couldn’t walk anymore, but she was the most beautiful woman in the world. They sat her in a chair on stage, a movable butaka. Papá was the Gentleman. The plot comes back in bits and pieces as I keep reading. It’s not much fun to read if you already know the ending. Dulcinea fans herself to death. That’s what it looked from backstage, where I watched Mamá. Papá on a bed, shouting with dignity: “Burn the books of my foolish youth, oh ye of good faith!” Something like that. Props (patched-up porcelain bowls, faded embroidery on shawls), open-air mosquito stages in dirt plazas, a fly circling the ugly fruit of a jackfruit tree116 117 118
116 Langaw lumalaway sa langka: feeble English fails to assimilate the lyrical nature of this fetid matter. Sorry. (Trans. Note)
117 The Mata family declares that Raymundo’s mother died in childbirth. “He killed his mommy; that’s why he was nuts” is the prevailing wisdom among that warped, typically Caviteño clan. The passage belies their claim: Raymundo remembers traveling with his player-parents until the age of three, at which time his actress-mother died of tuberculosis. (Estrella Espejo, Quezon Institute and Sanatorium, Tacloban, Leyte)
118 This entry had many crossed-out lines, and I append them as #8, next page. (Trans. Note)