Entry #16a211
Kawit, June 19, 1886212
Dear Son,
I hope you are doing well. Someone a concerned correspondent a good friend tells me that you are doing too well [sic], he says he’s seen you at the Botica,213 imbibing who knows what and shooting the crap with well-known wastrels like a damned indolent youth. Beware the gossips at Botica Luciano! Remember what happened to your father. Please do not f—.214 That witch in a skirt carrying a basket of rambutan that you saw by the “bat caves” during vacation, I say again, that fright—that fright was not your father you came home with a fever [sic]! And what were you doing in the bat caves anyway! Whatever he said disregard [sic]. Your father—may he rest in peace—he is gone. Do not f— like him. You have always had a strong imagination I blame myself [sic]. I allowed you to stay awake at night reading books and now see what we have reaped. You are going blind. In more ways than one. Beware, my son. Take care of yourself. Your condition can only degenerate if you do not follow God’s will mark my words [sic].
Blindness is not only physical it is spiritual my son [sic]. My concerned correspondent says your illness is God’s judgment on you bla bla bla but have faith. The God of love is with you I pray—be warned—there are forces of evil out there my son terrible occasions for sin avoid them [sic]. Beware your father’s fate a good man with bad judgment of his peers,215 God have mercy on his soul. Remember your Lolo is a katsila, a veteran policeman with rank and honor. Yes I know he’s going nuts but that’s not his fault. If you only knew what syph—I mean that—well, cholera—can do to the brain! And even if our name has diminished our pride need not.
I am sending a ticket for a passenger boat to Manila. Take it from Cavite Puerto. Mang Rufino216 will pick you up go with him in peace, do not resist [sic]. You will be enrolled at the Ateneo everything has been arranged [sic]. You will live at Señora Chula’s boarding house on a decent street Calle Caraballo please check the address. She has taken care of many good young men of Cavite God bless her generous soul. May the Jesuits straighten you out so help you God [sic].
Much love,
Tio U.
P.S. I’m sending your favorite a bag of lanzones and baby mangoes still green from the garden and a handful of guavas I urge you to burn your books except for the novels. Which I would like to have back [sic].217
211 This letter bleeds from the backside of Entry #16, “The Legend of Travestida.” In hasty Spanish, with run-ons but much affection. The tortured priest-uncle, now a robust farmer, is more of a rustic than a writer. The only entry in these journals not by Raymundo, included here because it’s about him. Anyway it was in his mess of papers. (Trans. Note)
212 Rizal turned twenty-five exactly on this date. Raymundo is not yet seventeen. (Estrella Espejo, Quezon Institute and Sanatorium, Tacloban, Leyte)
213 Three popular student hangouts in San Roque, Cavite, were the pharmacy, owned by the Chinese mestizo Victoriano Luciano; the bookshop Bazaar La Aurora, next to the Botica and owned by Antonio San Agustin; and the cockpit, of course. Luciano and San Agustin will become two of the Trece Martires (Thirteen Martyrs of Cavite) killed at the onset of the revolution, along with Raymundo’s beloved friend, Agapito Conchu, R.I.P.! Happily, in this journal, Agapito is recalled, thus revived and lives. Such was not the case for Luciano and San Agustin. However, their fate is memorialized in the town’s modern name. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
214 Filibuster was the scary, four-syllable word, worse than fucking. (Trans. Note)
215 The priest-uncle Tio U. refers to the father’s association with the filibustero Padre Burgos, though some family members insist that the letter in fact warns about the father’s lapse in marrying a non-Caviteño (“bad judgment of his . . .”). It seems at this point that Raymundo was enamored of a young woman (Lady K?) while hanging out with a disreputable barkada, his gang of low repute. The priest-uncle preferred him to go into orders. Ateneo was their compromise. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
216 Rufino Mago, or Magos, of Binakayan and Cavite City. Later in these journals, this old servant reappears in the hero’s fateful journey to Dapitan in Zamboanga. (Trans. Note)
217 As noted by Professor Estrella, this singular memoir came together finally while Raymundo was in an American jail, circa 1902; however, as I have taken pains to point out, the physical manuscript is multifarious. There are odd and various sheets; in degenerating handwriting and polyglot styles; all bunched in a tin can—nestled as Raymundo’s executor had abandoned it, in an old leather medical bag. The bag also contained crumpled trash, random paper, as well as worms. I have ordered it chronologically as best I could. As he grows into adulthood, bursts of retrospection occur, less so in his immature texts. Gradually, the sense of time in each section becomes lucid. Altogether, the result, yes, is an inconclusive carousel of the words (and worms) of Raymundo’s memory: yet without a doubt it unfolds a man’s, and nation’s, story. (Trans. Note)