Entry #23
Psigotar om Berlesdy287 288 289(Rludoar om Nonocsy,290 291
a.k.a., Profiles in Bastardy)292 293 294
Case A
19 or 20 years of age. Originally from San Roque, now at the Normal School. Visits occasionally to drag me to Mass. Father, a fisherman; mother, a fish vendor. Favorite food: fish.
Religious dreamer, more of a follower than a schemer. Humble sodalist of the Legion of Mary. His looks are not prepossessing: pug nose and brittle hair. Dry pimply skin scaly from his years in the sun, on his father’s fishing boat. Perhaps eczematic. Wants to be a teacher like his idol, Don Felipe. He’s a plugger, sticks to the straight and narrow, a hermit crab crawling sidewise to his goal. My heart goes out to him. He’s a good friend, faithful though unimaginative, with a nervous agitation that marks sincere men.
A steadfast romantic, known as Ipot for his disasters with women. Also an ascetic, a Jerome in the desert. He’d starve himself into purity if his mother, bless her, didn’t keep sending him baskets of food, which he always shares. She sends excellent Raw Oysters and average Fish Snacks.298
Defects: Smells a bit of shrimp fry.299 300 301 Any deviation into the original, the strange, freaks him out; does not have the stamina for candor, much less stomach for jokes. It’s because of his devoutness. An ideologue for the Virgin, a cabalist of the saints, flogger of his sins. I observe him carefully because it’s a mystery how someone so punished by God can so love Him (he’s a bit ugly; Bamofmi, I mean, not God, though who knows?). One wonders if Christian piety arises from self-loathing, deepened by his misplaced feeling of depravity. Poor Bamofmi! He prefers whips for Christmas. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Confiteor Deo omnipotenti. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
One drink and he cries to God for forgiveness.
A bummer at parties.
Good Qualities: Worships women, though like many here not immune to the adventures of Don Juan Tenorio (believe me, I’ve been in line with him among the damned at Fonda Iris). Fine, if perfunctory, memory. Nice handwriting. Possesses without stint an organ of veneration (somewhere by the liver, where sighs diffuse). Best of all, he has the ardent soul of Saint Francis, though no birds settle on his shoulders. Instead, they—ipot.302
Case B
Anotoi E.
I have always been under his thrall. Small build, Chinese eyes, quick temper. Brooding. Moody. Of a landowning, pious family. Mother hard-working, chief of cigarreras303 304 whose energies surpassed her simple birth. Father, deceased, former mayor (rival of Cemdodi’s dad). Let’s face it, a dullard in the classroom, but with a winning personality, an easy, unaffected way with men. Despite his slightness, he was always our class president and pet of maestros. He took me in hand ever since I began to walk, in those times of cholera when we believed the world was doomed. Though his brain got squashed in that mutiny near Kawit. (He has yet to recover from that fall.) He acts like the older brother I do not have, boxing me in the ears whenever he feels like it. I did everything he did and still have this instinct—to curry his favor, as if certain one day I will lose his regard forever. It’s a terrible feeling, my abiding, satisfying, and anxious complicity in all his distractions.
He demands love, and I carry it like a foetal cord, a strain in my blood.
Anotoi E. was, and I confess with regret, the worst bully and an awful cheat—but he never got caught! Even when his mischief was at my expense (that poison pen letter to Tio U.: a form of high-jinks for him: joke!), I forgave him. He’s a man of daring. And so we follow. When his father died, he left school at fifteen with a convenient excuse. To have an adventure. Bought his own boat by the sweat of his brow and began a fine seafaring life selling fishnets, thatch, and bamboo prows.
Now he’s a little mayor, Kapitan Noimf!305 Ready to go to the top.
Good qualities: Bold decision-maker, coiled to act. Not hampered by introspection or given to remorse. The past is a clean slate of his good intentions, and the future is a gift. Devoted friend. Patriotic.
His brother Csorputi is a saint.306 307
Defects: A troubling sense of gloomy self-regard,308 even I must admit. It leads him into bursts of moodiness over real and imagined slights, often directed, rightly, at the Guardia Civil, but also at his old companions who befriend others, at men better educated than he, at mestizos flaunting women he wants, at foreigners with advantages he covets, and a million other matters, at times so trifling I cannot immediately discern them, though in a series of events I’ve shared with him fleeting moments of borrowed bitterness, over provocations and aggressions I must say I barely noticed but pretended to feel. Perhaps because I’m an orphan, obliged to cultivate oblivion, I try to get rid of it—that gruesome gnawing on the bones at the world’s injustice.
It can cause goiters.
Curiously abstemious, don’t know what to make of that.
For a long time I’ve kept these disloyal feelings to myself and now feel guilty and relieved both at giving them words.
Case C
Cemdodi L. L.
Man of brawn. Father, former mayor (rival of Anotoi’s dad); mother, schoolteacher (my aunt Juana, a devout woman—she named him after the hero in Voltaire, though sadly, like his brother, he was no scholar, though as we can see, learning is no impediment to the masses’ regard!). Robust even in youth—strong-armed, muscular. Defended me in that skirmish in my first month in Manila. He knocked “Moises” out for good and the kid went back wailing to mother in Tanauan with a black eye. Cemdodi was only visiting. “Moises” never returned to the boarding house. I had no trouble with “Florencio,” “Leandro,” and the boys of Calle Caraballo after that. He believed it was his duty as my cousin to fight for me. Otherwise, I can’t shake off the feeling that he treats me like a loser, that he’s ashamed. His parents are bigshots. My father is either dead or a bandit. Plus, I’m practically blind, a nighttime imbecile. How could I, his own cousin, end up a basket case?
I will never be worthy of his respect, which makes me want to kick him in the butt.
How he became best of friends with Anotoi E., son of his father’s bitter rival, is town legend. Now they are so thick it makes me sick.
His brother Demoat is a weasel.309
Good qualities: Simple-hearted. Loves Cavite. Loves his family. Hates Spaniards. The one-dimensional virtues are his: loyalty, obedience, piety. Chastity, not so much. His courage is profound (though shortsighted), his loyalty enduring (but canine). I love him as my elder, but he’s exactly my age.310 Hearty drinker.
Defects: Simple-hearted. Gains convictions by habit, not reflection; his truths are dog-eared. These are not necessarily defects—but they’re a drag. Killer boxer, however, so one should never mention any of his defects to his face.
Case D
Chuem C.
French charmer. Phony. Schoolteacher with the pose of a remontado—but the heart of a bully. Everyone likes him, taken in by his stranger’s langueurs and amazing, eight-inch mustache, oiled and greased with ritual passion (the envy of Efepoli, who has twice his heart). He avows a shrill, vocal fealty to Cavite that anyone else would find suspicious, except Caviteños. Who knows where his family came from—from the sewers of Paris or the fine houses of Binondo. A bastard child. In any case, he has good qualities.
Good Qualities: Possesses the capacity to throw in his plight with that of present company. Others would call that sucking up; but many view his acts as profound—an honorable empathy. He cherishes kinship, family, the slightest of ties. His nervous system is that of a hound: his loyalty to friends is feral, and his enmity is equally tedious. In this case, he is most like us: blessed with a deep sense of community and a fierce covenant with those of our blood. Tribal. So we, his chosen family, welcome him with open arms: because he is not ours, and yet he chose us.
Was he product of a viscount-merchant’s squandered youth? orphan of a Bruges perfumer? Who knows? Has the ability to make of ignominy an attractive mystery: life is a game of luck he has won. The schoolchildren, his charges, love him—but it’s not clear whether they are mainly fascinated by his prodigal mustache and foreign tongue. Good drinker.
Defects: Same as above.
Case E
Padsi P.
Around 30 years of age. I was proud to be introduced to him, at first, seeing as he was of a generation and kind not my own. Lawyer, of medium build. Smooth hands reeking of French cologne. Spaniard by affect, Chinese by blood. Budding (but elegant) Judas. God Knows Hudas Wear Fine Clothes! Well-dressed voluptuary of Binondo. Piano player. Envy of young Manileños, hero-worshipped by us provincianos. Tu un daldalero!311 Urbane, talkative (ay, stop it already, my God!312), frequent traveler to Madrid and Barcelona. Knows many people—M. Calero! Pablo Feced!313 Hung out in Paris with Juan Luna! Drew his family chest himself! I’m most jealous of his conquests among women, though I would not decline possession of his books.
Good Qualities: Successful in his field. Nice shoes. Persistent (trait most obvious in his dealings with women). If ambition is a virtue then he’s a saint. Fluent though legalistic Spanish. I must admit my own sounds falter, I still can’t lisp. Good at chess. Fine drinker, but mysteriously leaves before it’s time to pay: got to admire talent like that!
Defects: Vain. Pompous. At worst: substitutes fine tailoring for true refinement. Noamla berlemla, mi ra puada vimgoes am at.314 315 316 A liar, one can’t really trust him. Lots of girls fall for him, especially the superficial ones. I hear rumors Lady K. likes him, though she is engaged to another. Let that flirt go to hell! Will stab a man in the back as befriend him, if need arose. Relationships are calculated costs.
He will go far. Let’s say, in a dispute, he sees the chance of his glory from delicate arbitration. He has the worldly opportunism of the best scoundrels. Thus, he settles quarrels peacefully. (I’ve seen him do this, in the case of a duel between a scion from Bulacan and a Dutch merchant.) Will one fault him for his success, as others reap the benefits of his self-interest? If a selfish man averts bloodshed, does one condemn him for his shallow intentions?
An ethical conundrum that awaits a verdict.
Case F
Efepoli C.
I met him in San Roque by Botica Luciano, where his uncles ground my glasses. He struck a tragic figure, even when young. A matchstick, skinny as a marionette, with eyes that blazed in his cadaver’s face (he was, in fact, well-off: it wasn’t his body that was starved). Father, pharmacist. Mother, owner of tobacco store by Cavite’s port.317 318 319
Parents were transplants from Binondo. He did everything in a nervous sputter—whether playing the organ, rolling cigarettes for goddamned cazadores, his mother’s clients, those louts lording over the Cavite piers, or setting the type on an uncle’s Minerva press, which Efepoli operated with lapidary compulsion, caressing the leaden type so that some pages echoed his own agitations, and then his uncles beat him up for being a lazy boy. He loved gadgets. Later in Manila, when he discovered the mysteries of the photographer’s cape, he fell into its illusions. However, in San Roque, I couldn’t tell if he was going to be a druggist or a druggist’s victim. What was clear was that he had too many uncles telling him what to do.
Good qualities: A boy of practical talents and a philosopher’s soul but never a teacher’s pet. His constant movement—fingers twirling, thumbs twisting, legs shaking in his seat—condemned him daily to the lash, which he endured with the same appealing intensity that made his organ music tolerable and, to be honest, at times sublime.
I love him in a way that makes my body ache, here amid chains in Bilibid, listening to grunts and groans.
O brother, Efepoli C., where art thou?
His sister K is an angel.
Defects: Philosophers who weigh less than a turtle’s egg get picked on. His Adam’s apple is expressive and gives his heart away with pathos. He used to tremble at the sight of the gangs, the big boys who roamed San Roque. When we arrived in Manila, he depended on me—a blind boy!—to shield him from our enemies. Believes the martial arts will save him; his facial hair, too, he believes is an improvement (others’ opinions vary). Always looking for redemption. Self-righteous. Drinks like a wuss. Selfless. Believes death is an oblivion a man risks for country.
His sister K is a flirt.
Case G
O.320
What can I say? The Seed.321 322 Also nicknamed the traitor.323 324 Will steal a syllable to appease a vowel, concoct history from a diphthong; you know what I mean: a slippery type. Pleasant in company, a bit retiring, perhaps genuinely shy. Her pañuelo can hide a bolo as it would a pen, but circumstances enumerate her many awkward graces.
Good Qualities: She has the mental resources of an encyclopedia but likes to skip the boring parts. Possesses an earnest vigor behind the scenes, true of many of her kind. Respectful and polite to strangers. An open heart.
Defects: Plays hard to get. A bit testy, to be honest. Who knows, a cheat. Also, inclined to speak in aphorisms that make her stuffy company. Cleanliness is next to godliness. God helps those who help themselves. Whoever does not learn to look back on the past must sail like a boat on two rivers. Consummatum est.325
287 Aha! Finally: the Katipunan entries! I was wondering when the secret language of the revolution would reappear. All that love stuff: boring. Coded signs here indicate Raymundo’s fear of capture. After his failed romance, he turned to serious business: the work of patriotism. Makes sense, especially since he’s in Manila, seat of the Katipunan. But what the hell does it mean, “psigotar om berlesdy”? Perhaps an anagram? “Pigs—or goats—bleed something something”? A revolutionary warning against informers? (Estrella Espejo, Quezon Institute and Sanatorium, Tacloban, Leyte)
288 Beats me. Rludoar om Nonocsy? Sounds fishy, or maybe Finnish. While this section is mostly in Spanish, a few odd words occur in cipher. In no language I can fathom—and I’ve shown it to all the guys I know at Cornell, an entire soccer team made of international graduate students, including Lebanese. No one can figure it out. This cryptic message is one of the mysteries of Philippine historiography. (Trans. Note)
289 Bah! Elementary, Watson! They are anagrams, possibly Katipunan notes. Or revolutionary Masonic cipher. Anyway, figuring it out is easy if you act like Sherlock Holmes. Haven’t any of you translators read him? You should. The first line reads: “Pigs seem too broadly r—” ; the second line continues the first: “(R)—otten dead Jesuit Indians.” The entire phrase must be: “Jesuit Pigs Seem Too Broadly Rotten. Dead Indians.” Gobbledygook, yes, but passwords need not make sense. That’s why they’re passwords, idiot! “Jesuit pigs” must be code for spies. “Dead Indians” must be rebels. This encryption is preliminary—but it will keep scholars at work for decades. Great find, Mimi C.—the beginnings of Raymundo’s Katipunan diaries. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
290 Estrella: please don’t get mad—but does it matter that the date is 1886, Raymundo’s Ateneo years—six years before the Katipunan was launched? Maybe it’s a collegiate joke, Pig Latin? (Trans. Note)
291 Oh shush, Mimi C. Is heroism a mere prank? Of course it’s connected to the Katipunan! Generals of the revolution have mentioned codes in their memoirs: this is one of those Holmesian ciphers beloved of nineteenth-century secret societies, such as the Masons, from which the Katipunan (and Arthur Conan Doyle) heavily borrowed. (The Katipunan’s passion and dignity, of course, were indigenous.) Masonic rites of secrecy thrilled the revolutionaries. The Masons were notorious cryptolepts, code fetishists (as well as ghoulish graphic designers). Thus, in Raymundo’s diary, we see evidence of Masonry’s baroque obscurantism and frankly enigmatical tricks, from which derived the Katipunan’s cumbersome initiation rites, for instance. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
292 I get it. Psigotar om Berlesdy = Profiles in Bastardy. The cipher is in English! Just check the letters: then decode. Cheers. Rludoar om . . . Studies in?? But still—why in English? (Dr. Diwata Drake, Reichenbach Falls, Switzerland)
293 Oh thou cryptic doctor—good one! S = R; I = O; G = F; et cetera. I get it! Thanks. (Trans. Note)
294 Am I the only one out of the loop? What terrorist signals are you sending? (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
295 Therefore, if I am not mistaken, Bamofmi R. could be—Benigno S.! This section is a serial monograph on his contemporaries. The following, then, are probable suspects, I mean subjects, in order: Benigno S[anti], Emilio A[guinaldo], Candido T. T[irona], Juan C[ailles], Pedro P[aterno], Agapito C[onchu]. He begins and ends his list with his two great friends from San Roque, his John the Beloveds—Benigno Santi and Agapito Conchu. Except for the fop Paterno, all are from Cavite. Other actors are mentioned in passing: the pious Crispulo [Aguinaldo] and the treacherous Daniel [Tirona]. (Trans. Note)
296 Uh, Mimi C., you’re missing the last one. Case G, who has no name, just an initial. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
297 Oh, yes, Case G. That, too. (Trans. Note)
298 Talangka: sobresaliente; Torrones de Tulingan: pasado. (Trans. Note)
299 Rough translation of may anghang bagoong. In patches of prose, the Spanish student regresses into Tagalog. (Trans. Note)
300 “Regresses” is a key word. It is always useful to note when the writer returns to native speech, which is when he touches upon the authentic self. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
301 Touché, Estrella. It is, of course, an amusing fable that “native speech” always equals “authentic self” in that insight that in our days passes for political propriety. As if the “authentic self” had a single character, speaking only one language and in correct syntax to boot. Whereas perhaps it is less tempting but more analytically productive to imagine the self as a jumbled aggregate of fragments and bits of languages, “foreign,” “native,” and others, a signifying soul wantonly spliced: especially the Filipino soul—so tugged about into linguistic quarters who knows where and when which of its languages—Tagalog, Spanish, English, Waray, and so on—will draw blood? (Dr. Diwata Drake, Dobbs Ferry, New York)
302 Ipot: the organic sheddings of our feathered friends, occurring at times in pointillist pellets, Pollock-like runs, or fine impressionist shades of shit. (Trans. Note)
303 Cigarette makers. Implies that mother was a factory foreman. Notes on class status occur in these sections. (Trans. Note)
304 Class, of course, is the signal issue in discussions of the revolution, metonymized in the class(ic) dichotomy Bonifacio versus Aguinaldo, that is Peasants = Redeemers versus Petty-bourgeois = Betrayers. Race is less remarked upon. Raymundo, as a petty-bourgeouis Basque-Filipino-(ghost-Chinese) cuarterón, quadroonish or mestizo type, from landowning, military, and lamp-oil-selling castes, is, I’m sorry to say, destined to mess up. Let’s see what history reveals. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
305 Ah! Niomf = Miong! Hah, Dr. Diwata, now I get it—I, too, have deciphered the code! His childhood friend Miong, a.k.a. Emilio Aguinaldo, later first president of the Republic, became kapitan (mayor) of Kawit at a tender age. Also a school dropout, when his father died. Miong left school to help out his mother, the young widow Trinidad Aguinaldo y Famy. But it’s not clear that he was any good at learning anyway. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
306 Crispulo: Emilio’s older brother. A devout Christian. Initially opposed to revolt and the Katipunan because of its Masonry but became a disciplined soldier. Killed right after the historic [dubious] Tejeros Assembly of 1897, in which Emilio was elected [sic] president, while Bonifacio was demoted [cheated] to minister of the interior [and even that seat was taken away!]. Emilio was “elected” while at battle; Crispulo insisted that Emilio swear his oath and stay in Tejeros—he offered to take his post at war. Emilio agreed. Sure enough, Crispulo was shot. He died in battle in his brother’s stead. In an interview with the historian Agoncillo, Aguinaldo is “visibly affected” when he mentions his late brother. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
307 Did his brother’s death feed Aguinaldo’s callous betrayal of Bonifacio, who challenged him at Tejeros? Aguinaldo’s brother Crispulo died to uphold the election at Tejeros Assembly. So under ancient grudge slips brotherly guilt and self-loathing: twin emotions of survivors, of war and other traumas. (Dr. Diwata Drake, Kawit, Cavite)
308 Un amor propio, incómodo y meditabundo: periodic phrases proliferate in this section. (Trans. Note)
309 Daniel Tirona: Candido Tria Tirona’s younger brother. Pairs of brothers are a war trope. Familial bonds drew people to battle. Daniel took over his brother’s troops when, like Crispulo, brother of Aguinaldo, Candido died early in the war. Candido died in the Battle of Binakayan, before the fiasco of the Tejeros Assembly. A student in Manila when revolution broke out, his brother Daniel had never officially joined the Katipunan, which explains why he could so easily degrade the Supremo. It was Daniel Tirona, the lout, who at Tejeros challenged the Supremo Bonifacio’s fitness to be leader of any government—he challenged even the Supremo’s right to be minister of the interior, when it was Bonifacio who had founded the secret society, organized its passion, inspired its growth—damn you, Daniel Tirona! You’re a wart on the nation’s undersole, a crippling boil! (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
310 Mathematically confused. If Cemdodi LL is Candido Tria Tirona, he was six years older than Raymundo Mata. Raymundo has a mutable notion of his age, situating his birth year between 1862–1872, convenient for the historical dramas to which he was witness and symptomatic of the mental concussions rebels were heir to in those dank and pestilential American prisons! Bastards! Americanos! (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
311 Perverse, ungrammatical Espangalog here. A form of Cavite-Chabacano? Translation: He’s a huge talker [tu = you (Spanish); daldalero = talker (Tagalog, from daldal: to talk)]. (Trans. Note)
312 Agi, saba na daw, por dios por santo mio! Odd outbreaks into Visayan are also habitual and perplexing. (Trans. Note)
313 M. Calero (a.k.a. Marcelo H. Del Pilar, the tireless journalist) and Feced were enemy combatants in the Propaganda Movement: Pablo Feced was the notorious Quioquiap, nasty castigator of indolent Filipinos in Manila’s conservative dailies. Feces, is what I call him. Bastard! Spaniard! (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
314 Noamla berlemla, mi ra puada vimgoes am at. Hmmm. Again, a cryptic insertion. Perhaps a rebel code in Sanskrit? One patriot, Isabelo de los Reyes, was an erudite Sanskrit scholar, you know. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
315 The next line, in the original: Miente bastante, no se puede confiar en el (A liar, one can’t really trust him). What the connection is, only Judas knows. (Trans. Note)
316 Mimi C., we went through this. Noamla berlemla, mi ra puada vimgoes am at = Miente bastante, no se puede confiar en el. Simple. The code is in the pudding. But this time the message is in Spanish. (Dr. Diwata Drake, London, England)
317 Tobacco is another recurring trope in rebel annals. By the nineteenth century, the tobacco monopoly, though in decline, ruled industry and leisure on the islands. A fine hotel in Barcelona bears a remnant of the Manila Tobacco Company, a baroque mahogany cave now a tourist trap along the Ramblas. That, along with Rizal’s prison cell at Montjuic and the Tagalog plaque to Rizal on Plaça Bonsuccés, is all I bothered with in Barcelona. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
318 Another astasic attack, eh, Estrella? Let me see: did you faint in Madrid, get hives in the Basque country, have allergies in Canton, Ohio? (Dr. Diwata Drake, El Raval, Spain)
319 I got abasic stress in Michigan, where I recollect someone STOLE my scholarly work! (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
320 I.? (Trans. Note)
321 The Seed is an epithet: La Semilla. Also capitalized in the text. (Trans. Note)
322 Oh good. Finally he mentions the women. La Semilla was the appropriate name of a Masonic order of females who provided “the seed” for a legion of subsequent katipuneras. While the exact identity of the understandably cloaked “I.” may never be fully known, there are several renowned cases of female katipuneras, from the teenage Icang, or Angelica, daughter of Narcisa Rizal, the hero-novelist’s sister, to the tragic wife of Andres Bonifacio, Gregoria, who became the widow of a musician; from Agueda Kahabagan, the generala of Cavite better known as the Tagalog Joan of Arc, to my own favorite, the patient and shrewd Marina Dizon, early organizer of women in Manila. And of course, the thousands who were unknown. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
323 This section seems coffee-stained and cigarette-gashed and contains many deletions and revisions. For instance, I settled upon la traidora though the text indicates an original syllable through which a frank deleatur cuts: other options are la trasladora or la tarantadora, et cetera. While the first alternative makes better sense given later wordplay (su pañuelo . . . bolo . . . boligrafo), the author’s intention is quite clear to me: the slash over the syllable (sla[?]) is in a decisive hand. (Trans. Note)
324 Pseudonyms of women of the revolution included: Lakambini, for Gregoria de Jesus, Bonifacio’s wife, and Tandang Sora, for Tandang Sora. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
325 That is, it ends. Not clear in text if this is separated into its own passage or is another aphoristic exemplar attached to Case G. (Trans. Note)