Entry #31
June [1896]
As we passed by the Panay coast—Capiz, Iloilo, Antique—I thought again of that mystifying pair, the Visayan divers from Australia who had disappeared after their good deed.
Perhaps I was infected with that melancholy that seems to graze one like a rash among a ship’s moving shadows. Those pearl divers now rose with a mythic heft, tanned and muscular angels of freedom—with that ragged eyeful of coconut hair439 that happens to Filipinos who’ve been too long in the sun.
Who knows, I thought, I might see them when we all go to war, after the doctor-novelist-hero-ophthalmologist gives the green light to our plans, after our mission in Dapitan.
When will we three meet again?
Maybe not.
Passing by Capiz, the third or fourth day of that journey—did it last only a week?—I recalled our moment of farewell, etched in my brain. The pair had a kind of flatfooted stance by my door, as if, pearl divers, they had just begun learning again to walk on land. I wondered how they were, the hard-working sailors who had gone back to organize triangles of mutineers on their far-off island.
Now there it was, their island, scratched against the dark shore.
So the ship’s cook, a friendly sort, told me.
The shell of Capiz.
Try as I might, it meant nothing to me.
The random quality of our islands in the moonlight betrays our brotherhood’s tenuous pledge.
And yet, one day, I hoped, when we saw each other again, we’d note the marks of our union.
Past Dumaguete, we squeezed through the perilous straits of Siquijor, that sea of witchcraft and dolphins. Mermaids swam there, wrecking boats with impunity. Never proceed under the habagat, or you were destined for death, or at least some form of dislocation. That curve toward open sea, before you sighted Mindanao, was enough to drive you insane—it was as if finally you were lost, amid the endless algae and barracuda, as witless about your destination as the loony flying fish.
In this way, the late, slow arrival of the prow-like shores of Zamboanga had about it the false horizon of destiny.
We approached with anxiety—even Dr. Pio had a fit of nerves, muttering to himself over and over the speech he was going to give Rizal, refining his phrases to make himself look smart.
He had a long way to go.
However, I must say I did not envy him.
Despite my bravado, this is what I knew: I would be terrified to speak to the man. I was glad that I had not brought my copy of the Noli—no need to ask him then about an autograph and risk looking like an idiot. “Excuse me, Mr. Rizal, can I please have your signature?” What—was I a debt collector, tanga? “Ehem, Mr. Rizal, please sign this vegetable, I mean cabbage, I mean—lechugas!” Oh my gulay, God help!440
I mean, it seemed incredible, in fact, that he lived on that bobbing nonentity in the distance, now you saw it, now you didn’t, in the twilight of our vision looking most discomfitingly like, well, like every other island I had just seen.
The approach to Zamboanga was excruciating, and Rufino and I whiled away our time with the eighth sacrament (after baptism, matrimony, and extreme unction): cards.441
—They say he has a flying carpet, Rufino said, throwing down a jack of spades.
—Who? Didn’t you see my queen?!
—The German doctor. The one who will cure you.
—He’s not German. He’s from Calamba. And I’m not sick, you know. I’m just nightblind. Anyway, flying carpets are in fairy tales, Mang Rufino. Or at least the Chinese do not sell them in Manila. Ah, I’ll take that deuce.
I was beating him easily at the game, but Rufino didn’t notice.
—He can walk on water, you know.
—You’re mixing him up with Jesus. That’s in your gospel of San Geronimo.
—No, Segunda says so.
—Who’s Segunda?
I pretended not to know, though he and I knew full well who she was.
—The cook’s wife. The one whom I saw—
—Now Mang Rufino, it was dark and your eyes are old. Old age puts fevers in people’s brains.442
—No, Don Mundo, I saw—a woman showing—
—Showing what?
Rufino tossed his last card on the table, completing my winning hand.
—Showing the rich bat hole of the ace of spades,443 thus: the fleas of the vulva of the widow of espadañas!444 Que dios berdugo te bendigo!445
He was right.
May God the executioner have mercy on my soul.
I could not repent, for after all, what with my foolish hankering for an untouchable stranger, my sins were already multifold. And then there was Segunda, with the body of an angel and the squeals of a piglet, who helped in the galley, a kind of sous-chef coquette. She was a seasoned voyager, touchingly proud of her husband the cook, an amiable roughneck. In contrast with the English señora in widow’s weeds, Segunda the cook’s wife was jovial, you might say, almost to a fault: she giggled even when she came. But who can blame her? We were coupling by a cow.
I had met her in my errands for the ladies, going to and fro with glasses of lemonade and hot tea. Segunda used to trill as she butchered live animals, and her breasts’ fine trembling did justice to her violent songs. By the third day, she had taken pity on my poor glances, which caught her chest, I mean her eyes as she was mangling some soon-to-be capons, while her husband chewed betel off-duty with the sailors. Ah, her dexterous aggression with those blunted birds was enough to make a fellow feel for his own, to make sure they were there, and this I did with such tender distraction, acting thoughtlessly on my thoughts, that Segunda shrieked and hit me in the face with a basting tool. I bled. Then she brandished her bloody knife and laughed.
You might say a scene of carnage, not to mention her despotic glee, was not a good start to our communion. But while the ways of God are mysterious, those of humans are more so. Her gruesome humor turned me on, while she believed I was demented, so it was a good match, if you don’t count the adultery. With that nobility that marks her sex, Segunda did not even seem to mind, later on, the bovine nature of my lowly loft, and while you could not quite tell my grunts from those of our companions, I believe they were as happy for our union as we were to be rolling in their humid hay.
Segunda was from Dapitan. Despite a few demonic qualities, she had a knack for belief. She and Rufino, who wasn’t called mago for nothing, were birds of a feather, a pair of gulls. No matter how much I explained that it was impossible for a man, even a writer-ophthalmologist-zoologist, to walk on water on a handkerchief, Segunda clung to her declaration of his paranormal side.
—You’ll see, she said, when you meet him. He’s an aswang.
—No, said Rufino: more like a manggagaway.
—All those sick people who come for his magic, Segunda said: oculto.
—He’s an oculist, you dimwit, not an occultist!
—He can walk on water, Segunda repeated.
—You’re both crazy, I said. He’s a writer. Only Jesus walked on water, and even that is just hearsay.
—My son, please ask the German to cure you of your blasphemy. It’s worse than your blindness.
—He’s an aswang, muttered Segunda. He makes bats talk and knows the words that resurrect the soul. You’ll see.
Boy, that girl would not retreat. If you think about it, she herself was a kind of devil—she possessed an unconscious witchcraft under which any man would be glad to be victim, if you ask me. She had a fiery innocence, that Segunda: and her blend of foolishness and vigor only endeared her more to me. Sadly, she would not disembark with us but would remain on the boat with her blissful husband, happily mutilating poultry as she crooned her songs with lambent glee.
Meanwhile, the mourning American señora had now become more animated. As Zamboanga loomed and we coursed toward Dapitan’s inlets, she combed her hair lovingly and hummed songs in public. Josefina, as the grieving Swedish lady was called, now exuded perfume and cast off her blighted aura—that soapless stench of sweat and pubis that had first aroused me, a humid reek, especially when she moved her dirty skirts, was now replaced by banal talc. And yet—her stockings, which I glimpsed often in those wanton accidents that happen at sea, remained what they were: smelly, secretive, and sinful. Doña Sisa, Angelica, and Josefina stood with that impostor Don Procopio at the railing, looking anxiously toward shore though all we could see were the blurred outlines of trees.
She was his favorite sister, Dr. Pio had confided to me about Doña Sisa, as if he were intimate with the writer’s affections. So why, I thought, had he named his madwoman character in the Noli after this ordinary woman carrying an abaniko like everyone else? Why burden a favorite with the symbolism of deranged Motherland? Beats me. Doña Sisa, with her fattish waist and love for garlic, looked about as ready to fall into suicidal depression as Don Procopio was to speak the truth. She did not look like the image of the degradation of Islas Filipinas but more like a portrait of a pious eater of pork. As we approached the shoals, I reflected on a writer’s reasons for confusing identities to useless ends, and so missed the thudding moment of our arrival. We got off the ship onto a pilot’s banca, to negotiate the shallow waters of this edenic coast.446 447
439 Mata de lampaso. I get it. Raymundo uses another pun on his name [mata de pelo means mop of hair; lampaso means, among other things, coconut husk]. Right, Mimi C.? (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
440 The declension of vegetables (gulay) that occurs in the text makes no sense, as none of them rhyme with “novel;” the American-era pun extends the mystery. Don’t you think so, Ms. Translator? (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
441 That joke is so nineteenth century. I would add the ninth: karaoke! Personally, I prefer mah-jongg over cards; it has a most salutary effect on the senses, the clack of tiles like the sound of om. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
442 An interesting discrepancy occurs in two versions of Valenzuela’s memoirs. In Appendix A of the Minutes of the Katiupunan, Valenzuela states: “. . . Under the assumed name of ‘Procopio Bonifacio,’ I embarked on the steamship Venus . . . accompanied by Raymundo Mata, a blind man, and Rufino Magos [sic], both residents of barrio Binakayan, Kawit, Cavite . . .” In the later edition, Valenzuela’s biographer uses the same language but adds to the facts: “He traveled under an assumed name, ‘Procopio Bonifacio,’ and was accompanied by Raymundo Mata, a blind man, and Rufino Magos [sic], Mata’s young aide.” The truth of Raymundo’s memoirs asserts Rufino Mago [not Magos] was an old man while he was the young patient. In addition, while they were both from Binakayan, Kawit, they were residents at the time in Manila: further proof of Valenzuela’s notoriously unreliable testimony. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
443 ¡Que rico las pulgas de paniqui de puquis—entonces: las alas de la viuda de espadañas! ¡Que dios berdugo te bendigo! The spate of spite here progresses incoherently. (Trans. Note)
444 Ah, Mimi C. You’re back. Welcome! I knew you’d reappear with the nasty words! The faithful reader will note the allusion to the character from the Noli, the fraudulent “Spanish” matron, la viuda de de espadañas [sic], Doña Victorina, Rizaline quips increasing as the ship nears Dapitan. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
445 May the wrath of God the executioner fall upon you: the ultimate oath, perhaps an ancient Chabacano screed. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
446 Is this another of Raymundo’s cunning allusions to the hero’s poetry, of which he seemed to have intimate knowledge? Was Dapitan also Raymundo’s “nuestro perdido eden,” etc. etc? At this point, it is hard to tell apart the hero’s words from the reader’s mind, a symbolic gambit of a sort. What do you say to that, Dr. Diwata? Are you still there? Or are you expelling your quack exhalations on some other text? (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
447 Dear Estrella, contrary to rumor, I have been reading these entries carefully and formulating some interesting—“symbolic gambit of a sort,” is that what you said? I will admit, I have been bemused—I will keep in touch, I am in the middle— (Dr. Diwata Drake, Saint John’s, U.S. Virgin Islands)