Entry #32
June [1896]
We arrived before sunset. Rufino, Dr. Pio, and I rowed out on one banca and the women in another. I had already made my goodbyes to Segunda in the galley, where her husband, that gifted cuckold, shook my hand with affable innocence. The heat was sultry but not withering though the sun still blazed: a tribute to the town’s mild clime, due perhaps to its open posture against the Sulu seas. I carried my cane, my banig, plus a rosary just for effect. Rufino, even on the banca, was already crossing himself as if at a saint’s canonization, muttering prayers of novena. I realized only later that, unlike myself, Rufino had the wit to be scared about the outcome of our journey.
After all, we were visiting an exiled man.
Dr. Pio—that is, Don Procopio—paid a porter to carry his valise and other effects. No improvised suitcases for that suave Bulakeño. The porters mangled their backs carrying his mendacious equipment, that heavy medical bag, a useless burden, if they only knew. He shouted when they almost dropped it into the water—but what was the point? He had not come to cure any ills. I must say he cut a dash—quite cosmopolitan in his fashionable trilby and his European shoes, which the porter took and tied with care to a pole. Don Procopio put to shame the likes of me, with my single camisa and pitiable chinelas sloshing in the banca’s shallow flood. Oh, that I spend all my money on filthy novels and smuggled pamphlets! I had the spendthrift ways of a cowardly filibustero, and all I could show for them were my dumb decoy eyes and wet feet. As we rode the precarious banca, I was conscious, beside the well-groomed señoras and fraudulent señor, of my ragged costume, my bent reader’s posture, cheeks scrunched to perpetual close scrutiny, altogether a lackluster figure, prematurely aged,448 under a buri hat. Who was I to meet him, shake his hand, and speak his name? I, Raymundo Mata Eibarrazeta, of Cavite’s Kawit, the Basque country’s Jaca, and any of the obscure towns of tubercular grief around Leyte: son of a bandit and grandnephew of a minstrel, grandchild of a tyrant and a bleeding actress’s orphaned kid. Why, hell yes, I had cause to greet him! I straightened my skinny shoulders, kept a hand on my hat, and held high that brow serene, rufous and scowling in the sun: hell yes, I had reason.
Why not?
A reader has as much to say about a book as an author, if not more, I thought, crossing my fingers in the gliding banca, ready for shore.
That avid bunch that greeted us on shore portended our importance, or their boredom. How many of them swarmed at our arrival I couldn’t tell—but it seemed a whole village of young boys appeared to wave us toward land. They took our bags, our balot, our burdens—then they all disappeared toward the huts, a few meters from land, that accosted our gaze with a tidy welcome.
—So this is Talisay, Dr. Pio, a.k.a. Don Procopio, exclaimed.449
—He built it all, with the help of his students, said informative Doña Sisa.
—Can you believe, all this from a lottery?,450 exclaimed funny Angelica.
—You must see his clinic, doctor, said timid Josefina.
—No, Josefina, let us eat first, interrupted rude Angelica.
—He eats only what he plants, offered tender Josefina.
—Though he doesn’t harvest pigs, countered clever Angelica.
—Well, he also has poultry, a piggery, and cows for pasture, asserted proud Josefina.
—Plus cacao fields, a coconut grove, and acres of abaca, added agronomical Doña Sisa.
And that is enough of characterization via epithets, my clumsy rendition of insights frayed from my hunger. What distressed me was this altogether mundane illustration of my hero—what, he was a pigsty owner, chicken cooper, and cowherd, too? O Eumaeus!451
What blasphemies await poor readers who gain proximity to their writers!
It was as if, the closer you came, the more gall you collected, this unsolicited information about their lives filling up not a holy grail but a tin-can chalice of murky wine. I don’t know how I had imagined him—on some lofty cloud scribbling phantom masterpieces at a desk? From Doña Sisa’s details, he may as well join my retired uncle in his reverence for the wet season!
Numerous adjustments to my preconceptions confounded me as we moved toward his house. The women chattered about the land’s improvements with nonchalance, not knowing they were shattering my illusions. He had planted the langka trees near the beach: the locals told him they wouldn’t grow so close to the sea, but look—like a miracle their roots have dredged deep enough to clutch the soil! He has a green thumb, they agreed. You don’t say, I thought, looking at the lush earth—he’s a goddamn green digital giant! Check out that mango tree: he loves its sour white meat. Ditto the cashew plants, green peanuts, and lanzones. He also loved tinapâ, mango jelly, and guavas, and he kept asking for kesong puti, but only from Laguna, and bagoong, but only from the Ilocos, which they used to mail to him even when he was in Europe.
My God, he was a veritable pig!
And do you remember his obsession over the stockings—his competition with the Chinese vendors to sell European-style hosiery in Dapitan? The ladies laughed, even the loyal Josefina. Oh please, do not add vile mercantilism to his sins of gluttony, I cursed to myself. I mean, will I learn he dreams of trading like a bombay next?452 453 His first project, said Doña Sisa, had been to import fishing nets from Calamba, to improve the catch in Dapitan. They can’t make fishing nets here? I asked. Gee whiz, I thought, what did the people of Dapitan do without him—flap their hands in the ocean? No—they used sakag, about the width of a little rice basket, so he asked us to mail large woven nets from Laguna, the largest pukutan money could buy.
Sadly, she said, he didn’t get it.
What darned ache and pain in that information—he only wanted a fishnet and he did not get even that?
I see in my heart a miserable apparition—the flailing arms of a drowning man, flapping at fish.
The twisted irony of that cruel question, quite unrhetorical in his case: if you were cast away on a desert island, what ten things would you take? Not even to include in the list: 1) the dreams of Rousseau, 2) the pamphlets of Voltaire, 3) the sciences of Rost and Jagor, 4) a pen, 5) one musical instrument, 6) postage stamps, 7) an unfinished manuscript, please to forward from Hong Kong, 8) secret perfumed letters from innumerable lost women, 9) a half-whittled wooden figure, yet untitled, 10) desire.
No, not even that.
Instead. Number One: goddamn pukutan, a fishing net from Laguna.
How the turn of fate had made him—well, human.
And look at that chicken coop—see? Against the hill of lanzones trees. He designed it himself. His patients pay him with poultry. He designed that water system, too—over there, beyond the outhouse. He took two months to figure out how to rig it to reach his home. I ooh-ed and ah-ed as they expected, but privately, my heart was breaking. My God, I thought, when the hell does he have time to write his third novel if he’s busy dredging up drainage systems for his kasilyas?454 455 Worse, what did it mean if his own beloved sister did not mention—not once, of her own volition—that first principle, his writing schedule? Was it in the morning, after the milking of the cows? Or between noon and twilight, when the pigs and the poultry and the household help were deep in siesta and finally he was all alone, catching words with dismal fishing nets?
The sister went on and on as my heart limped behind. When she showed us the carefully sculpted busts of his captors, governor Ricardo Carnicero and his grim-faced wife, those sullen gray guardians of his murmuring water system, I wondered at Doña Sisa’s blindness to the symbolism, so apparent to my sore vision I turned away. What did it mean but abject surrender, no matter what anyone else thought? He was whittling away his wits in his isolation. What kind of land was this, where he found comfort in carving out the fulsome cheeks of his oppressors?
His livestock, his coffee beans, his engineering marvels. What else was this man expected to think up next—replicate the sun at midnight? Oh yes, and have you noticed the lamps, Doña Sisa gestured, as we walked up the bamboo stairs and looked back at the path we had taken.
We turned around to gaze at the trim footpaths, a neat maze beyond the beach, sweetly hemmed with garden flowers.456 Like a pendant microcosmic gem resting against the sea, Talisay was beautiful in the sunset, a lovingly mapped dream. A homunculus universe—replete and whole.
You could rest your weary head here, I thought, if they kept you here long enough. If they kept you long enough, I thought, you could fool even your soul.
Necessity, I thought anyhow, is the mother of invention.
But to my sunken heart invention was also the bastard of despair.
—The lamps blaze even at night, Doña Sisa said proudly, so that the people of Dapitan say he makes day out of darkness.
—And what is that? Don Pio asked, pointing at a shuttered kiosk on the rib of the hill.
All the women looked to where he pointed.
—Oh that, said Josefina. It’s nothing.
—For shame, Josefina, said Angelica. That contains his butterfly collection. He hunts for specimens and sends them all in special jars to Europe.
—And he used to write there, Doña Sisa whispered in an addendum I could barely hear.
—Ah, said Don Pio with fawning unction, the famous lepidoptery!
Will this clown not stop his pandering?
—He helped build that hut himself, said Angelica.
I considered the blinkered place.
I considered the entire tranquil torment that was Talisay.
This was the curse of revelation, I thought—the whoredom of Babylon was nothing but the brutal candor of the quotidian matter of the divine.
—Doesn’t he use that hut still? I asked.
—No, swiftly said Josefina.
Doña Sisa stared at her but said nothing.
Well, I thought, I couldn’t blame her. Mama mía. With all this activity, her husband must be a nervous wreck.
Purbida.
When does he have time to be with her, much less write his third novel?
To tell you the truth, I couldn’t quite tell the status of the Austrian lady. From Don Pio’s pursed lips at my questions, I sensed it was a sore point, and in her exchanges with Doña Sisa, I witnessed a mutual though guarded affection, at times distressingly condescending on the part of the sister, so much more accomplished and knowledgeable even to my limited eyes than the teenage bride.
But my heart went out to the foreign mistress, for it must be so—she was his mistress, none of us were fools.
For one thing, could Masons get married?
Anyway, where was he?
Dr. Pio/Don Procopio inspected the place with the rapt air of a forger, and Rufino and I followed the leader with matching faces of gawking ardor. In fact, Rufino’s mute stupefaction had about it such a look of pure comedy that I was afraid to imagine the moronic replica in my own gaze. If this was our reaction to the sister’s introduction of his feats, how would we respond to his actual arrival?
And as if in a trice, conjuring the devil, there he was on the footpath, the giant of our hopes, writer of our sorrows, surgeon of our madness, and magician of Dapitan: I almost fainted in the twilight to hear his sister call out—Pepe!
Even his nickname was profane.457 458
Pepe, the writer.
That was he?
How can I describe the moment, what words do I have at my disposal, to speak the unspeakable instant when I finally met him, the Writer, face to face.
Was it possible, could it be?
Ecce homo.
I raised myself to full height to gaze upon the man, and I couldn’t help it, I said, gasping out in surprise:
—Jesus Christ, you’re short!459
Jesusmariosep, Jesusmaryjoseph.
I was taller than Jose Rizal.
448 How old was Raymundo? In this document’s variable math, in this episode he was between the years twenty-two to thirty. I talk to myself now since other readers have taken a vow of silence. It’s odd how you miss even those with whom you initially have nothing in common, except words. I think now of our aggressive jesting, our mismatched wits (some were not as agile as others), our triple jousts—we had some fun, did we not—us three musketeers, sans kulot? Those were the days. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
449 Rizal’s “estate” across from Dapitan town proper. In 1892, Rizal won 2000 pesos in a lottery, gave most of it to his father, and spent 80 pesos on the spit of land called Talisay, meaning beachfront. One day, let me tell you, when I regain my strength I will sail to Talisay. It is my dream. And one of you can carry my bags, Mimi C. or Diwata, I’d travel with you if you so wish. Did you hear that? We three can travel one day, as a sign of our old companionship. Please: please speak, old friends. I’m so lonely here in the Quezon sanatorium! Oh—un horrible vacío en el mundo de mis affecciones. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
450 Oddly enough, Rizal bought a share of the lottery with Ricardo Carnicero, the governor of the island at the time, his oppressor who became his friend. He, too, was lonely. This was a common trope in Rizal’s short life: his captors admired him. Another instance is his artistic military guard in Calamba in 1887, Jose Taviel de Andrade, who was more of a fellow painter than a guard. Jose’s brother Luis ended up being Rizal’s defense lawyer in December 1896. It’s possible that his reliance on the goodwill of his enemies rather than on the rash justice of his countrymen was fatal. Instead of escaping with rebels who planned to kidnap him from the ship España, Rizal declined and left himself at the mercy of the ship of Spain. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
451 On Dapitan, Rizal had reverted to his family’s primary occupation, farming. He was good at it. When he left Dapitan, he bequeathed quite a bit of land to, of all people, his barber. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
452 In his last years (did he know they would be his last?), Rizal settled into domestic occupations. By all accounts, he lived the active life of a gentleman farmer, like a placid man in Tolstoy, without the deadly spiritualism, or George Washington, without the slaves, and with a full set of good teeth. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
453 Bombay meant itinerant trader from India: from a Spanish epithet, obviously racist. Isn’t that so, Ms. Translator? Mimi C.! Mimi C.! (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
454 Toilet: from the Spanish casillas. Pukutan, of course, means fishing net. Mimi C., silence is golden, but will you at least do your job? (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
455 No. This is Raymundo’s story now. Leave him alone. (Trans. Note)
456 A specter from childhood rises. What happened to that cottage industry of educators who codified details of Rizal’s entire life in K through 6 reading primers, Unang Baitang until Ika-anim na Baitang? Their details were both pious and quotidian, moral and trivial, a reverent, gossip-filled annotation of his life. Like many, I happily measured out my life in the Rizal Caravan, and to this day my first memories of reading follow the Stations of the Hero’s Cross: Grade One, His Family. Grade Two, His Childhood. Grade Three, His Studies. Grade Four, His Travels. Grade Five, His Exile. Grade Six, His Trial and Death. Raymundo Mata appears, but only implied, in a cameo role, in Ikalimang Baitang: Ang Kanyang Retiro—he’s never even mentioned in the chapter on Dapitan. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
457 I’ve never liked Rizal’s nickname. In Waray, it is profane. Ay, dios mio, I can still see Albino, a.k.a. Wild Gamao, and Miguel, a.k.a. Green Muhog, rolling on the aisles laughing at the name. Illiterate first graders—mental cripples! (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
458 Sssh! (Trans. Note)
459 Aah, sssh yourself! Raymundo’s expletive has resonance. The cult of Rizal as a martyr Christ-figure is banal and banál at the same time. A whole mountain of devotees cherishes his relics and sings praises to his name, even as we speak. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)