Entry #43
With the third in the bag, I mean. The one on my back, in my goat like a bag. Oh you know: a posteriori.
—He’s living in the mountains of Maragondon, Matandang Leon added.
Like that shiver that occurs when a passage in a book happens exactly as you had imagined, so my body responded to Matandang Leon’s words. My heart spoke other questions, but my mind kept staring at his carbuncle. Is my father one of us? Did he speak of me? And where in the hell did you get that bukol? But in the course of the night, it turned out Matandang Leon knew everyone else as well—including the Count of Monte Cristo, the juggling dwarf of good old King Alonso, the bold but well-mannered principe of Asturias, and even Jose Rizal.
—Ah, Rizal. I met him, you know, when I had the hideout in Makiling. I didn’t know so many others would be joining me there. If I knew people would be fleeing Calamba left and right, whole families with straw mats and children, after the case of the Hacienda that was a disaster, I would have set up shop in Banahaw instead! The veterana tore down the farmers’ homes, and the friars drove them out of town, and they kept coming to me in droves, clamoring to become bandits. Hey, I told them, you can’t become a bandit just like that—you have to work at it! But anyhow, there I was in Makiling. I heard rumors of the German doctor who liked to take hikes and walk about with the Spanish fellow, that guard of his with the mustache and fancy uniform and a habit of painting watercolors, who followed him around. I knew it was the doctor the minute I saw him.
Tell, the men at the Supremo’s table demanded, tell how you knew.
—Because the security guard with the fancy uniform and the bag of watercolors was with him, you idiot.
Tell, the men at the table asked, tell us how he looked.
—He was tall and fair, like a German. Taller than that painting Spaniard, who was just a pygmy, an unano in a uniform, next to Jose Rizal. Rizal wore a salakot hat and a purple jusi shirt and spoke to me in my own language. So polite. He was a polite man, that doctor. He bowed to me when he saw me, as if I were a señor.
Tell, the men at the table intoned, tell us what he said.
—Good morning, he said, and I said, Good morning. We are looking for a good banyan grove, so I can show this gentleman how roots can grow out of branches, instead of the other way around, he said. It would be a nice subject for a watercolor. I said, over there. And I added, since he was nice, whenever you get a toothache, you can take a piece of banyan bark and just rub it on your gums, that helps. He answered, my old yaya used to tell me so: she lived near here, he said. He thanked me for my information, bowed again and went on his way, twirling his walking stick. And as he walked off, guess what?
Tell, the men at the table chorused, tell us what happened next.
—The grass turned purple as he passed with his cane—purple just like the shroud of the tabernacle during Santo Pascua!
Leche, someone said, he’s just like the Christ! And the Spanish want to kill him.
No, said someone else, they’ll never get him. He has magic powers, German potions.
What do you mean, magic powers? Ulol! Didn’t you hear he wants to become a doctor to help the Spanish in Cuba? He’s on their side now.
You shameless—want to fight?
It could have come to blows, except that we were tired. And anyhow, we still had to start the revolution the next day.
As I said, Matandang Leon was our troop’s leader, that rascal. Lying old bandit. The hero was taller than the unano, my ass. Still, when I slept, I had happy dreams on the strength, I believe, of Matandang Leon’s news of my father’s existence. And once more, I swore, I would speak to the Supremo the next day.
But the next morning, I slept late, and the Supremo had left to join the troops in San Juan.
When I woke up he was gone.
I didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye, much less mention. I was groggy. I still had the papers on me. I had no idea what to do with them, or why I had done it, what had come over me in Dapitan, and now I was the guardian of this albatross.
And if that weren’t enough, soon they would be sending me to war.
Matandang Leon took all of us into the sunlight, to exercise us. He showed us smart military tactics he’d learned from spying on the Spaniards when he used to rustle horses.
His face was red-cheeked, like a baby just born. In my memory what strikes me now is the smoothness of his red-cheeked face—red like an areca nut, red like a newborn babe, red like a general of the revolution.
Santo Santo Kasis!
Santo Santo Kob!
Well, all of us liked Matandang Leon’s tactics.
They were just exercises of vocal cords!
We followed:
Santo Santo Kasis!
Santo Santo Kob!
Susuko, susuko—
Sumuko ang kalaban.
It was the kind of thing, I guess, meant to keep our spirits up, even though we were already quite spirited, if you know what I mean, but it was fun making a clamor, fit to raise the dead. That was the band, of course, which finally woke up, those moochers. They were all borrowed from pieces of a church choir in Trozo, and following the code of religious fiesta they had slept soundly after the lambanog. But once they got started, I understood why wars cannot exist without marching bands.
The horns fired up our lungs, and the drums loudly admired our moves. We followed Matandang Leon’s wild gestures, Santo Santo Kob!, and the castanets jingled in happy chorus. The band major, a boy not even old enough to have a cédula to tear, waved our sanguine flag. His color troops, a pair of gawky Bulakeños, marched behind with a cumbersome medical bag, one skinny hand each holding a leather handle. If this was war, I thought, count me in—it was just like being in a fluvial procession, minus all the praying and the old ladies mumbling the novenas.
This must be heaven, I thought, where all the angels and drunkards fall into place in single file.
No one expected the arrival of the Guardia Civil.
It was so early in the morning, and anyway the Supremo, who had gone ahead with his chosen men, had scheduled the battle for later in the afternoon, conveniently somewhere else.
I tell you this was the story of the war—all mixed signals and crossed destinies and aborted plans. The war was supposed to happen in the next arrabal, not in this nondescript fork between a banyan grove and a Chinese bodega in an unnamed barricade near Bilarang-hipon!
You could tell the guardias were just as surprised by us as we were by their arrival. They, too, had probably just had barako, tsokolate-eh, and pan de sal. At first I thought they were part of another balangay who had come to find us. The men’s dark and startled faces mirrored the surprise on Matandang Leon’s, and when one of the guardias spoke, he shared our tongue.
That was my other trouble with the war.
It was so goddamned annoying.523
I couldn’t tell apart my brothers from the other brothers, the guardias who were Filipinos like us, even when they wore uniforms. Some were deserters, some were not. It was only the arrival of the españolados in the bunch, always holding up the rear, that cleared up the issue.
And then—and this surprises me even now, because it was as if my heart already understood—my heart beat double at the sight of the leader of the Guardia Civil even before I saw him in full.
The españolado stood uncertainly by the Chinese warehouse’s rusting gate, staring at us, the sons of the people.
He wore the uniform of my grandfather Don Raymundo Mata Eibarrazeta, the one in the framed picture in my uncle’s home. The españolado had my grandfather’s unseeing face. Most of all, he had the same scary gray eyes of my father in the other picture on my uncle’s mantel.
It seemed to me that finally I was face to face.
With el genio Jote.
I was so surprised I stood like a dumb decoy before the parley, open to everyone’s guns.
Like a moment long ago—I waited for him to recognize me.
Was this what had become of the bandit who strode the mountains of Buntis swaddled in women’s clothes?
Paniki, sabi ko.
The smooth-cheeked face of interchangeable fate gave me a sting of nausea.
Two chickens came out of the warehouse and pecked at the españolado’s thick brown boots, and he bent to shoo the fowl away.
Sugod, yelled Matandang Leon.
At that moment I understood why the Supremo had chosen Matandang Leon to lead us—and not, for instance, me.
Because Matandang Leon was a crazy son of a bitch.
The tulisan forged ahead of us, even on such short notice, and he cast his raw courage at the startled guards.
The rest of us, I mean, me, I froze.
I mean, look at us. Look at us in the pictures of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, bootleg copies of photographic curios that survive of our war. Even the Filipino guardias wore shoes and, lucky bastards, a uniform, with stripes and pockets. Plus they had guns. El genio Jote, or whoever this lifesize double was, with his precarious head and fantastic katsila nose, wore the arrogance of a man who had not only a gun but a silver, gleaming sword.
Matandang Leon was barefoot, not to mention hung over, and all he had was a bolo and a reconstituted pistol. God bless that intsik merchant who had sold us back our pistols, which our fine brothers had stolen in turn, in parts from the Manila arsenal, a round-robin of stealing and reconstituting and selling that marked our ingenuity at least—at least with the single pistol we had one chance.
Matandang Leon hoisted a weapon and lashed out with the other, and sure enough instead of shooting with the gun he fired with the bolo. The españolado shot him dead. Bulls-eye at the carbuncle, an easy target.
Chaos followed.
How can I describe the battle? Don’t ask me because my brains rattle in my guts and my toes move upward toward my spleen when I think of the moment.
I ran.
I was bent and breathless as if something were breaking in my chest’s bony cradle, amid the flesh and ganglia of my nerves and despair. I was weeping. I was weeping and running and I lost my step and got entangled somehow in someone’s feet, and I didn’t care if he were a son of the people or the son of the Lord, something in me was dying and on top of that I was scared to death.
I fled.
I saw him.
I saw him die.
Matandang Leon was my first—he was the first katipunero whom I saw fall.
I wished never to see another again.
Those staring eyes on the path toward the banyan grove, looking up to the sky in surprise, as if to say somehow nothing had prepared him for this particularly ignominious story. Then he was a nothing—gone—he was a nothing of himself. In that minute, I saw how easily it goes, and a weight fell on me.
As I said, it was that buwisit medical bag.
The skinny Bulakeños were nowhere in sight, and the band major with the red and white flag was gone. The flag sat on a chicken’s carcass, a scarlet inflammation, one with the blood, and the bag had fallen first on my head then at my feet.
The Spanish reinforcements had come, a bunch of Filipinos still picking their teeth, and in the mess I don’t think I ever saw him again.
The unseeing sharpshooting españolado.
My unnamed enemy.
The mirror of Spain who mimicked my father.
But who cares about him?
In the mess of my retreat, I retrieved it, our poor three-letter flag, missing a digit to round out our curse.
Running on, I picked up the fallen medical bag.
—He’s living in the mountains of Maragondon, Matandang Leon had revealed to me. He’s respected by all the bandits.
In retrospect, when I think of it, I must believe it was a kind of truth, an act of kindness, Matandang Leon’s revelation. The clairvoyant drunken old knight had in fact answered the questions of hopeful sons. Who knows if any tale, any tale at all, were not so much an invention as a charm, created for the comfort of a child? I take his words now as a memento: something to remember him by—not my father, no—but to remember that livid old codger Matandang Leon.
In that way storytellers live forever.
I don’t think I ran—I rolled into the grove, and I squeezed myself through the banyan’s grave roots, bag flag and all, to dwell in the ghost-shape of the banyan’s host—
523 Nakakabuwisit talaga: bursts of Tagalog occur frequently; here, much of the text is a mix of colloquial Tagalog and obscene Castilian. (Trans. Note)