They put the white flag out an hour after the merienda.
The chino camp followers came up from Manila, and the men paid them to prepare some pancit canton and baboy, and Bayani, the new sargento who reported to him this morning, had the idea of throwing a few of the pork ears on the fire once the breeze shifted to send the odor over the thornbush breastworks to the Spanish garrison crouching without food in Guagua. He is insolent, this Bayani, addressing Diosdado with the tú when he speaks Spanish, which he does ironically and with an atrocious accent, moving among them with a kind of assurance, as if already the platoon belongs to him. It was a good idea, though, a very good idea, and Diosdado shrugged in what he hoped was a manner becoming an officer and said he supposed they could give it a try. The siege has been on for over a week, the Spaniards never even stirring to snipe at their positions until nightfall, Diosdado’s men dug in all around the town and kept busy shuttling from one trench to the next to try to appear like a much larger force and gambling away their meager three-and-a-half-peso monthly pay. Almost all the people from Guagua managed to sneak out with their livestock the night his platoon arrived, and are camped in the fields behind them complaining constantly about how long it is taking to drive the Spanish away.
“If you would like to lead the charge,” said Kalaw, the private with the big nose, to one delegation, “we will be two steps behind you.”
But an hour after they are finished with all the pancit and the baboy and the fried bananas the chinos have brought up, the white flag appears from the belltower of the tiny church in the plaza of Guagua, the high spot from which a Spanish sniper hit Anacleto Darang in the knee, their only casualty so far.
“Come and talk to them with me,” Disodado says to Sargento Bayani, who claims he was a cuadrillero for the Spanish in the Moro islands and understands the thinking of their officers.
“Con placer, hermano,” says Bayani with his strange, insolent smile. “Let me get a flag together.”
It takes nearly a half an hour for one of the privates to run back to the hacienda they liberated a week ago and borrow a sheet. Sargento Bayani holds this banner of truce, tied to a long bamboo pole, high over his head as they step out and approach the Spanish breastworks.
“Our boys need practice,” says the sargento as they walk. “They’ll never get it this way.”
“The point is to regain our country, not to test ourselves in battle.”
“And when we have to fight the yanquis?” He has that smile on his face.
“The yanquis are our allies,” says Diosdado. It is ridiculous, this cynicism. If not for the Americans the Spanish would still control the harbor in Manila, would still be able to resupply themselves, be able to send fresh troops to relieve any besieged garrison. Education will be the key, as Scipio always says. Of all the ills that plague the people, this overriding cynicism, this ignorance, is the worst.
“We’re sending you into the field,” Scipio told him in Cavite. “Very soon, when we are in power, the people will want their leaders to be men who bore arms against the Spaniards, men of action.” Scipio, never a weapon in his hand, has moved up in the hierarchy, though he will never tell Diosdado his official title.
Diosdado had expected to rejoin the Supremo’s staff, Pepito Leyba at one side of their diminutive leader and himself at the other, translating, rewriting proclamations in a more confident Spanish, offering his opinion when asked. He had a detailed scenario worked out in which Ninfa Benavides, looking up at him contritely in the rags of one of her fabulous gowns, begged for his intercession to save her collaborationist father from the wrath of the Philippine Republic. She was so very grateful—
“This is because of my accent,” he said to Scipio at the time, hurt. “Because I’m not a Tagalo, much less a Caviteño.”
His friend did not deny it. “This will be good for you,” he shrugged. “Believe me. Just avoid being shot.”
Diosdado has no training, of course, but there doesn’t seem to be much to it. Setting a good example, being a model of character for the men, explaining the importance of doing one’s duty and not leaving in the middle of an engagement to deal with problems at home. The uniform—he had the foresight to have a pair made in Hongkong before he left—does half the job. When he caught the men looting the hacienda, Diosdado made them replace everything that was not of immediate use in the military campaign, and put Sargento Ramos in charge of making certain the goods taken were shared equally.
“We are soldiers of the Filipino Republic,” he reminds them constantly, “not a gang of tulisanes.”
There is only an alferez under a smaller, improvised white flag on the other side of the breastworks.
“My comandante wishes to hear your terms,” he tells them.
“You will leave your arms and ammunition stacked, neatly, in the church,” says Diosdado. “You will form ranks and march out fifty yards on the road to San Fernando and halt. There I will accept your surrender.”
“Stacked neatly,” echoes Bayani, mocking, and Diosdado shoots him a look.
“And there will be no reprisals?”
“You will be treated with the consideration due to fellow soldiers.”
The alferez looks uneasily to Bayani, then back to Diosdado.
“We are starving.”
Diosdado nods. He wanted to ask the men to save some of the merienda, but realized it would never be enough to feed the garrison.
“There is food in Malolos,” he says. “You will be taken there to join your defeated comrades.”
He has no idea if there is sufficient food for them in Malolos, only that that is where prisoners are to be sent. The alferez nods and offers him a salute. “I will inform my comandante.”
“There is no reason to make them feel ashamed,” he says to the sargento on their way back to the men.
“Of course not. We may shoot them, cut their throats, hack them to bits, but we wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings.”
The ideal is to keep the best of the Spanish—learning, culture, a certain code of honorable behavior—and jettison all that is base and hypocritical. The friars will have to go, of course, though the Jesuits might be allowed to remain if their political inclinations can be discouraged. The native clergy will do well in the villages, but for the ilustrado class a more elevated approach to Heaven will be required. Sadly, there are aspects of the Filipino temperament, shortcomings, brought into sharp relief by a character like this Bayani—
The Spanish begin to come out of the plaza. They are trying to stay in ranks, but the men sent ahead to make a gap in the breastworks are weak and struggle with the spiky mass of aroma bush and a few men collapse while they are waiting. It is thirst, really, Diosdado knows, no well dug within the garrison’s fortifications and his own people tearing down the bamboo acueducto that fed the town from the hillside stream, and finally the alferez appears beside a tall, emaciated comandante, leading the men who can walk, maybe sixty of them, out onto the San Fernando road. Before they left for this outpost, no doubt, these soldiers knelt in their ranks before the Arzobispo in Manila, receiving his blessing and swearing before God that they would never surrender the sacred banner of their nation. Bayani sends two squads of the men who have rifles to quickly flank them, worried about their reaction when they discover how few of their tormentors are present. Diosdado steps up to the tall officer, who salutes him.
“I am Comandante Ramón Asturias y Famy,” he says. “We are at your mercy.”
“We will take you first to the stream,” Diosdado tells him. “And then on to Malolos. Are there wounded left behind?”
“Perhaps a dozen. Sick, not wounded.” The officer looks Diosdado over. He is glad that the uniform fits him well, that he has managed to keep it nearly spotless during the siege. “May I inquire about your training?” asks the comandante.
It seems a strange, if not presumptuous question for a prisoner of war to put forth. Diosdado wonders if he should reveal his inexperience, even to a man unlikely to resume arms against the Cause. Filipino forces will be at the outskirts of Manila soon, circling the final gem of the crown, and the troops inside the Walled City must be made to believe they are outmanned, outgunned, outgeneraled—
“I believe he is very well trained in philosophy,” Bayani interjects, an innocent look on his face, “with an interest in the Classics.”
It is cruel, yes, and Diosdado wonders how he knows. He has not spoken to anyone in the platoon of his education. Asturias y Famy is weeping.
“A university boy,” he says, tears making channels in the grime on his cheeks. The Spaniards have not bathed for a week. “I am surrendering to a fucking university boy.”