I will be asked by that supreme inquisitor—no, not God, but my own conscience: What meaning have you given your life? I must retort: Should life have any meaning other than it be lived pleasurably? This is not a hedonistic attitude; all over the world, people are searching for objects of belief; some see it in politics, in religion, but this attempt to reach out for eternity—in a sense, this is what this searching is all about—is bound to fail because eternity does not exist; the pristine nature of things change, and it is this inevitability of change that, from the beginning, we must always be conscious of. But human nature is, by itself, unchanging, the lust and the greed commingled with the saintly attitudes and selflessness of those who are so inclined. And I? Look not just at myself, inutile now and in this hapless condition. Look at what this mind and this body have achieved! I have bequeathed to this nation progress, fed hundreds, gave them and their families their reasons for being. Don’t talk to me about justice—I know it not as an abstraction, but in the fullness of my deeds. Those yammering crusaders, those who have lambasted me, what have they themselves done? I scorn them, ignore them, regard them as despicable cockroaches hiding in dark, stinking crevices of oblivion. They could not do what I have done, and knowing this, I stand above them all, superior not so much because of my genes but because I have used my wealth and my power in my best moral lights.

At this juncture, perhaps, I should explain my continued interest in prostitution not as a social problem but as an instrument by which I could further my influence, my interests. I have already stated how I set up a travel agency. It served me and my companies very well. But above such a service, two of my talent scouts recruited girls from the Continent, not for some brothel such as my father operated in Pasay, but for the social lions of Manila, the powerful politicians and businessmen who wanted sexual variety and at the same time would be assured of complete privacy. They could well afford the prettiest women—all of them non-Filipinos—which my agency recruited and, God, I made them pay! It was for this reason that these aides were always in Australia, the United States and Europe, in Spain and Italy particularly—for it is in these two countries where they obtained the best girls, who visited as tourists and were billeted in houses in Makati or in the five-star Manila hotels.

“Hijo,” I told Delfin, “if the compulsion comes, let me know. I have so many connections. Beautiful women, all of them very clean—I can assure you of that.”

I had become a pimp to my own son, but I was determined that he suffer no disease as I had done. I may have shocked him, but it was common enough for the rich fathers I knew to initiate their boys into this domain that is woman with the girls I had procured from Europe.

When I learned that Delfin was giving away almost all of his money, I decided to limit the amount I sent to his bank account, but there would always be enough for him to fall back on. Yes, that was it, I was his fallback position even if he did not admit it. Perhaps his knowledge that I was there with the safety net emboldened him, gave him a sense of security. I always demanded this when I went into a new enterprise; if it failed, what was our fallback position? Actually, I did not bother too much with it, although I made sure it was always there. With my bulging portfolios, I had great liquidity, stocks and bonds in the international market, U.S. treasury notes, hard currencies squirreled away and earning slowly but surely, and yes, gold bullion, too.

May I say here, now, how much I admired the Leader, particularly after he declared martial law. I was not in his anointed inner circle; I am not Ilokano or a classmate. But I did not want him to consider me an enemy either. Even before he grabbed so many enterprises, I had already protected my flanks, and not only in my friendship with him and his cronies—hah! how many times were the European beauties in my stable his for the asking. I had connected with the Japanese, the Americans and the Germans; they were a safeguard against his greed. And whenever I was asked, I was also prepared to give.

I said I admired him; he would have been the complete entrepreneur, taking over established businesses with verve and premeditation—the very virtues that I would have possessed more of. Of course, what he did with what he grabbed, that I did not approve of. Whatever one may say about my massive investments abroad, I have not neglected this country, not out of loyalty, mind you, but because this is where I live. Capital, like water, seeks its own level. Wherever there’s profit to be made, it will go there.

Delfin was now on my mind often. I had decided to mold him into an heir fit to take over my empire. That is not an exaggeration. It is an empire of sorts that stretches from the Philippines to Europe, to America and, of course, Asia, too. Not in the grand manner of the Greek tycoons, the Arab sheiks or the Sultan of Brunei, but on a more modest scale, though global just the same.

All my companies were earning and my food-processing factory was ready to go regional. All were directed by my holding company, Cobello y Cia. I had an intelligence operation that kept me informed about my own people, the opposition and those in power. Every bit fed to me was double-checked and triple-checked. When someone’s head was cut off, the victim always knew he had it coming. I never did the executions myself. Always there were subalterns who did it for me. I had learned from my father how to protect myself by having others do the dirty work. And they did it skillfully, gladly, for all of them were rewarded well. Divide et empere! It is an easy game to play and those who play it must always be sure they will not be dragged down by the undertow.

Liberal arts for Delfin took only three years, not four. He was now entering law school. He landed a job at the Nojok law office as a researcher, a job he was very proud to have found, for I learned later that he worshipped this lawyer, this Nojok.

I did not like Nojok at all, his nationalist posturing, his continuous harping about corruption in government. In a sense, I was glad when the Leader imprisoned him; he should have kept him there longer. Not only was he bad for the Americans with whom I had very lucrative relations but for business in general. In the earlier years, he had run out of the country a business associate, Alfred Dangmount. Alfred had come to the Philippines as an American GI and had stayed on after Liberation to set up several businesses. The man had vision. I know, because I was involved in his plans to set up factories. He had planned on making this country self-sufficient and productive in textiles and, together, we had begun ramie plantations in Mindanao and cotton in the Ilocos.

We would have been the world’s foremost producer of this

magic fiber, ramie, but this Nojok hounded Dangmount. What wrong did Dangmount do? He was no different from us, whether Spanish or Chinese mestizos. He just blabbered too much, and said nasty things, such as he could buy any public official, which was true anyway. And so he went and, of course, the businesses that he started were soon taken over by us. I worried, perhaps unnecessarily, that Nojok would also go after people like me, but, fortunately, people like him, these crusaders, do not last long in government. They are soon booted out because they go against the grain, because they turn the faucets off when so many politicians are thirsty.

These do-gooders, these pseudo saints, when will they ever understand that it is this symbiotic relationship between business and government that makes quicker progress possible? Look at Japan’s rise to economic dominance in such a short time! Nojok’s populist nationalism also bothered me; one of our best assets has always been cheap labor, be it rural or urban. He was always pleading for social justice, for the expulsion of the American bases, for honesty in government—all of these anathema to my own interests. And now, my son was working for him!

Yet I should have expected it. I recall an early conversation about why Delfin was going to take up law. As a lawyer, he had a ready niche in my business. I could see that. Angela could not do the job, given her poor physical condition and being a woman and so young at that. And what was his explanation then? That there was a lot of injustice in Siquijor.

He was going to be Sir Galahad, a knight on a white horse, with youthful idealism that would be tempered by age, by the reality of the world outside that campus. Former student leaders, radicals in their college days, but now, in fine summer suits in Makati, timorous conservatives, work for moneybags like myself. Surely Delfin would mature and, in anticipation of that, I had drawn my will for the third time, made many corrections on the first that named Corito and Angela as the major beneficiaries.

I am convinced of Delfin’s common sense. His ancestry will compel him to do as I have done. When the responsibility of running the estate passed on to me upon Father’s death, I had to be equal to the challenge, I could not have spent all that fortune gambling, because I didn’t gamble, or on luxurious living, because there was more than enough for that, or on women—I didn’t have to go far to have that hunger appeased.

So will it be with Delfin—and, thank God, he is a lawyer and better equipped than I was at his age. By himself, he cannot destroy an organization that has its own momentum, a machine that performs with the least interference from he who owns it. Will he make the engine stop? He is full of goodwill—he will need all the money he can to fulfill that goodwill in his heart. And when he realizes this, then he will also realize that he cannot kill the goose that lays those precious golden eggs!

He had derided the Rockefellers and the robber barons. He cannot be accused of hypocrisy—he can very well follow their do-gooding example—and what I have built will then be sanctified by him with a halo of philanthropy.

And Angela, my dear Angela, ten, twelve years younger than he, will be his beacon. All through her young years, I have told her that wealth begets wealth begets wealth. She understands this logic. She is not a Cobello for nothing.

Four years and Angela had bloomed in many ways, but she was still frail, in need of constant medical care. She had become asthmatic and she suffered the omnipresent dust, the dampness, the slight variations of weather. But she was brave, determined, taking up sports that were not strenuous and following the regimen prescribed for her. At fourteen, she was simply beautiful, her hair glossy and brownish in the light, her eyes alight and large. Indeed, she deserved her name—she had an angelic countenance and a voice so clear, so limpid, it was such a pleasure to listen to her. Maybe I exaggerate her attributes.

It was from Angela now that I got the latest news about my son, for all through intermediate school, Angela visited him at least once a week at his boardinghouse in Diliman. She brought him things, food, fruits, candy, whatever she fancied. “He is a very good teacher, Tito,” she told me.

I was very glad they had developed such an affectionate relationship. “He is not uncomfortable with your visits?”

Angela puckered. “No, he is fun to be with.”

She knew enough not to visit Delfin in any of the big cars, the Mercedes—two of which were new additions in the garage. She was driven in an old battered Ford that the cook used when going to the market.

She described Delfin’s room. “It’s tiny, with just a chair, a table and an iron cot. We sit on the cot when he teaches me.”

I have never been inside that house, that room no larger than the bathrooms in the house, but it was clean and airy. How I wished I could tell my Angela that Delfin was her half brother, not her cousin as she believed. The fullest sense of family, its profound emotional pleasure was beginning to enthrall me, give me an exalted purpose, and not just the business sallies where I had always triumphed. I was beginning to luxuriate in the feeling and Angela had made it all possible.

Delfin flourished in law school. I was not surprised at all when he topped the bar—that was what his classmates and his professors expected. In all those seven years, although I had often asked him, he had never traveled abroad. I would have brought him with me on my trips to Europe or the United States, or even to nearby Hong Kong, where I went as a matter of course, and to Tokyo, too. But he had refused, always saying he had to maintain his scholarship although it was no longer necessary for his sustenance. And then he started working in that infernal law office.

It was Angela again who convinced him to vacation in Hong Kong. Corito came along so that we could have some family life, although I must add that she had now become almost intolerable, demanding my presence, bothering me in my work.

Angela chose the penthouse in the condo named after her, not in the old Kowloon Tong block that was built earlier; the condo’s magnificent view of the busy harbor was unhindered by the new apartment blocks burgeoning all over the place. I had carefully chosen the lot when I was looking for a place to invest in and Ann Lee had located it. It was October and cool, the sky untarnished. Delfin had not put on weight in all these years, but I had. He finally wore the suits that Francesco had cut for him, and he truly looked patrician, urbane, a young up-and-coming professional. They did not call them yuppies in those days—1965 and the last days of Macapagal as president. The Philippines was still prosperous, the Leader had yet to come and set back the nation.

Hong Kong was changing. The old brick buildings had been torn down and, in their place, monoliths of stone and glass had sprung up. More apartment blocks had also risen on the peak. Mine stood out, as did my building in Manila, and the house in Dasmariñas, for all were designed by Tanga, the famous Japanese architect. He had come to Manila and stayed here for a couple of months, and also in Hong Kong for a month before the actual designs of the buildings were even started.

Filipino architects? Not one of them has the intelligence and the imagination to define Philippine architecture itself, to understand the need to merge function and form in consonance with climate, available materials, Philippine aesthetics. All of them are copycats, depending on innovations and styles from abroad. All you have to do is look at the morass in Makati and all those California bungalows there!

Delfin’s first trip out of the country, and I watched him keenly, the unfeigned wonder on his face, how he noticed everything. Angela took him sightseeing in the New Territories and on long walks along the shop-lined streets of Kowloon. She also visited the apartment block there, the three units rented out to American businessmen.

I was now sure Delfin was much closer to me, his resentment slowly vanishing. Angela did this. My ever precious Angela, conceived in sin and now a delight to watch. The cool weather brought the rose to her cheeks. She was much taller than her mother and she moved about, in spite of her frailty, with a graceful liveliness. Now, she and Delfin spoke in Spanish even in our presence. I had suspected all along that he had learned the language well but had not spoken it till he was confident. With Angela, that confidence grew.