A Moment in the Sun (102 page)

“I remember there was a celebration when you left for school,” says Bayani, deadpan. “A feast for all of Don Nicasio’s laborers, with fireworks and everything.”

“You were there?”

Bayani looks away. “I heard about it. People were very proud.”

Diosdado scowls. “Rich men send their sons to university because they’re not fit for anything else.”

“But you learned.”

“Nothing of use here.” He indicates the rocky path, the line of straw-hatted soldiers ahead of them.

“You have languages,” says Bayani.

“So have you.”

“I have the languages of ignorant people. You have proper Spanish—”

“Which my father spoke in our house. English is from our trips to Hongkong. At university I learned only Latin—”

“You know sciences.”

“The theories only. Nothing practical, like how to make gunpowder—”

“You know history.”

“So do you.”

Bayani snorts. “I know stories—”

“History is only stories written down.”

Bayani looks disappointed. “Then how do the young
ilustrados
occupy their time in Manila?”

Diosdado sighs. “Some drink and gamble. Some put on their
frac
coats and bowler hats and spend their nights attending the theater and courting young ladies. My friends and I spent most of our time trying to impress the padres with our intelligence and our cultivation,” he says, “and the rest of it plotting their destruction.”

“You wanted them to like you?”

“We wanted them to love us like their perfect children. We wanted them to respect us. But no matter how we parroted their language, no matter how much we learned from their books, we were never more than
indios
to them.”

“They insulted you.”

Indios sucios
. It is what his father had called the majority of the people who lived in San Epifanio, people who cut his cane and processed his hemp and picked his mangoes in the orchard,
indios descalzados
,
indios tontos
,
indios sinverguenzas
, and Diosdado had spent his young life striving not to be anything like them. But even with Padre Peregrino, whose pet he had been at university, he was never more than a curiosity, an
indio
who won honors in Latin, a talking monkey.

“We were so full of hope,” he says to the sargento, “so full of energy and
patriotismo
. We would not become rich and corrupt like our fathers, we would fight and fight and never sell ourselves, we would never—”

“Take money from the Spaniards and run to Hongkong.” Bayani looks up the hill to the summit, speaking casually.

“That was a strategy, carefully thought out by General Aguinaldo. A chance to heal and to plan—”

Bayani turns to look him in the eye. “If the
americanos
had not come, you would still be there.”

They have stopped moving, as have the men behind them. Joselito runs down to them from the top of the hill.

“
Yanquis
ahead of us, Teniente. On the other side.”

Diosdado gestures and little Fulanito rushes forward with his binoculars. The boy loves to carry them, the strap around his scrawny neck, bumping in their leather case against his knees. The men ahead are already sitting, eyes following Diosdado as he hurries up past them with Sargento Bayani.

The uniform shirts are a beautiful bright blue against the brilliant green of the rice paddy on the plain below. Two full companies, most resting on the side of the plantation road, a dozen standing stretched in a firing line. Diosdado twists the focus ring on the field glasses until the others come clear.

PATROL

There are ten of them, in the simple white cotton with blue stripes, straw hats scattered on the ground behind them. Their arms are tied behind their backs, their bare toes curled over the stone of the low dike they stand upon, facing a shallow trench they have just finished digging. The Americans raise their weapons in unison and there is a dotted line of smoke puffs. The Filipinos have toppled out of sight into the ditch before the rifle report echoes up from the plain.

Diosdado puts the binoculars down. Sargento Bayani lies on his belly beside him, his face impassive.

“If we cut around the hill to the north we should be able to miss them. Unless you want to try an ambush.”

“General del Pilar told us to report to headquarters, nothing more.”

The sargento fixes him with a look. “
A sus órdenes, mi teniente
.”

They crawl away from the top, then stand to head back to the men. “We swing to the north,” says Diosdado. “General Aguinaldo should be informed of how close they are.”

It is a hot, airless, dusty march around the hills, past noon when they reach the outskirts of Cabanatuan to be greeted by dogs in an ugly mood. There are dozens of them, scabby, ribs showing, shifting around the troop in a loose pack that seems to have no leader, snarling with their ears laid back. The men throw stones but the dogs only scamper away a few feet and then regroup. Diosdado halts the makeshift company by the first decent-looking dwelling they come to, and asks the betel-chewing old woman in front if he can go inside to change clothes.

The tunic is not so white now, hanging loose on him, buttons unpolished. His friends at the Ateneo called him
flaco
sometimes, and he hadn’t thought he had any weight to lose.

“
Por favor, mi teniente
,” jokes Kalaw when Diosdado steps out of the hut dressed to report to Aguinaldo. “Ask the General if we can have a week’s leave in Manila. They say the
americanos
have the lights working again.”

Bayani walks with him into the town. There are more dogs, growling low as they pass, and dozens of the Presidential Guards lingering in the plaza, eyeing them suspiciously.

“Something bad happening here,
hermano
,” says Bayani.

Sometimes it annoys Diosdado when the sargento calls him brother, and sometimes it seems like a compliment.

“They’ve probably heard the Americans are close.”

Bayani shakes his head. “We’ve seen these Caviteños before. This is the bunch that Luna disarmed after we burned Tondo.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You can wash their faces and stick them in red pants,” says Bayani, “but they’re the same
putos tagalos
. You better be careful.”

“Go see if you can find the men something to eat.” Diosdado wishes there had been a mirror in the woman’s hut to comb his hair. He wonders if General Aguinaldo will remember him from Hongkong.

Scipio Castillero, wearing a spotless white suit and polished leather shoes, is lounging by the entrance to the
casa parroquial
next to a pair of sentries. He grins when he sees Diosdado.

“It’s Brother Argus, all dressed up like a soldier.”

Diosdado is too tired to smile. “Look who’s visiting the war.”

“I’m here with Don Felipe,” says Scipio, pointing upstairs. Don Felipe Buencamino is Secretary of War, one of the old guard who are said to be
autonomistas
, willing to trade Spanish domination for that of the
yanquis
. “How about you?”

“Reporting to General Aguinaldo.”

“Miong isn’t here.”

“We were told he was.”

Scipio shrugs. “This may not be a good day for you to be here,
compa
. Something in the air.”

Scipio has always been the one with the inside information, the one at school to steal the answers to the history examination, the first one in their class to start spying for the junta. He wears the smile of a man who knows what you don’t.

“I have to take care of my company.”

“The best thing you can do,” says Scipio, not smiling anymore, “is march them far away from Cabanatuan until things settle down.”

Diosdado steps past him into the building. “Politics must agree with you,” he says. “You’re getting fat.”

It is hotter, if possible, inside the
casa parroquial
than in the plaza, and there are flies everywhere, crawling on the walls and windows, buzzing lazily in the air, dead flies littering the tile floor. The
encargado
behind the desk, a nervous-looking sargento, also tells him that General Aguinaldo has left Cabanatuan, and does not know when he will return.

Diosdado sits on a bench by the wall to wait. The next superior officer who comes in can give them orders. He sits with his back straight and concentrates on keeping his eyes open, occasionally wiping at the sweat rolling down his face with the back of his hand. His stomach is making noises, low rumbling under the drone of the flies and the squeaking of the lopsided fan that turns overhead, barely managing to stir the air. Better that the
supremo
doesn’t see him in this state. He has developed, if not patience, the talent for waiting that is vital to a military career. He counts flies, living and dead. A Presidential Guard
teniente
sticks his head in the door, glares at Diosdado, then disappears. Diosdado hears some pacing upstairs. He guesses it is near three o’clock when there is a chorus of barking from the plaza, then angry shouting just outside and a slap and then General Antonio Luna stomps into the room. Diosdado jumps up and snaps to attention, but the
encargado
, surprised halfway to his desk with a wastebasket in hand, can only freeze with his mouth hanging open.

The general is in his usual fury. “Have none of you people been taught how to greet an officer?”

The sargento drops his trashcan and salutes. Colonel Román and Capitán Rusca step in behind Luna, looking around the room. Paco Román nods to Diosdado.

“I have come to see the President,” Luna announces.

“He is not here,
mi general
,” says the
encargado
.

Luna yanks a folded paper from inside his jacket, waves it in the air.

“Then why has he summoned me, in his own hand, to report to him at this place and time?”

“I don’t know,
mi general
. I only know that he is not here. He has gone—a
way
.”

Luna, seething, suddenly turns to fix his glare on Diosdado.

“I was told the same,” says Diosdado. It does not seem the moment to ask if the general will give his bastard company an assignment.

Luna snorts, then steps up close to the sargento. “This is the seat of our government. The headquarters of the army of our nation. This paper says I am to head a new Cabinet. Is there anyone here who can offer me an explanation?”

“Only Señor Buencamino is upstairs, sir.”

The general’s face turns a deeper red, almost purple, as he turns to Román and Rusca. “We are engaged in desperate battle,” he says in a barely controlled voice, “and they leave a traitor in charge of headquarters.” He pushes past the sargento and bangs up the stairs. Paco Román rolls his eyes toward Diosdado before he and Capitán Rusca follow.

There has been more bad blood and trouble. Another officer refusing, at Bagbag, to honor Luna’s authority, the general pulling two companies off the line to confront him and his troops, and Bagbag falling rapidly to the
yanquis
.

“He was almost killed at Kalumpit,” whispers the sargento as Diosdado sits, uneasy, back on the bench. “Shot off his horse with the
yanquis
all around him. The say he was like this when the colonel saved him.” The
encargado
points an imaginary pistol to his skull. He seems disappointed by the outcome.

There is shouting from upstairs then, two voices. Luna’s is the louder, cursing. Diosdado hears the word
traitor
more than once. Buencamino has no place here, shouts the general, no authority. A capitán of the Presidential Guard strides into the room with a half-dozen of his men, ignoring Diosdado to look up the stairs with a tight face. Diosdado’s stomach drops as he realizes that the capitán is Janolino, whose brains were very nearly blown out by General Luna after the burning of Tondo. “Be prepared,” says the capitán to his men, “but do nothing without my order.”

The men bring up their rifles and
bam!
one discharges, the bullet shattering the glass of a framed photograph on the
encargado
’s desk.

The yelling upstairs stops abruptly.

“
Mierda
,” hisses Capitán Janolino.

The flies stop buzzing.

General Luna charges down the stairs, livid, the summons to report clutched in one hand and the other on the butt of his pistol.

“Who fired that shot?”

Before there is an answer his eyes fall on Janolino, also gripping his sidearm.

“You. What are you doing here?”

“I am commander of the Presidential Guard—”

Just as Colonel Román appears at the head of the stairs a pair of the soldiers leap forward swinging their bolos, metal hacking into bone before the general pushes clear of them, blood spurting from the side of his head, yanking his pistol out to fire wildly, chips of stone from the wall stinging Diosdado’s face, Luna staggering out the door and down the front steps with Janolino’s men rushing after. Román and Capitán Rusca run down the stairs and out past Diosdado and then there is a ragged volley of rifle fire. Diosdado trades a look with the terrified
encargado
, then rises and goes to the door.

Paco Román lies splayed at the bottom of the stairs and the plaza dogs howl as at least a full company of the Caviteño
guardia
surround the stricken general, firing indiscriminately now, Luna still on his feet with eyes blinded by his own blood shrieking “
Cobardes! Traidores!
” and firing his pistol till it is empty and he falls to his knees and immediately the bolomen are in hacking, hacking, as the dogs bark and snarl and nip at the backs of their legs in a frenzy of excitement. Diosdado feels a hand on his shoulder.

It is Scipio, somehow inside the room now. “A very bad day for you to be here,
compa
. Out the back door.”

Diosdado takes a last look, Capitán Janolino yanking the bloodied summons from the dead general’s fist, then turns to hurry past the weeping
encargado
and out through the rear of the
casa parroquial
.