A Moment in the Sun (133 page)

“While you were busy running from the Americans,” his father informs him, still seated, regarding his son’s torn
kasama
clothing and sun-weathered face with weary condescension, “your mother,
Dios le protige
, has passed away.”

Diosdado feels unsteady on his feet, but that may only be hunger and the long journey over the mountains. He has guessed the sorry news already, noting the ribbon of black crepe stretched diagonally across her portrait, chrysanthemums abundant throughout the house.

“I am sorry.”

“She was a good woman. Too good for this world.”

Don Nicasio’s face is more lined than he remembers, yellowish, but his eyes burn as they always did.

“I suppose you’re here to demand tribute.”

“One of my men is wounded and needs a doctor,” he says flatly. “And an offering of food would be considered patriotic.”

Don Nicasio snorts, pushes himself up from his chair and steps past Diosdado. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with here.”

The men are in the rear garden, by his mother’s shrine to the Virgin of Antipolo. The statue is of a young, beautiful woman with her head tilted to one side, as if trying to hear something far away.

“She is listening for an infant’s cry,” his mother explained to Diosdado when he was little. “She is the Mother of us all.”

Beyond the stone bench where they have laid Bayani out Diosdado can see the
panteón familiar
, a tiny alabaster tomb with a cross upon it marking the grave of Adelfonso, his brother who did not thrive in the School of Survival, and his parents’ mausoleum, recently garlanded with wreaths of carnations.

That was her name—Encarnación.

The
segundo
with the shotgun and several of the other workers stand nearby, watching Don Nicasio’s face for instruction.

It takes the old man a moment to recognize Bayani, studying the wounds first before looking at the man’s face. Don Nicasio’s body stiffens. He turns away to confront Diosdado.

“Why have you brought him here?”

“He needs a doctor.”

“Dr. Estero is in Palauig.”

“That is ten miles farther on.”

“You have no right.”

“But here we are.”

Bayani raises an arm with some difficulty. “Don’t you recognize me, Don Nicasio?” he asks in Zambal.

Diosdado’s father does not speak. Bayani raises his voice, speaking to the old man’s back.

“Both of your boys home and this is your reception?”

The other men, Diosdado’s
guerilleros
, look away. Don Nicasio tells his
segundo
to send a carriage for Dr. Estero and to have Trini bring some food for these beggars, and then strides back into the house.

“I’m sorry,
hermano
,” Bayani says to his brother. “I was never taught proper manners.”

It was somewhere back in Pampanga that Diosdado guessed, but he has not found the words to acknowledge it.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did,” Bayani shrugs. “Not in so many words, but I did. You people only hear what you want to.”

Trini comes out then, bent with age, tears in her eyes.

“God has spared you,” says his old
ama
, embracing Diosdado and then setting up a table for the men to eat. When the food comes there is more than enough to fill their shrunken bellies.

“We had better finish this,” says Kalaw through a mouthful of
lechón
, “before the Americans take it all.”

Diosdado is certain his father will have no trouble with the Americans, even if his son—sons—are
insurrectos
with a price on their heads. Men like his father are making their accommodations all over the Philippines, coming to an understanding, waiting in line for the positions that will be handed down by the new masters of the land. The
americanistas
will not look so different than those who did the bidding of the Spanish—businessmen, the wealthier politicians, the owners of plantations.
Ilustrados
, even many of the scribblers, especially the ones who can write in English, have begun to campaign for “wiser heads to prevail” and “the gradualist approach” to independence. He has heard of a masquerade party in Manila with an
adobo
prepared, quite purposely, with American tinned pork obtained from their quartermaster corps.

“I’ve never set foot in that house,” says Bayani when they try to move him into the
zaguán
, “and I’m not going to now.”

Finally Diosdado sends the others to sleep on the palm mats Trini has laid out, and stays outside with Bayani in the garden, covering him with a blanket. It is very difficult for the sargento to breathe now, as if he had to strain through a quart of water to find the bubble of air within it.

“The doctor will be here soon,” Diosdado tells him.

“The doctor isn’t coming.”

It grows darker in the garden, the shadow of the Virgin lengthening toward them. Bayani fights to keep his eyes open.

“I hated you,” he says after some time. “I hated your clothes and I hated your shoes and I hated seeing you in your
carroza
on the way to church and the times I heard you speak I hated your voice. I hated Don Nicasio too, though my mother said he was a great man, great and proud and very intelligent. But I hated you more because you were where I should have been. You wore my shoes and ate at my table, the one with the cloth covering it, with a separate plate for every dish, while I was out sneaking chickenshit from your yard to spread on our potato patch. I tried to get the Baluyut brothers to beat you up because I was too shy, too ashamed, to do it myself.”

Diosdado smiles. “I always wondered what I did to upset the Baluyut brothers.”

“When you went away to school I was already in the world, stealing from people, killing
moros
for the Spanish, and I forgot about you. I thought I did. But when I joined the
sublevo
my first thought was to come to Zambales, to evict Don Nicasio from this house in the name of the Revolution and live here, rule here, myself. And when you came back one day, looking like a
maricón
in your white suit with your hair full of brilliantine and speaking Spanish like a
peninsular
, I would say ‘Go away, boy, you are not welcome on this land.’ ”

Talking costs Bayani, and he pauses to catch his breath.

“Then you ruined my dream,” he says when he can speak again, a slight smile on his lips. “You ruined my sweet dream of revenge. ‘We have a young lieutenant from Zambales,’ they told me, ‘and we want you to look out for him.’ ”

“I am sorry,” Diosdado tells him. For confession, carefully choosing one of the friars who didn’t know his voice to unburden to, he said the words but never felt the remorse. He feels it now. “I am sorry for what was done to you and your mother.”

“She didn’t want money. She only wanted him to look at her when he passed on his horse, passed in his carriage. To look at her as if she was there, as if he had loved her. But he is not corrupt enough, our father, to love two women and be just to them both.”

“My mother must have known about you.”

“We called her
La Rezadora
, whenever we’d see her coming back from morning mass, muttering her novenas. The One Who Prays. Maybe she was praying for our father’s soul.”

“And you still hate me.”

Bayani laughs, coughs wetly. “Take a look at us now. We could be twins, except I have more holes in me than you do. How can you hate your twin?”

Diosdado feels himself crying now. Maybe for his mother. The shadow of the Virgin covers Bayani’s face.

“The doctor will be here soon,” he says. “We’ll regroup and make a stand here in Zambales and on some of the other islands—”

“They’re paying fifteen American dollars if you hand in your rifle. How many of our men have ever had that much in their pocket? No—the
yanquis
will win and all of your friends will learn their language, your children will learn their language and priests of the American religion, if they have one, will take the place of the friars.”

“Maybe.” Diosdado has had to wrestle with the possibility. Being steadfast does not mean you have to be stupid. “But one day they will leave—”

“But one day they’ll leave,” says Bayani, “just like the Spanish are leaving, and then we’ll be able to kill each other in peace, the Christians against the
moros
, the Tagalos against the Ilocanos, the rich against the poor, men like me against men like our father. A true Republic of the Philippines.”

One of the workers returns then, a young man Diosdado remembers climbing trees with when they were boys, the kind of young man who should be bearing arms for his country. He steps forward shyly, deferential.

“Señor,” he says, “I am very sorry to report that Dr. Estero cannot be persuaded to come. He says that he is afraid that when the Americans arrive people will tell stories. He sends this.”

The young man, Joaquín is his name, Diosdado thinks, holds out a hand to reveal a small black ball of opium.

“No more,” Bayani growls. “If it hurts enough, I won’t regret leaving.”

Diosdado sits with him into the night, the
tuko
lizards chirping, the moon rising slowly over the grave markers in the
panteón.
Diosdado is cold but does not move.

“Bury me with my mother,” says Bayani at the end. “May God forgive us all.”

PROMETHEUS

It is the filth he can’t abide. Niles has come, in the last few days, to pray that they will kill him.

“They live like beasts, like hunted beasts,” he remarks to the Corre-spondent, who he knows is still alive because of the occasional tightening of the tether around his neck. “And we are less than beasts to them.”

It has been some time since the Correspondent has acknowledged his complaints or observations, the man going mute this morning after they cut poor Private Moss, dead from his wound and their appalling treatment, loose from the tree and tossed him into the ravine. Niles worries his teeth with his tongue to see how loose they have gotten. He tried once, maybe yesterday, to asphyxiate himself with the rope around his neck but was only able to slump enough to make himself less comfortable. He has witnessed two hangings in his life, one a formal and somewhat legal execution that ended with a hard snap and twitching legs, and the other an amateur affair meant to prolong the agony of the miscreant, a white man vile enough in his predations to merit the attentions of Dr. Lynch. There will be no public obloquy attendant on his own passing, the wretched niggers barely glancing in their direction anymore, moving them from camp to camp like necessary but annoyingly unwieldy baggage.

Niles has been recalling his Bulfinch of late, the Judge’s voice intoning Olympian exploits to him and Harry when they were boys, Niles perking up at the naughty bits and staring longingly, whenever the Judge was not present, at the gauze-caressed bosoms of violated maidens in the wonderful illustrations. Lately it has been the fate of Prometheus weighing on him, bound to a rock for his transgression, the giant golden Eagle of Zeus sent each day to tear his still-beating heart from its cavity. How the screech of the feathered terror, how the breeze from the waft of its enormous wings must have quickened that heart with apprehension! And then, after the wrenching pain—what? Was he made whole immediately or left pouring blood from his violated innards, life ebbing from him, thinking this is the last, the end, till darkness—and then a sharp jolt of consciousness, sun bleeding onto the ocean horizon and the heart pumping life again? He imagines that the groan emitted from Promethean lips is not unlike his own when coming to, still knotted to a tree, and realizing that nothing has changed.

He has begun to envy the Titan. Bound, yes, but with the healthful sea air in his lungs, the magnificent blue waters, joyous with dolphins, stretched below him, and the song of cliff-nesting birds in his ear. Wind in the hair. What of a few sharp moments with a razor-beaked demon, a gory, if inconclusive death? Niles is being consumed by insects while still breathing. Lice cavort in his scalp, ants, beetles, many-legged crawling vermin he cannot imagine inhabit the rags of his clothing and every sweat-sticky fold of his body—biting, nesting, breeding. Flies have burrowed into his face and left their eggs, the lumps on his tortured countenance growing larger and more tender each day, filling him with terrible thoughts of what will come with their spawning, what manner of squirming pupae unleashed to feed on him. There is no place on the surface of him that does not itch or sting or prickle with the traffic of tiny legs and he has taken to cursing the niggers in the crudest and most detailed manner whenever they wander near, hoping one will understand and take enough umbrage to send a quick bullet through his worm-infested skull. He feels not so much Prometheus as Caliban, styed in a crevice and bent with ague, victim to sorcerers without wit or pity.

“The Anglo-Saxon,” he informs the Correspondent, “has the ability to amuse himself without cruelty. However, even among those considered, academically, as members of the white race, there is a great deal of variation in this attribute. Take the Dago and his
corrida
, for instance, or the slaughter in your typical Italian
musicale
. And these miserable buggers,” he jerks his head, though the Correspondent cannot see him, toward the rebels, who have stirred from their midday torpor and seem to be breaking camp, “these mongrelized Asiatics practice cruelty as a matter of course, barely taking any pleasure in it.”

There was one for a while who spoke English and would share a few words, but he is gone. The
jefe
of this pack, a degenerate Spaniard of some sort, has a hateful, impatient disposition and rules his cretinous minions through fear.

There is gunfire lower on the mountain.

“Another of their hapless ambushes. We’ll be moving soon.”

If he refuses to go, feigns unwillingness or inability to move his legs, surely they will kill him. Quickly, dispassionately, but not with a bullet. There’s the rub. He has seen them butcher a captured mule with their bolos, the animal dismembered before someone thought to silence its bellowing with a chop to the neck, eyes still large and sentient after its larynx was cut. They fed Niles bits of the half-charred, purplish meat for a week. No, when they come to make him move he will clench his toes to force some blood into his numbed leg, will try to hold the mewling woman of a Correspondent he is yoked to upright and drag him down the pathway after their captors. If they haven’t been killed yet, burdensome as they are, there may yet be an exchange, something already in the works.