A Moment in the Sun (67 page)

“We maintained that heritage against overwhelming armies of men of our own race—shall we surrender it to a ragged rabble of negroes led by a handful of white cowards who at the first sound of conflict will seek to hide themselves from the righteous vengeance which they will not escape? No!” he thunders, the audience joining his shout. “A thousand times no! You are armed and prepared,” he says, and looks among the aisles with piercing gaze, “and you will do your duty. Go to the polls tomorrow,” Colonel Waddell commands, “and if you find the negro out voting, tell him to leave. If he refuses,
kill
him.”

A massive cheer erupts in the Hall, men and women standing, shaking their fists and applauding, many with tears in their eyes.

“Negro domination shall henceforth be only a shameful memory to us and an everlasting warning to those who shall seek to revive it!”

The Judge takes a step down the aisle toward the Colonel. The old man looks forty again, reanimated, a spirit back from the grave. And yes, sometimes the only course is to let the dogs loose and have at it. Order can be restored later. They are only dogs, after all, and tire even of blood.

Turpin claps him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Judge,” he winks. “Every move been planned out. Gonna be like clockwork.”

“We shall prevail in this election,” cries the old rebel, “even if we have to choke the Cape Fear River with carcasses!”

Somebody has to shovel the coal. To feed the engine. Mr. Clawson said as much when he left for the Thalian with the others. “Drew,” he said, “you got to mind the fire while we gone.”

Milsap perches on his stool setting type as Colonel Waddell speaks in the great Hall and the others rally outside. He can hear the Red Shirts through the window as his fingers fly over the keyboard, shouting and singing and shooting off their pistols, celebrating tomorrow’s great victory. When he ducked his head out before, he could see flaming barrels of tar on the street corner, could smell sweet pork cooking. But somebody has to set the front page of the
Messenger
, Special Morning Election Edition, somebody has to ensure that the lightning bolt of truth, hurled before a yearning public, will be properly spelled and spaced.

Milsap has filled the hoppers with italics, and the words quicken his heart as they fall into line—

Rise ye sons of Carolina!

The clandestine pamphleteers of the Revolution must have felt this way, peeling Tom Paine’s seditious manifesto off the blocks—

Proud Caucasians one and all;

Be not deaf to love’s appealing—

Hear your wives and daughters call;

That Milsap has neither wife nor daughter does not lessen the chill that rises up his back as he commits the phrases to metal—

See their blanched and anxious faces

Note their frail but lovely forms;

Slender, pale girls with arms thin as broomsticks, eyes pleading as they submit, horrified as they stare the Nameless Crime in its brutal visage, breasts heaving, thrilled—

No. No. Horrified. Milsap strikes the keys and the matrices rattle down the slides, lining up like soldiers for a volley—

Rise, defend their spotless virtue

With your strong and manly arms!

CONGRESS

Diosdado is here because of the uniform. The one that has not been torn or stained in his few desultory engagements with the disheartened Spanish, nor in the weeks of guiding his mongrel company from post to post facing the American defenses north of the Pasig.

“If you’ve still got a decent uniform,” said Scipio, passing close to the front in white linen and straw boater, “I can get you on for the Congress.”

So he stands here at attention beneath a bamboo arch, borrowed sword raised in salute to the delegates as they file past from the train station nearly a mile away. It is all nipa in Malolos, roof panels woven here sold throughout the island, nipa huts strung along either side of the narrow main road, lined now with excited citizens eager to greet and evaluate their representatives.

These great men, perspiring in full evening dress, pause now and then to lift their silk top hats and acknowledge the throng, wiping their brows with dazzling handkerchiefs. There are not nearly enough carriages. The Banda Pasig, up ahead at the massive stone church, are pumping out
Alerta Katipunan!
, though that old secret society of workers and peasants, wellspring of the people’s revolution, has recently been dissolved by General Aguinaldo.

The entire Philippines is now the only Katipunan
, read his decree, published in both Spanish and Tagalog,
the real Katipunan, where all are united in saving the Mother Country from the depths of slavery
.

A cunning piece of diplomacy, thinks Diosdado, standing at attention, eyes forward, sweat rolling down his face. Certainly none of these gentlemen parading before him were in the original organization, their
cédulas
torn with Bonifacio’s at Pugad Lawin, nor did they rise up valiantly in ’96 to battle the oppressors. Most have not been elected by the regions they represent, regions they may never have set foot in, but have been appointed by the Supremo to impress the
yanquis
and the ruling powers of Europe, reassuring them that the new republic will be administered by educated men, men of means and culture.

Here, riding in an open
calesa
, is the lawyer Pedro Paterno, who after his role in brokering the truce of Biak na Bato petitioned his well-connected Spanish supporters to have himself made “at least a Duke” of Castile, with the position “valued in dollars so that the common Filipino will not hold it in contempt.” Paterno who made his best efforts to rally those Filipinos to the cause of Spain, certainly
his
Mother Country, when the Americans declared war on her.

And here is Don Felipe Calderón y Roca, grandson of a Spanish friar, who balked at recognizing the Revolutionary Government and decries those who “cater to the ignorant masses” who have shed their blood to make this day possible, with Buencamino just behind him, only a month ago jailed for intriguing with the Spaniards, now strolling at the head of a gaggle of his minions.

One of whom is Scipio Castillero.

Scipio, in a swallowtail coat he never wore to the theater, favors Diosdado with his customary smirk and a discrete nod as he passes, and now the sun is almost unbearable, the dust stirred up by this herd of strolling dignitaries thick in his nose, the Banda Pasig, playing an overwrought version of
Jocelynang Baliwag
, perceptibly out of tune.

Two local
kasamas
have camped behind him, men in their forties who look sixty, missing teeth and, in the case of the taller, several fingers.

“So who are they,” asks the shorter, whose name is Eulalio, “these men in the tall hats?”

“
Ilustrados
,” replies Zacharias of the severed digits. “Men who know things.”

“And what do they know?”

“For one thing,” Zacharias states confidently, “they can speak
kastila
.”

“But if we have defeated the
kastila
themselves, if they are banished to their home across the seas, why would we speak their language?”

“Because it is the language of learning,” explains the taller man. “When Padre Fulgencio stole the last five
hectares
of field from you, in what language did he read the legal decree?”

“
Kastila
,” Eulalio concedes.

“And when he gives his sermon to admonish us on Sunday, what does he speak?”

“
Kastila
, again. After speaking that other one for Mass.”

“That is called Latin. The language God uses to speak to His angels.”

“I’ve never understood why the padre does this before us, we who are no angels,” says Eulalio, “when he can speak our language passably well.”

“To remind you of your ignorance,” Zacharias explains. “And to take advantage of you. What is the point of knowledge if you can’t use it to prevail over others? Look at this one—”

It is the fiery Ilocano newspaperman Antonio Luna, tricked out in a general’s regalia, strutting down the center of the road at the side of Dr. Trinidad Pardo de Tavera. A strange and symbolic pair, thinks Diosdado, though comrades from their wild
indios bravos
days in Paris and Madrid—Luna’s brother Juan, the celebrated painter, very pointedly shot his wife and mother-in-law, Pardo de Tavera’s sister and mother, to death in a jealous rage.

“There are only ten, maybe a dozen families who matter in this country,” Scipio likes to say, “eternally bound by blood and commerce.”

The last of the pedestrian delegates pass. The
kasamas
and many of the other spectators drift toward the Barasoain Church. Diosdado holds his pose till his arms begin to tremble, then eases the sun-heated blade back into its scabbard and allows himself to look around.

The honor guard is mostly infantrymen, privates favored with footwear and intact
rayadillo
uniforms, troops who no doubt fought for the Spanish at some point, with junior officers like himself spaced at the bamboo arches for decoration. Capitán Janolino, charged with the detail, hurries down the line with an aide.

“He’s getting in his carriage,” announces the capitán breathlessly. “We’ll greet him at the church.”

They form in double file and march, the rest of the spectators tagging along on either side, till they come to the huge churchyard and create a passageway with their ranks, two hundred yards long, leading to the neo-classical grandeur of the basilica. The shadow of the three-story belltower gives relief to a good half of the waiting soldiers, but Diosdado is not among them. He waits, at attention, in the sun.

Malolos is renowned for its churches, “infested with them” as Scipio would say, and within them many of the Spanish friars captured in the central provinces are being held prisoner. Humiliated, yes, but fortunate to have been spared the wrath of the poor villagers they have bullied and defrauded for so many years. If it had not been for the Church some sort of reform acceptable to Filipinos might have been possible, some link with Spain preserved. But the religious corporations had the ear of the Queen Regent, that girl of sixteen years who famously stated that she would “rather lose all of the Philippines than a single soul for Christ.”

There will be a Philippine Republic now, with Philippine laws and a Philippine Constitution, each new proclamation, Diosdado hopes, no matter how compromised by the
principalía
in their top hats, further refutation to American designs on the archipelago.

Cheers erupt from the crowd as they see the carriage, drawn by four enormous white horses, passing over the small bridge and under the towering, hastily constructed triumphal arch, a trotting phalanx of infantrymen to keep the well-wishers from mobbing it, now swinging into the passageway of soldiers and stopping in a waft of dust at the foot of the great church.

Diosdado can see the delegates crowding at the entrance to the basilica, the Banda playing the newly written national anthem, cries of “
Viva Aguinaldo! Viva la República Filipina!
” filling the air.

He is a small man, even smaller than Diosdado remembers from Hong-kong, carrying a large ivory cane with a golden head, flanked by his taller subordinates as he mounts the steps. The mass of cheering delegates part to allow him entrance.

A small detail of Janolino’s men is left to guard the doorway, and Dios-dado is able to squeeze his way back through the spectators who press forward hoping to catch a phrase or more of the Supremo’s opening address, till he reaches the shade of a huge mango tree. It is an honor to be here, he knows, but he can’t escape a twinge of disappointment at being left outside like this, after his close and valuable service—

Eulalio and Zacharias are there beside him, squatting on their heels and fanning themselves with their hats.

“First Don Emiliano will give a speech,” says Zacharias, “and then the rest will make up the new rules.”

“And what will these be?”

“Better ones, God willing.”

Eulalio indicates a dozen Augustinians, no doubt receiving their daily allotment of exercise, being shepherded across the rear of the yard by a pair of armed soldiers. Robes wrinkled and dusty, the
frailes
hide their unshaven faces from the happy
indio
throng with their parasols.

“Will they be sending these ones away?”

“Without a doubt. As soon as it is allowed by the Americans.”

Eulalio ponders this. “Why do we need their permission?”

Zacharias sighs at the ignorance of his friend. “Because the Americans control the harbor of Manila and every ship that sits upon it. We can’t make the
prayles
swim home.”

“I would like to see them try,” says Eulalio, his face brightening. “I bet the fat ones can float for a long time.” He looks around the churchyard. “Are the Americans here?”

Zacharias stands to look over the heads of the crowd, then approaches Diosdado, holding his hat over his heart.

“Excuse me,
po
,” he says, bowing slightly to the younger man. “Do you know if any Americans have attended? Their great Admiral Dewey, perhaps?”

Every
anuncio
has been full of praise for “the Mighty and Humanitarian North American Nation, cradle of Liberty,” who has “offered its disinterested protection” to the fledgling republic, but the
yanquis
remain distant, cloistered within the Walled City and on their menacing gunships, like dark clouds of a typhoon hanging over the sea whose very mention may draw their fury screaming about one’s ears. We have mounted an impressive spectacle today, thinks Diosdado, but our most important audience is absent.

“Perhaps,” he tells the barefoot
kasama
, “the Americans have other plans.”