When the Elephants Dance (37 page)

There is also Bartoy and Nina to think of. They are more like family to me. Bartoy is the son I would be proud to have. He has the passion and the hopes that I carry with me. And Nina Vargas? She has always been my dream. Never have I felt so accepted by a woman. It still feels new, that she belongs to me. I walk in wonder of her. Ahh, Nina’s smile; to be in her warmth is to lie in the sun. How I long for the sun. I have no questions of morality. Morality has cheated me in many ways, so I take what I can. Yet here I am, far from them. I have many concerns: How to protect them? Whom to protect first? Whom to lead? When to rest?

Up above, the stars against the black are incredible. They outshine the sliver of a moon.
Does Nina see these same stars?
Feliciano leads me through the jungles, twisting and turning at a fast pace. He means to test me, but I know the jungles better than he can ever know. How else have I managed to outrun the Japanese raids and patrols? We travel this way for an hour. I study his every move. His eyes scan left to right, he pauses to listen to things I would not waste time with, then moves again. He grows tired at the pace he has started, while I keep up with him even in my injured state. He knows I too am watching, judging him. He does not know the extent of my hate. I fight at this moment not to kill him. I remind myself again that he is my only hope of finding Taba and the others.

I laugh inside at my situation. Who would have thought I would be walking beside a Makapili? If my group saw me now, they would not understand. I
wonder at what would turn a Filipino into a Japanese sympathizer. What would it take to turn in your own countrymen and watch as they are tortured? We have similar upbringings, no family to turn to. But I have chosen to help our people, whereas he has sold his soul to the Japanese Imperial Army. I stop my thinking when I see he is studying me.

“Why not just ask me? I know you have been thinking about it,” Feliciano says.

“What?” I ask.

“You have many questions about the Makapilis. You want to know what would make me a sympathizer. Perhaps you would ask if I have ever met your father, Senator Angelito Matapang.” He asks this plainly, as if discussing the workings of a motorcar. His manner is casual. His arms swing confidently at his sides.

“I already know what it takes to join your ranks. It takes a coward, a traitor. It takes a person who wishes to be led, and not to lead. I have no questions about this. As for my father, do not bait me.”

He continues to try me. “I have met your father. He is well respected within the Makapilis. He has many Japanese friends.”

“Yes, and he will rot in hell with them.”

“He denies you publicly to this day. But everyone knows you are his son. The resemblance is strong. You look more like him than his youngest child. Your half-brother favors his mother’s side. Have you met your brother, Eladio?”

I stare at Feliciano. He swallows once.

“Why do you bear their name if you hate them so?” he asks defiantly.

“Why not? I wish for his important friends to know this. I am a stain he cannot wash away.” I say these words with much bravado, but inside, inside the pain is rekindled. The same badge of shame I have carried since I was a young boy at the orphanage. At twelve I was adopted. I had mixed feelings. Hadn’t I always wanted a family? My foster mother was told my real name, Matapang, yet she hid that name from me. I had always been told it was Legaspi. It was only later, something said in passing by the other kids. A joke, the word
bastard
, and then the confusion.
Your name is Matapang, like the well-known lawyer, very much like the lawyer’s. Ask your mother
.

When I confronted her with the question, she caved in easily and gave me the identity of my father. She said it was nothing to be ashamed of, and I believed her. I believed her, and in turn I believed secretly something else. I believed she was wrong when she said my father would never acknowledge me. I thought she said it merely to keep the peace for him and his family. But I was
wrong. On my eighteenth birthday I ran away from her and found myself on my father’s doorstep. He was not a senator yet, just a lawyer, but he came from a wealthy family.

I remember walking up those stone steps and how my heart jumped when the door was opened and I saw my younger half-brother walk past the door in fine clothes. He was carrying a leather schoolbag. He was clean and well fed. There was happy chatter coming from the back rooms. Just a glimpse, but it was enough. I wanted that life. And when Mr. Matapang, my father, came to the door, I saw an older version of myself. There was no doubt we were blood related.

I revealed my identity to him, and the hate in his eyes was scorching, but even more painful was the love I had unconditionally built for him. It could not be undone in my heart, even when he denied me to my face. All the fantasies I had created around him were still there. I had built a make-believe world where he existed and searched and longed for my return, his eldest son. I have never let go of that image. It taunts me still.

Perhaps that was what I was thinking when I married Lorna. She came from a wealthy family. I thought to be closer to my father’s circle in that way. I am ashamed to admit it even to myself. I should have known they too would react like him. An unwanted orphan, a bastard.

Feliciano continues with his rambling. “You even talk like him. The other week, he ordered the Reyes family taken in. I reminded him that these people were once his friends, and asked again if he was certain he wanted them brought in. He said, ‘Why not? They are known guerrillas.’ ”

I smile at Feliciano. His talk has opened up a well of bitterness. I relish my words as they leave my mouth. “And you, you are like
your
father. Jamie Bautista.” I watch his eyes narrow. I can see the anger burn in them. His hands are balled into fists. “Yes, I have seen your father, the drunk. The weakling who could not live without his woman. He walks our barrios like a ghost.”

Feliciano stops; he takes his pistol from his holster and his hand shakes. “I will shoot anyone who compares me to him.”

“Use it or put it away. I grow bored with your threats.”

He continues to hold the gun toward me. His eyes are red.

“You are not going to cry, are you?” I scoff. “The man who would give his people to the enemy has feelings? The man who can watch our women being raped can also cry? You are very talented. Who knew you were capable of such feelings? Ah, but I see he is not a man at all, but a boy. A frightened, misguided boy who is very much like his father,” I taunt him. I cannot resist. He holds the gun unsteadily now.

“I am not like my father. My father is weak. I am strong. The Japanese and the Makapilis bow to my words. He is defeated. I can never be. But I have already told you. I am done with the Makapilis. After I saw what they had done to the women, to Isabelle.”

“It is late, I wish to find my son. It may be too late already. We must hurry.”

He searches my face. For kindness, maybe, or understanding. He will find no compassion here. He begins to speak, then stops himself and looks up at the stars and takes a deep breath. “This way. I know of two encampments.”

We turn up a ridge, leaving the flatlands and the waist-high cogon grass bending in the wind. We pass the sugar cane plantations, with the cordillera mountains far north in the distance. We climb alongside rice terraces, the ground soggy from the recent storms. The moon is a slice of lemon above us. White orchids freckled with coral and magenta bloom in abundance. I have walked this trail many times with my troops, sometimes at a full run, and long ago with my friends. Feliciano glances back to me. “I tell you the truth, whether you believe so or not. I am done with the Makapilis. I have turned my back on the Japanese. I see now what they have done to our people.”

“I am here to rescue my son. I cannot grant you redemption. You have killed many of our people, maybe not with your own hands, but with your finger that has pointed to them and turned them over to the enemy. Does that not eat at your conscience?”

He stands strong at my words, his silence angering me more.

“You wish to impress Isabelle by rescuing her brother. And now that the Amerikanos are so close to winning, maybe you fear punishment. You think that siding with a guerrilla commander will win you leniency. You wish to change sides in the eleventh hour, but that cannot be done. I will not vouch for a traitor. Find some other fool.”

His eyes flinch slightly, the jaw clenches a little, but that is all. There is intelligence and a fierceness in him that few of my men possess, but I am not swayed by it. He stares, blinking at me several times, then turns abruptly and begins walking once again. The crickets quiet as we pass, listening in the cloying heat, and then they sound loudly again. The whir of the mosquitoes is constant at my ears. And high in the trees an owl speculates out loud as we pass.

I hear a sound, a voice. I reach out for Feliciano. He turns to me with hope in his eyes. I put my finger to my mouth and purse my lips and point with them toward the shadow of trees. In our discussion we have almost missed a small encampment a hundred meters below us. There are tents and Japanese soldiers standing guard. I count four guards and six soldiers lying down. Feliciano crouches beside me. I watch him from the corners of my eyes, aware of the
positioning of his hands and his gun. The soldiers talk easily among themselves. They trust that their guards are watching over them. The fools.

There is a grouping of captured Filipinos at one end, five of them seated against a tree with their hands tied behind their backs. They are blindfolded and badly beaten. A guard walks from behind the trees with a large stick. He questions one woman, and when he is not satisfied with her answer, he pulls her head back and hits her across the face with the stick. The woman’s face is no longer a face at all, but a mound of purple flesh. The woman and her group belong to Ocampo’s guerrillas. I can tell by the red woven wristbands they wear, their blood pledge against the Japanese. I grit my teeth at the sight. I fight the urge to shoot the woman and take her from her misery. I tell myself to go. Nothing can be done. We must go. I feel like weeping.

I see no sign of the children. I make a circular movement with my finger. We will move around the perimeter to make certain my son is not present. As we complete the circle, a Japanese guard stops to listen. He looks into the trees and calls out to a comrade. Soon they are all craning their necks into the darkness, their rifles at the ready. I look to Feliciano and point backward for us to go.

The words come out pained. “My son is not here.”

“What of the captives?” he whispers.

I feel a tear in my soul when I speak the words. “Nothing more can be done for them. We must find my son.”
Hold on, Taba. I will find you
.

He looks at me in surprise, then nods slowly in understanding.

W
E TRAVEL ANOTHER
hour in the same northwesterly direction. The wound in my leg expands and begins to throb with the heat of infection. We climb the side of a waterfall at a furious pace. The sound of rushing water is a balm to my soul. The water sprays the nearby rocks, making them slippery to our grasp. My throat constricts with thirst. I feel a fever starting in my bones, but I do not let Feliciano see this. Instead, I speed my stride, forcing the boy to move faster. He says nothing, but his shirt is stuck to his back from sweat and his breathing has become labored.

Feliciano’s group, the Makapilis, keeps mainly to the flatlands, serving as eyes and ears to the Japanese army. They do not traverse the jungles as we do, so his conditioning is not good. He leads us to another encampment, but this time it is the Japanese themselves who warn us of their presence.

They speak loudly, and we hide in a thick cropping of brushes and ferns. The soldiers have grown weary this last year. They talk loudly among themselves
in areas they know may house guerrillas. They hope for us to avoid one another. Unless they are a small patrol and we can pick off the stragglers, we let them pass. It is safer for us to let the bigger patrols by unless we are expecting them or we are forced to fight. We prefer to combat them in our own way, after we have studied their habits and have weighed the benefits to an attack. A direct assault can be more costly to our troops if open combat occurs. They are better equipped than we are. It is wiser to plot our raids and come in full force on smaller groups.

Feliciano looks around quickly and then whispers, “This is the only other encampment I know of. It is to grow larger in the coming days to go against Augustino’s guerrillas.”

I nod and scan the area with my eyes. This is Augustino’s territory. I wonder if he knows of the Japanese strategy. I cannot worry about that now. Again, I am aware of Feliciano’s proximity to me, of the positioning of his hands to his gun. I count five guards and two men seated in the center of a grove of papaya trees. The men are not regular foot soldiers. They are higher ranked. To our right is a large tent. To the left are metal slabs laid out on the ground. There are five bodies tied to the slabs, three adults and two children. They are laid flat, on their backs, with their hands outstretched as if they were on a cross.

“In the morning, the sun will heat the metal and they will cook to death,” Feliciano explains.

“I know this,” I tell him through clenched teeth. I see Alejandro immediately. He wears the same torn shirt and ragged trousers with the large belt around his waist. He looks dully at the stars. The fire has gone from his eyes. He is defeated. The sight of him brings my anger full to the surface. To the right of Alejandro is my son, Taba. He moves restlessly. I sigh and send a prayer of thanks that he is alive. The adults have been badly beaten. Roman Flores is among them.

“Wait here,” I tell Feliciano.

He reaches out to stop me. “I have a plan.”

I wait for his explanation.

“I know these men. The two in the middle are Majors Koiso and Matsura. They will recognize me immediately. I will take you in as prisoner. There is a high price for your head. Your likeness has been drawn, and Matsura carries a sketching in his pocket. You and the Amerikano Holden are highly prized. There is great honor in your capture. They would not plan to kill you until later. They would show you first to our Filipinos to break their spirits further. They would display you to their comrades as a trophy, before finishing you. It will buy us time. Later, while the soldiers sleep, I will untie you and we can
rescue the others.” He takes a piece of rope from his pocket and a mask and looks at me expectantly.