“You see how they grow,” Don Nicasio would always point out when they passed a tree where the carabao were allowed to ripen on the stem. “See how they are red on the side that faces the sun and yellow on the side that faces the tree?”
“Yes, Father,” Diosdado would say, mango-colored at the fingertips and with a mancha the shape of Luzon on the front of his shirt. “I see it.”
“This is how we must be in life. We must adjust ourselves to what we are facing.”
And that is Don Nicasio. A drinker of imported Madeira, a backslapper to governors and priests, deferential to anyone with ties to what he reverently toasts as “nuestra gran Madre al otro lado de las mares,” though when he crossed those seas to visit the Great Mother they thought he was a chino and refused to seat him in fine restaurants unless he was the guest of a peninsular distinguido. He has many such patrons, though, Spaniards who he has helped make wealthy in the islands and is helping still, a scientist with crops, a genius at trade — maybe this is the chino in him — and an able hand at cards or billiards.
By the time of the Katipunero uprising they were having their arguments — actually only one long argument, interrupted when Diosdado went off to the Ateneo, and resumed whenever he returned on a visit.
“I’m sending you to school to study the Spanish,” Don Nicasio would growl, “not to play around with filibusteros. If you want to get yourself killed you can do it without wasting my money.”
“But our country—”
“Country? What is it called on the map? Las Filipinas—a group of islands named after a Spanish king. There was no country before they came and there is not one now, only bands of wild men fighting other wild men for the right to remain ignorant.”
He had been Diosdado’s hero once, the man who knew things, who moved in the world, the man the poor of San Epifanio and its environs came to for help, meekly, hat brims twisted in their hands as they muttered their requests, barely able to meet his eyes. A generous man, a man who advanced pay to those who needed it, who paid for the most elaborate mass on holy days. The Concepcións had their own pew reserved at the front left of the church, his mother God-struck after her second son, Diosdado’s brother, died in infancy, rocking slightly and murmuring the Rosary throughout, the carved ebony beads draped over her fingers, Don Nicasio erect and motionless, watched and admired but seemingly oblivious to the others standing crowded behind him. Diosdado imagined his father’s talks with God as hearty affairs over cigars and brandy, ending with Don Nicasio’s habitual firm handshake and meeting of the eye.
“So — we understand each other?”
There are boat horns now, distinguishable over the engine thrum and the constant drumming of the pump pistons, and Diosdado hopes it means they are entering the harbor. The coolies roll up their possessions and tie them into bundles, still talking excitedly. Even if they have hundreds of miles yet to travel, they are going home. Diosdado is going only to a certain spot in the foreign city, to wait for someone to come and give him a clue about what the rest of his life will be. The word must have reached Zambales by now, his mother on her knees praying for his safety and his soul, while Don Nicasio paces and curses, asking the heavens to explain how he could have fathered an idiot and a criminal.
“You’ll be back in no time,” smiled Scipio, helping him throw together his most essential belongings on the evening when the photographs appeared, pasted over government notices and decrees on walls throughout the Intra-muros. “Once the Americans declare war—”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then you’ll have to develop a taste for congee and carp.”
It was meant as a joke, but there are men, dozens of them, who have never been able to return, scattered around the world, pleading in their letters for news of progress, for any scrap of hope. And most of these are wealthy, with bank accounts and families who have the means to visit them in exile. Diosdado has only the one good set of clothes in his sack, with letters from the Committee to the Junta, coded in Tagalog, sewn in the lining of the jacket, and the little pile of silver Scipio passed on with the forged cédula and verbal contact instructions for his arrival.
The name on the cédula is José Corpus — born in Tarlac, four years older than Diosdado. The photo is his, though, cropped to conceal the school fencing uniform he was wearing when it was taken. There will be Spanish agents looking for that face when the passenger ships dock, standing by British authorities keen on preventing troublemakers from entering the Crown Colony. The hum of the engine changes pitch. One of the coolies appears beside him, poking his shoulder, and leads him through a maze of bananas back to the packing crate. He speaks in pidgin Tagalog, indicating that Diosdado has to crawl back in.
José Corpus, he thinks as the lid is placed over and pounded shut. Scipio must have known about this part.
The wooden lid is only inches from Diosdado’s nose. He is nobody in here, nothing, a tiny spark of consciousness shut off from the living world. Voices outside, movement, men shouting in Cantonese, and several times his crate is banged by workers hauling stems of bananas away, one even standing on top of it for a moment, the boards creaking. Diosdado tries to breathe evenly, to will his heartbeat slower. He doesn’t feel nauseous anymore, he feels — lost.
When the crate is lifted he is smashed onto his left side at first, then his feet go up almost vertically and the top of his head bears all his weight, sides of the crate cracking against the ladder and the hatch. He has been flipped onto his face by the time the crate is dropped roughly on what he guesses is the dock, one elbow twisted awkwardly under his ribs, listening with a mounting sense of terror at the bang of another crate being piled on top of his, then another—
“Reflect that you are no longer Master of your body,” he thinks. “It belongs now to the Society.” Unless the Society has marked the outside of this crate and are on their way, or whatever is supposed to be inside it is meant to be pulled out very soon, he will die in here. Diosdado has imagined dying for the cause, leading a throng of loyal followers in a charge over a corpse-strewn battlefield, uttering last words that will be engraved in marble, but not this. Not this helpless nothing.
Only time, which is not even time in the dark, nothing to mark its passing. Diosdado manages to wiggle into a slightly more comfortable position, maybe even sleeps. It is hard to tell. What sounds he hears are muffled, distant. He can breathe, for the moment. He tries whispering the Rosary to fill the void, the words coming back in their familiar rhythm — the Pater Noster followed by ten Ave Marias and a Gloria Patri to complete each decade, then contemplation of one of the Mysteries before launching into the next. There are Joyful Mysteries, Sorrowful Mysteries, and Glorious Mysteries to choose from. Diosdado chooses to contemplate the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, a Mystery whose fruit is the virtues of purity and obedience.
There were no cigars or brandy when he was off to the Ateneo for his first semester and Don Nicasio wanted him to know about women. Specifically the ones who could be found at Doña Hilaria’s parlor, who were clean and honest and well-trained if not well-bred. Diosdado, a priest’s boy but no stranger to how animals reproduced on the hacienda, fought, cheeks burning, to hide his shock. If his father knew such things, he must have “relieved himself ” on his trips alone to Manila, and very likely in similar establishments in Hongkong, Macao, Madrid, and Yokohama before and after he was bound in Holy Matrimony.