They can rhapsodize about independence for hours, his friends, but Kokoy is too rich and Epifánio too timid and Hilario a poet doomed to unwittingly plagiarize Dr. Rizal’s literary work, from which he no doubt conjured the image of the infernal machine, for the rest of his days. And he, Diosdado Concepción, is still waiting for the call—
“To a better day,” says Epifánio, and they touch their cups together. It is Scipio’s favorite toast, Scipio who has not yet appeared, most often invoked at a café table like this one, surrounded by Spanish soldiers, looking like any other group of Filipino dandies in white suits and straw skimmers. “A un día mejor!” Scipio will say, raising his glass, and then down the throat, all of them smiling with their secret knowledge.
Until this afternoon it has seemed only naughty.
The bell sounds and they hurry back and stand just inside the doors to witness the re-entrance of the damas, their fans fluttering in a myriad of gown-matching colors, the students dizzied by passing waves of perfume, and then there is the dress they are waiting for, the dress that has the great fortune to caress the body of Ninfa Benavides, a whisper of organza the color of ripe guayaba, with a border of translucent French lace and a cameo brooch nestled between her artfully displayed twin doves of nubility.
“If the fakirs are correct and one revisits this earth in different forms,” sighs Hilario Ibañez, “I would end my life now to come back as that cameo.”
Ninfa, whose father is the Policarpio Benavides who supplies fresh beef to the Spanish army and can destroy men’s lives with a word in the proper official’s ear, whose aunt is the renowned Sister María de la Coronación de Espinas who teaches music and deportment at Santa Isabel, Ninfa carries herself like what she is, a jewel of the nation. There are so many peninsulares seeking her hand, or merely her interest, as well as the countless criollos and filipinos ilustrados, that some nights the crowd under her balcony erupts into terrible rows that warrant the militia being called to action. The rumor, for Diosdado has never been privileged to speak with her, is that she is as intelligent as her father is ruthless, and can puncture a man’s soul with a single flecha irónica. In his reveries it is Ninfa, stepping regally from her landau and catching his eye to say, with a half-secret smile, “You, campesino, belong here. And if you work hard, if you study the minds of men and learn to turn them to your will, you may some day be worthy of me.”
“Far too rich for your blood, muchacho,” says Scipio as she passes. He is there suddenly, watching Ninfa with his own private smile. “Follow me.”
The coach ride is not a long one. Diosdado tries to guess at the turns and distances with his eyes covered, Scipio silent beside him. Padre Peregrino, his favorite of the Jesuits, is a firm believer in mystery.
“We have been created to inquire, to reason,” he tells his students. “To strive to understand the workings of the Universe. But mystery, doubt, the blind flight into the unknown—these are the elements of Faith.”
The coach stops. Diosdado can hear water lapping, smell the tang of a filth-choked estero. Somewhere near the Pasig, maybe the northern corner of San Nicholas. Scipio takes him by the arm, helps him from the coach, and leads him inside.
“Kneel.”
A voice he doesn’t recognize. Diosdado kneels.
The blindfold is pulled off and he opens his eyes.
It is a small room with dark mahogany walls. On a low table, providing the only light, flickers a votive candle. Before it are laid a revolver, a bolo knife, and a human skull.
“Who is this,” asks the tallest of the hooded men, in Tagalog, “who disturbs the works of the Temple?”
“One who wishes to see the True Light,” says Diosdado in what he hopes is a strong, confident voice, “and to be worthy to become a Son of the Country.”
“Think well and decide — can you comply with all its duties?”
Diosdado allows the smallest of pauses to signal that he is, in fact, considering the weight of this decision. Padre Peregrino always chides him in the confessional for announcing his remorse too quickly.
“I can.”
“In what state was our beloved Fatherland when the Spaniard first trod upon its soil?”
“We were as children,” says Diosdado, “free, but living in ignorance.” He was the shining light of his First Communion, the Bishop posing the Catechism questions to him in Spanish, and Diosdado, at nine, answering by rote but with a semblance of understanding.
“In what condition do we now live?”
“Now we have the Light of Knowledge, but remain enslaved.”
“And what shall be our future?”
“We shall live as free men, equal among the many nations.”
His father believes that this is worse than heresy, it is stupidity. “Do you fight the sun?” he will shout during their arguments. “Do you fight the rain? You accept them, you use them, without them your crops will not grow. So it is with the Spanish.”
His father who kneels in church every Sunday grinding his teeth while the friar drones on, who drinks imported wine with the governor and hides a third of his earnings at tax time. His father who calls bribes “seed money” and Chinese “yellow monkeys.” His father who is a secret Freemason, initiated in a secret rite much like this one, who crippled a man in a duel of honor but will not lift a finger for the Tagalog Republic.
One of the other hooded men takes the bolo and, stepping behind Diosdado, reaches around to hold the sharp blade against the base of his throat. Another lifts the revolver and presses the barrel to his forehead.
“Do you know, Brother, what these arms represent?” asks the tallest man, the hermano terrible in the hooded red robe. “These are the arms with which the Society punishes those who betray its secrets. If at this moment the Society should require your life, would you give it?”
“I would,” says Diosdado, and is glad he is kneeling. Scipio has rehearsed him in the entire litany, but actually saying the words, knowing that irrevocable actions will follow them, this sends awe tingling through him like the Holy Sacraments never have. A small gong is struck. Candlelight, flickering on the wall behind the small table, illuminates a portrait of the martyred Dr. Rizal. Was he a secret member as well, as the tsismis has it, or have they only borrowed his image to add weight to the ceremony?
“The sound of the bell is the sound of you leaving your former life and entering the Society, where you will see the True Light. Your body must be given a visible sign that you are a Brother in the Society — can you endure the hot iron?”
“I can.”
The sword and pistol are withdrawn and his shirt pulled open, and the tip of an iron crucifix, searing hot, is pressed to a point on his right breast and held there a moment. He smells burned flesh.
“Reflect that you are no longer Master of your body. It belongs now to the Society.”
Educated young men have been leaving the university and taking to the hinterlands. Nothing as important as this will happen again in his lifetime. To not be part of it, to sit idly to one side, uncommitted, is unthinkable.
“This I accept,” says Diosdado.
“Then welcome, Brother!” The inductor and others pull down their hoods and step forward to embrace him. Diosdado recognizes the inductor as a young man who was only a year ahead of him at the Ateneo, a young man already a capitán in the rebellion, with famous battles to his name.