163 Your head. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
Entry #13
May 16, 1884
Noli me tangere: caseated organ of a purple hue. Six inches and counting, enflorescing. Explosive pulp, a bit cheesy. Nigh: left femoral stigmata; tender to touch. Necrosis in croce—doctor says to rest it in peace. But oooooooh. The Lollipolypalooza. It won’t stop its dance! Bless me father for I have sinned may I do it again?164 165 166
164 The shifts in tone keep surprising me: from the stiff, public diction of the school essays to these private sheaves of purplish waste, this time spattered with medical lingo. Raymundo uses his Latin resourcefully. In any case, I’m just the translator. I only play with the dice I’m given. P.S. “Lollipolypalooza” contains the extravaganza of dialects he indulges in here; I refuse to repeat the mess of his pungent phrases. (Trans. Note)
165 The second journal to which Raymundo attaches a date: this time, it is the year Rizal began writing the Noli. Of course, Raymundo in Latinidad de Jose Basa has no clue what Rizal, six years his senior, was scribbling in Europe (though they seem to be reading the same books). Even a few of Rizal’s friends thought he was writing a medical treatise—and were annoyed to learn it was just a romance. “Noli me tangere” also referred to a doctor’s caveat for dying sufferers full of contagion—“don’t touch [this patient].” The line originates from the Catholic-Vulgate gospel of John. Rizal used it as a beautiful metaphor for the canker of colonization. Raymundo’s kinship with his hero is explicit in this section’s fine allusion to Rizal’s historic novel. (Estrella Espejo, Quezon Institute and Sanatorium, Tacloban, Leyte)
166 Onanism nurtures obfuscation. In this case, the clues are obvious. “Six inches . . . a bit cheesy” and the final apostrophe to the Divine: this is a young boy discovering the pleasures of jacking off. Catholic ritual, of course, lends this otherwise dull routine its meaning. Masturbation occurs not in the action itself but in the act of confession. The power of Catholic taboo lies in its use of words. The solitary act has no reader, thus no point: the “masturbator” has yet to exist. He comes into being, authorial and anxious, when he (voluptuously) speaks to the Father, a.k.a. The Other, a.k.a. The Big Other (not to be confused with the little other, a distant cousin somewhat removed). This is how “language . . . constitutes the self into the symbolic order” (Mürk, Epithets LII). However, I do not recommend it to everyone. (Dr. Diwata Drake, Kalamazoo, Michigan)
Entry #14167
Name: Raymundo Mata
Nickname(s): Mundo; Paniki; Bulag; Buta (but stop calling me that)
Father: Don Jorge Raymundo Mata Eibarrazeta of Kawit, a.k.a. el genio Jote
Mother: Doña Tarcela Delgado of Leyte168
Place of Baptism: Santa Maria Magdalena, Church of Kawit, Cavite Viejo, Cavite
Grade: third year at Latinidad de Jose Basa, San Roque, Cavite
Best friend(s): Agapito Conche; Benigno Santo169
Favorite Hobby: Reading; Picking lice170; Exploring the Forest171
Favorite Song: None
Favorite Book: Sa Martir ng Golgotha by Juan Evangelista172 173
Favorite Color: Purple
Favorite Author: Eugène Sue (especially The Mysteries of Paris)174
Favorite Place: Bazaar La Aurora
Favorite Letter: K175 176
167 The entire page is part of a so-called “slumbook,” term used in the American era, also known as libro de memorias in the Spanish times. Filipino school children filled up self-illustrated autograph books to remember classmates by. Raymundo’s libro is disheveled, with dedications from irrelevant classmates; I preserve here only Raymundo’s page. (Trans. Note)
168 This is the only direct reference to his missing mother’s family name and provenance. (Estrella Espejo, Quezon Institute and Sanatorium, Tacloban, Leyte)
169 Agapito Conchu and Benigno Santi: town layabouts and future suspechosos, destined to be arrested by the Guardia Civil. Many years later, Agapito Conchu was executed at the Fort of San Felipe, one of the trece martires of 1896 (Thirteen Martyrs of Cavite). Benigno Santi was last seen with Raymundo in 1902 at Bilibid jail, prisoner of the demonic Americans. Bastards! Americanos! (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
170 Raymundo declines to add to this list the talent for which he was much admired by his peers: prophecying the results of cockfights. He was miserable at other games, such as tuktukan. His wanderings in the forest were secret, but now legend. It is said that his eye condition made superstitious gamblers believe he was something of a cockpit savant; the losers, of course, just beat him up. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
171 Site of dream, or traum. Always useful to italicize, if possible. (Dr. Diwata Drake, Vienna, Austria)
172 An original and masterful Tagalog novel, as suspenseful as a telenovela. What a young polyglot he is, reading classics in Spanish and Tagalog with versatility! (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
173 El Martir de Golgotha was a popular Spanish novel, translated into Tagalog. Such plagiarized editions were common at the time. (Trans. Note)
174 As the opening of the Suez Canal enlivened trade, more French novels translated into Spanish became available. Books, however, were expensive. Raymundo’s stash indicates that his family was a) at the time well off; and b) romantic. Eugène Sue is an unjustly forgotten writer of political triple-deckers, the bestselling novelist of his time. My own favorite is his stroke of moral genius The Mysteries of Paris. Highlights of Sue’s novels include wealthy princes who turn out to be socialist reformers; whore-mistresses; twin orphans separated from birth; serial killers; evil Jesuits; hunchbacks; dwarves; and long-suffering foot soldiers of the Napoleonic wars. In fact, not too different from our contemporary television and komiks masterpieces, except with anarcho-syndicalists. The Mysteries of Paris traces the travails of rich radical adventurer Prince Rodolphe, who in disguise foments rebellion among the Paris slums. Any connections to El Filibusterismo are inevitable; Rizal admired Sue and read him in both French and Spanish. Not even Victor Hugo escaped Sue’s reach: Les Mysteres de Paris influenced Les Miserables, which in turn influenced elaborate Broadway
