286 “Un horrible vacío en el mundo de mis affecciones.” Compare to Entry #8: “for a long time I could not escape the sense that Mamá would come back, take off the pretty stage dress, and boil barako for me.” It’s interesting that Raymundo’s second heartbreak possesses emotional language, distinct feelings and deliberate expression, whereas the first one (mother’s death) is a series of detached details. I can’t help but think that the horrible vacuum is, in fact, the first one: and that all others are only una rapida sombra (“a rapid shadow”) of early pain. (Trans. Note)
Entry #23
Psigotar om Berlesdy287 288 289(Rludoar om Nonocsy,290 291
a.k.a., Profiles in Bastardy)292 293 294
Case A
Bamofmi R.295 296 297
19 or 20 years of age. Originally from San Roque, now at the Normal School. Visits occasionally to drag me to Mass. Father, a fisherman; mother, a fish vendor. Favorite food: fish.
Religious dreamer, more of a follower than a schemer. Humble sodalist of the Legion of Mary. His looks are not prepossessing: pug nose and brittle hair. Dry pimply skin scaly from his years in the sun, on his father’s fishing boat. Perhaps eczematic. Wants to be a teacher like his idol, Don Felipe. He’s a plugger, sticks to the straight and narrow, a hermit crab crawling sidewise to his goal. My heart goes out to him. He’s a good friend, faithful though unimaginative, with a nervous agitation that marks sincere men.
A steadfast romantic, known as Ipot for his disasters with women. Also an ascetic, a Jerome in the desert. He’d starve himself into purity if his mother, bless her, didn’t keep sending him baskets of food, which he always shares. She sends excellent Raw Oysters and average Fish Snacks.298
Defects: Smells a bit of shrimp fry.299 300 301 Any deviation into the original, the strange, freaks him out; does not have the stamina for candor, much less stomach for jokes. It’s because of his devoutness. An ideologue for the Virgin, a cabalist of the saints, flogger of his sins. I observe him carefully because it’s a mystery how someone so punished by God can so love Him (he’s a bit ugly; Bamofmi, I mean, not God, though who knows?). One wonders if Christian piety arises from self-loathing, deepened by his misplaced feeling of depravity. Poor Bamofmi! He prefers whips for Christmas. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Confiteor Deo omnipotenti. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
One drink and he cries to God for forgiveness.
A bummer at parties.
Good Qualities: Worships women, though like many here not immune to the adventures of Don Juan Tenorio (believe me, I’ve been in line with him among the damned at Fonda Iris). Fine, if perfunctory, memory. Nice handwriting. Possesses without stint an organ of veneration (somewhere by the liver, where sighs diffuse). Best of all, he has the ardent soul of Saint Francis, though no birds settle on his shoulders. Instead, they—ipot.302
Case B
Anotoi E.
I have always been under his thrall. Small build, Chinese eyes, quick temper. Brooding. Moody. Of a landowning, pious family. Mother hard-working, chief of cigarreras303 304 whose energies surpassed her simple birth. Father, deceased, former mayor (rival of Cemdodi’s dad). Let’s face it, a dullard in the classroom, but with a winning personality, an easy, unaffected way with men. Despite his slightness, he was always our class president and pet of maestros. He took me in hand ever since I began to walk, in those times of cholera when we believed the world was doomed. Though his brain got squashed in that mutiny near Kawit. (He has yet to recover from that fall.) He acts like the older brother I do not have, boxing me in the ears whenever he feels like it. I did everything he did and still have this instinct—to curry his favor, as if certain one day I will lose his regard forever. It’s a terrible feeling, my abiding, satisfying, and anxious complicity in all his distractions.
He demands love, and I carry it like a foetal cord, a strain in my blood.
Anotoi E. was, and I confess with regret, the worst bully and an awful cheat—but he never got caught! Even when his mischief was at my expense (that poison pen letter to Tio U.: a form of high-jinks for him: joke!), I forgave him. He’s a man of daring. And so we follow. When his father died, he left school at fifteen with a convenient excuse. To have an adventure. Bought his own boat by the sweat of his brow and began a fine seafaring life selling fishnets, thatch, and bamboo prows.
Now he’s a little mayor, Kapitan Noimf!305 Ready to go to the top.
Good qualities: Bold decision-maker, coiled to act. Not hampered by introspection or given to remorse. The past is a clean slate of his good intentions, and the future is a gift. Devoted friend. Patriotic.
His brother Csorputi is a saint.306 307
Defects: A troubling sense of gloomy self-regard,308 even I must admit. It leads him into bursts of moodiness over real and imagined slights, often directed, rightly, at the Guardia Civil, but also at his old companions who befriend others, at men better educated than he, at mestizos flaunting women he wants, at foreigners with advantages he covets, and a million other matters, at times so trifling I cannot immediately discern them, though in a series of events I’ve shared with him fleeting moments of borrowed bitterness, over provocations and aggressions I must say I barely noticed but pretended to feel. Perhaps because I’m an orphan, obliged to cultivate oblivion, I try to get rid of it—that gruesome gnawing on the bones at the world’s injustice.
It can cause goiters.
Curiously abstemious, don’t know what to make of that.
For a long time I’ve kept these disloyal feelings to myself and now feel guilty and relieved both at giving them words.
Case C
Cemdodi L.
