297 Oh, yes, Case G. That, too. (Trans. Note)
298 Talangka: sobresaliente; Torrones de Tulingan: pasado. (Trans. Note)
299 Rough translation of may anghang bagoong. In patches of prose, the Spanish student regresses into Tagalog. (Trans. Note)
300 “Regresses” is a key word. It is always useful to note when the writer returns to native speech, which is when he touches upon the authentic self. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
301 Touché, Estrella. It is, of course, an amusing fable that “native speech” always equals “authentic self” in that insight that in our days passes for political propriety. As if the “authentic self” had a single character, speaking only one language and in correct syntax to boot. Whereas perhaps it is less tempting but more analytically productive to imagine the self as a jumbled aggregate of fragments and bits of languages, “foreign,” “native,” and others, a signifying soul wantonly spliced: especially the Filipino soul—so tugged about into linguistic quarters who knows where and when which of its languages—Tagalog, Spanish, English, Waray, and so on—will draw blood? (Dr. Diwata Drake, Dobbs Ferry, New York)
302 Ipot: the organic sheddings of our feathered friends, occurring at times in pointillist pellets, Pollock-like runs, or fine impressionist shades of shit. (Trans. Note)
303 Cigarette makers. Implies that mother was a factory foreman. Notes on class status occur in these sections. (Trans. Note)
304 Class, of course, is the signal issue in discussions of the revolution, metonymized in the class(ic) dichotomy Bonifacio versus Aguinaldo, that is Peasants = Redeemers versus Petty-bourgeois = Betrayers. Race is less remarked upon. Raymundo, as a petty-bourgeouis Basque-Filipino-(ghost-Chinese) cuarterón, quadroonish or mestizo type, from landowning, military, and lamp-oil-selling castes, is, I’m sorry to say, destined to mess up. Let’s see what history reveals. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
305 Ah! Niomf = Miong! Hah, Dr. Diwata, now I get it—I, too, have deciphered the code! His childhood friend Miong, a.k.a. Emilio Aguinaldo, later first president of the Republic, became kapitan (mayor) of Kawit at a tender age. Also a school dropout, when his father died. Miong left school to help out his mother, the young widow Trinidad Aguinaldo y Famy. But it’s not clear that he was any good at learning anyway. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
306 Crispulo: Emilio’s older brother. A devout Christian. Initially opposed to revolt and the Katipunan because of its Masonry but became a disciplined soldier. Killed right after the historic [dubious] Tejeros Assembly of 1897, in which Emilio was elected [sic] president, while Bonifacio was demoted [cheated] to minister of the interior [and even that seat was taken away!]. Emilio was “elected” while at battle; Crispulo insisted that Emilio swear his oath and stay in Tejeros—he offered to take his post at war. Emilio agreed. Sure enough, Crispulo was shot. He died in battle in his brother’s stead. In an interview with the historian Agoncillo, Aguinaldo is “visibly affected” when he mentions his late brother. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
307 Did his brother’s death feed Aguinaldo’s callous betrayal of Bonifacio, who challenged him at Tejeros? Aguinaldo’s brother Crispulo died to uphold the election at Tejeros Assembly. So under ancient grudge slips brotherly guilt and self-loathing: twin emotions of survivors, of war and other traumas. (Dr. Diwata Drake, Kawit, Cavite)
308 Un amor propio, incómodo y meditabundo: periodic phrases proliferate in this section. (Trans. Note)
309 Daniel Tirona: Candido Tria Tirona’s younger brother. Pairs of brothers are a war trope. Familial bonds drew people to battle. Daniel took over his brother’s troops when, like Crispulo, brother of Aguinaldo, Candido died early in the war. Candido died in the Battle of Binakayan, before the fiasco of the Tejeros Assembly. A student in Manila when revolution broke out, his brother Daniel had never officially joined the Katipunan, which explains why he could so easily degrade the Supremo. It was Daniel Tirona, the lout, who at Tejeros challenged the Supremo Bonifacio’s fitness to be leader of any government—he challenged even the Supremo’s right to be minister of the interior, when it was Bonifacio who had founded the secret society, organized its passion, inspired its growth—damn you, Daniel Tirona! You’re a wart on the nation’s undersole, a crippling boil! (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
310 Mathematically confused. If Cemdodi LL is Candido Tria Tirona, he was six years older than Raymundo Mata. Raymundo has a mutable notion of his age, situating his birth year between 1862–1872, convenient for the historical dramas to which he was witness and symptomatic of the mental concussions rebels were heir to in those dank and pestilential American prisons! Bastards! Americanos! (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
311 Perverse, ungrammatical Espangalog here. A form of Cavite-Chabacano? Translation: He’s a huge talker [tu = you (Spanish); daldalero = talker (Tagalog, from daldal: to talk)]. (Trans. Note)
312 Agi, saba na daw, por dios por santo mio! Odd outbreaks into Visayan are also habitual and perplexing. (Trans. Note)
313 M. Calero (a.k.a. Marcelo H. Del Pilar, the tireless journalist) and Feced were enemy combatants in the Propaganda Movement: Pablo Feced was the notorious Quioquiap, nasty castigator of indolent Filipinos in Manila’s conservative dailies. Feces, is what I call him. Bastard! Spaniard! (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
314 Noamla berlemla, mi ra puada vimgoes am at. Hmmm. Again, a cryptic insertion. Perhaps a rebel code in Sanskrit? One patriot, Isabelo de los Reyes, was an erudite Sanskrit scholar, you know. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
315 The next line, in the original: Miente bastante, no se puede confiar en el (A liar, one can’t really trust him). What the connection is, only Judas knows. (Trans. Note)
316 Mimi C., we went through this. Noamla berlemla, mi ra puada vimgoes am at = Miente bastante, no se puede confiar en el. Simple. The code is in the pudding. But this time the message is in Spanish. (Dr. Diwata Drake, London, England)
317 Tobacco is another recurring trope in rebel annals. By the nineteenth century, the tobacco monopoly, though in decline, ruled industry and leisure on the islands. A fine hotel in Barcelona bears a remnant of the Manila Tobacco Company, a baroque mahogany cave now a tourist trap along
