318 Another astasic attack, eh, Estrella? Let me see: did you faint in Madrid, get hives in the Basque country, have allergies in Canton, Ohio? (Dr. Diwata Drake, El Raval, Spain)
319 I got abasic stress in Michigan, where I recollect someone STOLE my scholarly work! (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
320 I.? (Trans. Note)
321 The Seed is an epithet: La Semilla. Also capitalized in the text. (Trans. Note)
322 Oh good. Finally he mentions the women. La Semilla was the appropriate name of a Masonic order of females who provided “the seed” for a legion of subsequent katipuneras. While the exact identity of the understandably cloaked “I.” may never be fully known, there are several renowned cases of female katipuneras, from the teenage Icang, or Angelica, daughter of Narcisa Rizal, the hero-novelist’s sister, to the tragic wife of Andres Bonifacio, Gregoria, who became the widow of a musician; from Agueda Kahabagan, the generala of Cavite better known as the Tagalog Joan of Arc, to my own favorite, the patient and shrewd Marina Dizon, early organizer of women in Manila. And of course, the thousands who were unknown. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
323 This section seems coffee-stained and cigarette-gashed and contains many deletions and revisions. For instance, I settled upon la traidora though the text indicates an original syllable through which a frank deleatur cuts: other options are la trasladora or la tarantadora, et cetera. While the first alternative makes better sense given later wordplay (su pañuelo . . . bolo . . . boligrafo), the author’s intention is quite clear to me: the slash over the syllable (sla[?]) is in a decisive hand. (Trans. Note)
324 Pseudonyms of women of the revolution included: Lakambini, for Gregoria de Jesus, Bonifacio’s wife, and Tandang Sora, for Tandang Sora. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
325 That is, it ends. Not clear in text if this is separated into its own passage or is another aphoristic exemplar attached to Case G. (Trans. Note)
Entry #24
December 1887 to March 1892
Into my rooms came Benigno, the wannabe maestro, his harassed nerves of a crab and his timid smile, I’ll always remember it. (Even laid out wounded and tortured in the dungeons of Bilibid, he turned to me with that same—.)326 327 A reunion with the gang from San Roque.328 He shook me out of bed where I was unknotting a double negative in a line by Calderon to no avail. I could barely manage to read. I was lethargic in those days, after the fiasco with K. No matter what I did, scribbling in my journal, reading Ovid, visiting the prosti—, I mean, going to church, I could not forget her.
Sometimes I felt like weeping like a child.
The party was at the Japanese place in Binondo. Everyone was there.
Idoy lorded over us like a bouncer, slapping everyone on the back as we came in, so that we all lurched into the room dizzy from his welcome. Boy, that cousin of mine has an arm. Tagawa, the Japanese kid with that cipher of a face—he welcomed us with churros and an impenetrable smile. My heart turned when I saw Agapito—how grown up he looks, in leather shoes. He’s developed a serious, troubled air. Might be the mustache, growing a la Juancho, le Français, Monsieur Cailles.
Agapito came up to me, I wondered if he had a message—but all he wanted to know was if my boarding house had a room.
Perfect timing, I said—come and be my roommate.
I needed the money.
But what I really wanted was to ask him about—his sister—.
I thought better of it. He never mentioned the vanished K. globetrotting toward Barcelona with her lucky fiancé. Agapito kept silent about her to me. Out of politeness. I was grateful. He’s a good man. I carried my melancholy with me, a gloomy wreath around my heart, but no one noticed.
I saw Santiago, that domineering bon vivant, ever present at all parties, with his glistening hair of Brillantina® grease. And of course Juancho the Frenchie came again with that glum guy—what’s his name—Ricarte? He’s not from Cavite but he hangs around, brooding like the Count of Monte Cristo. I saw the brothers Crispulo and Miong. I mean Kapitan Miong to you, on vacation from his duties. He’s a busy man, and it’s funny to think of those old days when we swam in the stream near his house in Binakayan and played tuktukan by the bat caves. He’s mayor of my hometown now, and when as he hugged me he secretly pinched me in the arm the way he used to do when we were ten, I felt this swell of pride that he once bullied me, and the first toast we all drank was to him. He insisted.
It was Agapito, ridiculous in his ill-fitting American suit as always, who brought up the subject. He had a copy of the pamphlet under his sleeves. I’d heard about the paper but had never seen it. All I had were my crumpled monthlies, El Mundo Ilustrado and La Ilustracion, my rented magazines, where I traced the mutant worlds of Europe, of globetrotting K.
I thought the famed pamphlet was a myth, and we all crowded around Agapito.
But Idoy—at a gesture from Crispulo, I noticed—told him to stop it—don’t go there, it was a party not a political assembly.
But Agapito called him a coward, which you do not do to Idoy.
A brawl ensued.
Agapito, already a bit tipsy, got the worse of it. Boy, that cousin of mine has an arm. Tagawa, the Japanese waiter, watched it all with implacable cheer as he handed out salty finger food, I mean chicken feet. Benigno, that sad crustacean—he charged stupidly into the melee, his twitchy limbs flailing in absurd intervention, and it was all I could do to drag him away. He’s a shrimp, and I’m blind, and in the end we crawled to a corner and watched everything
