The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata

philosophico-ethnologician, ophthalmologian—whatever. Who cares what else he had done? Nothing was of consequence but the books, and to be honest Agapito’s extraneous information kind of irritated me. He had been on a boat in Hong Kong on the way to the islands all along. He was going to set up a gymnasium and a botanical garden along the banks of Laguna de Bay, and if all else failed he would set up a colony of gentleman farmers, somewhere in the jungles of the British Indies. Bla bla bla. Boring. He went straight to Calamba to visit his blind mother. He wore elegant European attire, spoke Latin with priests and English to strangers, and he visited putas only once a month. He was a saint. He was tall, muscular, and comely, with porcelain cheeks, just like Crisostomo Ibarra.

So Agapito blabbed, unable to keep from boasting about his knowledge even though he obviously carried bad news, and I was annoyed, waiting with envy, for the critical matter of his information.

And yes, now the truth could be told.

He was in Manila, in our midst, not even ten blocks away!

The fact itself warranted a public declaration of miraculous joy.

I would give up my small intestines to see him, except that this damned epidemic had battered them to a pulp.

I would give up my kidneys, my left lung!

Agapito revealed with pride how he and his friends had held a party. The Writer was the guest of honor. They offered a toast. He gave a speech. I could have kicked myself if my knees weren’t already as limp as withered zacate—I could have been there! Instead I had been busy divesting Orang of her breeches in one of those many sordid afternoons at Fonda Iris in Paco Dilao! Oh, what a calamity, a black misfortune—God had punished me for not becoming a Mason!

But this was not the news he had to tell. Agapito had stopped looking like an injured owl, but at this point, his face turned white as if he had suddenly remembered a ghost he had locked away in a drawer. And he ran to the closet where I knew he kept his secrets in a trunk covered with his photography equipment: the jar of ink; the box with the rattling skull (stolen, he confessed later, from Paang Bundok by an acolyte); a quotidian quill. All his devil’s instruments were intact. I was surprised to be suddenly face to face with his paraphernalia, especially the skull.

I knew he had hidden away some treasures, but I had no idea he was such a ghoul.

—I’ll have to find a way to get rid of them, he muttered. They’re useless, useless, useless, now that he is gone!

—Come on, Agapito: what happened?

I looked away from the craven craw, I mean the thing of death.

—He’s gone, he declared dramatically. They arrested him.

The words sank in, but in the way you eat into raw tamarind—with the sourness at bay and then a bitterness, and in the throat an occult sense of pain.

—Is he dead?

—Not yet, said Agapito. He’s been deported to Dapitan. On the island of Zamboanga.

—So they haven’t buried him in Paang Bundok,364 I said.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

We spent the afternoon trying to find a way to get rid of the skull, which I walked about handling like a bucket. We ended up pulverizing it with a ladle. Surprisingly, it crumbled easily, like a losing egg in a game of tuktukan.

And all throughout this grisly operation, all I could think was: of all the darned luck.

I have an abysmal soul, full of mold where angels should sit. In these dire times I could think only of myself. The Writer had been right there all along, in a room on Azcarraga just a kalesa ride away. I could have touched his hand. And now they had thrown him all the way to Zamboanga, to be adored by infidels. What rotten luck. I felt my bowels rise again, a damned fluttering in my gorge. Always a latecomer. History keeps laving my behind, I thought mournfully—I mean, history keeps leaving me behind, as once more I waddled off to wash my country’s sorrows off my sorry bum365 366

326 Flashforwards begin to occur in the narrative, brief eruptions, portending a future too sad to delve into fully. (Trans. Note)

327 Sssh, Mimi C. Do not disturb. Raymundo has begun to describe scenes of katipuneros in action, gathering in secret meetings. Any amateur sleuth of Philippine history can decipher the following figures: the mustached Frenchman from Cavite, Juan Cailles (turned out to be a traitor, in the American phase—hah!—but at first he fought for the right side); Santiago Alvarez, future memoirist; Artemio Ricarte, the General Who Never Surrendered and Escaped to Japan. Best of all, the diary expands our knowledge of unsung heroes: Benigno Santi, one of the feared, holy millenarians escaped to the hills to confound the Americans, jailed in Bilibid with Raymundo in 1902; and Agapito Conchu, the saintly photographer’s assistant whose name is now lost in an anonymous collective noun, the Trece Martires of Cavite. Etc. etc. (Estrella Espejo, Quezon Institute and Sanatorium, Tacloban, Leyte)

328 I don’t know, Estrella. Seems more like some birthday party to me, a “blowout,” not a secret revolutionary gathering. (Trans. Note)

329 Chicharon, delicately fried pork rind, is my favorite snack. Chicharon bulaklak—porkrind flowers—delicately fried pork intestines, are paradise. In fact, if you look into my heart’s chamber, you will probably find a conical circle of diseased arteries, a viscera-portrait of Dante’s Hell winding its way like a chokehold of birthday memories around my honest muscle. I’m glad to note my modern solidarity with the katipuneros: we even like the same junk food. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)

330 Sssh, Estrella! Do not disturb! Let us read in quiet. You are right. Momentous times are coming up, and it is up to us, careful readers, to give Raymundo Mata the space—to carve out his reader’s mindful attention. (Dr. Diwata Drake, Katmandu, Nepal)

331 I love the smell of