Miong, on the other hand, shared nothing of our wonder, and Manila, I soon saw, left him cold, his interest in the sights a mere feint for the driver, I realized. Once we got off the kalesa and into my rooms, Miong went straight to business. More or less, in not so many words, as you know I am a bit verbose and my friend is annoyingly taciturn, I paraphrase below Miong’s agitation.
—Mundo, he said, you’ve got to go with me, you with your learning, and I with my brawn, to join the revolution.
—What the f—, I said, truly eloquent.
—Santiago’s coming for me tonight, pretty soon, and you may as well join me, because, to be honest, you are not living up to your potential.
He looked around at my miserable rooms as if to make the point.
—Well, f— me, I exclaimed, peeved, though I should have expected this backhand compliment.
—Anyway, you’ll have to put me up every time I come to Manila for the meetings. I have no idea where they’re taking me, Miong added, peering suspiciously out the curtains, but I am confident I will pass their tests, as I am already a Mason.
—Mother of f—, I declared, with amazing erudition.
I was not as surprised as I paint myself to be in the above profane pantomime, but the dashes, I believe, sufficiently underline the drama. Anyone might wonder with me that I was part of the historic moment when Miong joined the Supremo’s war, given the fate of their future encounters.384
Santiago, Kapitan Mariano’s son,385 386 that tiresome busybody, soon arrived. What can I say about Santiago except that I wish him well? Those two were scions of Cavite, Miong and Santiago, who were born to command, while I was a wiseass bastard. All I had in common with them was that shared fishhook of a creeky landmass, which, come to think of it, was not much, let me tell you.
At the time Santiago was a well-shaven youth whose sincerity excused (but not completely) his pompous air. He was earnest but, most of all, he had an amazing head of hair—I used to call him Señor Brillantina®, but only when he was drunk and he did not seem to mind. I knew him from the Latinidad and had last seen him in that brawl, thrashing Agapito with a toothpick in Binondo.
It was only later that I appreciated the constant anxieties that beset him and erroneously gave him a look of gloom. No one talks about those of us who gave their bladders, nay entire gastrointestinal systems, to the revolution. I have seen Santiago suffer his incontinent malaise with the pent-up agony of Saint Sebastian. Even his stomach was heroic.387
We rode in a kalesa to the telegraph office.
There we were blindfolded and bundled into another kalesa toward who knows where. A small altercation occurred, I’m a bit ashamed. I made a fuss about the blindfold. I mean—Jesus Christ—I’m nightblind. I couldn’t see anyway, for Christ’s sake. But Santiago was firm: no, no, Don Raymundo (he was very polite, calling all of us Don, though we used to play nasty tricks on each other in our underclothes in San Roque), no, no, you must wear a blindfold, it is the rule.
Fucking stupid rule it is to blindfold a blind man.
But Miong held on to my arm in that firm way of his and said, Mundo—Bulag—cut it out. I kept quiet and let them do it, but I silently chalked down a black spot in the checkbox of insanity, one for the revolution.
I know now we went toward Trozo, but at the time I only knew we drove close by the esteros, because, as I said, I have bat’s ears. I heard the river. I mean its rats. And then, not so much the river but the traffic along it, the wooden thud of oars against the banks, muffled bamboo knocking, plonk of paddles and clatter of clogs as people got off and on every so often as we clopped toward our goal.
But most of all the rats—a musical rabble of weak monsters scurrying softly about their dark excursions. And I have to say, in that ancient moment, rattling along in the blind kalesa, I felt one with them all.
When we got off, it was Miong who was a bit discomposed by the blindfold, tripping on everything as he slipped to the ground. I, on the other hand, knew my way with my hands, how to handle the backseat and fall to earth.
It was Miong who was dizzy, staggering into the house, and it was he who had the devil of a time in the oaths. On the other hand, I passed my examination with flying colors, not knowing what I was doing at all. While he—they kept him at it until almost curfew at least, trying to get him to speak the right answers to their tests. I ended up watching this all with Santiago, who whispered to me: Don Emilio has to stop answering like a Mason—this is the Katipunan, not the Oriental lodges, tanga!388
I know, reader, you are on the edge of your seat, waiting for the details of our initiation. For in imbibing this scene, the reader partakes of the body of our freedom. The holy sacrifice of independence: this scene is the Mass of the nation’s redemption. When blood turns on the initiate’s knife, so indio turns into Filipino, and slave transubstantiates into Soul.
Oh History! Oh Fate!
One moment we were Spain’s servant and the next we are her scourge!
But no matter how much I call upon the Muses, pale-cheeked, preferably naked Mnemosyne, the
