At some point in the night I heard a shout saying, of all things, for no apparent reason, Cold! Cold!,389 in the startling voice of a shrill Visayan. To be honest, in my nervousness, I was Warm! Warm! Mainit, mainit!
My armpits were wet.
Then I believe they made me do the limbo.
Oh God that I cannot do more service to the nation than this—dancing stenography of details, my silly redacted recall: not for some witty moral purpose, mind you, but just because I’m a dunce. Now all these guys swear there were, first, skulls and crossbones, then bloodletting and banners, and then divine decalogues sworn over dead bodies, all that rot that smacks of gothic fiction.390 Well, to each his own. Whereas, what I remember was passing underneath a covered table in the dark, bending low while someone shouted questions, and all I could answer was, Damn you, of course, I love my country, idiot, but as for dying for her can I think about it?
Then Santiago kicked me in the shins.
Finally they took my blindfold off, and under the glare of the oil lamp I recognized him before I saw him: Andres Bonifacio, the Supremo, with a handkerchief in his lapel and a triumphant smile on his face.
The Supremo swore us in.
You know I would recognize his voice even in the wilderness.
I had heard it before.
Only later did I learn who he was, but all along that strange blindfolded evening I kept wondering where I had heard that Tagalog rasp, a low melody of vowels. He instructed me to stop being a poisonous weed, to love my neighbor as myself, unless he’s a Spaniard, and don’t do unto others what your wife does to you—or was it to stop doing what you don’t want done to your wife? Whatever. They had so many don’ts but you get the drift—it’s the thought that counts. In any case, in that still night he spoke with a haunting speech, as of an echo from the past.
I couldn’t place it.
In fact, altogether, there was an impossible conflation in this untidy moment with an incident that had occurred before, and I ransacked the closets of my dirty mind for this solemn event’s partner in time. Just kidding. My mind, of course, does not work in such logical metaphors, and time does not dwell in cabinets. What I mean to say is that there was something oddly redundant in the voice of the man before me, and when I saw him, in a flash I recognized his twin. Well, not really in a flash—but you’ve probably guessed by now to which episode I shall soon flashback.
The handkerchief gave him away.
It’s odd to think how he was so well dressed for a workingman, and I understood that—I understood the dry itch, like a rasp in the esophagus, of upward mobility; and sadder still, is it that he had just the one suit?
The man before me was the same man who had defended the sacred novel in that latticed room in Ermita where Agapito used to meet with his radical book club. At least, I thought then it was a radical club only to discover they were mostly a bunch of homebodies who ate too many churros.
I hate to admit this, but in that flash of recognition during my initiation into the Katipunan, by the Supremo no less, with Santiago prodding me into patriotism and Miong making all the wrong Masonic answers in the background, my thoughts, of all things, flew to the serving girl Orang of Ermita, my erstwhile skeletal love, and I wondered, with an ache akin to that of rapists, to which forlorn fool she was now showing her skinny chest?
Anyway, that man in Ermita who challenged the crippled lawyer over his nasty reading of El Filibusterismo was, there you have it, the founder of the Katipunan.
Now you know.
What a difference time makes. Now he was in this poor man’s quarters in Trozo, whereas before I had met him smoking with gentleman lawyers in a mahogany room.
What had he said to that shallow critic? Quote. “You have a right to your opinion, but I must challenge you to a duel for your thoughts.” Unquote.
Sadly for me, it is details like this that buzz like bedbugs in a holding pattern in my brain.391 392
I remember exactly the handkerchiefed man’s words, and my shock to see him now before me, ordering me to shed blood for my country, in front of a bunch of pensive farmers and somber witnesses, was great, as you can imagine. I agreed immediately, not having much choice as they had daggers. Then someone slit me on my left bicep (tip: it doesn’t hurt as long as you don’t look), then I signed my name with my blood. It looked like this: R Mat
My script was kind of thrifty because I did not want further bloodshed, given that it was at my expense, but even though I left out the final vowel, running out of blood, they were satisfied. Then they asked what I wished to be called in the revolution, and seeing they were serious, not joking, I answered without thinking.
Paniki?
I posed the name as a question, but they took it as fact, and to this day I regret my quick response for sometimes it seems I could have chosen a more masculine alias, instead of a freaky flying beast.
I could have called myself Elias, brawny and elemental precursor of the
