Not bruises but books made me burn.
In my case, those hyperventilating texts did spur revenge, so that if revolution were to occur, as, turning over page after page of continental ignorance, now I hoped it would, how strange that I owed my growing bloodlust to the pulp of trees and ash of words, even though it was my life that was at stake.
Personally, I was pathetic.
You can imagine what it meant to read those pamphlets of the Filipino propagandistas from abroad. I won’t tell you how I got them, those yellowed pages hoarded from eons ago, the size of missals, about eight inches’ span, the breadth of my puny chest. You could slip one in a hymnbook and so fool the friars.
I’d like to know what became of those scribbling musketeers.
Sadly, I hear that apoplectic genius, Plaridel, is dying of the Filipino plague, poverty, in Barcelona, picking cigarettes off of cobblestones; and such luminaries as Laong-Laan, Dimas Alang, et al., are now scattered to ever-desperate sections of disparate straits: Vienna, London, even America. And where have Carmelo, L. O. Crame, and M. Calero gone, cunning men in anagram masques? Some are plotting utopias in Borneo, while others have fallen to the frail witticisms of Spanish life. (I understand, from those same mongering sources, that K herself has grown stout and matronly in El Raval, though her eyes, I imagine, are still wicked, a trap for fops.) Personally, I never much cared for Paterno or that Lete de leche, superfluous Spanish peacocks, though they had their moments. But that Prussian pedagogue, Herr Blumentritt, the saint of ethnologists—what I would not give to offer him with sincere thanks, with my own trembling hands, a cup of steaming barako. And by the way, I would like to know where in the world is the raving statesman, Lopez Jaena, my favorite, a rascal, magician of bile, even more eloquent, some say, when drunk, but what can one do with an Ilonggo? In hindsight, my own attempts here at imitating his lurid oratory do betray, even I will admit, a rather specious, a bit waxen, grace. So be it. I relished them all. They whipped that cur Cañamaque good with the lash of their Latin logic: “Nosce te ipsum!” “Materialiter vel idealiter sumptum!” Francamente, no me gusta perder el tiempo atacando y luchando con empresas particulares como la del Padre Font, Quioquiap y otros: yo lucho por la nación, Filipinas!418 My God, how that blessed German Blumentritt scratched out Quioquiap’s blind eyes with epithets like lances. Quite above the belt!
And as for dear, deported Rizal, who unlike others signed his name to his quips, unafraid of redemption, I mean retribution—I, like many others, could only bow like a cow. That was my problem: my organ of adoration burst to seams on reading such glories as “Missals and Mocking Missiles” and “Stop Asking Me for Poems!”419 and the froth of my praise was not entirely coherent.
I will confess, now that those gusts of fervent steam have blown over, that I, too, penned my own paeans to my country’s future freedoms. My masterpiece, “Pearl of the Orient Pawn-Shops,” studded with lurid chess metaphors and metallurgical allusions, was one such stupefying poem: the crappy surplus of veneration. I admit, this is all paltry excuse for my subsequent adventures, but, frankly, it is all I have.420
And so I prepared for my voyage to Dapitan.
Reading my old hoard of pamphlets, I tried to get into the spirit of the thing. Soon, I did feel it, full of hope for the revolution, and a bit proud, if I might add, of my coming-soon, cameo role in it.
Carefully I packed, wrapped in tissue and a pair of my lone wool trousers, Father Gaspar’s beat-up old copy of the Noli Me Tangere, read and re-read and not handed around among my brothers, despite what the priest had said. I was still jealous of anyone who had read it, as if the book were written only for me, and except for those early days with Benigno, I kept it for myself.
Finally, I could get it autographed.
Dr. Pio gave me daily missives on what to bring and how to act—he was a moralizing sort with a condescending attitude, but who was I to argue with the secretary, or was he treasurer, of the Katipunan?
Above all, he said, do not carry incriminating material, such as your copy of the Noli Me Tangere.
My God—what was he—a spying savant?
I put the novel away with reluctance and packed instead the holy missal that I had bought from the Indiaman’s bookshop, an ertswhile gift for my uncle when I returned home.
Tio U., of course, knew nothing of my impending trip.
It was all hush-hush, you know, like Cassius and Brutus among the Romans. My secrecy made me feel self-important, though if you think about it, Brutus’s life did not end well. In any case, I never told my uncle, as he had enough troubles at home. For one thing, like a vast joke on the universe, my grandfather simply would not die. The marvelous hound of Jaca—you had to give it to the old man!—barked his blind dominion to the end. Plus, there were my uncle’s other tribulations: his bad sugar harvests, chicken coop banditry around Kawit, and complaints of arthritis.
Above all, his affection endured.
I knew anything I did that was out of the pale would both worry and annoy him—remember your father, hijo, remember 1872, he would write, and I could hear the mothering quiver of his lisp!
My poor uncle.
Couldn’t he get over it already? Like many of us he used the past as crutch in his solitude, and though I had no intention of sharing his despair, I felt guilty. So instead in my letters I mentioned my eyesight,
