The sister went on and on as my heart limped behind. When she showed us the carefully sculpted busts of his captors, governor Ricardo Carnicero and his grim-faced wife, those sullen gray guardians of his murmuring water system, I wondered at Doña Sisa’s blindness to the symbolism, so apparent to my sore vision I turned away. What did it mean but abject surrender, no matter what anyone else thought? He was whittling away his wits in his isolation. What kind of land was this, where he found comfort in carving out the fulsome cheeks of his oppressors?
His livestock, his coffee beans, his engineering marvels. What else was this man expected to think up next—replicate the sun at midnight? Oh yes, and have you noticed the lamps, Doña Sisa gestured, as we walked up the bamboo stairs and looked back at the path we had taken.
We turned around to gaze at the trim footpaths, a neat maze beyond the beach, sweetly hemmed with garden flowers.456 Like a pendant microcosmic gem resting against the sea, Talisay was beautiful in the sunset, a lovingly mapped dream. A homunculus universe—replete and whole.
You could rest your weary head here, I thought, if they kept you here long enough. If they kept you long enough, I thought, you could fool even your soul.
Necessity, I thought anyhow, is the mother of invention.
But to my sunken heart invention was also the bastard of despair.
—The lamps blaze even at night, Doña Sisa said proudly, so that the people of Dapitan say he makes day out of darkness.
—And what is that? Don Pio asked, pointing at a shuttered kiosk on the rib of the hill.
All the women looked to where he pointed.
—Oh that, said Josefina. It’s nothing.
—For shame, Josefina, said Angelica. That contains his butterfly collection. He hunts for specimens and sends them all in special jars to Europe.
—And he used to write there, Doña Sisa whispered in an addendum I could barely hear.
—Ah, said Don Pio with fawning unction, the famous lepidoptery!
Will this clown not stop his pandering?
—He helped build that hut himself, said Angelica.
I considered the blinkered place.
I considered the entire tranquil torment that was Talisay.
This was the curse of revelation, I thought—the whoredom of Babylon was nothing but the brutal candor of the quotidian matter of the divine.
—Doesn’t he use that hut still? I asked.
—No, swiftly said Josefina.
Doña Sisa stared at her but said nothing.
Well, I thought, I couldn’t blame her. Mama mía. With all this activity, her husband must be a nervous wreck.
Purbida.
When does he have time to be with her, much less write his third novel?
To tell you the truth, I couldn’t quite tell the status of the Austrian lady. From Don Pio’s pursed lips at my questions, I sensed it was a sore point, and in her exchanges with Doña Sisa, I witnessed a mutual though guarded affection, at times distressingly condescending on the part of the sister, so much more accomplished and knowledgeable even to my limited eyes than the teenage bride.
But my heart went out to the foreign mistress, for it must be so—she was his mistress, none of us were fools.
For one thing, could Masons get married?
Anyway, where was he?
Dr. Pio/Don Procopio inspected the place with the rapt air of a forger, and Rufino and I followed the leader with matching faces of gawking ardor. In fact, Rufino’s mute stupefaction had about it such a look of pure comedy that I was afraid to imagine the moronic replica in my own gaze. If this was our reaction to the sister’s introduction of his feats, how would we respond to his actual arrival?
And as if in a trice, conjuring the devil, there he was on the footpath, the giant of our hopes, writer of our sorrows, surgeon of our madness, and magician of Dapitan: I almost fainted in the twilight to hear his sister call out—Pepe!
Even his nickname was profane.457 458
Pepe, the writer.
That was he?
How can I describe the moment, what words do I have at my disposal, to speak the unspeakable instant when I finally met him, the Writer, face to face.
Was it possible, could it be?
Ecce homo.
I raised myself to full height to gaze upon the man, and I couldn’t help it, I said, gasping out in surprise:
—Jesus Christ, you’re short!459
Jesusmariosep, Jesusmaryjoseph.
I was taller than Jose Rizal.
448 How old was Raymundo? In this document’s variable math, in this episode he was between the years twenty-two to thirty. I talk to myself now since other readers have taken a vow of silence. It’s odd how you miss even those with whom you initially have nothing in common, except words. I think now of our aggressive jesting, our mismatched wits (some were not as agile as others), our triple jousts—we had some fun, did we not—us three musketeers, sans kulot? Those were the days. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
449 Rizal’s “estate” across from Dapitan town proper. In 1892, Rizal won 2000 pesos in a lottery, gave most of it to his father, and spent 80 pesos on the spit of land called Talisay, meaning beachfront. One day, let me tell you, when I regain my strength I will sail to Talisay. It is my dream. And one of you can carry my bags, Mimi C. or Diwata, I’d travel with you if you so wish. Did you hear that? We three can travel one day, as a sign of our old companionship. Please: please speak, old friends. I’m so lonely here in the Quezon sanatorium! Oh—un horrible vacío en el mundo de mis affecciones. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
450 Oddly enough, Rizal bought a share of the lottery with Ricardo Carnicero, the governor of the island at the time, his oppressor who became his friend. He, too, was lonely. This was a common trope in Rizal’s short life: his captors admired him. Another instance is his artistic military guard in Calamba in 1887, Jose Taviel de Andrade, who was more of a fellow painter than a guard. Jose’s brother Luis ended up being Rizal’s
