—Did we get him into trouble? Rufino whispered to me.
—Eat your mangoes, Mang Rufino, I commanded, still piqued by his earlier snub.
I’d like to say I shared in the old man’s worry—his early sense that by our coming we had upset the gods’ compass, or, more bleakly, set blind destiny in motion. In retrospect, it was old Rufino, of course, in his anxious simplicity, who possessed prophetic dread, the niggling restless apprehension that escaped us as we sipped sweet nectar from the hero’s cacao and bit into sour mango from his trees.
No, my mind was on a selfish tack, still smarting from my humiliation and revising the scene as one’s shamed heart does, furiously editing out the blighted parts.
And around me, I looked for signs of the writer in the house—manuscripts, scrap paper, pens, inkwells.
But in the sala, all I saw was a spartan home, touches of the feminine in the lace runners and the trite puka shells for curtains separating the living room from a dim passage, my curiosity unrequited.
The hero returned before we even finished polishing off the fruit.
His arrival startled Rufino, as if he’d witnessed a magic trick.
—Mira ta, he nudged me.
—What, I whispered.
—El bini aqui—en banig voladora!
—What do you mean—a flying carpet? Didn’t you watch him leave in his banca, stupid!
But Rufino was gazing beatifically on the hero and did not listen to me.
The hero looked with satisfaction at our appetite.
—Ah, he said, I see you like the paho.
—Don Pepe, replied urbane Procopio, I prefer your pickled mango to the olives of the Europeans.
Coño!463 464
Will that charlatan465 ever stop showing off?
The women and the doctors then took up the merits of Mindanao’s virgin soil, its paradisiacal profusions, and so on and so forth, Don Procopio building up to that usual hype about the promised land. Sure, I thought, it’s a promised land to you, coño—but what about the people who have lived here for ages? Who’s promising their goddamned land to whom, idiot? I listened to everything the hero said and wondered at his tolerance of that quack Valenzuela.
If anyone had the right to shake this man out of his mug, it was the doctor-writer-hero-butterfly-catcher-gymnast-water engineer. For after all, weren’t we endangering his quiet life in exile by our revolutionary trespass, bringing the war right up to his bougainvillea gates, so to speak, whether he liked it or not?
We went on to dinner, chicken tinola, chicken sinigang, and caesar chicken salad466 467 468 469—a motley parade of the hapless denizens of the aforementioned handsome coop—and in this way we found our journey’s troubles repaid.
Meanwhile at our elbows stood a fine servant, a bony teenager with an eyepatch, ready to replenish our sweet tuba drinks. Then at times from the kitchen emerged another man with a deformed eye. In fact, the ocular motif was beginning to unnerve me, I must say.
Was I the only one who noticed the comings and goings of these creatures, like extras from a Gothic Pageant of the Island of the Lost Eyes?
Everyone else concentrated on the discourse during the courses.
—Is everything all right with the governor? Dr. Pio asked.
—Oh that. Carnicero just wanted to know who you are. I said you’re a doctor bringing a patient to me. It’s okay, don’t worry. As you can see—there are a lot of them around.
Doña Sisa explained the exile’s life: patients from all places, blind men from Jolo, Hong Kong, Jala-Jala, you name it, flocking to Dapitan. Plus there were his abaca farming, irrigation plans, butterfly collecting, physical education, and life saving, all of which eased his monotony on the island.
However, in exchange for his freedom in Talisay, the hero reported to the governor every day, usually at lunch, she explained.
The point starkly came upon us: our host was a prisoner after all.
I thought: the revolution must save him.
We must deliver him from this—from this paradise!
—The governor’s just homesick, the hero cracked. I can speak to him about the cities in Spain that he misses.
—Plus cities he’s never seen!, interjected Doña Sisa. No one’s seen more of the world than you! New York! Hong Kong! Egypt!
—Ah, sisters, the hero joked. They think the world of you in your presence, but you wonder what they say when you’re gone.
—That’s unfair, said Angelica. You know that Mamá would never say a word against you! Not like—
—Want more paho, asked the sweet Josefina, smiling tenderly at her Jose.
I realized at that moment how inconvenient we all were—interlopers all, including the faithful sister—for wasn’t this the lovers’ first meeting after a mournful division, as any lover’s separation must be?
We turned away, or at least I did, at the spectacle of the reunited couple, a topic too delicate for my inspection.
I had the privilege of noting Doña Sisa’s passing discomfort, a slight twitch of the shoulder as the pair exchanged the pleasantries of paho with one other. My own unease was not that of a sibling’s misplaced, perhaps unwarranted, sense of propriety, or smart sisterly protection—no, mine were the misgivings of the vulgar, as from my vantage I watched the familiar bosom heave in fine irrelevant show, in her wispy black balintawak.
Clearly, it was time to withdraw, and we got up.
—Bulag, exclaimed the hero as we moved off.
I was startled. Indeed, I was offended at this slight.
Sure he was a genius, and clearly the chosen one between us two—still, did that give him the right to make fun of my condition?
In an instant the one-eyed houseboy appeared, and the hero addressed him:470
—Bulag, show you the huts, then cowboys three put away their banig. Me hear you?471
It was shocking, to say the least, to hear this absurdity from the poet who wrote pensive poems to the flowers of Heidelberg. But then again, he is the guy who wrote Spanish sonnets to German flora.
—The teahouse, Señor?
—Si.
Wonders kept abounding. You can imagine my deflation to note my common cause, including my
