I couldn’t help it.
I was born from the cracked egos of a pair of stage actors. I was in the wings of history, waiting for my cue. I’m sorry to say that I happily anticipated the moment when it would be my turn to face applause. This was a distinctly engulfing feeling—to be stuck in dramatic pause, as if in a starring role—though you couldn’t even call me an understudy, and anyway my bit part had no lines. If I were honest, I would say I saw absolutely nothing, but instead I will note: there was my mother, coughing up her blood; there was my father, the young prince, flashing his petard; there were the scent of flowers, leaves, silence—
And it’s hard for me to separate out my mind’s dim memory from dim desire. Now I blow up what fascinated me (Jose Basa in Hong Kong possesses his books, who the hell is he?). I narcotize the dull (they go on and on about Cuba, who cares!). I catch Don Pio’s tactful tactics—I have to admire him in his shining moment. He has a mission. He has focus. At last he’s in his element, and I note, with belated respect, the inutile, thankless mission of the Supremo’s secret messenger.
For the Katipunan, after all, there is only one right answer.
He waited for the hero’s reply. If not now, when?
For the hero’s in a bind: the flattery of this trip alone unnerves him. So the seed grows. Who sowed it? He did, but that was a shallow answer best left unspoken. Don Pio waits. As for him, the hero, Cantu’s fallacy of historical causality has finally caught up with the living, and he’s too tired to wrestle with belief. My own perceptions in this matter mix with hindsight, plus fancy, such being the rules that govern recollection. He had as much interest in idolatry as cows have in cud; godhood is tiresome. Exile is a gift. He had tried. I strained to catch it, the unspoken. The man had tried on the island to captivate something beyond the soul: a surplus matter. It was a terrible accounting, and I struggled vainly to comprehend. For one thing, I could barely hear. It was beyond us, vile trespassers. How to say it? The goal? Simply to live, oblive? I could not get the words, I improvised.
To succumb to rascal matter. The risible, fetid completeness of a sac. The secret volcano in a rock. The tumid gristle on a bull, sadly defunct. Castration was no picnic, but what one would give for the tenacity of dumb beasts? My God, the infinite capacities of the ravened eye! And a breast was a breast was a breast: neither a lesson in futurity nor the lesions of a mother’s love. The world was enough if it was narrow enough. That is grace.
He knew damned well what we were up to: we wanted his signature in blood.
It’s true.
His bones did not matter.
We wanted of him what was air and nothing, such as his name, a ghost louse-scratch. As for his novels, his words? Not futile but culpable. Blameless, but still: bloodstained. This pained him.
I was shocked. This is what I got for my crime, arrant listener. Struck dumb: for this must be our Medusa. Worse than a hero’s death was a hero’s truth.
How could we not have seen it: that he possessed the regrets of ordinary men?
I was disconcerted, and I wished in that moment to turn to stone.
And then, how could we convey what we meant, our profound—? How could Don Pio even begin—? Our mangled esteem. Our symbol equals, yes, the shreds and skein of his body, but quiddities, if we thought about it—yes, just as much, really. It’s not fair to discount our concern, though it is true, yes, we preferred blood. It’s all we had. It was all that we could draw.
Stalemate.
And then I kept wishing he would talk more about his library.
What again was the address in Hong Kong?
A sudden movement toward stage left, a sandshuffle of feet, where I think they rambled up and down upon the beach, the sea making a fine backdrop. And I swear I saw that wistful gesture, more like an aside, when the hero pointed with his moonlit cane to that cleft of land where the Katipunan’s boat would never rescue him.
—Bulag!
Like a clarion he called out, his voice away from us, toward the useful shore. I imagine Don Pio himself had a hand to his waist, ready to brandish his secret gun—but the voice’s pistol shot was quicker.
—You behind the rock: get back to the huts! All three of you. And be careful on your way up to help the blind man.
And then, as if he had not interrupted his walk, he continued with Don Pio, hands holding his shining cane: I believe it glowed, a hypnotic snake, its head raised against the sand no matter which way it twirled.
Bulag, as if he had indeed been stricken by a blow from the man’s cane, raced up toward the huts, dragging us through the grass. We scampered like beasts in flight, for all the world turned into swine. To be honest, I did not think I would make it up alive, and when I fell on the mats, I touched my limbs and my eyes to make sure my body had not become marble, or worse engristled into the wildness of a boar. I was delirious, feverish, and like Rufino tossed and turned all night.
When he woke up, Rufino said:
—Examine my face, Don Mundo: do
