There by the lanzones grove, I loitered. I wish I could say I passed it, that shuttered spot against the hill. I wish I could say I collected my senses and moved on. I didn’t. I climbed the stairs of the closed kiosk.
Unlike the other constructions, it was a square affair, not pentagonal, diagonal, contrapuntagonal: just a squat straw box, barely five feet by five, natch. It looked more, in fact, like a halfway shack, a temporary fruit stall or one-night stand. I unlocked its useless door, bent my head, and went in.
Cobwebs, ants, the crumbly remains of formerly moist grass, a pile of grimy glass frames, papers. A dusty old bowler on a nail. A European umbrella. Papers. My livid eyes reverted to the sheaves of paper, a film of dirt already settled into a close reading of its fine lines. I walked over, as thoughtless as a marionette, and I recognized the slanted scripture, the clean sweep of his RX r, the critical j, his showboat z, medicinal p, and his liberal and garrulous l. An insect buzzed, and I swear, that index print on the dust, my first violation, was not intentional—I was only swatting at a fly. And my second touch, an awkward sampling, as of a brief, hesitant pinch, was only because, as you well note, one day objects may appear in the wrong shape or size and I will experience the loss of correct colors—though, who knows, peripheral vision will remain. Oh all right, I did: with index and thumb, I held up a dog ear of a page. I didn’t lick it, I admired it, holding it up close to my ruined eyes the better to ravage a phrase. Then I read on, and on and on. I took page after page in my criminal hands. I perturbed and caressed and, sheaf after sheaf, word for word, I devoured. I penetrated and entered and sated my lust. There. Are you satisfied? I violated the pristine state of the hero’s third novel. Not only that: I kidnapped it.487
477 “Fue un latinidad lechugas a vegtable [sic] lump.” The original translates his idiomatic self-loathing into English. (Trans. Note)
478 Ah, Mimi C. Is it self-loathing that brings you back to the table? (Dr. Diwata Drake, Kalamazoo, Michigan)
479 The better to speak with you, my dear. (Trans. Note)
480 The text is garbled here: this line contains the only instance of Italian plus some French. A solecism, how-are-you the book, instead of come va, how goes the book; or is le livre in weird vocative, or budding appositive, i.e., icon for Rizal [how-are-you The Book]; or maybe a dyslexic pun, how-are-you the liver, who knows? In any case he sounds stupid, and I kept the mystery intact, untranslated. The rest of the dialogue is a similarly hallucinatory mix of Spanish, Tagalog, and Chabacano, which I smoothed out into more orderly English, sorry. (Trans. Note)
481 Speaking of hallucination, Blumentritt, Rizal’s faithful correspondent in his exile, was concerned about Rizal in Dapitan. By 1896, Rizal spoke in passing despair about his waning gifts. And his always admiring Austrian friend began to note atypical parapraxes, for instance in Rizal’s Italian—the hero misquoted the opening lines of Dante’s poem of exile in an otherwise upbeat missive to Leitmeritz. The grammar school teacher was alarmed, told the hero he must do something, say, apply to be a doctor for the Spanish in Cuba, get out of the island already, for Christ’s sake. Such was the effect of Rizal’s solecisms. In short, the plan to go to Cuba was a mental health intervention engineered by the good Austrian—not a form of treason to the revolutionary cause! Raymundo’s slips, on the other hand, should just be corrected, Ms. Translator. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
482 Here is a vertiginous spin in his story, his retelling of his telling, so that the narrative spawns an infinity, a dizzying yarn at this juncture: just as, in the Scheherazade tale, for instance, the heroine-storyteller at one point indulges in infinite recapitulation to avoid decapitulation, a literal [in]stallment. The teller’s motive here is less obvious, however—to retell his story in æternum does not defer his diagnosis nor his nation’s. Rather, the story speaks to and remains with the dead hero ad infinitum: in a temporal miracle only narrative might engender, it prolongs a meeting that otherwise occurs nowhere in Rizal’s myriad scripts of his much-recorded days. (Dr. Diwata Drake, Siena, Italy)
483 Well, Dr. Diwata, it’s good to hear your voice! Sometimes. To be honest, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Again. But so pleased to hear from you again! Welcome back! Would you like some lugaw? Tsokolate-eh?! (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
484 Yes, and how are you, Ms. Mimi C. Magsalin? Is that your full pseudonym? (Dr. Diwata Drake, Siena, Italy)
485 I am as I am, as I’ve always been, thank you. (Trans. Note)
486 The creeping unconscious of Raymundo Mata’s debility bubbles into a pool of “knowledge.” So much is at stake in our blindness, and so slight is the fulcrum of our release. Is that not so, Ms. Mimi C.? (Dr. Diwata Drake, Mesmer, Ohio)
487 Oh my God. Brujo. Is that true? Did he—Is that— (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
Entry #35
Even now, I feel them on me: a pair of bleak gray eyes. As I tucked the papers in, awkward and beribboned against my loins, into my finally useful, rapacious karsonsilyos, I felt the gaze of the weeping woman. But nothing, not even my silent conscience, would deter me. The clumsy sheaves themselves indicted my guilty ribs. I did note the fresh mound, a clump of earth with flowers about it, a memorial corona shaped like a cross on an interstitial grave that almost obstructed my path. It was situated—let me see if I remember this right, just in case the details of that purloined hour might one day be of use, though I doubt it—it was by the steps,
