When I woke up and saw her, my lost Leonor—I leapt up from the grove—one more body among the banyans after the Battle of Balara.
516 . . . la doncella rara e iluminada, por los ángeles llamada et cetera. A free translation. (Trans. Note)
Entry #42
I was not a literal hunchback, of course. Where am I? No, it was later, after I met the rare Leonor, that I carried the suitcase of the Katipunan shaped like a medical bag. Like Dr. Pio’s mendacious kit, the one he carried on the trip to Dapitan. Right—why should you remember? That doctor, Dr. Faust, the one who irritated me no end, carried this quack doctor’s bag all around Dapitan. Well, not really: the porters and the servants carried it. His mimicry of the other one, the Doctor to whom we traveled, for whom I traversed, was so patent to me he could have been carrying a banner along with his kit: Where he is there shall I be! What a buffoon. God, I hated his guts. Anyway, there I was, carrying that bag like his on my back, like a man with gout, an inverted glut, like a uterus, behind me. Who knows whose it was?
A child a posteriori.
How did I get it? Where am I? I fell into my grave with a witch. Or in a ditch with a brav— Whatever. When Matandang Leon fell, Captain Carbuncle, as they called him, in the battle of Balara, the first battle, by the way, of the revolution,517 albeit accidental, but then all of them were accidental, now that I think about it—I caught this weight falling upon me. No kidding.
We had just come out into the sun, kind of drunk, for what does one do after tearing one’s cédula and crying out Fire before jumping into the goddamned frying pandemonio, you said it, of freedom?
One drinks.
Where was Leonor?
Anyway, our throats were dry from all that crying, we needed the refreshment.
On Father Gaspar’s orders, nay, his faith, yes, I had gone off and finally joined the Supremo—when, where, why, what the heck, who wants the details, since so many others have already provided their versions (at least seven, if you don’t count the liars) of the reunion, which none of them got right.
Father Gaspar’s directions, though sketchy, were sufficient. After all, I was a man of the Diario, an all-around man—before you even touch the Minerva machines, you start off as a paper boy with the routes of the city on the back of your hand. Where else could people hide but in places we didn’t reach, among farmers and laborers beyond the walls? The perisylvian canals and thatched palay penumbras could only lead me to the swamps and leeches of their gallant dens.
I knew where to go.
Sure, it is best, in the annals of revolt, to make shortcuts and cut out the crap—apostrophes to the divine, expository introductions of brave men who heeded the call to arms, classical-like enumerations of Achaean ships, plus the boring roll call of names that retell the lives of their fathers, semi-literate though classical thugs, with too many causes, as well as all the tragic epithets on the sad provincial provenances of the soon-to-be-dead.
But still it would be nice to introduce a few sterling men with rhetorical flourishes, and not simply a brief, opportune sigh for Matandang Leon—obscure and, as you’ve noted, unpremeditated in my story.
But to return.
I came upon him, the Supremo, in the middle of a meal, of all things, like Jesus Christ amid his disciples, except Christ had only a dozen. While he had a few hundred, some well-dressed, some barefoot, all welcoming me as if I were exactly who I was—not Barabbas, the other one.
It wasn’t really a supper, as you know the word—some smartaleck had hacked a wandering nag, or was it a castrated bull of a carabao, into pieces, and we ate scorched horseflesh, or some irredeemable hijacked hide, upon wet banana leaves. Another fine son of the people had “found” a jug of tuba.518
I was moved by my welcome. At that point none of us hungry and hunted men, after that discovery of names in the La Font printing press, knew when our next meal would be, and still they gave me rest and food without a word. They were barefoot and filthy, soggy and unarmed. They were scared, tired, and intolerably happy. You know, I have survived on kangkong and insects, the fruit of the narra and one bat, and once I had lived in the ruined boardinghouses of genteel Binondo, where Señora Chula treated dinner as not so much a meal but a religious rite, and at home in Kawit my uncle used to be an assistant priest, with a fine table and always at least two lechon at fiesta, and only a few months before I had dined on pickled paho with the gentleman hero in Dapitan.
But when I came upon the men of the Supremo once more, I felt like weeping. I felt, well—really really hungry. And as I dug into the hide and ate the flesh, it was the only time in my life I understood the meaning of communion.
Don’t ask me about how I got on with the sons of the people.
They got me drunk.
—Your father was a good man, Matandang Leon said, his tongue slurring, his face a blur.
It was late at night, and I had no idea who this horse-faced general was.
—But the man was an odd one, Matandang Leon said, el genio Jote. All of us bandits respect him, don’t worry.
I know that in any knot of Filipinos, bound by one thing or another, in our case Masonic-type rituals of bloodletting, reverent displays of
