This must be heaven, I thought, where all the angels and drunkards fall into place in single file.
No one expected the arrival of the Guardia Civil.
It was so early in the morning, and anyway the Supremo, who had gone ahead with his chosen men, had scheduled the battle for later in the afternoon, conveniently somewhere else.
I tell you this was the story of the war—all mixed signals and crossed destinies and aborted plans. The war was supposed to happen in the next arrabal, not in this nondescript fork between a banyan grove and a Chinese bodega in an unnamed barricade near Bilarang-hipon!
You could tell the guardias were just as surprised by us as we were by their arrival. They, too, had probably just had barako, tsokolate-eh, and pan de sal. At first I thought they were part of another balangay who had come to find us. The men’s dark and startled faces mirrored the surprise on Matandang Leon’s, and when one of the guardias spoke, he shared our tongue.
That was my other trouble with the war.
It was so goddamned annoying.523
I couldn’t tell apart my brothers from the other brothers, the guardias who were Filipinos like us, even when they wore uniforms. Some were deserters, some were not. It was only the arrival of the españolados in the bunch, always holding up the rear, that cleared up the issue.
And then—and this surprises me even now, because it was as if my heart already understood—my heart beat double at the sight of the leader of the Guardia Civil even before I saw him in full.
The españolado stood uncertainly by the Chinese warehouse’s rusting gate, staring at us, the sons of the people.
He wore the uniform of my grandfather Don Raymundo Mata Eibarrazeta, the one in the framed picture in my uncle’s home. The españolado had my grandfather’s unseeing face. Most of all, he had the same scary gray eyes of my father in the other picture on my uncle’s mantel.
It seemed to me that finally I was face to face.
With el genio Jote.
I was so surprised I stood like a dumb decoy before the parley, open to everyone’s guns.
Like a moment long ago—I waited for him to recognize me.
Was this what had become of the bandit who strode the mountains of Buntis swaddled in women’s clothes?
Paniki, sabi ko.
The smooth-cheeked face of interchangeable fate gave me a sting of nausea.
Two chickens came out of the warehouse and pecked at the españolado’s thick brown boots, and he bent to shoo the fowl away.
Sugod, yelled Matandang Leon.
At that moment I understood why the Supremo had chosen Matandang Leon to lead us—and not, for instance, me.
Because Matandang Leon was a crazy son of a bitch.
The tulisan forged ahead of us, even on such short notice, and he cast his raw courage at the startled guards.
The rest of us, I mean, me, I froze.
I mean, look at us. Look at us in the pictures of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, bootleg copies of photographic curios that survive of our war. Even the Filipino guardias wore shoes and, lucky bastards, a uniform, with stripes and pockets. Plus they had guns. El genio Jote, or whoever this lifesize double was, with his precarious head and fantastic katsila nose, wore the arrogance of a man who had not only a gun but a silver, gleaming sword.
Matandang Leon was barefoot, not to mention hung over, and all he had was a bolo and a reconstituted pistol. God bless that intsik merchant who had sold us back our pistols, which our fine brothers had stolen in turn, in parts from the Manila arsenal, a round-robin of stealing and reconstituting and selling that marked our ingenuity at least—at least with the single pistol we had one chance.
Matandang Leon hoisted a weapon and lashed out with the other, and sure enough instead of shooting with the gun he fired with the bolo. The españolado shot him dead. Bulls-eye at the carbuncle, an easy target.
Chaos followed.
How can I describe the battle? Don’t ask me because my brains rattle in my guts and my toes move upward toward my spleen when I think of the moment.
I ran.
I was bent and breathless as if something were breaking in my chest’s bony cradle, amid the flesh and ganglia of my nerves and despair. I was weeping. I was weeping and running and I lost my step and got entangled somehow in someone’s feet, and I didn’t care if he were a son of the people or the son of the Lord, something in me was dying and on top of that I was scared to death.
I fled.
I saw him.
I saw him die.
Matandang Leon was my first—he was the first katipunero whom I saw fall.
I wished never to see another again.
Those staring eyes on the path toward the banyan grove, looking up to the sky in surprise, as if to say somehow nothing had prepared him for this particularly ignominious story. Then he was a nothing—gone—he was a nothing of himself. In that minute, I saw how easily it goes, and a weight fell on me.
As I said, it was that buwisit medical bag.
The skinny Bulakeños were nowhere in sight, and the band major with the red and white flag was gone. The flag sat on a chicken’s carcass, a scarlet inflammation, one with the blood, and the bag had fallen first on my head then at my feet.
The Spanish reinforcements had come, a bunch of Filipinos still picking their teeth, and in the mess I don’t think I ever saw him again.
The unseeing sharpshooting españolado.
My unnamed enemy.
The mirror of Spain who mimicked my father.
But who cares about him?
In the mess of my retreat, I retrieved it, our poor three-letter flag, missing a digit to round out our curse.
Running on, I picked up the fallen medical bag.
—He’s living in the mountains of Maragondon, Matandang Leon had revealed to me. He’s respected by all the bandits.
In retrospect, when I
